I pray you remain safe and sound.
With fond affection
Bel
xxxx
It was a shock, but not totally unexpected. ‘She’s been quite restless in London,’ said her mother. ‘Felt she was whilin’ away her life workin’ in that shop, waitin’ for you to come back from your travels.’
I was pleased to hear Bel had missed me so much but sad not to see her. Still, she had left me a letter to treasure.
I said farewell to Mrs Sparke. ‘Shame Mr Sparke’s off down the Five Bells,’ she said, ‘he could have met you too.’
I was relieved he was. Bel’s parents, both of them at once, would have been an ordeal.
I walked along the riverside, still filled with crowds from Nelson’s funeral, and on to Grosvenor Square, where Robert and his father were waiting to take me to dine at their club. The funeral had lifted a burden from my soul. It had been a beautiful ceremony and now I felt able to enjoy my freedom. The night air sparkled with frost, and stars shone cold and bright above my head, but I felt warm in my coat. I would never have thought, when I left home five years before, that the sea would give me so much. It had brought me adventure, it had brought me advancement, it had even brought me Bel. I marched on through the streets of London feeling the whole world lay at my feet.
Fact and Fiction
Most of the events and characters in this book are fictitious, but when Sam arrives on the Victory, fact and fiction begin to mingle. Alongside Admiral Lord Nelson, his comrades Admiral Collingwood, Captain Hardy, Mr Scott, Dr Scott, Lieutenant Pasco and Mr Beatty are also real people. (All other characters, such as Duffy and Trellis, are fictitious, although Duffy often reflects the worst behaviour of some Royal Navy midshipmen.) During the battle Lieutenant Pasco did have a midshipman to assist him. Like Sam, he was also eighteen at the time of the battle and his name was John Pollard. My apologies to his descendants for writing him out of this pivotal moment in history.
The events of the Battle of Trafalgar depicted here – the details of the action, positions and names of ships – are inspired by eyewitness reports. So is Victory’s return to England and Nelson’s funeral.
During the battle itself the Victory did send men aboard the Redoutable, and they were greeted with great courtesy by the French seamen. The incident in the book with the Ariane and HMS Pegasus is fictional, as are both these ships, although similar events occurred with British and Combined Fleet ships as the Battle of Trafalgar came to an end.
For any reader whose curiosity has been stoked by this story, here are a few of the more approachable books (from many acres) on Nelson and Trafalgar:
Trafalgar: the Men, the Battle, the Storm by Tim Clayton and Phil Craig (Hodder and Stoughton, 2004)
Fighting Sail by A.B.C. Whipple and the Editors of Time-Life Books (Seafarers series, Caxton Publishing Group, 2004)
Voices from the Battle of Trafalgar by Peter Warwick (David and Charles, 2005)
The Trafalgar Companion by Mark Adkin (Aurum Press, 2005) is a magnificently comprehensive and accessible account of both the battle and the life of Admiral Lord Nelson.
Younger readers will be fascinated by Stephen Biesty’s Cross-Sections: Man-of-War (Dorling Kindersley, 1993), which shows HMS Victory in entertaining and mind-boggling detail.
Older readers will find food for thought in Adam Nicolson’s Seize the Fire – Heroism, Duty and Nelson’s Battle of Trafalgar (HarperCollins, 2006)
Finally, HMS Victory in Portsmouth is an unmissable treat and you can stand on the very spot where Nelson was hit. The website is brilliant too (www.hms-victory.com).
H.M.S. VICTORY
Acknowledgements
My thanks are due, as ever, to Ele Fountain and Isabel Ford at Bloomsbury, for steering the cargo through storms and reefs, to Ian Butterworth for creating the evocative cover and Peter Bailey for drawing the fine illustrations inside the book.
While researching the book, Alison Harris at the Marine Society Library, and staff at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; the Department of Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections at the British Library; the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; the Museum in Docklands, London; the Museum of London, and Wolverhampton and Birmingham Reference Libraries all directed me to useful sources.
Thank you also to my agent Charlie Viney, for his support and encouragement, and to Mrs Julie Rose and the pupils of St Peter’s Collegiate School, Wolverhampton; George Gordon, Mrs Jo Brearley and the pupils of Gresham’s Preparatory School, Norfolk; Dr Roland Pietsch for his advice and for sending me his article ‘Ships’ Boys and Youth Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain: The Navy Recruits of the London Marine Society’; Jeremy Lavender (for the joke), and Jenny and Josie Dowswell for their invaluable help and support.
Extra special thanks are due to Dilys Dowswell who read through my first drafts, and whose familiarity with Georgian England ensured that none of my characters used mobile phones.
Also by Paul Dowswell
Powder Monkey
Prison Ship
Text copyright © 2007 by Paul Dowswell
Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Peter Bailey
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published in the United States in 2008 by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children’s Books
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
Distributed to the trade by Macmillan
Electronic edition published in October 2011
www.bloomsburykids.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
available upon request
ISBN-13: 978-1-59990-080-3 • ISBN-10: 1-59990-080-7
ISBN: 9781599908618 (ebook)
Battle Fleet (2007) Page 19