ix And round that sacred altar swear Such glory and such graves to share. Appropriately, a national campaign was launched this summer under the banner: ‘History Matters: Pass It On’. The programme is gathering momentum and the way it justifies itself has real empathy with the raison d’être of the Club: ‘A society out of touch with its past cannot have confidence in its future. History defines, educates and inspires us. It lives on in our historic environment. As custodians of our past, we will be judged by generations to come. We must value it, nurture it and pass it on’. In the context of the Georgian sailing navy this is precisely what the Club seeks to do. Yet, the force of nature is a constant challenge as stones crack and mosses creep, as roots pry into fissures and acid rain dissolves. Our conservation work seeks to slow down this process of decay so that future generations are not deprived of their rich maritime heritage. Our mission is to identify and conserve these graves and monuments so that all can enjoy, and, more importantly, learn from the wonderful tales associated with those memorialised as we seek to bring them ‘alive’through research and with imaginative and exciting club events. Thanks to the interest aroused by the bicentenary of Nelson’s death we are being approached for help and advice more than ever. This interest is also demonstrated by the growth in our membership, which in 2005 exceeded five hundred– the target we set ourselves five years earlier. Another landmark is the progress we have made with The Trafalgar Captains Memorial Project. Our well-received publication The Trafalgar Captains:Their Lives and Memorials has already been reprinted and the conservation work is nearing completion thanks to grants totalling £12,450 from the Manifold Trust, Leche Trust, Idlewild Trust and Francis Coales Foundation. This has allowed us to progress the work on five of the seven graves, namely Captain Charles Bullen (Britannia), at St. James Church, Shirley, Southampton; Captain Thomas Dundas (Naiad), at St. Nicholas Church, Hurst near Reading; Lieutenant John Richards Lapenotiere (Pickle), at Menheniot Church, Cornwall; Captain Sir Edward Berry (Agamemnon), at St. Swithins Church,Walcot, Bath; and Captain Richard Grindall (Prince), at St. Nicholas Church,Wickham, Hampshire. The total cost of the works for all seven Trafalgar Captain graves amounts to £26,835 and the Club is now concentrating on raising funds for the conservation of Captain Thomas Capel’s (Phoebe) grave at Kensal Green, London, and Captain Henry Bayntun’s (Leviathan) tomb at All Saints Church, Weston, Bath. While the life and legacy of Horatio Nelson is always at the heart of everything we do, we are fortunate that the Club’s charitable objects allow it to spread its influence and activity beyond Nelson and Trafalgar. Nelson himself was the first to recognise the considerable talent gathered around him, whether precursor, contemporary, or protégé and there is now a real opportunity to build on our achievements attained throughout the Nelson Decade and revisit not only the naval story during the remainder of the Napoleonic Wars, but also the key eighteenth-century events that influenced Nelson’s own thinking.
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