NELSON’S LETTERS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6844, 23 February 1929, Page 13

NELSON’S LETTERS

200 PRESENTED TO HARVARD A naval correspondent writes in the “Daily Mail” as follows: The news that some 200 letters written by the great Lord Nelson or his intimate friends have just been' presented to Harvard University in the United States raises the question whether efforts should not be made to retain in this country documents written by its most famous naval hero or dealing with important episodes in his career. It is stated that the documents at Harvard contain "extremely valuable historical material, hitherto unknown and untouched.” If so. there is all the greater reason to lament the loss of matter which—it is to be presumed—has not appeared in Pettigrew’s collection of Nelson’s papers, nor in Nicolas and the Morrison papers. So long ago as November, 1911, the late Mr. T. J. Barratt bought for £4,000 at Sotheby’s the log-book of the Victory for the Trafalgar period. He gave this amount to rescue it from American collectors who were under stood to be offering large sums for it. This log-book was possibly one of the numerous books abstracted by Croker. Secretary at the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830. He is known from many sources to have been in the habit of taking logs, reports, and letterbooks home with him and keeping them.

One such book which camo from his library was sold by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson in 1913. It was Nelson’s official letter-book for the period including the Battle of Copenhagen, and sight of it had been completely lost. As it was undoubtedly the property of the Admiralty originally, the suggestion was made that the Admiralty should reclaim it, but Prince Louis of Battenberg, then First Sea Lord, could not be persuaded to move in the matter. Eager though he was to recover all Nelson documents, ho thought the book had been too long in private hands to be attached. But if Prince Louis’s view was correct and these abstracted State papers cannot be seized by the State—to which they belong and have always belonged—it does seem that a short Bill might be passed forbidding their export or sale to anybody outside the! country and requiring the owners to! permit them to be registered and photographed for historical purposes.)