THE INN OF SEA-DOGS

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 166, 10 April 1926, Page 22

THE INN OF SEA-DOGS

NELSON’S WINDOW-PANE SIGNATURE

The old town of Portsmouth, which consists mainly of one of the most historic streets in the world, and the ancient bvwavs that branch from it, is in danger of losing one of its most famous landmarks, the antique Star and Garter Hotel. The Star and Garter has been a hostelrv ever since 1551. It is located practically on the beach of Portsmouth Harbour and in the days of “wooden walls” was much resorted to by naval officers. Nelson stayed there. , The rooms he used to occupy are still in use. His name, scrawled with a diamond, appears on a window of the house, and below it is another signature which tradition says was written by Ladv Hamilton. This window seems to have played the part of hotel register in bygone times and is covered with names many of which are known to have been written by famous seamen, though a pseudonym is employed instead of the proper name of the writer. Captain Marryat knew the Star and Garter well and mentions it frequently. In his sea-going days King William IV was one of its habitues and often caroused there. Other famous names associated with the bouse are Earl St. Vincent, Earl Howe, and Sir John Franklin, the Arctic explorer.. All of our famous old sea-dogs, in short, made it a resort. So did some of the later ones, for it was in the Star and Garter that Lord Charles Beresford hung up th* knocker that he wrenched

frpm the vicarage door in one of thea pranks for which as a young officer/ be was notorious- Going to the Stary and Garter one night, Lord Charles! Beresford stepped into a shop near, bv and ordered a pound of treacle* “What shall I put it in?” asked th* woman who served him. “Put it |:t| this,” he replied, throwing his cap <a the counter. The woman did --o, whereupon lie took up the cap, clapped it on her face, and flung a sovereign on the counter and walked out of th*

shop. Many other queer stories of the Wild tricks of young naval "bloods” could be told in association with the Star and Garter and with the “Old Blua Posts”—the midshipman’s house—. which stands in the same street and with the name of which all readers of Marryat will be likewise familiar. Now, the Star and Garter is likely soon to be as much a thing of the past as the old navy with which it was for centuries so intimately associated. The navy no longer uses it to anv extent, and the house has been scheduled amongst those which it is proposed to close on grounds of redundancy.

TncidejMally, the street in which the Star and Garter stands also contains the Inn (now a private house) in which Felton assassinated the Duke of Buckingham, a gilded bust of Charles I, to which all passers-by were once obliged to doff their hats,’ and much els* of deep historic faterest.