A gift for Friendship : a letter from Edward Pellew June 1805

[nodbear]

The lovely post by lady_latimer and all the responses to it prompted me to share one of the riches relatively recently discovered by anteros_lmc and self.This is a letter to Jacques Bergeret which the French captain preserved with numerous others in his papers and which is now deposited with the rest of his archive in Bayonne, his home town

Comments

[nodbear]

delighted to share

after all the fact that Admiral Bergeret kept it himself and then his fanily for 205 years somehow already makes it signifcant

[eglantine_br]

Good kind men, both of them I think. I wonder if Captain B has his own fangirls?

[anteros_lmc]

I wonder if Captain B has his own fangirls?
Why yes, yes he does. ;)

[nodbear]

he certainly does yes

and Anteros and I would like to tell his and Ned's whole story as reflected in their letters one day - that is one of our further prpojects

that and drinking Ystarra on the Quai de l'Amiral Bergeret in their memory :)

[lady_latimer]

How utterly lovely. Thank you so much for sharing!

On a related note, I'm interested to find out more about Captain Henry Lambert, as both my paternal grandparents were of that surname... *goes off to dig*

[vespican]

If I remember correctly, it is a Captain Lambert that appears at the end of Lieutenant Hornblower and sort of mops up. (book version).

Also it was a Captain Lambert who commanded HMS Java vs USS Constitution during the War of 1012.
Dave

[nodbear]

It is one and the same Henry LAmbert -he has a quite good wikipedia page here at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Lambert

Psyche was one of his major triumphs- he was a junior acting captain in PEllew's sqaudron then and he died of wounds received in the fight with USS Constitution

[nodbear]

see below re wikipedia page - and if you get stuck let us know - Anteros and I are old hands at searching for links to navyboys of the period

[anteros_lmc]

I love this letter so much, but of course the line that really does it for me is "a man is never unfortunate until he has lost his honor".

[nodbear]

yes indeed - hence the icon - sad

jamie so convincingly pale there - suspect for other reasons than acting however :)

and how every time I see that one it seems a shame those two were not on screen more together - purely for artistic and narative purposes of course not because I would be glued to the screen or anything ...

reading the account of the capture of the Psyche yesterday though it struck me more forcibly that he is actually commenting here on the manner of Bergeret's defeat and his conduct in it - which is obvious of ocurse but because I tend to think of it genericaly as a Ned statement

but its a great letter - that determined "unalterably " is very charcteristic of his ideals even if soemtimes he fell short of them as he knew he did

[vespican]

Thanks for sharing
Dave

[nodbear]

is a pleasure !