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Abstract
At the resumption of hostilities in 1803 after the Peace of Amiens, Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson, now commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, renewed his interest in Sardinia as a logistical base for the blockade of Toulon. The story of the selection of an anchorage, known in the British fleet as Agincourt Sound, situated in the Maddalena Islands at the northern end of Sardinia, is explored. The related background and events are examined, and shown to be more complex than described by William James and other historians. They are also analysed for evidence of the evolution of front-line hydrographic data gathering and the supply of navigational intelligence to the Fleet during the wars of 1793–1815.
Acknowledgments
Both Dr Roger Knight and Dr Adrian Webb provided generous comments on an earlier draft of this article. Any remaining errors are entirely the responsibility of the author.
Notes
1 Nelson's interest in Sardinia, and his use of Agincourt Sound as a logistic base, are put in strategic context in White, ‘A Man of Business’.
2 Denham, The Tyrrhenian Sea, 63–6; Knight, The Pursuit of Victory, 444 et passim; Hunt, The Marine Art of Geoff Hunt, 42–7.
3 British Library (hereafter BL), Add. MS 34,966, Nelson Papers vol. LXV.
4 Knight, The Pursuit of Victory, 460; White, Nelson: The new letters, 386.
5 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), ADM/80/141, 186-8, 1 Aug 1803, ‘Report of the Superb's passage through the Straits of Bonifacio’. There is a copy in BL Add. MS 34919, fo.355. The accompanying sketch, which Keats believed sufficient ‘to be of considerable use to a stranger’, has not survived.
6 BL Add. MS 34920, fo. 352.
7 During the first decades of its existence the Hydrographer's department was known as the Hydrographical Office. The term was coined by Alexander Dalrymple.
8 White, Nelson: The new letters, 386.
9 BL Add. MS 34966, fo. 23.
10 Ibid., fos 24–5.
11 Ibid., fo. 42.
12 BL Add. MS 34,967, vol. II, 52–3.
13 Denham, The Tyrrhenian Sea, 65.
14 A copy of his remarks is in UK Hydrographic Office Miscellaneous Papers (hereafter UKHO MP) 77(C6), 66.
15 TNA ADM 1/407, N5 dated 17 Jan. 1803 and N27 dated 27 Feb. 1803.
16 Nicolas, Despatches and Letters, vol. V, 277–8. The importance that Nelson placed on this anchorage, and his attention to good relationships with the local authorities, leading eventually to the presentation of silver to the church in La Maddalena, is discussed in Reidy, ‘Lord Nelson, HMS Victory and Sardinia’.
17 James, Naval History, vol. III, 184–5.
18 NMM ADM L/A/53.
19 Naval Historical Branch (hereafter NHB/AL) Vq 39, annotated by Atkinson ‘Book of Harbours in the Mediterranean/August 10th in Bequiz Bay – 1798’.
20 Marshall, Royal Navy Biography, vol. IV, 581–5; TNA ADM 52/2439, Parts 7–9 show the extensive cruises of the Pearl in the Adriatic and Aegean as well as the western basin of the Mediterranean; the relevant Remark Books are in UKHO MP 81(C10), 630–1 and MP78 (C7), 290–331. The missing surveys, which were probably removed during a major cull in the 1870s, were: m10 ‘Gulf of Oristagne, Sardinia’ and m11 ‘Bay of Ogliaster, Sardinia’. The survey of the Maddalena archipelago is at m13 on Ry.
21 TNA ADM 52/2439 Part 7; ADM 51/676, part 3.
22 TNA ADM 52/3592, Part 1; BL Add. MS 34921, fo.6.
23 National Maritime Museum (hereafter NMM) CRK 8/36. The cutter Pigmy anchored off Maddalena in November 1801, although the ship's logs (TNA ADM 52/3291, part 5) are silent about the plundering of a village by Tunisian pirates which her surgeon would claim to have witnessed. Lowry, Fiddlers and Whores, 100–1, 153.
24 TNA ADM 51/1452. NMM ADM L/A/53 also contains a copy of Captain Ryves's journal for the period 17 Dec. 1802 to 11 Mar. 1803.
25 TNA ADM 51/1463. There is also a plan of the islands held in the QMG's department which credits soundings in Arsakina and Agincourt Sounds by both Captain Ryves and Mr Davison, master of Bickerton's flagship Kent (TNA MR1/184/20). There is no indication of transfer in the relevant muster books (TNA ADM 36/15348 and 14926). Kent certainly anchored in Agincourt Sound in February 1804, when Davison could have taken additional soundings (BL Add. MS 34981, 6–8 Feb. 1804).
26 Davey, ‘The advancement of nautical knowledge’, 81–103.
27 NMM CRK/13/93, 15 Nov. 03.
28 TNA ADM 12/104, Cut 68.4.
29 There is a copy of this edition of the chart in NHB/AL Vf.4/10.
30 Marshall, Royal Navy Biography; TNA ADM 1/390, Letters of 26 Oct., 8 Nov. and 23 Nov. 1791.
31 O'Byrne, Naval Biographical Dictionary, 64.
32 TNA ADM 1/1527.
33 TNA ADM 1/3522, letter dated 24 Nov. 1807.
34 NMM NVP 12.
35 TNA ADM 9/8/2467.
36 Cited without identification in Robinson, ‘Captain William Bligh RN’, 306.
37 TNA ADM 2/923, 78.
38 BL Add. MSS 34936, fo. 46-7, with another copy in TNA ADM 1/1532, B 140.
39 Nicolas, Despatches and Letters, vol. VI, 21.
40 Thus, for example, a plan held in the Military Depot of the Quartermaster General, partially based on Sardinian sources (TNA MR1 184 20).
41 White, Nelson: The new letters, 390–1; Fernyhough, Military Memoirs, 28–9; NMM, MON/2/42, 12 May 1804.
42 NMM ADM/L/V/57.
43 Smyth, The Mediterranean, 334.
44 Nicolas, Despatches and Letters, vol. VI, 21; these remarks are extant in UKHO MP 72(C1), 431.
45 Nicolas, Despatches and Letters, vol. VI, 249–50.
46 NMM ROU 03 NAV 18J; the survey sheet is annotated on the rear ‘No 24 C’.
47 His name is sometimes rendered Russell. I have used the spelling that he himself used.
48 In August 1805, Dalrymple sent a message to Nelson that he had for him ‘a plan of the Magdalena Islands with some of the dangers sent by Rear-Admiral Knight besides the Excellent's Shoal sent by His Lordship’ (BL Add. MS 34930, fo. 319). But Russel's survey sheet (UKHO o6 on Su) is annotated as received in the Hydrographical Office on 4 September 1806 and his work was only incorporated in the published Admiralty chart after Hurd's accession in 1808 (NHB/AL 062 and Vk5). Russel's remarks are at UKHO MP 75(C4), 452-4, and 77(C6), 301-2.
49 UKHO MP 75(C4) pp. 452-4 contain his remarks for this location, which state ‘see Sketch of the Bay’. This has not survived.
50 NMM CRK/10/162, 5 Nov. 1803, Ryves to Nelson.
51 UKHO MP 77(C6), pp. 66–8. In their New Sailing Directions for the Mediterranean Sea, Second Edition, London (1811), 42–3 (copy at BL 533.g.21) Laurie and Whittle reproduced Ryves's directions in full, noting that ‘all this part of the coast of Sardinia etc. was surveyed in the year 1802 by Captain George Frederick Ryves’.
52 TNA ADM 51/1558, no. 2, and ADM 52/3604, no. 9.
53 Barritt, Eyes of the Admiralty, 33–4, 115–7.
Additional information
Captain Michael Barritt, a former Hydrographer of the Navy, began his naval career while studying Modern History under Piers Mackesy at Pembroke College, Oxford. He commanded three ships and saw service worldwide, afloat and ashore, latterly as a specialist adviser working with the International Hydrographic Organization. In 2008 he published Eyes of the Admiralty, a study of hydrographic data gathering in support of the Channel Fleet's blockading operations at the end of the French Revolutionary War. He is currently preparing an account of the emergence of the Royal Navy's surveying specialization during and after the wars of 1793–1815.