The 1805 Dispatches #25.05 October 2025 7 of 8 EVENTS DIARY EVENT DATE EVENT TITLE EVENT DESCRIPTION CLUB LEAD 15 Oct 2025 Trafalgar Way Story Talk by Kathy Brown at the Axminster Heritage Centre, Axminster Devon at 19:30. Tickets from Heritage Centre £5 –see axminsterheritage.org Kathy Brown 19 Oct 2025 Trafalgar Night Dinner Country Club of Fairfax, Virginia, USA Peter Pennington 19 October 2025 St Maddern’s Church Madron, Cornwall Service to remember Nelson Capt A Welch RN Rtd. 21 October 2025 Wreath-laying at St Paul's Cathedral. A member of the Club will lay our wreath at Nelson's Tomb. Enter by the North Door and meet in the Crypt at 1100. — 24 Oct 2025 1805 Club Conference: New Series 1 35th Anniversary of the Club and 220th of Trafalgar. Conference at Portsmouth Stephen Howarth 25 Oct 2025 Storehouse Number 10 Private guided access to the archive collection and workshop of the Portsmouth Royal Dockyard Historical Trust Nigel Linger 25 Oct 2025 Trafalgar Night Dinner TND at HMS NELSON Wardroom, Guest of Honour Matthew Sheldon, CEO NMRN Stephen Howarth 2026 Visit to Haslar RN Hospital and Buckler’s Hard Club visit to these fascinating historical sites Stephen Howarth BOOK LAUNCH Sailors of Varied Fortune: The Schombergs afloat and ashore By Club Member Paul Martinovich 380 pages Amazon UK £41 Amazon US $54.95 (print on demand) [To be honest, this is more of a press release than a book review, but the heads-up came too late for the next KA, which is now at the printers. As this may be an interesting Christmas present, we decided to include it here, as the next TD would be too late. Ed.] Who would have thought that among the contemporaries of Hood and Nelson were four successful Royal Navy captains named Schomberg? This book reveals how these closely-related men navigated the choppy waters of a demanding and competitive service. Over ninety years the four Captains Schomberg (Alexander, Isaac, Alexander Wilmot and Charles Marsh) encountered the challenges of battle, storm and professional missteps, as they built reputations for energy and competence. As their name suggests, these men did not come from a conventional RN officer background — the Navy or the gentry. The Schombergs were the offspring of an immigrant German-Jewish doctor, a man of considerable repute in early Georgian London. They seem to have inherited his erudition and intelligence, traits evident when they took on important administrative duties, mixed with artists, and wrote several books. Even today, Isaac Schomberg's Naval Chronology is a useful source for naval historians seeking obscure facts about the Royal Navy of 250 years ago. Sailors of Varied Fortune is based primarily on unpublished official and private documents, supplemented by a range of printed sources, both contemporary and modern. Though the individual Schombergs had different life stories, the careers of the two younger men (Alexander Wilmot and Charles Marsh) show interesting similarities, arising out of the circumstances in which they found themselves during the struggle with France between 1793 and 1815. While naval history is at the heart of the book, each individual is (as far as possible) portrayed in the round, considering his personal life ashore as well as his professional life afloat. The book is lavishly illustrated with over fifty images (mostly in colour), and ten maps — the result is a panorama of war at sea and life on land, seen through the lens of a single talented family. [See also KA #59 RN and Anglo-Jewry p32. Ed.]
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