Warkworth History Society
“A Captain in the Navy of Queen Anne” was the title of our December meeting. The speaker was one of our members, Dr. John West, who has spent his professional life in education and is a noted historian with several books to his name.
Speaking without notes John told us the true story of Edmund Lechmere who was born into an important and well-connected Worcestershire family in 1677.
At the age of fifteen the young Edmund was “sent for a sailor” as a gentleman volunteer and, presumably because he wasn’t fully grown, “found his sword too long!”
Edmund was a prolific letter writer, corresponding mainly with his grandfather, a judge, and his mother. His letters reveal a young man on the brink of adventure who found everything in his new life exciting and wondered, on receiving a parcel of books from his mother, “of what use are Latin books to me?”
Using Edmund’s story as his vehicle John skilfully steered us through a history of the British Navy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. We learned of the privations of life at sea, of the perils of piracy and Yellow Fever. We heard of action against the French and fighting on the Spanish Main, of how excited Edmund was to experience hand to hand combat with cutlasses and muskets and of the four thousand mile journey to Jamaica in 1698 in pursuit of the infamous Captain Kidd.
We followed the progress of Admirals Rooke and Benbow and learned how Edmund was made captain of his own ship the “Lyme” at the age of twenty.
Sadly Edmund’s glittering career was cut short when he was shot through the legs during a six-day battle against the French: notwithstanding he had a chair brought so that he could continue to direct the battle more closely but was mortally wounded and died several days later at the age of twenty-six.
To illustrate his talk John brought a small exhibition of documents and books and a beautifully crafted model which he himself had made of Captain Edmund Lechmere’s ship.
Dr West’s was enthusiastically received by an appreciative audience and he was warmly thanked by Dr Jim Teasdale.
Our next meeting will be on Monday 5 January when our speaker will be Rev. Ben Hopkinson who will speak on “Walking, and Panting, in Bhutan”.