The News of Trafalgar
Elizabeth Sparrow unpicks the origins of the long-standing belief that Penzance, in Cornwall, was the first place on the mainland to receive news of the victory at Trafalgar and the death of Nelson.
Who first heard the news of the victory at Trafalgar, and the death of Nelson? There is a strong oral tradition, believed by most, that the news of the victory on October 21st, 1805, first reached Penzance in Cornwall via a fishing boat, which heard it from the naval vessel HMS Pickle carrying Lt Lapenotiere with Admiral Collingwood’s official dispatches, which he had been entrusted to take to the King and government.
The primacy of Penzance in this respect has never been challenged until recently. In 1805, it was a lively, cosmopolitan sea-port in the parish of Madron, with communities of Jews, French royalist émigrés and the numerous black servants of the Jamaica sugar planter, Sir Rose Price.
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