What’s left of the Temeraire?
QUESTION Turner’s famous painting The Fighting Temeraire shows the ship being towed to Beatson’s yard at Rotherhithe, South-East London, to be broken up. Are any of the salvaged timbers still in use and can they be seen today? And does any remnant of Beatson’s yard remain? Warships at the end of their lifespan were often sold by the admiralty to companies for breaking, which meant the royal Navy got a decent sum for its old ships, and the yards could sell the components for a profit.
David Beatson, a scot, came to London in about 1790, joined his cousins who were shipbreakers on surrey Canal Wharf, and eventually succeeded to the business. his son, John Beatson, expanded the Bulls head Yard into a major concern which broke up such famous warships as Temeraire and Bellerophon, the East indiamen sesostris and Thames, the Dutch man-o-war ire Crone and Justitia, the last government convict ship.
hMs Temeraire was a 98-gun Navy ship of the line which served mostly on blockades and convoy duties in the Napoleonic Wars. she saw just one fleet action, the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), under the command of Captain sir Eliab harvey, where she became so well known for her actions that she was popularly known as The Fighting Temeraire.
The painting is not an accurate depiction of the ship or the event. J.M.W. Turner saw Temeraire’s final voyage in 1838 from one of the passenger steamships that sailed between London and Margate. Temeraire was by then just a hulk, stripped of her masts and everything of value, but Turner painted her with masts and rigging.
The ship was also being towed upriver, from east to west, so the sunset would not have been behind her. and she was guided by two tugs, not just the one shown in the painting.
John Beatson paid £5,530 for Temeraire (around £250,000 today). The timbers were the main source of profit, but even old rope could be sold for making fenders or oakum, tarred and used to plug gaps in ship decks.
an article in The Times said one piece of wood went to a former sailor on the ship, to provide him with a leg to replace the one he had lost at Trafalgar.
Wood from the ship made various architectural features still visible in st Mary’s Church, rotherhithe, including two episcopal chairs and the altar in the sacrament chapel. in 1892, the ship’s timber was used to construct the altar and altar rails in st paul’s Chapel of Ease, but this was demolished in 1955.
Beatson made 12 dining chairs from some of the wood, and when, in 1851, his brother William emigrated to New Zealand, he took two with him. One is in Whanganui regional Museum.
John Beatson died in 1858, and his will instructed his trustees to dispose of his wharf and business, and the yard disappeared soon after.
K. W. Weston, Bournemouth.
QUESTION I understand that Germany and France invest more in their health services than we do. How much of their taxpayers’ cash is spent on Foreign Aid? BriTaiN is the second most generous nation in the world in terms of foreign aid, one of only six countries which met the uN goal of spending 0.7 per cent of their gross national income (GNi).
according to 2015 figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the top ten donors were: united states $31.08 billion, uK $18.7 bn, Germany $17.78 bn, Japan $9.32 bn, France $9.23 bn, sweden $7.09 bn, Netherlands $5.81 bn, Canada $4.29 bn, Norway $4.28 bn and italy $3.84 bn.
These countries are all members of the OECD’s Development and assistance committee, the forum to discuss issues surrounding aid, development and poverty reduction in developing countries.
some countries that are not members of this organisation claim they make significant foreign aid payments, for example the united arab Emirates ($4.39 bn) and Turkey ($3.91 bn).
The OECD also lists Development assistance Committee members by the amount of Official Development assistance (ODa) they spend as a percentage of their GNi: sweden 1.4 per cent, Norway 1.05, Luxembourg 0.93, Denmark 0.85, The Netherlands 0.76, uK 0.71, Finland 0.56, switzerland 0.52, Germany 0.52 and Belgium 0.42. For the record, France is in 11th place on 0.37 per cent
Beth Sellers, St Albans, Herts.
QUESTION The UK tax revenue from tobacco rose steadily from 1990/91 to 2012/13 but fell between 1998/99 and 1999/2000. By 2006/7 it had recovered. Was there a specific reason for this drop? raising the price of tobacco products through duty increases has been a strategy of successive united Kingdom governments to reduce smoking as well as to increase the tax take.
From November 1993 to November 1999, tobacco duties were increased in real terms annually — initially by at least 3 per cent on average — and from July 1997 Tony Blair ramped this up at least 5 per cent on average.
Because prices kept rising, tobacco smuggling began to take root, and of particular concern was evidence that smuggling was switching from amateur gangs to organised crime. By 1999, about one in five cigarettes was being smuggled into the country, resulting in a £2.5 billion shortfall in the tax take.
such drastic levels of smuggling had been experienced in other countries; in Canada it reached 60 per cent in Quebec and 40 per cent in other provinces.
From 1999, the government adopted its Tackling Tobacco smuggling initiative, investing £209 million over three years to tackle the problem.
The strategy provided additional customs staff and a network of x-ray scanners, funded a major publicity campaign, introduced fiscal marking of cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco, along with related new criminal offences.
a tough vehicle seizure policy was also introduced, and the amount of cigarettes and tobacco legally allowed to be brought into the UK by individuals was restricted to six months’ reasonable use.
as a result of this initiative, the amount of smuggled cigarettes has been reduced on average to about 10 per cent of the market, allowing the tax take to stabilise.
Dr Ken Warren, Glasgow.
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT. You can also fax them to 01952 780111 or you can email them to charles. legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.