October 2011

News travels faster than a snow leopard in the Information Age, but if you are culturally relaxed enough to consider Portland’s fortunate geography in relative terms, it traveled even faster in 1805. In fact, our 1805 could blow the doors off the speed at which we learn things in 2011.

Consider: On Monday, October 21, 1805, Lord Horatio Nelson’s fleet defeated the combined maritime forces of France and Spain in the Battle of Trafalgar.

London learned about this smashing victory 16 days later, via His Majesty’s Schooner Pickle, commanded by Lieutenant John Lapenotiere. (The 10-gun Pickle came to this scoop honestly, having been on the fringes of the action.)

But wait for this tidbit to download:

“The first news arrived in America at Portland, Maine, on 13 December 1805, just 37 days after it was released in London. In contrast to the time it took news to reach England from America in earlier periods, this was a rapid transmission of information,” writes John B. Hattendorf in “Trafalgar and Nelson 200: How and When the News of Trafalgar Reached America,” part of a symposium he created for the Naval War College Museum in Newport, Rhode Island, to celebrate the bicentennial anniversary of Nelson’s feat.

You don’t need a sextant to calculate how fast this was compared to other parts of the globe. According to Roy Adkins in Nelson’s Trafalgar, the Battle that Changed the World, “It was nearly six months before the news reached India, in the form of a letter from the British Consul General in Egypt, which was published in the Calcutta newspapers in March 1806. The American ship Laura, having encountered both the Pickle and the Nautilus on their way to England, carried the story to Australia, where it was published in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser on 13 April 1806.”

Trafalgar was such a game changer that “even the fashions were affected,” Adkins writes. “[From] the beginning of December it was reported that the ‘Trafalgar turban is much worn and is extremely elegant; the crown of royal purple, with a Turkish roll of muslin, caught up in front with the word Trafalgar beautifully embroidered on purple velvet; it encircles an ostrich feather, or a sprig of laurel.’”

Just a shade more recherche, but no more sincere, than our Red Sox Nation and Yankees Suck T-shirts.

People in France are still waiting to hear about their country’s defeat at Trafalgar. The information “was suppressed,” according to Adkins. Wellington later marveled in his journals that villagers were dumbfounded to see his army come across the Pyrenees.

In light of this, Portland surrendered geographic and maritime privilege when we condescended to participate in the democracy of the Internet. We may have crowdsourcing and cloud computing these days, but just imagine–when you think globally, unchained by the present tense, we really were Numero Uno, ahead of Silicon Valley and all those Pacific Rim sharks. If nothing else, Time Warner should give us a credit for this. Seriously, dudes. How about $50 a month off Roadrunner?

Something Wicked Cool This Way Comes: Did you know that Lord Nelson sailed in these waters? According to The Atlantic Neptune (London, 1778), “Nelson visited the region that is now the United States only once in his career. While in command of the 28-gun Albemarle in the very last stage of the American Revolution, Nelson had crossed the Atlantic with a convoy to Canada. He cruised off Cape Cod from mid-July through the end of August, then visited Quebec.” Source: “Nelson & Trafalgar 200.

Factoid No. 2: There’s a strong tradition that the masts for the HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar, were imported from the woods of Maine