Borrowed
telescope returned dotted with Nelson’s blood
Sidmouth
the Nelson connection - by Handel Bennett
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John Carslake. |  | |
• Violet Bank Cottage, which is now Littlecourt in Seafield Road. |
WITH
its strong links to Nelson, Sidmouth had good reason to celebrate the Trafalgar
Bi-Centenary.
Commander John Carslake, who served on HMS Victory as a midshipman
at Trafalgar, survived the battle and went on to found Sid Vale Association in
1846.
Next year the SVA celebrates its 160th anniversary and its chairman,
the Reverend Handel Bennett, reflects on the man who formed the oldest civic society
in the world after listening and transcribing a recent address to the Association
by Julia Creeke, chairman of the SW Maritime Historical Society, about Sidmouth
and the Nelson Connection.
Although we know Nelson travelled with his wife
Fanny to visit her cousin near Exmouth, and that she was later buried there, no
record exists of him visiting Sidmouth.
But the town certainly had connections
with the Admiral and Trafalgar.
John Yule, who served with Nelson on the
Elephant at Copenhagen as a Lieutenant, and had also been on the Alexander at
Aboukir Bay in the Battle of the Nile, was at Trafalgar.
John Yule had
married into the Carslake family. The Carslakes had been in the Sidmouth area
since late mediaeval times; first in 1695 in Branscombe, when Henry Carslake bought
the Cotmaton estate from Robert, Duke of Otterton.
The Carslakes continued
to live at Cotmaton Hall throughout the 18th century as minor gentry.
Each
of the three brothers inherited the property while a fourth, a surgeon living
in Colyton, married Elizabeth Crago from Seaton and had five daughters before
John Carslake was born.
John Yule, born in 1777, married John’s eldest
sister Elizabeth. He served as First Lieutenant with Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar
on the Victory.
Yule had a very nice telescope with him, which was better
than Nelson’s, and at Trafalgar Nelson asked Yule if he could borrow it,
as he would not be needing it on the lower deck.
There is a long-standing family
tradition that when it was brought back to Yule after the battle, it still had
Nelson’s blood on it.
Also in the “thick of it” was his
brother-in-law John Carslake, who in 1799 at the age of 14 joined the Navy as
a First Class volunteer on the Royal George.
He served under Lord Bridport,
and became a Midshipman the following year.
Also on board was another senior
‘midi’ George Brown, and a strong friendship developed between these
two, which was to have a very profound effect on Sidmouth.
Carslake was
transferred to the Thames and was involved in various captures of privateers.
Going to the West Indies he took part in a battle off Cadiz, returned
home, then went back to the West Indies on board Courageous under Captain John
Oakes Hardy.
John Yule used his influence on Nelson to get Carslake posted
to the Victory where he met up with his old friend George Brown.
Carslake
very soon distinguished himself on board the Victory as a fire fighter.
Edward
Pascoe, on board Victory as a Lieutenant – later made Rear Admiral –
remained a life-long friend of John Carslake.
In March 1852 Pascoe wrote
to John: “I have a perfect recollection of the fire which took place on board
the Victory in the after cock-pit, and which caused such panic in the crew that
many jumped overboard and were not restored to a sense of their proper duty but
by the drummer beating the Quarters.
“You it was, by your coolness
and self-command that got the fire under, by causing wet hammocks to smother the
blaze; and it was generally thought at the time that had you been qualified by
time (served), Lord Nelson would have promoted you on the instant.”
By
the time of Trafalgar, Pascoe was Nelson’s Senior First Flag Lieutenant and
well aware of what was happening aboard the Victory.
It seems Carslake
intended to write a book about his life and asked Pascoe for reminiscences.
He
wrote to John in October 1852 recalling: “the Victory had sailed back to
Gibraltar because the enemy had sailed out of the Gut (Straits) a fortnight before,
and nobody knew in what direction they had steered.
His Lordship was now
determined to sail for the West Indies, (in the hope of pursuing the enemy’s
fleets there).
The battle was finally joined at Cape Trafalgar on October
21, 1805. It was to Lieut. George Brown that Nelson verbally gave the great signal:
‘England confides that every man will do his duty’.
Brown took
it to Pascoe, the Signal Lieutenant, but Pascoe had to request that Nelson permit
him to alter it.
According to the Signals manual ‘confides’
had to be spelt with two individual flags, which would take much longer to hoist.
He
suggested the substitution ‘England expects that every man will do his duty’,
to which Nelson agreed.
So Brown and Pascoe, the two friends of John Carslake,
were both involved in hoisting Nelson’s famous signal to the fleet.
After
the battle Carslake was promoted to a Lieutenancy on the Bellisle.
Here there
was again another local connection. Robert Bastin, of Tidwell House, East Budleigh,
was First Lieutenant on the Bellisle.
This ship had suffered badly at Trafalgar,
and a lot of damage had to be made good, but it was a better sailing vessel than
the Victory.
By December he was back on the St George where there were
more heroics when he jumped into rough seas to rescue a seaman who fell overboard.
As
a result there was further promotion to First Lieutenant on board the Proserpine,
which was fitting out in Chatham.
The Proserpine had been a French frigate,
which was captured by Admiral Lord Amelius Beauclerk. In Sidmouth, Beauclerk’s
father had built Violet Bank Cottage; now Littlecourt in Seafield Road, and the
admiral often occupied it.
Carslake spent some time on this frigate, ending
up blocking the French port of Toulon after the British Admiralty received intelligence
the French were building a huge number of new ships.
This greatly alarmed
them. There was now no Nelson, and the thought of the French rebuilding their
Navy absolutely terrified the British.
Unfortunately while they were blockading
Toulon, two French ships of the line appeared, the Penelope and the Pauline.
As
those who heard Julia Creeke’s talk may remember, the Prosperine received
broadsides from either side and the badly damaged ship was recovered by the French
and its surviving crew, including John Carslake, taken prisoner and despatched
to the fortress at Verdun as prisoners of war.
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