Peter Warwick
Nelson expert who revived the 1805 Club and worked with the colourful T Dan Smith of Newcastle
PETER WARWICK, who has died aged 69, was privy to the secrets of the disgraced Labour politician and property developer, T Dan Smith, and was the leading Nelsonophile of his generation.
Warwick dated his obsession with Nelson to March 15 1957 when, aged seven, he read the last episode of “The Life of the Great Sailor” in The Eagle and underwent “a quasi-religious experience, like a hot knife going through butter”.
Over the next 40 years he built a library about Nelson and collected objets related to him, but it was not until the 1990s, while showing friends round the Nelson exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, that he learnt about the 1805 Club and realised that he could share his interests with others. He immediately joined, and by his infectious enthusiasm and natural leadership quickly rose to chairman, a position he was elected to annually for the last 14 years of his life.
Warwick helped turn the 1805 Club from a group of antiquarians into a vibrant, international sponsor of events, conferences and scholarly publications. These included the recreation of Emma Hamilton’s seminaked “Attitudes”, dinner with the Queen of Denmark to mark the bicentenary of the Battle of Copenhagen, as well as the conservation of more than a score of monuments to naval heroes of Nelson’s time.
Warwick also became one of only a handful of people to enjoy a three-course meal at the top of Nelson’s column, while there was scaffolding up for its maintenance, and where he hid his own marker for future generations to find.
In 2005, with others, he founded Thames Alive, a group to emphasise the importance of rowing to the River Thames. He helped to create spectacular moments of pageantry on the river, including the Thames Nelson Flotilla, part-sponsored by the Telegraph, which on September 16 2005 recreated Lord Nelson’s 1806 funeral procession from Greenwich to Westminster.
Subsequently, working with Historic Royal Palaces, he proposed and arranged a Tudor river pageant in 2009, the Henry’s Honeymoon river pageant in 2010, and in 2011 the Lord Mayor’s Show flotilla, which recreated the last occasion, in 1856, on which the Lord Mayor of London travelled by boat to the Palace of Westminster to swear allegiance to the Crown.
Thames Alive also campaigned successfully for the London 2012 Olympic Torch Relay to feature the river and on July 27 2012 the torch embarked at Hampton Court Palace and moved downriver to the Tower.
Meanwhile, in June 2012, to mark her Diamond Jubilee, Gloriana, a newly built rowbarge carried the Queen in a pageant along the Thames, though he felt that proper credit was not given to Thames Alive. Not one to bear malice, but always ready with a Nelson quotation, he would say of this: “Never let there be petty jealousies between us.” He could not bear, however, to watch the BBC’S “pathetic” coverage of the event.
For 15 years HMS Victory’s cutter, with its volunteer crew dressed in 18th century costumes, was “the great joy of my life”. They were not, he felt, re-enactors but representatives of the highest traditions of the Royal Navy. He was saddened when in 2011 the apparently overzealous application of health and safety rules ended the cutter’s appearances at Brest, Dartmouth, Falmouth and Yarmouth, as well as Tenerife, and to Gothenburg for the launch of a replica Swedish East Indiaman.
Peter Warwick was born on December 20 1949 at Kenilworth, where his father was a pioneer aero-engineer who worked with Frank Whittle, and on jets from the Gloster Meteor Mark 1 to Concorde.
He was educated at Pattison College and Woodlands Comprehensive in Coventry before reading Economics at Hull (1968-71) and, part-time, for a Master’s at Birkbeck (1972-75). His history was self-taught.
Warwick was diverted from his intention of joining the Royal Navy for a short service commission by the offer of a job as personal assistant to the colourful north-eastern politician T Dan Smith.
Smith, who by then was embroiled in the Poulson bribery scandal that would eventually see him jailed, gave Warwick great responsibility, and Warwick learnt to network through dealing with Smith’s contacts; they were as varied as the union leader Vic Feather, the musician Yehudi Menuhin and the Foreign Secretary George Brown. His responsibilities included finding greenfield sites for motorway service stations and the planning application for Sullom Voe oil terminal.
Though he believed he knew Smith’s business intimately, he was surprised not to be interviewed by the police after Smith’s arrest on corruption charges and remained convinced that the politician had been made a scapegoat by the establishment.
From 1974 to 1985 Warwick was part of Legal & General’s investment planning team, ending as head of property research. His interests were never numbers, however, but people, and when he was seconded to a charity, Action Resource Centre, for three years from 1985, he gained new qualifications in public relations, returning to L&G as business development manager (1988-91) and marketing director (1991-96).
Warwick enjoyed champagne and fast cars, but the business world was becoming less fun, and in 1995 he set up as a consultant in marketing and communications, initially enjoying some success with Middle Eastern clients. This also enabled him to give more attention to his teenage son, Tom, and gradually, with a variable income, his lifestyle became more abstemious.
In 2008 Warwick started another career as a guest speaker on Noble Caledonia’s sea cruises, establishing himself, with his magic grin and grasp of detail, as one of its leading personalities. He was happiest spending many weeks each year at sea, particularly in the Caribbean, where he made his name synonymous with naval history cruises in the three-masted barque Sea Cloud II.
Whether there or in the Baltic, Antarctic or Pacific, Warwick brought history to life through wonderfully detailed, note-free talks given to a background of rapid-fire slides; he assisted expedition leaders in boats and on land; and expertly hosted his own “captain’s table” in the dining room. Like the sailors of old, he could not swim.
His energy was unbounded and he was an inspiration to all. He also had a powerful sense of duty and in the last phase of his cancer, after he had been advised not to drive, he rose early one morning in Lewes to make a complex rail journey to the West Country to honour a commitment to speak at a National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies function.
He wrote Voices from the Battle of Trafalgar (2005) and two booklets, Trafalgar: Tales from the Front Line (2011) and, in the pocket giant series, Horatio Nelson (2015).
He regarded his four years’ treatment for cancer not as a battle but, like another of his heroes, Captain James Cook, as a journey of discovery. He still pursued new projects and was researching for a television series on the life of Emma Hamilton.
Warwick married Paulette Beauchamplait in 1976: they separated in 1982 and he is survived by his son.
Peter Warwick, born December 20 1949, died March 20 2019