VADM Collingwood VADM Collingwood was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne some eight years before Nelson. His father was a prominent Northumberland merchant who encouraged his son to join the Royal Navy at age 11, as a volunteer in HMS Shannon, commanded by young Cuthbert’s cousin, CAPT Richard Braithwaite. He swiftly gained promotion to Midshipman and by […]
ADML Samuel Viscount Hood (1724-1816) ADML Hood (painted by James Northcote about 1784.) Samuel Hood, the son of a vicar, joined the RN as a midshipman in 1741, at age 16, sharing duties with fellow MIDN George Rodney in HMS Ludlow. Qualifying as a Lieutenant in 1746, he saw active service in the North Sea […]
Royal Navy: the early years Sociologists tend to argue that it is not so much the individual who changes history. Instead, it is the struggles of the masses and random chance that selects any one of hundreds if not thousands of otherwise suitable individuals to be the figurehead for inevitable societal change. On the other […]
Nelson: A brief biography Nelson, wearing two of his three gold medals. (A third gold medal was awarded posthumously. Painting by John Hoppner.) Born on 29 September 1758, to the Reverend Edmund and Catherine Nelson of Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, Horatio Nelson rose from relative obscurity to become the nation’s outstanding naval officer and hero in […]
An Australian RNVR in WW II This essay was awarded second prize in the Naval Officers Club Literary Prize competition, 2001. It was published in the Naval Officers Club Newsletter Number 46, 1 September 2001, pp 12-16. by Noel Buckley The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 caught most people, including me, […]
Around Australia in a 4 x 4 By John and Pam Da Costa We left Sydney on 11 June in our SWB Pajero, towing our very comfortable off-road camper-trailer, and got back home 211 days later on 8 January, having driven some 30,500 kms. We had only relatively minor car/trailer problems along the way: an […]
