A WONDERFUL RELIC

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 84, 3 January 1930, Page 8

A WONDERFUL RELIC

NELSON’S “PLUME OF TRIUMPH”

Dominion Special Service.

London, November 2L

More than a century after the death of the hero of Trafalgar, a serious effort is being made to collect the many relics associated with his name for the purpose of founding a national collection in the Painted. Hall at Greenwich. A year or two ago an exhibition of Nelson relics, many of them privately owned, was held in ths West End, ’and notabl eamong them was the Chelengk, or “Plume of Triumph,” a decoration presented to Nelson by the Sultan of Turkey after the Battle of the Nile. Nelson highly prized this Order, for in the Mohammedan world it represents the highest order of chivalry. Recently the Order came on the market, and now it has been secured for the Greenwich collection through the generosity of Lady Barclay, widow of Sir Colville Barclay, lately our Ambassador at Lisbon. The Chelengk, which has thirteen rows of jewels, one for each enemy ship taken at the battle, appears in the armorial bearings designed for Nelson, which are an epitome of his career. One crest consists of the stern, “floating in waves of the sea proper,” of the Spanish man-o’-war, San Joseph, in which he received the swords of the Spanish officers after the victory of St. Vincent. The other, as described in heraldry, is “over a naval crown or, the Chelengk, or diamond plume of triumph, presented to the Ist Lord Nelson, by the Grand Seignor,- Sultan. Selim III.” Other features of this coat of arms are its “bend engrailed of the field, charged with three hand grenades of the second, fired proper;” its disabled ship and battery in ruins; and its supporters— ; an armed sailor, and a lion reguardant, in his mouth two broken staffs from which flow the Spanish and French ensigns. The Chelengk had never before been given to a Christian, and the Turkish Sultan’s act has had no parallel since.