Category: Blog

A Visit to the Temeraire in 1806

Date Posted: 18/01/2010

Mr Giles Laurent has kindly got in touch with a great piece concerning the Temeraire in 1806 as she lay at Portsmouth. An ancestor of his visited the ship in 1806, aged seventeen, and wrote  about her experience in her diary. ‘It was a melancholy thing to see the .... Read More

Richard Powell of the Temeraire

Date Posted: 11/01/2010

Mr Colin Powell has kindly got in touch with some information about Richard Powell, who fought on the Temeraire at Trafalgar. Richard Powell was born in Harwich on 13 August 1787 and was eighteen years old at the time of Trafalgar. Both his parents died when he was six years .... Read More

Google Earth spills naval secrets

Date Posted: 22/12/2009

I have just finished writing a piece on British naval reconnaissance at Brest in the early years of the Revolutionary Wars and wondered how easy it would be to do the same thing now – using Google Earth. The results are unsurprisingly astonishing, and someone has .... Read More

Battle of Lagos Update

Date Posted: 10/12/2009

Domick Penrose kindly got in touch with some new information about the Battle of Lagos. Falmouth Packet Captain Robert Lovell heard the news of the battle when his packet, the Prince Frederick, arrived from Lisbon. He noted: ‘This day the Prince Frederick Packet is .... Read More

The Battle of Lagos, 1759

Date Posted: 17/08/2009

250 years ago this week the Royal Navy fought a battle off Lagos in Portugal that is often overlooked, but which was crucial to the foundation of the naval mastery that Britain enjoyed after 1759. The French Mediterranean fleet was harried by Edward Boscawen until they were .... Read More