I am a little late for Trafalgar Day, I do apologise, but I thought I'd link to my indirect contribution to the day as an item of interest.

At the archive where I work we have several collections of private papers, one of which is from the Gasquet family of whom a member - Mr Joseph Gasquet - was appointed ship's surgeon aboard the 18-gun HMS ( Read more... )

A short historical post to accompany the newly available digitised image of the burial register of Christow church, Devon in which Edward Pellew shows himself to be his own man to the last.

Author: Nodbear
Summary :Images of the burial register of Christow church in Devon


( Read more... )

Hornblower experts, your assistance is required! ;-)

As some of you might know, I run a blog dedicated to Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood. A gentleman called Paul has contacted me with a question regarding Admiral Collingwood and flowers. He’s working on a project about flowers and their role in human culture. While reading “From Hornblower and the ( Read more... )

You'd think I'd have got the hang of this by now, but I am incapable of remembering which boats were carried by different rates of ships and how many men were required to row them. I am sure that I have written numerous fics where I have sent two men off in a boat that requires a dozen oarsmen, and other times crammed a crew of thirty odd into a ( Read more... )

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 ( Read more... )

Happy Birthday Sir Edward - 256 and as esmerelda_tsaid yesterday still doesn't look a day over 185 ( Read more... )

Thought I'd drop in briefly to rec this, as it might be of interest to a few people here. (It should be accessible outside the UK too.)

BBC Radio 4: Making History

'Tom Holland is joined in the Making History studio by Dr Elaine Chalus, who is Director of the Centre for History and Culture at Bath Spa University and currently involved in ( Read more... )

I know I've fallen off of my routine of posting something at least once a week.  I've been fairly busy, and over the past week or so, haven't felt really good.  Nasty head cold combined with a chest cold.

Anyway, I think I've mentioned that I'm currently reading Ships of Oak: Guns of Iron, by Robert Utt.  It's a detailed history of the War of 1812 ( Read more... )

I have been collecting for some time pictures of the homes of Edward Pellew over the almost 80 years of his life becaue they illustrate the trajectory of his rising career very well and am now hoping to make two or three posts, mainly pictures with some description to tell this story ( Read more... )

Last week's St David's Day appreciation of Welsh navyboys led esmerelda_t to wonder if there were actually any Welsh midshipmen on the historical Indefatigable. There may have been at some stage, but there are none listed on the January 1797 muster that nodbear and I have been looking at. Of the 19 young gentlemen aboard the frigate at that time 14 were English, 3 ( Read more... )