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Name
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The Wounded of Trafalgar
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Description
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Hugh Bainbridge was twenty-four. He lost his right arm. David Christian lost his left arm below the elbow. Edward Crow lost his right leg. John Cockrane was a Boy Third Class — twelve years old — wounded at Trafalgar. John Taggant was forty-one, killed in action. John Cawle lost his right arm serving on HMS Temeraire and came home to Kirk Bride, where he became a schoolteacher. He taught children to read with one arm, because the Navy that took his arm paid him nothing. The veterans who came home came back to an island that could not support them. The wages were still sixpence a day. The harbours were still in ruins. A man who had served the Crown at Trafalgar returned to find himself in the same condition as a man who had never left — and in some respects worse, because the man who had never left still had two arms.
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Active Period
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1805
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Type
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Human Cost
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Source
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Naval muster rolls; parish records
