September 1806
Alderney Races, among other things, featuring Mackenzie's brown mare, called Snowball!
Napoleonic
Sarnia
A poem from the Mercure newspaper, 20 October 1810.
Peter Paul Dobree on Cadiz, Spanish ladies, and politics, 1811
A letter from Peter Paul Dobrée, (1782-1825), who was born in Guernsey and became Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University in 1823. In 1811 he had visited 'Don Pedro' (Peter Carey) Tupper, the Guernsey-born and immensely wealthy British consul in Valencia. The illustration of Cadiz is from Sir John Carr's Descriptive travels in the southern and eastern parts of Spain and the Balearic isles, in the year 1809, London: 1811, in the Library collection.
Bailiwick Prisoners-of-War, 1813
A letter from Paris, dated 3 July 1813, to Harry Dobree, who organised collections for the welfare of the prisoners. [From the Gazette de Guernesey, September 13, 1813.]
14 February 1814: A Guernseyman's golden Valentine
Dug from Lima's golden mine, We hail it as our Valentine. HMS Menelaus recaptured a very valuable French prize, the Spanish treasure-ship the St Juan Baptista. The master was a Guernseyman, and Guernsey people are often very careful with money. This one certainly was. The account is from The Life of a Sailor by Frederick Chamier (1796-1870), some of whose tales are probably rather tall.
December 23, 1803: The loss of the Grappler and the sufferings of its captain and crew
Chaussey, or Choye, is a group of islets lying off the coast of Normandy, about twenty miles from Jersey, and nine from Granville. They stretch north, east, and west, and cover a space of nearly twelve miles. The principal of them is called the MaÎtre Isle, and is the resort of a few French fishermen during the summer, but being only a rock, and totally devoid of vegetation, its inhabitants are entirely dependent on the neighbouring shores for all the necessaries of life, excepting what their nets may produce. At the time of which we are writing, the winter of 1803, this group of islets was in the hands of the English, and was the scene of the wreck of the Grappler in that year.
100 men lost: HMS Boreas, 28 November 1807
James Saumarez' account of the loss of the 28-gun frigate Boreas, wrecked on the Hanois rocks on November 28th, 1807. This disaster was one of the major factors in the eventual decision to erect a lighthouse there. The number of men who died is uncertain; 77 were saved. Captain Robert Scott's wife is also said to have been drowned. From Cobbett's Political Register, Vol. 12, 1807, p. 928.
A barbarous murder: June, 1795
As printed in the Gazette de l'Ile de Guernesey.
1812, Prisoners-of- War
Local Prisoners-of-War held in France eligible for a share of a charitable fund made up of donations from islanders, and administered by Harry Dobree. The illustration is from the Gazette de Guernesey of March 1812; the actors were officers from the garrison (see note below).
Alderney on alert, 1796-7
Gazette de L'Ile de Guernesey, Saturday 27 Mai 1797.