The Trafalgar Chronicle: Dedicated to Naval History in the Nelson Era: New Series 9

224 pages

M. K. Barritt

Captain, RN

It has become the established practice of the editors of this annual Journal of the 1805 Club to invite submissions addressing a specific theme. This has produced a variable response over the years. For this edition, the pertinent contributions (I will return to the putative theme later) take up rather less than half of the content, leaving ample space for the other categories: biographical portraits and articles of general interest.

With a high proportion of authors from the Americas in this edition, these offerings bring substantial coverage of the War of 1812, with a case study of the encounters of an American mariner with the Royal Navy’s press gangs, an evaluation of the results and record of the cruise of USS Essex, and discussion of political point-scoring in the Houses of Lords and Commons following the defeat of British frigates. Otherwise, the temporal and geographical range brings some accessible entry points to subjects such as the debate over the importance given to health in the calculations of commanders-in-chief in the West Indies, the reputation of Lord Sandwich related to the introduction of copper bottoms, and the complex politics of the region of the Rio de la Plata following the exile of the Portuguese Royal Family to Brazil and the Spanish rising after the imposition of Joseph Bonaparte as king. All provide good pointers to more detailed coverage in secondary works. Hilary Rubinstein provides a master-class in delving into newspapers and other gazetteers in her account of ‘Trafalgar’s Last Survivors’. One unwelcome new feature, however, through much of the content, is the advent of voluminous footnotes, including, in some articles, potted biographies of every character consisting of lists of key career dates.

One of the general articles notes the political background to the name of the French flagship at Trafalgar, Bucentaure, as the way in to an account of the downfall of the Venetian Republic, paralleled by the fate of the famous state barge. A summary of the impact of the French invasion of the Italian peninsula from 1796, contains a throw-away remark pertinent to the mooted main theme of the volume. The Royal Navy’s loss of access to ports such as Genoa and Leghorn “would deprive the British of much strategic and tactical intelligence [..] a subject well worth exploring further” (my italics). Whilst this factor is well covered, especially in biographies of Nelson, it would indeed merit more work. Is the observation by Tom Fremantle in his effort to substantiate the intelligence-gathering efforts of Admiral Arthur Philip pertinent: “As you might expect, records are sparse regarding someone trusted to undertake such covert exploits”. Is there indeed nothing to be found through archival research?

With the exception of the featured monograph, to which I will return at the end, this is the impression which one might be left with after reading the articles addressing the 2024 theme of ‘Naval Intelligence in the Georgian Era’. Indeed, the first offering, from Steven Maffeo, whilst providing an excellent overview brings nothing new to the account in his seminal work published in 2000.  My interest was seized by a title offering an examination of the involvement of the local consul in British espionage in the Ionian islands during the War of the Second Coalition, and by an early declaration that “there is no shortage of archival evidence”. Alas, the endnotes point only to material published in the invaluable volumes of the Navy Records Society. These volumes underpin several other contributions in all parts of the volume, including, here, an evaluation of Vernon’s operations at Porto Bello in 1739. Evan Wilson’s examination of the ‘Grand Tour’ as a setting for intelligence-gathering does usefully high-light Jervis’s Journal of Tours in the British Library.

In the featured monograph, Natacha Abriat, a specialist in ‘nineteenth-century architecture, decorative arts and maritime heritage’ and the Head of the Cultural Heritage Research Department of the Occitanie region of France, takes a plunge into national, regional and our British National Archives, and produces a result which brilliantly meets the remit of the editors. Her subject is Xavier de Lebret, Baron d’Imbert, one of the naval officers of the ancien regime who survived the revolutionary purges, albeit marked out as a ‘Toulon officer’ implicated in the surrender of that port to Lord Hood. Thereafter he was a refugee plunged into the murky espionage world. In character he seems an apt match for Home Popham, with who he conspired in a plot for a descent on Ferrol. The unfortunate fellow exiles in his ‘spy ring’ were all mopped up in the course of the Trafalgar campaign. His story provides insights into the dangers confronting such men who sought to serve their country through collaboration with the current enemy, whilst adjusting to the shifts of regime in their homeland. In Imbert’s case he was eventually deported from England and found himself a shuttlecock in the espionage network of Fouché and his successor after the restoration of the monarchy. This article paints a compelling picture of a complex scene with some fascinating detail such as the operations of a corvette in the Mediterranean in 1800 under the Royalist white ensign. Natcha Abriat has certainly whetted my appetite to explore this era of French naval history more deeply, and on this score alone I recommend this collection to NR readers.