Nelson & His World

Discussion on the life and times of Admiral Lord Nelson
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 Post subject: Retired Captains' residences
PostPosted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 9:01 am 
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Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2008 11:06 am
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Location: mid-Wales
Reading of Captain Bazalgette's splendid villa in St John's Wood set me thinking about the sorts of homes senior officers might retire to once they left the navy.

Sir Edward Berry's house at 2 Gay Street, Bath, where he lived and died, is a lovely town house, very similar to Captain B.'s.

Sam Sutton retired to Ditchingham Lodge on the Norfolk/Suffolk border which he sold shortly before he died for £2,200.

Sir William Hoste, his prize money of £60,000 plundered by his father, seemed to live in rented properties.

Tony can perhaps say more about Captain Mansfield's post-retirement circumstances.

I suppose circumstances varied according to prize-money gained - often a matter of chance; the money wives brought on marriage - Hoste married an earl's daughter who brought £3000 to the family purse. But for many captains (and commanders like Somerville) the end of service or a period on the beach must have brought money worries.


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PostPosted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 6:05 pm 
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Joined: Mon Feb 18, 2008 7:11 pm
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Location: England
Shortly before Captain Charles Mansfield was forced to leave active service through illness at the end of 1807 after the Copenhagen expedition, he had a house in West Malling, Kent, but I know nothing about the house or whether he owned or rented it. Any tips on the quickest and easiest way to research this would be greatly appreciated.

Just over three years later in February 1811 he bought a house on St Margaret's Bank, Rochester (240 High Street - St Margaret's Bank being part of High Street). He died there just over two years after that, but his wife continued to live there until she died in 1841. She had been born in Rochester and other members of her family lived in Rochester and in East Malling.

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PostPosted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 6:45 pm 
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Joined: Thu Mar 20, 2008 6:00 pm
Posts: 97
Location: Salmo, British Columbia, Canada
Tony,

1807 is early and therefore a bit difficult, but rate books may help, though mainly if he owned the house. The I will have a fish around a few FH sites.
One to try is:
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.ph ... ,20.0.html
I have recently been researching a house my family lived in in Tunbridge Wells, and the moderators have been wonderfully helpful.

A2A may include some leases and Sun Fire Insurance records for him:
http://www.a2a.org.uk/

Good luck,
Charles


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 Post subject: Residences
PostPosted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 7:11 pm 
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Joined: Thu Mar 20, 2008 6:00 pm
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Location: Salmo, British Columbia, Canada
Here is a passage from:
The Napoleonists: A Study in Political Disaffection, 1760-1960. by E. Tangye Lean

"Community living in Edwardes Square (West Kensington)

There was one community which was brought together by its background. Naval officers on half-pay took a liking to the square, though they hoped it would prove to be a port of embarkation. The turnpike may have attracted them because it led out to Portsmouth and Plymouth. At various times in the decade after Waterloo there were more than a dozen lieutenants, commanders, and captains. Most had been retired on half-pay in 1815 or early in 1816 and found that Sutton could accommodate them at half the rent they would have had to pay in the centre.
At the top of the naval hierarchy was Captain Henry Pitfield Sturt, who sailed his frigate the Phaeton to St. Helena after Napoleon's death and had a nephew based on the island during Napoleon's exile. Sturt was perhaps chosen as a trustee because of his success in getting commissions which took him away from the square and his duties there, but he was in a minority of one in his good fortune. At the bottom of the hierarchy was Thomas Evans, an old seaman who made weekly trips from Greenwich Hospital to visit his married brother, Jeremiah. Thomas had been an engraver, and his wrist was broken on the Minotaur at the end of the war, leaving him with no chance of a new profession. Jeremiah Evans gave him five shillings a week pocket money, and when Jeremiah died, his widow raised it to six shillings.
Next in rank was Sampson Coysgarne, a former purser of Nelson's flagship, the Foudroyant, who lived on the west terrace with a married daughter and her husband on a pension of a pound a week. He had saved a little from his pickings, and the memory of his ship, with her 80 guns and 1000 men, remained more vivid to him than life in the suburb. He was a widower and made a will five years after Waterloo, leaving a little hoard of jewellery-a gold watch, rings, seals, and sleeve-buttons-to his children and grandchildren. He wrote the name of the Foudroyant at the beginning of the will, like a title to salvation, and died a few months later.
Joseph William Bazalgette, who lived a few doors above Coysgarne, had more strictly religious hopes. He was the son of a French planter from the West Indies who was naturalized at the beginning of the Terror. With his foreign name and accent, and a limp like Long John Silver's, he aroused curiosity.
Bazalgette had grown up in London with the knowledge that his French origin was a stigma. He joined the Navy when he was fifteen and fought with dogged courage in intercepting supplies to the French armies in Spain. At night, when he was boarding a vessel in the port of Ondarroa, he was hit at point-blank range in the thigh. His men took him back with their prize, but when the surgeons had worked on him at sea and in hospital at Gosport, he was lame for life. He went back to raiding on the Italian coastline, where the biggest of his successes was to capture the French batteries at Genoa
and turn them on the city. He was given his own command in 1814, but the Admiralty warned him there could be nothing further. His pension was £150, to which £ 50 was added `in consideration of his wounds'.
Bazalgette was still in his early thirties and had been converted to evangelical Christianity, perhaps after he was wounded. The experience was an overwhelming one which reduced the horrors of the war and his own lameness to minor proportions. Since he had become `infinitely a debtor', it seemed to him that he must devote the rest of his life to the salvation of his fellows.
For a while he moved uncertainly about the outskirts of London, boarding incoming ships from a craft called the Seaman's Floating Church and distributing Bibles. He married, settled down in the square, and had children, but his ambition was to see a Bible in the hands of `every man whose business is on the great waters'. He became secretary of the Naval and Military Bible Society and limped off regularly to their offices near Piccadilly. He sometimes spoke in public, but preferred to buttonhole people individually for subscriptions. He approached relatives, service-men, clergymen, and neighbours. To those who defended themselves with the argument that he might weaken the fighting spirit of the Navy, he replied that religion could only strengthen it. When he saw the first frigate weigh anchor with a Bible for every man on board, he felt she was sailing into an era which might convert the world.
There were poorer and less confident ex-officers than Bazalgette. Commander Pedlar, at the top of the west side of the square, won a medal from the Turks at Aboukir Bay but had nothing of the sort from the British because medals were given exclusively to the Army. As a cabin boy he had been captured by the French off Falmouth, was exchanged a year later and was already a lieutenant on the Foudroyant when Sampson Coysgarne was reading the Articles of War to the, ship's company. He fought in a score of engagements and captured three vessels from the Potomac in the American War of 1812. Like Bazalgette, he was appointed a commander in the last few months of the war against Napoleon. He had no wounds to justify an increase of pension, but an unshakeable belief that he would sail again from Portsmouth. For a decade he sent applications to the Admiralty, and died at forty, leaving a widow, and a son in Holy Orders."
.............

This book contains several inaccuracies and needs to be enjoyed mostly for its anecdotal qualities. Edwardes Square was inexpensive and the houses were (and are) quite small. It was built by a Frenchman, whose name was confused with that of a Napoleonic spy. Even though Lean was aware of this, and mentions the fact in the book, he still included this chapter in a book which was otherwise meant to be about subversives. Anything less like a Napoleon supporter than Joseph Bazalgette is hard to imagine. Although he was born of French parents his father was not a West India planter and it is unlikely that Joseph had much of a French accent, although he was short, dark and 'of a swarthy complexion'. He bought a house in Enfield when he married in 1816 so he did not 'raise a family' in Edwardes Square. I had the rate books searched for him in Edwardes Square but there was no record found. So although Lean cites ratebooks as his source there must be other sources for these stories, which I have not yet found.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Apr 28, 2008 9:30 pm 
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Location: England
What a fascinating little community, Chas.

And thanks for your earlier suggestions, which I will follow up.

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Tony


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 4:23 pm 
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Joined: Thu Mar 20, 2008 6:00 pm
Posts: 97
Location: Salmo, British Columbia, Canada
Tony,
I checked A2A and found nothing.

It would help to contact the Kent county record office.

Regards


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