KEDGE ANCHOR Issue55 THE VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE By Bill White Chairman, The 1805 Club 2 This is a very poignant report for me to write, being the last “View” before I stand down as Chairman of The 1805 Club in May2021. The 2021 AGM and Members’ Day will be taking place via a Zoom call on Saturday 8th May at 5pm, UK time, and I hope many of you will be able to join us for the meeting, which will be followed by a Members’ Forum. This is a crucial meeting for us and the future of the Club as we will be seeking your approval to change our status from a standard charity to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO). As we enter our 31st year, we are constantly reviewing our objectives to keep them relevant and in step with current events. One such issue is the continuing discussions played out primarily in the media about the removal of statues dedicated to speci�ic historic �igures, one of them being Admiral Lord Nelson, based on his alleged support for slavery. When this debate reignited last year, Alison Reijman, the Club’s Press Of�icer, prepared a reactive statement to be issued in the event of the media contacting The Club to seek its views. In the statement, the following observations were offered to refute the allegations being made about Nelson and his role within the Royal Navy. The erroneous view is that he supported slavery, but Nelson was never a slaver nor a slave owner. It is true that slavery was a practice which impacted directly on the activities of the Royal Navy during the times of the Napoleonic Wars. Leadership in the Royal Navy on slavery was shown by Charles Middleton, latterly Lord Barham, who was First Lord of the Admiralty and mastermind of the Battle of Trafalgar campaign. Middleton was also an abolitionist, his home at Barham Court in Teston, Kent, being the location for campaign meetings about the abolition of slavery. He had recognised that abolition could only be achieved by legislation and that for this political involvement was essential. He therefore invited William Wilberforce and other leading abolitionist politicians to the meetings to develop a Bill to be introduced into Parliament. The resulting Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed in Britain in 1807 at the height of the Napoleonic Wars. It placed a great additional burden of policing on the Royal Navy. Nelson’s Navy, the Georgian Navy and the Royal Navy have a proud record regarding the abolition of slavery. If Nelson had survived the Battle of Trafalgar, he would have been active in upholding this 1807 law. Also, any enslaved person who joined the Royal Navy was automatically made a free person. Such a person could rise through the ranks right up to the level of Captain, with Jack “Punch” Perkins, the Royal Navy’s �irst black commissioned of�icer, being one of the best examples. The muster books of Nelson’s ships did not record ethnicity, so it is likely that many of the Americans in the books were former slaves. For Nelson’s part, he did marry Fanny Nisbet (née Woolward), a young widow who was a member of a family that was among the colonial elite in Nevis. Through his connections with the Nisbet family and the planters, Nelson acknowledged the vital, contemporary economic and strategic importance of the sugar plantations in the West Indies to Britain. Much of the evidence built against Nelson came through a letter he wrote to a planter friend, Simon Taylor, on 10th June 1805 and which Peter Warwick quoted in his Chairman’s Dispatch (KA Issue 48 – Autumn 2017). In the letter, he said: “I have been and shall die a �irm friend of our colonial system. I was bred, as you know, in the good old school, and taught to appreciate the value of our West India possessions; and neither in the �ield, nor in the senate, shall their just rights be infringed, whilst I have an arm to �ight in their defence, or a tongue to launch my voice against the damnable and cursed doctrine of Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies.” However, this letter was written at the height of war with France when he was being accused of risking the safety of the British West Indies and needed to stress the importance he attached to their protection. At that time, Nelson was keeping a close watch on activities taking place in the Mediterranean, where French Commander Admiral Pierre Villeneuve had broken through the British blockade. Nelson and the British �leet then chased Villeneuve, who was commanding the French and Spanish squadrons, across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean and back. This action proved to be the prelude to the Battle of Trafalgar. ▻
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