Volume 98, The Private Correspondence of Admiral Lord Collingwood,
ed. Prof. E. Hughes (1957)

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This volume, edited by the then professor of modern history at the University of Durham, attempts to rescue Nelson’s second-in-command at Trafalgar from the comparative obscurity and even disdain that had overtaken him since the close of the nineteenth century. That Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood (1748-1810), lionised for his role at Trafalgar by his contemporaries and by Victorians, had become widely viewed in the first half of the twentieth century as a naval ‘mediocrity’ was largely due to the influence of Professor Sir John Knox Laughton’s assessment of him in the Dictionary of National Biography (compare the entry by Captain C. H. H. Owen RN in the modern Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Indeed, before publication of this NRS volume number 98 even the NRS had neglected him.  Deliberately, this volume contains no letters published in the Memoir by his son-in-law G. L. Newnham Collingwood (listed in Further Reading below) nor does it include any of the admiral’s official correspondence during 1805-10 while commander-in-chief, Mediterranean, consisting of twelve massive letter books deposited at the National Maritime Museum in 1935. Thus in this volume there are no broad comprehensive accounts of Trafalgar, though there are related snippets of and professional and human interest, not least regarding the sense of injustice felt by the officers of the ships that had not returned home after the battle but stayed on in the Mediterranean and feared themselves forgotten by the Admiralty in the bestowal of rewards. Also clearly glimpsed is Collingwood’s own frustration with an Admiralty that, despite his repeated protestations of ill-health, steadfastly refused to relieve him from the Mediterranean command. The outward correspondence reproduced here comprises mostly the following, in private collections: letters from Collingwood to his two unmarried sisters in his native Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1776-1810); letters to Mrs Collingwood’s uncle by marriage (1792-1805) which provide vivid accounts of the Glorious First of June and the battle of Cape St Vincent; letters (1792-1804) to Mrs Collingwood’s uncle; letters of a domestic and revealingly personal nature (1801-9) to Collingwood’s married sister; letters (1803-9) to Rear-Admiral John Child Purvis, commanding the Cadiz squadron from 1806. There are also incidental letters to other recipients including Rear-Admirals Sir Thomas Louis and Sir Thomas Pasley, and Captain Benjamin Hallowell. Inward correspondence, consisting of letters (1808-10) from the Duke of Northumberland, forms an appendix. The outward correspondence opens in March 1776, when Collingwood was about to become first lieutenant of the sloop Hornet under a brutal and despised captain who had him court-martialled the following year (he was acquitted), and closes in March 1810, when, weary and ailing, he was yet again desperately pleading to be relieved.  (The final letter, dated 15 March 1810, is to Collingwood’s sister from the First Secretary to the Admiralty, unaware that the admiral had died at sea on 7 March). The frontispiece to the volume is a silhouette of Collingwood as a young officer, with drawn details of his hair and clothing, by his close friend Horatio Nelson.

Contents

Introduction                                                                                              ix
Letters of Lord Collingwood, 1776-1810                                                  1
Appendixes                                                                                             316
Index                                                                                                       339

Further Reading

Max Adams, Admiral Collingwood: Nelson’s Own Hero (London, 2005)

G.L.Newnham Collingwood (comp.), A Selection from the Public and Private Correspondence of Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood: interspersed with memoirs of his life (London, 1828)

William Davies, A Fine Old English Gentleman, exemplified in the life and character of Lord Collingwood. A biographical study (London, 1895)

Geoffrey Murray, The Life of Admiral Collingwood (London, 1936)

C. H. H. Owen, ‘Letters from Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood, 1794-1809,’ in Michael Duffy (ed.), The Naval Miscellany Volume VI (NRS vol. 146, 2003), pp. 149-220

Oliver Warner, The Life and Letters of Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood (London, 1968)

Extracts

100. To his sister, Mrs Mary Stead, Queen, March 5, 1806

Would you believe that many of the officers have not heard from their families since the action [Trafalgar], nothing having sailed from Plymo’ since their first reply to my letter. Not a promotion of any officer in the fleet here … The consequence is that the Senior Officers are in extreme dejection with vexation and disappointment, and the younger ones all desirous of getting home, where they may have a chance of promotion.  In my ship, the Royal Sovereign, I have not heard that there is one person promoted, except those who were made Angels in the Action, and my first Lieut’t, who I put into a death vacancy with which the Admiralty had nothing to do.  But those who can make a good story out of a very trifle, get whatever they please.

174. Same to same, Ville de Paris, April 18, 1809

I am sorry … I have little prospect of coming home….While I can serve to the satisfaction of my King, and benefit of my country, I feel the reward in my act, and look no further for it.  But my fear, my only fear, is that my strength of body, impaired by weight of days and strength of years, should unfit me for the arduous duties I have to fulfil.  Fourteen or sixteen hours of every day I am employed.  I have about eighty ships of war under my orders, and the direction of naval affairs from Constantinople to Cadiz, with an active and powerful enemy, always threatening, and though he seldom moves, keeps us constantly on the alert.