SPECIAL POINTS OF INTEREST: The 1805 Club Organisation & Flagship Fund 4 Marine Nationale Française, Part 2 6 Navigation with a Sextant 12 Nelson, Pepys & Lieutenants’ Exam 15 Capt Christer Hägg 19 Nelson’s Nile Dispatch 20 A Tour of Guernsey 24 Napoleon Aboard HMS Victory 27 RNLI 200 30 Admiral J Saumarez 32 Historiography of Naval Life at Sea 37 Thomas Fremantle’s Master at Trafalgar 39 The Other Special Relationship 40 The Revd Dr Alexander Scott 41 INSIDE THIS ISSUE THE KEDGE ANCHOR THE MAGAZINE OF THE 1805 CLUB Issue 60 AUTUMN 2023 Chairman’s Address 2 Secretary’s Report 3 Crossword 5 AB&OS 10 Events Diary 11 New Members 22 Unsung Hero No. 1 28 Book Reviews 33 Everybody Knows… 42 Cover Picture: See Page 3
THE KEDGE ANCHOR Issue 60 2 Greetings Fellow 1805ers! One might say, that with this autumn edition of The Kedge Anchor (KA), together with the forthcoming edition of The Trafalgar Chronicle, that another year is about to pass for the Club. The year so far has certainly been a busy one. Our publications show that your Club’s activities have returned to pre-Covid levels. First and foremost is that your Club has, for all practical purposes, transitioned into a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO). This brought a restructuring of The Club as to its organisation, which includes IT management, accounting and Club secretarial (Clerk) positions. All receive a modest sum. These changes were necessary for two interrelated reasons. First, shortly after the Club reached its 30th year in 2020, Council members concluded it was necessary to decide what The Club wants as its modus operandi for the next 30 years. Certainly, it was to build on the three aspects of achievements of the first 30 years; 1) preservation of memorials and graves, 2) broaden the public’s understanding of the Royal Navy of the Georgian era, to include telling Nelson’s story and those who served with him, and 3) developing and maintaining records on the men and events of the period, making them available to researchers. Additionally, to remain relevant, members of Council felt it was necessary to open the aperture, by including the sailing navies of the Georgian era and to demonstrate the influence these navies have on the navies that followed, to include those of the twentyfirst century. The mission is for the Club to be the ‘goto’ non-profit naval history organisation of the Georgian era; one possessing a global reach. To facilitate this transition (it takes money after all), it was necessary to change the Club’s charity status and become a CIO under UK Charity Commission requirements. As a CIO, the Club can raise its profile, and it is easier for the Club to apply for grants. However, applying for grants to major fund providers requires the Club to demonstrate that the membership financially supports its mission, and that is why we have introduced the new fundraising programme, the Flagship Fund. See page 4 for a few details. A more descriptive explanation will be circulated to all of you soon. With that said, I think this edition of the KA reflects the course the Club has taken. Besides highlighting the Club’s activities since the previous edition of the KA and TD, our honourable editor has provided for our enjoyment a potpourri of articles that many will leave you with an, ‘I didn’t know that’ feeling. I for one didn’t realise that the Royal National Lifeboat Institution will be 200 years old this year. On a personal note, I always drop a few coins into the RNLI’s little lifeboats when I see one. I hope you enjoy fellow member, Captain Christer Hägg’s RSwN (Ret) short autobiography, which tells us why he became a marine artist. I am sure you will agree that Christer is a highly accomplished marine artist. The next Trafalgar Chronicle will have on its cover one of Christer’s works, which I think one could frame. You will note in KA’s New Members section, that we have experienced a significant uptick in new members over the summer months. As you will see, our membership is increasingly international; members from the US, such as Key West, and those from Bermuda, Canada, France, Italy and Germany! Finally, I am most appreciative of fellow member, Professor John Hattendorf’s article ‘The Historiography of Naval Life At Sea’. I think you will understand, after reading his article, why the Georgian era of sail has become so popular in the twenty-first century. Of course, there is Bridgerton, for those of you in the USA. Depending on whether you are north of south of the equator, I wish all a pleasant autumn or spring. Yours aye, THE VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE By Captain John Rodgaard, USN (Ret) Chairman, The 1805 Club In September I spent a week in the company of John Rodgaard and Judy Pearson (aka Mrs Rodgaard) at the McMullen Naval History Symposium in the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, USA, and elsewhere, and want to tell you all that I was very impressed by their enthusiasm, commitment, contacts and enjoyment of the whole shebang, together with the respect in which they are both evidently held amongst the world’s top naval enthusiasts, practitioners and servicemen and women. EDITOR’S FOOTNOTE
THE KEDGE ANCHOR AUTUMN 2023 3 EDITORIAL Here is a glimpse of how it works at the KA: imagine, if you will, that your Editor is a rational and nimble ape, swinging by liana from tree to tree above it all. He invites copy, selects it, checks it, and occasionally produces it. But snapping at his heels, are a pack of predators waiting to pounce on his errors. Often a matter of opinion, so he can decide to thump his chest and ignore them. But they are the kings of the beasts, with the additional bene�it of education, so to keep the pack onside, as it were, he usually allows them their little (sometimes big) triumphs. Therefore, he now gives thanks to his sub-editor, his proof-reader and his partner (an ex-English language teacher) for their improvements. Any mistakes that survived the pack’s avidity are probably from when the Editor thumped his chest inappropriately – and lost grip of his liana! All faithful readers of TD will, by now, have heard plenty about the ‘Cornwallis Weekend’, but for all you others, I cannot pass the opportunity of saying thank you to everyone who made it such a great event. For me, personally, it was a chance to meet lots of people that I wanted to meet, often for the �irst time, and others whom I did not know I wanted to meet, but was glad to have done so. If you are attending this year’s Trafalgar Night Dinner, at the HMS NELSON Wardroom, and we have not yet met, please introduce yourself. I am usually reasonably tame, when I am not swinging from a tree. Mention has been made about the (usual) lack of references in The Kedge Anchor. Like its Editor, KA is neither scholarly nor academic, and is intended to be a relaxing read for Club members, who have plenty of opportunities for serious reading elsewhere. KA’s roots are from the Club newsletter, which has now been replaced by The 1805 Dispatches (TD). So, please just enjoy! For your enjoyment in this edition of KA we have news of our CIO status and a new fund-raising initiative; the second part of Hervé Savoie’s history of the French Navy; instruction on the use of a sextant; Christer Hägg’s brief biog., with some examples of his work; a trip to Guernsey; a new potential hero for you: Sir Nesbit Willoughby; The Revd Sir Alexander Scott; and all the usual regulars: New Members; Everybody Knows That; Crossword, etc., and, of course ‘The Nile’ is mentioned occasionally. Cover picture: Bell Rock Lighthouse JMW Turner (1775-1851), 1819. Watercolour and gouache with scratching out on paper, 30.60 x 45.50 cm. Collection: National Galleries of Scotland (In storage) SECRETARY’S REPORT By Stephen Howarth MA (with Distinction), FRHistS, FRGS, Cert. Ed. (Oxon) Hon. Secretary, The 1805 Club Please note the next edition is due in Spring 2024. The deadline for copy will be 21 March 2024. Please submit your ideas to the Editor as soon as you can,and actual contributions before the copy deadline whenever possible. On Saturday 17 June 2023, the Club’s AGM took place in the Princess Royal Gallery of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth, marking the third major organisational development in the Club’s life so far. The �irst was of course its creation, which took place by informal agreement in the autumn of 1990 and was formalised on Trafalgar Day that year: 21 October 1990, the Club’s of�icial birth date. The second major organisational development came on 26 September 1998 at an Extraordinary General Meeting in HMS BELFAST, when the large number of members present voted unanimously for the Club to become a public charity. Our third major organisational development, agreed by all members present and those voting by proxy, has made the Club into a charitable incorporated organisation, or CIO. This structure did not exist in 1998. If it had, we would have adopted it then. The only comparable arrangement would have been to have taken on charitable status (as we did, and which crucially enabled us to apply for grants that were only available to legally public bodies) and to have created a limited company as well. This, however, would have demanded annual reports to Companies House as well as to the Charity Commissioners, signi�icantly increasing our voluntary workload. The original Committee of 1990 became the Council in 1998, and is now the Board of Trustees. Council still exists, but in a more amorphous form than hitherto. As well as the Trustees, its members are individuals who give the Club their time and energy, their knowledge and connections, their ideas and skills through focused committees that report formally to the decision-making Trustees. Please, if you have ideas and believe you could help with the running of the Club – let us know! Events since this time last year began with a successful Trafalgar Night Dinner 2022 in a happy return to HMS NELSON WARDROOM, Portsmouth. After the long hiatus of Covid-19 it was a great pleasure to have over a hundred members and guests together again, and we were privileged to have Vice Admiral Martin Connell, Second Sea Lord, and his wife as our Guests of Honour. In February 2023, US East Coast members enjoyed a dinner in Alexandria, Virginia, commemorating the Battle of Cape St Vincent, and on 16 June 2023 – the day before the AGM – a wonderful event took place in HM Naval Dockyard, Portsmouth, with the unveiling of our memorial (jointly developed with the Milford-on-Sea Historical Record Society) to Admiral Sir William Cornwallis. It was no coincidence but a happy development that our AGM was chaired by member Richard Cornwallis. The Cornwallis memorial is a highly valuable contribution to our Commemorative Projects and should have been followed in the autumn by a major presentation in Nevis, where Horatio Nelson married Fanny Nisbet. Our sister organisation the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society was scheduled to receive a new Nelson uniform and hat, together with a climate-controlled display cabinet, AND the fully restored Register containing the record of the wedding. Alas, our expert conservator at the Borthwick Institute, University of York, suffered a serious accident. This Continued on page 5
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