Cindy Vallar's Blog - Posts Tagged "royal-marines"

The Trafalgar Chronicle: New Series 2 by Peter Hore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The Royal Marines, whose history traces back to 1664, and the United States Marine Corps, first founded in 1775, gained distinction when the world was at war between 1792 and 1815. Past histories have often given short shrift to these sea soldiers, but here The 1805 Club allows them to take center stage. The various essays chosen for inclusion demonstrate the vital roles they played and illustrate why they participated in “every important action of fleet, afloat and ashore during the Great War.” (5) The contributors include navy and marine personnel, academics, researchers, writers, and historians.

The book opens with Julian Thompson’s “The Marines: The Early Days,” which explores the origins of the British Marines, how they became the Royal Marines, who they were, and what they did during their first 151 years. Anthony Bruce focuses on “The Marines in Boston, 1774-75,” with particular emphasis on the events leading up to and including the Battle of Bunker Hill, while Britt Zerbe examines their participation in the Battle of Trafalgar and their marginalized treatment in the age of sail in “That Matchless Victory: Trafalgar, the Royal Marines and Sea Battle in the Age of Nelson.”

In “Leathernecks: The US Marine Corps in the Age of the Barbary Pirates” Charles Neimeyer discusses the origins of their contemporary nickname and their activities in America’s war with Tripoli, which is immortalized in the “Marines’ Hymn.” Benjamin Armstrong also looks at this war, but his focus is on Commodore Edward Preble and naval diplomacy in “‘Against the Common Enemies’: American Allies and Partners in the First Barbary War.”

Two other essays discuss the naval officers who also held commissions in the Marines, even though they never served as marines themselves. John D. Bolt’s “The ‘Blue Colonels’ of Marines: Sinecure and Shaping the Royal Marine Identity” explains this practice and how Royal Marines viewed it, as well as how it affected their ability to advance through the ranks. David Clammer focuses on one particular officer, who was charged with defending England’s coastline from a French invasion in “Captain Ingram, the Sea Fencibles, the Signal Stations and the Defence of Dorset.”

“The Royal Marines Battalions in the War of 1812” by Alexander Craig looks at raids and encounters in the Chesapeake Bay and Canada, while Robert K. Sutcliff’s “The First Royal Marine Battalion’s Peninsular War 1810-1812” examines their activities in Portugal and Spain. Tom Fremantle explores the thirty-six-year career of “Captain Philip Gidley King, Royal Navy, Third Governor of New South Wales,” an ancestor who served on several ships before being sent to Botany Bay to establish a base for the convict colony.

Larrie D. Ferreriro discusses the French and Spanish navies in “The Rise and Fall of the Bourbon Armada, 1744-1805: From Toulon to Trafalgar,” while Jann M. Witt explores “Smuggling and Blockade Running during the Anglo-Danish War of 1807-14.”

Another author, Allan Adair, also writes about his ancestors. He focuses on two brothers – one a captain in the Royal Marines, the other a fourteen-year-old master’s mate – who participated in Trafalgar in “Loyal Au Mort: The Adairs at the Battle of Trafalgar.” Sim Comfort, on the other hand, turns his attention to a weapon and the man who wielded it in “The Royal Marine Uniform Sword by Blake, London, Provenanced to Captain Richard Welchman, Royal Marines.”

Two additional entries in this book provide glimpses into two men who were veterans of Trafalgar: “Marine Stephen Humphries 1786-1865” and “Captain James Cottell: The Pictorial Life of a Trafalgar Veteran.” Humphries’s account of Trafalgar, his first fight, his time as a prisoner of the French, and his participation in the march on Washington are from his memoir, one of the few written by a marine that has survived to the present day. In the other offering, John Rawlinson provides background to tie together Cottell’s life with the many sketches and watercolors that he made while at sea.

For me, these last two offerings are the most intriguing and absorbing, but all the essays enlighten readers and illuminate men who deserve more recognition, but rarely receive it. Excerpts from primary documentation are included in some, while resources consulted and other materials are listed in the endnotes. Recruiting posters, maps, portraits, paintings, and tables are among the illustrations included with the contributions. A center section of color plates, including Geoff Hunt’s painting of marines aboard a ship, further enriches the text. There is also a list of contributors with short biographies. As always, the yearbook shines a spotlight on tantalizing new naval research in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and this edition with its focus on the marines makes this a praiseworthy contribution to any library or historian fascinated with the Georgian Navy.




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Bellerophon’s Champion: Pennywhistle at Trafalgar by John Danielski

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Distraught over being jilted by her fiancé, Pennywhistle’s beloved cousin kills herself. Thomas, a medical student, misread the signs and blames himself, which is why he intervenes when he witnesses a gentleman thrashing a woman. The cascade of events that follow forever alter his life. Instead of becoming a doctor, he joins the Royal Marines.

Three years later, on 21 October 1805, First Lieutenant Thomas Pennywhistle finds himself aboard HMS Bellerophon, a ship of the line more commonly referred to by her crew as the “Billy Ruffian.” The vessel is one of twenty-seven, approaching Cape Trafalgar and the combined fleets of France and Spain. Before long, the two enemies will engage in the battle Admiral Nelson has long sought. It will pit his ships against thirty-three ships of the line, armed with 2,636 guns and manned by 26,000 men. Nelson’s warships carry only 2,200 guns and 18,400 seamen and marines.

Since his commander suffers from consumption, Thomas is responsible for the men serving under him. He is an excellent marksman and hunter, but has never applied either talent in fighting. The coming conflict will provide the perfect opportunity to test his skills in actual battle. He has also provided some of the crew with sword-fighting instruction, so they might better defend the ship if boarded. The two second lieutenants serving with him are Luke Higgins and Peter Wilson.

Higgins is an Irishman, the youngest officer aboard, and only joined the marines eight weeks earlier. From Thomas’s perspective, Higgins likens “the great conflict ahead [to] a giant version of some schoolyard tussle.” (30) Yet he has the determination and passion to be a hero, and he wants to emulate Pennywhistle, who he sees as an older brother.

Wilson may have gentlemanly manners and a sharp mind, but few trust him. Nor does it help that he’s particularly adept at playing cards and is owed money by many of the officers. Joining the marines wasn’t his preferred option, but it was the only way that he could disappear before becoming embroiled in a legal suit. The last thing he wishes to become is a hero and he’s not particularly keen to stand in harm’s way during the forthcoming battle. Thomas finds him disturbing, and the ring Wilson wears also niggles at Thomas’s memory, but he hasn’t a clue why that might be.

The story unfolds from the perspectives of a variety of characters, including those mentioned above and the Bellerophon’s captain, schoolmaster, several crewmen and marines, the surgeon, and two women – Mary Stevenson, the gunner’s pregnant wife, and Nancy Overton, whose husband is the sailing master. This diversity allows readers to experience the breadth of battle in all its horror and glory. There are also a number of animals aboard, whose antics before, during, and after the battle provide humorous interludes and grim reality that contrasts with the experiences of the men and women.

The battle commences at noon, and the twenty-six chapters depicting it provide more than enough evidence to prove it was a “long and bloody affray,” as one character foresees. But the first fourteen chapters show how each character prepares and what he or she thinks prior to the first shot being fired. These pages may not pass quickly, yet they allow readers to get a feel for the slow passage of time that the participants experience, or as the author writes “the minutes were moving at the pace of crippled turtles traversing fields of molasses” – a passage that vividly describes the battle when the wind slackens as much as it does the long wait for the engagement to begin. (147)

Although this is the fourth Pennywhistle book to be published, it actually takes place prior to the previous books in the series and it explains how Thomas comes to join the Royal Marines. The only drawback to the story is the lack of proofreading. There are too many misspellings, missing words, duplicated words, and misplaced apostrophes to go unnoticed. Yet the author has a gift of crafting phrases that vividly get the point across, as when he compares an amputation to peeling an onion.

Danielski expertly depicts the battle in a way that compels readers to keep reading in spite of the gruesome and brutal realities of war. He makes readers care about the characters, which makes for poignant, gut-wrenching scenes, while at the same time portrays the determination and self-sacrifice the participants willingly made to protect others. He also commendably demonstrates that war cares little for who and what a man is or does. A man might overcome a personal struggle only to be removed from the action without rhyme or reason.




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