Sam Willis has written what appears to be a fascinating book – Fighting Temeraire.

J.M.W. Turner’s painting, The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up,  hangs in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and was recently voted to be Britain’s favorite painting, by a landslide, in a BBC4 poll.   Sam Willis, a naval historian known for his previous books Fighting Ships 1750-1850 and Fighting at Sea in the Eighteenth Century, writes that despite the popularity of Turner’s work, ”few people know anything of life on board, or of the terrible sacrifices made by her crew…  I decided to write a book about the Fighting Temeraire – a choice, in part, inspired by Turner’s great painting.”

Willis has quite a tale to tell. In yesterday’s Daily Mail, he writes:

Unlocking the bloody history of the ship made famous by Turner, the Fighting Temeraire

Struggling to breathe in mouthfuls of air rank with choking gunsmoke, hundreds of men and boys crouched low on the gun decks of His Majesty’s Ship Temeraire.  In that cramped space, where shouted orders competed with the screams of the injured, blood ran freely through a hull hewn from English oaks.

Already the sails high above were riddled with chain shot from the French warships, but it was there, on the crowded gundecks that a brutal slaughter was unfolding.   In the hellish tempest of the Battle of Trafalgar, in an act of almost suicidal valour, the Temeraire’s captain chose to draw fire away from the Victory, in which Nelson lay dying.

The Temeraire survived the horrific storm that followed the battle and eventually limped home.

The damage was enormous.  Every sail and yard had been destroyed; only the lower masts were standing and they had been shot through in many places; the rudder had been shot off together with the starboard ‘cat-head’, from which the starboard anchor should have been suspended.  Eight feet of her hull on the starboard side was stove in and the quarter galleries on both sides of the ship had been destroyed as she was crushed between the French ships.

But it could have been worse. At one stage, a grenade thrown from a French ship found its way onto the Temeraire’s quarterdeck and caused an explosion.

It took the quick thinking of John Toohig, the Temeraire’s master-at-arms, to prevent the fire from spreading to the magazine, which would have destroyed her.

Upon its return to England, the public flocked to see the battlescarred ship, and among their number was Joseph Mallord William Turner, who sketched the ship and its survivors.

The Temeraire captivated the artist for the next 30 years until, at the height of his powers, he completed that mournful painting of her final voyage to the breaker’s yard that we know so well, with a steam-tug pulling a ghostly leviathan, and the sun setting on the wooden walls of old England.

Thanks to Alaric Bond and David Hayes for passing the article along.