Review of The Trafalgar Chronicle New Series 5

The Trafalgar Chronicle: Dedicated to Naval History in the Nelson Era: New Series 5 by Sean Heuvel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Do visual portrayals of Horatio Nelson do him justice? Are they realistic, or do they stem from their creators’ imagination and interpretation of him? How authentic is literature’s depiction of the Georgian navy and the men and women who served in one capacity or another? These are themes explored in the latest yearbook of The 1805 Club.

Using his medical expertise, Gerald Stule opens with “Representations of Horatio Nelson in the Visual Arts: Heroic Portraiture Versus Historical Reality from a Medical Perspective.” He examines the visual depictions of Nelson, his ailments, and his battle injuries in various mediums to show whether the portrayals are correct, how they may have affected Nelson, and how they shaped his image as a flawed, courageous hero who deserved his countrymen’s veneration.

Andrew Venn utilizes eyewitness accounts of Nelson’s tragic demise and compares them to two paintings of the admiral’s final moments in “William Beatty, Arthur Devis and the Death of Lord Nelson in Early Nineteenth-Century Literature and Art.” This allows Venn to demonstrate how this event impacted the legend surrounding Nelson’s death and how we perceive these events today.

“Nelson has more faces than a clock factory, but nobody today can be certain about what he really looked like.” (45) He has long been a favorite subject to portray, whether these depictions be fulsome or disparaging. This is the subject of cartoonist Pete Turner’s “Nelson in Caricature and Cartoon.”

In 1748, an author and former sailor penned a novel that became a big success. Its contents and his descriptions of the Georgian navy influenced many subsequent writers of the 18th century, even if those depictions weren’t as authentic as historical accounts show. Anthony Bruce discusses The Adventures of Roderick Random in “Tobias Smollet and the Early Georgian Navy.”

In spite of the fact that women played significant roles in the lives of Georgian navy men, historical novelists often portray them as peripheral entities. As Linda Collison points out in “Beyond Lady Barbara: Women as Portrayed in British Naval Fiction,” this often misleads readers into thinking that women played less than significant roles both at home and at sea.

It is during the Georgian era that the fouled anchor is introduced on the uniforms naval officers wore. Its popularity as a decorative item blossomed thereafter. Lily Style, an expert on Emma Hamilton and a direct descendant of her union with Horatio Nelson, explores the use of this symbol in “The Rise of the Fouled Anchor: The Visual Codification of the Royal Navy During the 1700s.”

France is often depicted as the ally who came to the aid of the American colonists in their bid to gain their freedom from Great Britain, but Chipp Reid reveals that Spain also played a significant role in the revolution. He also explains why few people are aware of this connection in “Spain and American Independence: The Best-Kept Secret of the Georgian Age.”

In addition to these thematic essays, the new editors of The Trafalgar Chronicle have chosen to include biographical portraits and three historic papers pertaining to the navy during the Georgian era. These include:

“Sir Andrew Pellet Green: Vice Admiral Thomas Fremantle’s Protégé” by Charles Fremantle
“Commander Sir James Pearl” by Sean Heuvel
“Captain John Houlton Marshall” by John Rodgaard and Lisa Heuvel
“Captain Ralph Willett Miller” by Gerald Holland
“The Popham Code Controversy” by Chris Coehlo
“Cornwallis, a Woman Named Cuba, and the Caribbean” by Barry Jolly
“A Second Naval War: The Immediate Effects of the American War on Royal Navy Operations, June 1812-July 1812” by Samantha Cavell

When combined with black and white illustrations, a few graphs and tables, and a center section of color plates, these essays are entertaining and, at times, fascinating. All the contributors are eminently qualified and, as always, The Trafalgar Chronicle provides informative glimpses into new research that leave indelible impressions on readers.



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