Archaeology To Philately With Hms Namur.

Here's a little story members may find of interest.

The December 2012 issue of he UK's 'Current Archaeology' magazine published an eight page article 'Finding HMS Namur' - Solving the mystery of the ship beneath the floor.

In 1995 the discovery of part of a Royal Navy warship hidden in the Wheelwrights' Shop at the Historic Dockyard Chatham sparked a hunt to determine both the name of the vessel and what it was doing there.

Eunice and I read the article with a great deal of interest as we happen to have a letter written by one of the seamen on board HMS Namur in 1812.

We wrote to the Editor of the magazine and he was very excited about it, so we sent him scans and the transcript of the letter, part of which they published in the 'Letters' column of the February edition.

The letter was written by Seaman John Manning and at the time the Namur was moored near the Nore sandbank in the Thames Estuary, guarding against smugglers and spies from the Continent.

In part the letter reads

"I should of wrote to you befor but I have been employd ever since they got me on board painting the Captin's cabin and all round the sides of her.the Lieutenant and all the officers are very much pleased with my work and very much respect me"

He goes on describe life on board ship in his fascinating two page letter to his brother and the full transcript can be read on our website at

-/letters/Previctorian/namur.html

The editor of the magazine forwarded our e-mail to Alex Patterson, Collections & Galleries Manager, Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, who then e-mailed us

quote


What a great piece of information about life on board while as a guard ship. As you may have read in the article we are starting to fill in the gaps about Namur's service history and people who served in her, and where we can, actively collect material relating to Namur. It is so rare to find firsthand accounts, especially from this period and therefore is even more valuable as a piece of evidence.

Would it be possible to have a high resolution scan of the letter, as it would be really useful to help build up our knowledge?

Unquote

In the last couple of days we have been contacted by two readers of the magazine regarding the letter.

The HMS Namur letter is one of about 140 old letters illustrated and transcribed on our site ranging in date from 1668 to 1840.

They are all different and give some very interesting insights into life of the general populace of the times.

Well worth a browse if you are interested in the history of Great Britain in that period.

-/letters/Previctorian/lettersov.html

We welcome comments and constructive criticism on any of our web pages.

Regards to all

Ron and Eunice.