Nelson & His World

We've discussed excerpts from Frederick Chamier's Ben Brace in the past, and it's often been touted as a form of 'biography' of Tom Allen, Nelson's 'wally de sham.'

I'm sure I've read, in the dim and distant past, that Chamier incorporated a number of different recollections supplied by men and officers who had served alongside Nelson, but can't recall where this was or whether any names were supplied.

Can anyone recall seeing something similar, and whether any specific names of genuine people have ever been cited as contributors?

Well, you know what I think, Jacqui!

Apparently that Ben Brace was a 'biography' of Tom Allen was actually stated in the introduction to the 1905 edition.

The suggestion that it is based on an autobiography of a Greenwich pensioner of course comes from the text of the book itself, and from Chamier's own preface (to the 3rd edition, at least). But that preface was all part of the fiction, and indeed the 'marketing spiel'. That preface also states that he had been 'assisted by officers who sailed under his Lordship's orders', but that was to back his claim that 'the biographical part concerning Lord Nelson' is correct, rather than that they provided any information about the model for Ben Brace himself.

The Ben Brace character incorporates Fearney, Lovell, Allen, the quartermaster on the poop of the Victory at Trafalgar, and other unnamed seamen. But I have never seen any suggestion that Chamier interviewed or corresponded with any (apart from Allen). Indeed the Victory's quartermaster was actually killed at Trafalgar!

Where Chamier incorporates these characters into Ben Brace, he simply embellishes the accounts contained in Southey's 'Life'.

I am here mostly just repeating Petrus Johannes van der Voort from 'The pen and the quarter-deck. A study of the life and works of Captain Frederick Chamier, R.N'. See preview here: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=z0tc ... &q&f=false But the one section of 'Ben Brace' that I studied in great detail (Ben's eyewitness account of John Sykes, Nelson's coxswain) was definitely no more and no less than an embellished version of Southey's account. I am quite certain Chamier had received no information on that from anyone else.