Nelson Off New England

[Readers, this is a piece for paid subscribers, on an incident which took place locally in the summer of 1782 — after the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, but before the Peace of Paris between the new United States and Great Britain was signed in 1783 — when a young officer of the Royal Navy, Captain Horatio Nelson of the frigate the HMS Albemarle, captured a local schooner, the Harmony, of Plymouth.

Nelson, of course, went on to lasting fame as the victor of Trafalgar, and the 1782 incident in these waters is significant not only because of his involvement, but also for certain realities of the early modern Atlantic world which it illustrates.

Because this article is quite long, you may wish to open it in an Internet browser rather than read it in email form.

As always, thank you for reading and subscribing. – Ben Cronin.]

(CAPE COD BAY) — October 21st is a day that typically goes little remarked on this side of the Atlantic — it is the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, when, on October 21st, 1805, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, British Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson decisively smashed the superior combined Franco-Spanish fleet off of Cape Trafalgar, Spain, on the western approaches to the Strait of Gibraltar.

The British fleet triumphed, but Nelson himself was felled by an enemy’s musket ball, thereby instantly joining the pantheon of Britain’s national heroes — it is after this naval engagement that Trafalgar Square, in London, is named, replete with a column dedicated to the memory of Nelson.

(“The Battle of Trafalgar,” by William Drummond, 1825. Via Wikimedia Commons.)