Andrew D. Lambert

Peter Hore

"The smallest ship in Nelson's fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar was the curiously-named HMS Pickle. The ship was a topsail schooner and, though deemed too small to take part in the fighting it distinguished itself as the ship to bring Captain John Lapenotiere with the news of Nelson's victory at Trafalgar and his death. The schooner set off on October 26th and took 9 days to reach Britain after facing a gale off Cape Finisterre. After the Pickle anchored in Flamouth Bay on November 4th Lapenotiere started his journey to London (a trip that usually took a week was covered in 37 hours with 19 horse changes). [Author] Peter Hore describes the ship's beginnings as a civilian vessel called Sting, through conversion with 10 guns and its role with Admiral Cornwall's Inshore Squadron for French reconnaissance in 1803. HMS Pickle was also involved in the rescue for the crew of HMS Magnificent in 1804 and further reconnaissance missions. This full history details other colourful episodes including a single-ship action against the French privateer Favorite in 1807. Pickle was wrecked in July 1808 when she was grounded as she entered Cadiz harbour but without loss of life. The Pickle's journey is commemorated by Royal Navy Warrant Officers on November 5th."--Provided by publisher.

The Swiftest Ship in Nelson's Trafalgar Fleet

HMS Pickle

Stephen Badsey

During the Crimean War, for the first time, newspaper correspondents were able to provide the public with eye-witness accounts of the scenes of conflict. This book combines such descriptions from The Times of London with a discussion of the war, based on historical scholarship.

The Crimean War

From one of our foremost naval historians, the compelling story of the doomed Arctic voyage of the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, commanded by Captain Sir John Franklin. Andrew Lambert, a leading authority on naval history, reexamines the life of Sir John Franklin and his final, doomed Arctic voyage. Franklin was a man of his time, fascinated, even obsessed with, the need to explore the world; he had already mapped nearly two-thirds of the northern coastline of North America when he undertook his third Arctic voyage in 1845, at the age of fifty-nine. His two ships were fitted with the latest equipment; steam engines enabled them to navigate the pack ice, and he and his crew had a three-year supply of preserved and tinned food and more than one thousand books. Despite these preparations, the voyage ended in catastrophe: the ships became imprisoned in the ice, and the men were wracked by disease and ultimately wiped out by hypothermia, scurvy, and cannibalism. Franklin's mission was ostensibly to find the elusive North West Passage, a viable sea route between Europe and Asia reputed to lie north of the American continent. Lambert shows for the first time that there were other scientific goals for the voyage and that the disaster can only be understood by reconsidering the original objectives of the mission. Franklin, commonly dismissed as a bumbling fool, emerges as a more important and impressive figure, in fact, a hero of navigational science.

Andrew D. Lambert

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