Nelson & His World

The Times of October 10, 1843 records the story of a Mrs Sara Frank Pitt, the widow of a marine, and then resident in Exeter, who had been on board Victory at Trafalgar where she was employed in carrying powder. Hearing a false report that her husband had been injured she rushed on deck and there saw Admiral Nelson fall, mortally wounded. 'She subsequently buried a boy of hers at Alexandria, and another near Sicily, and now in her old age, without child or husband, she is left totally destitute without kin or associate, with no consolation but the recollection of the glorious bloody scenes in which she spent the early portion of her married life.'

This report was made at the time that 200 Trafalgar veterans were being assembled for the unveiling ceremony of Nelson's column. She was too old to join them, but let it be known that of there should be 'any distribution of largesse in commemoration of the victory, she would 'be thankful to receive a portion.'

It is well known that Nelson would not have women on board his ships. Did she slip through the net? She wouldn't appear on the muster rolls of course, so it is probably not possible to establish whether her story is true. Was there a Marine named Frank Pitt aboard Victory?
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Anna,

Where did you obtain your information? Was it from a book, or have you actually looked up The Times, as I can't find the story there for that date? In a query about JSTOR in the private forum, you refer to an article in a US journal. That article only gives a tiny bit of information, and the author says it is from The Times, but he has taken his information from David Walder Nelson: a Biography New York: Dial Press 1978 p.xii. We have a Hamish Hamilton version of that book, and Walder gives his source as The Times (giving the same information as you have given here).

A while ago, when Roy and I were researching The War for All the Oceans, we came across this same story on page 111 of Laurence Brockliss, John Cardwell and Michael Moss's book Nelson's Surgeon (Oxford University Press, 2005), an excellent publication on the surgeon William Beatty. They give the reference as the Exeter Times for that date, but although we live in Exeter, we were unable to find the story. We never chased it up with the authors, but the Ayshford Trafalgar Roll has no mention of a marine with the surname of Pitt or Pitts on board the Victory. There was an ordinary seaman called George Pitt from Bristol in the Victory, and he may later have joined the marines, or she may have remarried - that happened to Ann Hopping, who was at the Battle of the Nile. She remarried and was later known as Nancy Perriam, so that for a long time it was believed there were two women (see War for All the Oceans pp.32-3)

There is evidence for women being on board the Victory at Trafalgar, such as Mary Sperring who claimed to have washed the blood from Nelson's shirt. It hasn't been possible to confirm the presence of these women, but we're sure some were there, as well as on board some of the other ships. You mention Daniel Maclise, the artist, in an earlier thread, and he shows two women in his famous painting. He did a lot of eyewitness research, and it would be fascinating to track down all his research. In a book by Nancy Weston, in 2001, called Daniel Maclise: Irish Artist in Victorian London, she says that he interviewed many people who had been on board the Victory during the battle, and she gives (in footnote 10 on page 245) a quote from a letter that Maclise wrote to one of his informants, in which he says of the women: 'I am very glad to receive this intelligence from you, for great naval authorities had forbidden me to introduce a woman in my design of "The deck of the Victory when Nelson fell". I shall certainly now introduce that element of interest and variety.' This letter is apparently in the Whitley Papers chapter 8, British Museum [not Library], department of prints and drawings. It was impossible to obtain more information from the museum, or to make a firm appointment to see this archive when we were doing our research - it was first come, first served to get a seat, we were told, and so you needed to live in London and be able to queue up at the museum door that morning in order to do the research. Nancy Weston also says that Maclise recorded that the presence of women was beyond doubt, but he also said that it was positively denied by the higher-ranking officers.

Many people of course claimed they were at Trafalgar, especially in the Victory, as they could get a lot of sympathy in their old age. In Jack Tar, p.390, we talk about Joseph Swindlehurst who at the age of 89 was in the workhouse at Chorley in Lancashire. He made such a claim, but there is no evidence that he was there, unless he used an alias (which some of them did, of course).

Lesley

http://www.adkinshistory.com

Anna,

A glance at the complete list of the Victory's complement at Trafalgar, as given on the Victory website, also turns up the same information. There was only one man by the name of Pitt on board during the battle, he being the able seaman, George Pitt, that Lesley mentions.

To be honest the story sounds a little far fetched. Are we expected to believe that she actually arrived on the weather deck, where of course her marine husband (who doesn't appear to have existed) was stationed, to witness the exact moment that Nelson was hit by the fatal shot? Her own presence at the burial of her two sons would also appear rather stretched. It sounds rather like the other case that Lesley mentioned, dreamed up in order to obtain money.

Many thnaks, both, for those comments.

Yes, I came across the story in David Walder's 'Nelson' (1978) who quoted the Times. I checked the Times archive for that date, and, true enough, the story is there. That doesn't mean, of course, that it's true, despite the Times being the 'newspaper of record.'!

There's more on the subject of women at sea and in the army in Dan Cruikshank's latest book: 'The Secret History of Georgian London' (Random House 2009, £25) The subtitle is 'How the Wages of Sin Shaped the Capital' and is ostensibly about the influence of prostitution on the architecture of London - brothels, bagnios, grand houses for successful courtesans, the Foundling Hospital, etc. though it is rather a ramshackle work with all sorts of digressions into the 18th century underworld, including the shadowy one of women serving the the army and navy. Some of the stories are clearly true, some exaggerated, some probably invented. One interesting suggestion Cruikshank makes, with some supporting evidence too long to quote here, is that some women escaped discovery with the connivance of 'sober men', a few trusted comrades who protected them from discovery.

There is of course plenty of both anecdotal and hard evidence of women enlisting in the navy and marines by posing as men, and of their escaping detection for long periods. Slightly sensational books have been written on the subject. The question is – how, in such crowded quarters, did they escape detection so long? Cruickshank’s explanation is as good as any and might have been true in some cases.

What is really intriguing is how many women were present on warships in their own capacities as the wives of crew members – rather than those of officers? Such women were seldom officially recorded since a ship’s muster book was essentially a financial document designed to justify paying the crew and victualling legitimate passengers, but there were undoubtedly many. There are numerous examples of women claiming medals; the service of some in battle as powder monkeys or tending the sick is on record; babies were born on board; women appear in paintings of ship board life; and there is St Vincent’s famous order to captains to stop the women on their ships using too much fresh water washing their smalls. I seem to remember that Admiralty Regulations prohibited taking women on board without permission and that commanders regularly (including St Vincent) inaugurated the occasional purge. Neither had much effect.

I have never heard that Nelson 'would not have women on board his ships'. If this was his policy, then he was spectacularly unsuccessful in implementing it when a fleet commander.

Brian

Apologies, all, for my comment that Nelson 'wouldn't have women on his ships.'

I recall reading an observation to that effect, though I can't locate the source, despite perusing my shelves in vain. I remember that it was supported by a quotation from Nelson himself. 'They [women] will always do as they please. Orders are not for them - at least, I never yet knew one that obeyed.' However, as I searched for my lost source, I came across the full quotation in its proper context and now realise that the orginal source had used this partial quotation - quite erroneously, it seems - to support his claim that Nelson refused to have women aboard his ships. In fact, Nelson's remarks, from Tucker's 'Memoirs of Earl St Vincent', quoted in Roy Adkins' 'Trafalgar: the biography of a battle', make it clear that he was merely commenting wryly, with a sort of resigned acceptance, on the presence of women on ships, and not as a prohibition, as the other writer, whomsoever he or she might be, suggested.

I'll try and locate the culprit and rev up the Forum Frying Pan.

Brilliant, Anna - I at last have found it in The Times, bottom of page 7, and it gives their source as the Exeter Times. It reads as a credible story, but at present it can't be verified. It's something to look out for. The Times says that Sarah Pitt was also at the Dardanelles - this was in 1807, when the Ajax blew up. In one eyewitness report of that disaster, it was said that one woman out of three from the Ajax was saved. This is yet another indication of the number of women on board most ships, women who were not (usually) prostitutes.

Lesley

http://www.adkinshistory.com

Lesley:

had a quick Google to see if the archive of the 'Exeter Times' was on line and came across this link to all the nespapers published in Exeter.

http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/EM/newspapers.php

There is currently an Exeter Times, but it only started publishing in 2006.

An earlier newspaper, 'Featherstone's Exeter Times', published only 15 issues in the 1830s.

Perhaps it was another Exeter newspaper of 1843 that carried the report.

Trewman's Exeter Flying Post seems to be the longest-established and most authoritative 19th century newspaper. Maybe that was the one that carried the report about Sara Pitt. Incidentally, it was this paper that published a poem to mark the death of Nelson in early November (the 7th, I think, I'll need to check,)1805, possibly the first tribute in the public prints.

Lesley!

I think we need to be a little more specific. Ships in harbour notoriously attracted hundreds of good times girls claiming to be wives, coming to scrounge off the sailors, getting drunk and indulging in what one officer described as "excess and debauchery that the grossest passions of human nature can lead them to." However I cannot believe that any of them went to sea on (often voyages of indeterminate length and certain discomfort) or wouild have been allowed to do so. Those who did can only have been wives.

Brian

Brian, What I meant was that most women who went to sea were wives or partners, but there is evidence that some of the women who went to sea were most likely to have been prostitutes but had been adopted by one of the seamen or marines. This is very rare, but one instance is the surgeon George Magrath complaining about a marine who has gonorrhoea that he has caught off the girl he has on board. Surgeon Lionel Gillespie also refers to four prostitues on board the Racehorse - see Jack Tar p.318. There is also evidence that prostitutes occasionally sailed from port to port around the coast of Britain, but not all captains allowed this. And of course some of the captains had their mistresses rather than their wives with them.

As for the Exeter Times, Anna, I have now looked up the weekly Trewman's Flying Post for 5th October 1843, and there is a reference to the opening of the Nelson monument and a hope that the Exeter veteran Mr George Aunger could be present. He was definitely an ordinary seaman on board the Victory at Trafalgar. As this is a weekly paper, this is obviously not the one from which the London Times took their story about Sarah Pitt on the 10th. I think this must be The Western Times and will try to check this out when next in Exeter.

Lesley

http://www.adkinshistory.com

Re: Nelson forbidding women on board:

I have just tracked down a letter he wrote to Lady Hamilton from Victory, off Toulon, October 18th 1803. It appears that Emma has suggested coming to join him. He says that the weather is very bad - 'it will kill you; and myself, to see you. Much less possible, to have Charlotte, Horatia &c on board ship!

And I, that have given orders to carry no women to sea in the Victory, to be the first to break them!'

Quoted in 'Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, with a supplement of interesting letters by distinguished characters.' (pub. Thomas Lovewell, 1814) p. 160

If indeed he gave the order, (though it's not impossible that he invented this as an excuse to discourage Emma) then, as Brian says, he was not successful in implementing it.

Brian: re women who were not wives aboard ships (on voyages rather than in harbour.)

Evelyn Berckman writes very eloquently on this subject in a chapter called 'The Floating Rib' in her book 'The Hidden Navy'. (Hamish hamilton 1973).

She argues persuasively that stowaway prostitutes, though hidden, were not rare. Concrete evidence is necessarily thin, but she makes some interesting and credible deductions from the scanty evidence available, as in the case of the 'Horatio' in May 1815. The ship struck a needle rock and all hands were needed at the pumps, and for 'thrumming'.

'All at once, five women appeared on the scene. Only one of them was known to the officer relating the episode; she was the boatswain's wife. By his manner of reference to the others he had never set eyes on any of them, which points to the reasonable inference that they were stowaways.' Quickly they took over at the lethal break, releasing the men who were needed at the pumps and 'rendered essential service in thrumming the sail.' The ship was saved and 'the four unknown apparitions melted away again into their secret holes'.

She continues: '....The lieutenant knew nothing, or seemed to know nothing, of the four stowaways; the boatswain's wife, on the other hand, must have known all about them. How otherwise could she have recruited her working team from the hold as quickly as she did? But her knowledge she had kept to herself till faced by the threat of the ship's going down with all hands. Was her earlier silence through the mere silent partisanship of sex? Through obscure compassion for those fallen into the nethermost pit, whose lot she would not make harder by betrayal? ..
Such considerations, if they existed, never found their way into official records. But what we do know is that, having considerably helped to save the ship, they received no word of thanks, and equally, of course, no reward.'

Sorry Anna, but I remain unconvinced by Ms Berckman’s story.

‘Horatio’ was a 1000 ton frigate with a crew of about 240 men. I am not in the least surprised to learn that there were 4 partners/regular wives/common law wives on board, probably being fed from their partner/husband’s rations, living in cubby holes (and therefore not invisible) on the accommodation deck, and inevitably forming a kind of little ship-borne women’s community under the leadership of the senior female – the boatswain’s wife. Neither am I surprised at the possibility (see below) that one of the divisional lieutenants (whose concern was the immediate supervision of only some 80 men) was unaware of, and probably uninterested in, their unofficial presence.

What does surprise me is that Ms Berckman’s should go much further than the facts and so readily assume that they were prostitutes rather than women who were there with male partners. The idea that they were ‘stowaways’ (ie had sneaked aboard on their own or as the result of a kind of feminist conspiracy by the boatswain’s wife), who dwelt in 'secret holes' (without anyone knowing about them), and who actually lived in the airless, lightless hold which, with the orlop - which Ms Berckman has probably never heard of – was the location of the boatswain’s and carpenter’s storerooms , the spirit room, the bread room and the magazine, all of which were visited regularly and guarded by sentries seems to me to be highly implausible.

How were they supposed to have eaten in a ship where the issue of rations was strictly controlled by the purser who had to make up for any discrepancy between the amount theoretically needed by X men and the amount actually consumed? And is it likely that the ‘regular’ wives on board would have tolerated such a group?

Suzanne Stark in her 'Female Tars' does not make this assertion when she reports the incident and does so in a chapter discussing lower deck wives.

Not only that, but has Berckman misunderstood the story? Or not read the original? As far as I recall, Sir William Dillon's 'Narrative' (which is where it comes from) does not say the women were unknown apparitions. It is Michael Lewis, when he relays the incident in his 'Social History' who adds the phrase 'thereupon several women, hitherto unmentioned' (presumably in the 'Narrative' which he edited for publication) 'appeared from nowhere' before he quotes Dillon's own words about thrumming the sail.

Evidence, as you say, is thin. Romantic imagination clearly is not!

Brian

Anna,

I have to agree with Brian here that Evelyn Berckman seems to have a bit of a vivid imagination – and also does not appear to understand the internal workings of a warship of Nelson's time!

There would have been very few, if any, parts of a ship which were not visited and on a regular basis (many watch by watch), either by marine sentries, the bosun and his mates, the carpenter and his crew and others in an official capacity – including the captain or first lieutenant on his regular 'rounds'. This was so that nothing would be amiss as regards the working or maintenance of the ship (such as the springing of a leak); to see that the crew were healthy (both as regards their person and their quarters); to ensure that there would be no source of fire (such as an unguarded candle, which was extremely important on a wooden ship, especially with gunpowder aboard); and to make absolutely sure that no 'skulduggery' or mutiny was being planned.

Under these circumstances, I find it very difficult to believe that all of the complement carried, both men and women, were not known and recognised, even though the latter may not have been accounted for in the ship's books. I'm also not so sure that the men thrumming the sails needed to cover the hole in the ship's bottom, were so desperately needed at the pumps, since there was only so much room at the bars and there would have been others to relieve them. The women might have been used however if they were thought quicker with a needle!