Nelson & His World

I recently purchased an interesting little book printed in the 1940’s, ‘New Chronicles of the Life of Lord Nelson’ by C. J. Britton. The book is a collection of fascinating information gathered together by the author over many years of research into Nelson’s life. It contains detailed family trees, and some fascinating lists detailing interesting aspects of Nelson’s story. I was drawn to Britton’s list of Nelson’s ships; he gave dates service began, and commanding officers for each entry. I noticed five entries were incomplete, all lacking information on their commanding officer, so I decided to try and fill in the blanks. The relevant ships and dates were:

Victor (sloop), April 1780.
Seahorse (38), 20/08/1797.
Samuel & Jane (transport), 13/08/1799.
Perseus (20, Bomb), 29/10/1799.
Atty (transport), 25/11/1799.
Petrel (sloop), 19/04/1800.

I found the information on: Victor (Samuel Hood Walker), Seahorse (Thomas Freemantle), Perseus (Henry Compton) and Petrel (Francis William Austen). This left the two transports Samuel & Jane and Atty, niether of which I have been able to find much information on. How were transports manned, were they classed as merchant ships or did they have a compliment of RN officers? I assumed if they were flying Nelson's flag they must be controlled/manned by the Royal Navy.
I compared Britton’s list with the list Roger Knight compiled for his excellent biography. In his introduction professor Knight discounted the Victor, stating it was not known which ship had given Nelson passage from Central America to the West Indies.
Professor Knight also omitted the two transports from his list on the grounds that, although they flew Nelson’s flag he never sailed or boarded either. He also failed to name Atty, just referring to the Samuel & Jane and another unnamed transport. Has anyone heard of, or can anyone find reference of a transport in the Mediterranean in 1799, called Atty? I have been searching all day without success.

Trimmer,

Hopefully these references will help your search:

Nelson to Brigadier-General Graham.
Palermo, November 25th, 1799.
No vessel named, but Nicolas inserts: 'Lord Nelson's Flag was shifted on the 25th November to the Atty Transport, as the Foudroyant sailed on that day with the Culloden for Malta.'
(Nicolas, volume IV, p108.)

Also:

Nelson to 'The officers of His Majesty's Dock-Yard, Port Mahon' (letter-book),
Atty Transport, Palermo, December 14th, 1799.
(Nicolas volume IV, p138.)

Good luck!
J

Mira
Many thanks for that, I think I must have been suffering brain 'freeze', Nicolas is ordinarily a first port of call for me. Luckily, that through this forum, I have such a wealth of knowledge to draw on. Thank you!
The reference that still confuses me a little is for Victor, Professor Knight states:
It is not known in which ship he returned sick from Central America to Jamaica; the Victor sloop has been discounted.

Clarke and Mcarthur, volume 1, page 39 reads:
Captain Nelson returned to the harbour at Bluefields only one day previous to the surrender of the castle; and thence embarked for Jamaica in the Victor sloop, which was commanded by Captain Samuel Hood Walker, a nephew of Lord Hood, who was afterwards lost in a hurricane, as it was supposed, off Savannah la Mar. Captain Nelson found Mr Tyson in this sloop, who had been his purser in the Badger the whole time he had commanded her.

Granted, Clarke and Macarthur, although produced from Nelson's personal papers, and recollections, as well as those of close friends and colleagues, is still sometimes frowned upon as a source of reference. This does though seem quite a detailed account of events, I wonder how it has since been contradicted?

Re: Victor (sloop) I had a quick look in Tom Pocock's book "The Young Nelson in the Americas". Unfortunately he just seems to have repeated the information from Clarke & M'Arthur.

I wonder if Knight went back to Victor's muster book for the relevant period and found that Nelson was not in fact entered in there.

I haven't checked if the muster book is at the NA but it may well be.

MB

It would certainly be useful to know Professor Knight's reason for discounting the Victor.

An earlier version of the story than Clarke & M'Arthur appears in James Harrison's 1806/7 version of Nelson's life (volume 1, p64.)


Interesting that it's a quite different rendition to Clarke & M'Arthur.

Looks like the muster book is the way to go.

I find this a little puzzling! This is a transcript of Nelson's Sketch:
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/nelsonh/myself.htm
As you will notice the paragraph starting January 1780, ends with the statement 'and went to Port Royal in the Victor sloop.' Its worth bearing in mind that Nelson wrote this nineteen years after the event, so its not impossible that he may have been mistaken on the identity of the ship.

As has been mentioned, a muster would be the most likely source to resolve the matter. One question, would Nelson's name definitely appear on the muster of the Victor? Only being given passage back to Port Royal, would he form part of the ships company, and therfore appear on the muster?

I'd wondered that. Whether Nelson would appear on the ship's muster. Others will know far better than I.

But if Nelson himself, in the nearest thing to an autobiography he produced, wrote that he was on board the Victor at the time, it's difficult to argue otherwise without compelling evidence.

The administrative records Nelson kept are so very impressive too - able to track back minute details from distant dates.

The muster book (wherever it is) is one avenue, but it may not be enough if Nelson was classified as a passenger.

What other records would clarify whether he was on board or not? Are there records of other ships making the same journey at the time?

I hesitate to say definitely but almost definitely anyone who was on board a ship would be recorded in the muster.

If a person was just "hitching a lift" - which regularly happened - they would be recorded as a "supernumerary for victuals only". This meant that any food/provisions they were given could be reconciled by the purser.

However I am aware of one thing that can throw a spanner into the works. i.e. I was looking for a man once who was given a lift from Plymouth to Portsmouth but I couldn't find him in the muster of the ship that I was sure he was on. I was told that this most likely meant he joined and left the ship between two Sundays (Sunday being the day when the muster taken). I have no idea what this meant for the purser's records but it was a fairly knowledgeable researcher who told me this so I give it a fair level of credibility.

At the very least some food for thought . . . . .

MB

I had a quick look on the National Archive website.

I don't know why life has to be so complicated . . . . . !

i.e. they do have musters for Victor for 1780 but not for the middle part of the year which I think we are interested in here.

The only records I could find are as follows:



I don't have a copy of Knight's biography to see the exact wording he uses, but I wonder if this is why he introduces this uncertainty about which ship Nelson was on.

MB

Mark, the quote previously used from Knights book:

Is as it appears in his book.

As you mention the dates of the musters for Victor(very frustrating!) may explain his reasoning. I think it would still be worth looking at the later document, mens names sometimes appear for a considerable time after they have left a ship.
The other thing that occured to me last night was checking the muster of Nelson's ship (Hinchinbrook), which should give details of which ship he was discharged to. It may be that they list Janus, but I would imagine that the ship that gave him passage to his next intended command may also be mentioned.

I have just been reading some of the notes I made during my research into E.T. Parker. I experienced two instances of knowing he was definitely on a ship, and his not appearing on the muster. Fom a letter Parker wrote to Frances Nelson in December 1799, it is known he served on Formidable without appearing on the muster. Then again in January 1801, Parker is known to have been on San Josef, with Nelson, at Plymouth without appearing on the muster. On both these occasions he had volunteered for service, which was the explanation I was given for his absence from the document.
I also came across two instances of his taking short passages, one from Malta to Palermo in April 1799. Another in May 1801 from Yarmouth to the Baltic, both of these were recorded on the respective musters. Bearing that in mind, Nelson may well have appeared on the muster of the ship that gave him passage from Central America.

Thanks T. I was just interested to confirm that Knight was unambiguous in his statement which he obviously was.

I thought I would see what the meticulously researched "Nelson - A Dream of Glory" by John Sugden says on the subject.

Sugden seems to have no doubt that it was Victor that conveyed Nelson from Nicaragua to Jamaica. He even gives the precise dates of leaving and arriving which were 2nd and 17th May.

In the meantime I looked again at the National Archive catalogue and I see that they have the Master' Log for Victor for the period 21 September 1779 - 20 September 1781. The reference is ADM 52/2059. I wondered if Sugden had looked at this log but the reference is not included in his Bibliography. So not sure where he got those precise dates from.

To summarise at this point - only one single biographer seems to have doubted a statement that goes all the way back to Nelson's own autobiography. But he is a respected academic and states it in unambiguous terms.

If time etc. allowed I would love to see that Master's log. If it shows that Victor did sail from San Juan to Port Royal in May 1780 then I would consider it as "point proven". If it showed that Victor did not make that voyage, then vice versa.

Certainly an intriguing matter. It would be great to be able to prove it one way or the other.

Anyone heading to the NA in the near future could you add that reference ADM 52/2059 to your itinerary??!!

MB

In this case, death is the reason life is so complicated! Victor was lost with all hands at the beginning of October 1780 in the Great Hurricane of 1780, which devastated the West Indies, killing over 20,000 people, and in which the Royal Navy lost about 15 ships, with many more badly damaged.

It would appear that Victor was quickly replaced with another vessel of that name the following month (November 1780). None of the usual reference books correctly document Victor, but I imagine that after losing so many ships, they urgently procured additional ships locally. The replacement Victor was certainly on the Jamaica station, as Admiral Parker later appointed Thomas Fremantle (who had survived the wrecking of Phoenix in the hurricane) to her. Rif Winfield (and Peter Goodwin) identify our Victor as the renamed captured privateer Hunter purchased in 1779 and lost in 1780, but Rif Winfield does not list the replacement Victor.

The loss of Victor explains why both the captain's log and the muster are missing, but the master's log ADM 52/2059 at first sight seems a mystery. However, this is possibly easily explained. The National Archives catalogue actually lists two items for ADM 52/2059, both for Victor:

Admiralty: Masters' Logs. Victor.
Date range: 21 September 1779 - 20 September 1781
Admiralty: Masters' Logs. Victor.
Date range: 05 November 1782 - 16 November 1782

The explanation is that the bound volumes in the National Archives often contain a number of masters logs (or musters etc.) bound together either for the same ship, or for several ships organised alphabetically. I suspect that the log for 21 September 1779 - 20 September 1781 will in fact be more than one log with a break of dates in the middle (the catalogue is far from perfect!). Whether the log contains entries for April 1780 remains to be seen!

Of course, an alternative but remote possibility is that all the reports of Victor being lost were incorrect and she eventually made it back to land, or perhaps was salvaged.

Sugden cites John Tyson's account Add. MSS 34990:36, and as Clarke & M'Arthur state that Nelson found Tyson on board Victor, it may well be that Tyson's account names Victor. However, there is a puzzle over Victor's captain, stated to be Samuel Hood Walker. Other sources (Beatson, Rif Winfield) list the captain as George Mackenzie (not the admiral of that name), lost with the ship in the hurricane. Samuel Hood Walker also drowned in the hurricane, then captain of Scarborough, which was also lost.

Terrible times! Just think if Nelson had been lost too!

I find all this fascinating, and I do hope someone can get to the National Archives before long and unravel a bit more!

P.S. Pay books for both (?) ships survive (as they were kept at the Admiralty, made up from the returned musters), and will at least identify the captain:

ADM 34/831 Victor 1779 Sept 18 - 1780 Oct 31
ADM 34/796 Victor 1780 Nov 11 - 1782 Nov 16

Re Atty: I think it would probably be a hired merchant ship, with a Navy lieutenant on board, but merchant master & crew. I would guess that the lieutenant kept his own log, but I have never seen one for a hired vessel.

Tony

Fantastic information!

It would be great if one day somebody could take a look at that Master's log.

Additionally if anyone knows or comes across Roger Knight in their travels perhaps they could invite him on to this forum/thread!

MB

P.S. Trimmer, I have got a copy of the CJ Britton book. I like the way it is a different "take" on the Nelson story than the regular biographies. I first came across it because I am particularly interested in any connections between Nelson & Birmingham and the Midland counties. You will see that the book was published by Cornish Brothers of Birmingham!

The following comes from the London Gazette of 30th December 1780.

It is from a dispatch from Sir Peter Parker who was Commander in Chief at Jamaica at the time.

Thanks all for the latest information!
All this snow and ice has ruined my work prospects, but it does free up some time to get some research done! I was going to the British Library, but I will switch and go to the NA instead. Thursday will be the best day, its open til late, and I have a mountain of work to get through! Fingers crossed, I will find the information we are looking for.

Mark,
The CJ Britton book has quickly become a real favourite of mine. Its so versatile a good reference work, but great for a spare five minute read with a cuppa! I first heard of it when reading an article by Michael Nash, I took pot luck and got a copy on ABE Books. I have since been told I was very lucky, my copy still has the original dust jacket and in quite good condition.