have not been featured before. You will find science and medicine, in the form of an essay on the Royal Navy and the mosquito-borne disease malaria. Let us embrace too what cultural history has to offer, something that might have sent older generations of naval historians reaching for their fighting swords. Literature is a record of history unfolding – and what better example than Wordsworth, or some regard to how the very real invasion threat to our shores was treated in slip-songs and ballads? Likewise, let us consider how news of naval engagements, and the memory of naval men, was received and remembered by subsequent generations in writing, on the stage, in popular entertainments, or even at the cinema. By these means we add to our bank of knowledge. The dividend is a more nuanced history. The Trafalgar Chronicle now has a specific target, even though it is one that knows no bounds. This edition will be a hard act to follow, though this is a statement that has been made year in, year out, since the early issues – and each year, we are pleased to see, it has been contradicted. Long may this continue to be the case. Finally, may we thank all of the contributors for their excellent efforts, and may we hope that our readers enjoy the benefit of their labours. But rest assured. The Earl St. Vincent’s words quoted at the head of this Editorial – ‘All agree: there is but one Nelson’– concluded with the wish ‘that he may long continue, the pride of this Country’. In our search for unfamiliar avenues of enquiry, slowly, yet surely, making our way toward a new intellectual agenda for maritime research, we realise that ‘every black will have its white and every right its wrong’. There must always be room for debate and for competing interpretation. But we also remember what is customary; we remember what is expected of us. There will always be a place in the maritime imagination, and a space in these pages, for Nelson. Anthony Cross Huw Lewis-Jones viii
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