Nelson's Lost Jewel: The Extraordinary Story of the Lost Diamond Chelengk

Martyn Downer has taken a precious and magnificent jewel and woven the story about the people surrounding it with flair. His sharp pencil brings to life the characters of Lord Nelson, Lady Hamilton, Lady Nelson, Sir Sidney Smith, Sultan Salim III, Bonaparte, King Ferdinand IV and many others who play a role in the world shaking events of 1798 and 1799 in the eastern Mediterranean. It is with speed and pithy observation that Martyn tells this story and it reads incredibly well. The Nelson scholar is sure to find nuggets here that they weren't aware of and for the general reader, well fasten your seat-belt and be prepared for a thrilling ride through this romantic and dramatic slice of history.

Loved it

Excellent

fascinating account of a mst unusual - but sadly lost -treasure

Do not hesitate – buy this! Its scholarship is outstanding; the complex interwoven story works perfectly, going skilfully back and forth in time; and the world it reveals, of battles for status looming as large in society as the real battles at sea, is astonishing, even comic - and extraordinarily evocative of the era. The Battle of the Nile itself, and the Sultan's actions and reactions are also deftly recreated. Martyn Downer also captures sympathetically the ailments and injuries that Nelson bore, and how that affected him – and those who met the naval hero at the time. Other histories I’ve read have not done that, though it cannot but have had a major effect on him.The travels and travails of the Chelengk itself make the aigrette into a sort of inanimate picaresque hero. And all so beautifully written – to take but one example of many, the close of Chapter 19.Nelson emerges as the complex figure he always was, but still intensely human, as was Emma (flaws and all.) Fanny is movingly described, and one is cast down at the thought of how she was treated by her husband; you find yourself feeling deeply for her.Interesting too how Nelson’s amour was so recoiled from, in an era of mistresses, license and liaisons (paid for and otherwise) – a kind of prefiguring of the era of Victorian rectitude (masking, of course, an enormous sexual underworld.) There, of course, his high profile didn’t help – neither him nor Emma.An absorbing read – to be taken back in time so fully and so creatively is intensely rewarding. And at the heart of it all, this fantastic jewel. A stunning recreation of it is now on display at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth – do go!

(publisher's review copy)Semper aliquod novi ex Nelson ..Biographical books about Nelson (including Downer's "Nelson's Purse") take up five metres of shelving in the naval reference section of Portsmouth public library. Can there be scope for yet another volume? Yes indeed. Here is the fascinating story of the Chelengk, the diamond-encrusted brooch that Nelson, famously from portraits and cartoons, wore on his hat after the Sultan of Turkey had awarded it after the Battle of the Nile (1st - 2nd August 1798).The story covers, in remarkable detail, the vicissitudes of the jewel leading to its presentation to the National Maritime Museum from whence it vanished forever in 1951. The Chelengk's (and Nelson's) anabasis starts with its attendant posse of Turks making its tortuous way to our hero in Naples. Nelson succumbs to Emma. The cuckolded Sir William Hamilton is superseded and we follow the equally tortuous return to London of the Hamiltons, Nelson and the Chelengk - via Vienna - in 1800.Most Nelson books major on Nelson afloat. Here we see Nelson ashore. The two are bridged by the mutual hostility between Nelson and Sir Sidney Smith, gallant hero of the Siege of Acre (1799), Chelengked in his turn as were many others, his relationship with Nelson soured by ambiguity over command arrangements, they largely the child of the time it takes anything to travel from London to the Mediterranean - the official Nile despatches took two months. Back in London the hatchet is buried but the portrait of Smith is an informative aside. Nelson ashore at home emerges as a small physical wreck happily buried under his fur pelisse and a weighty load of medals and decorations, his position undermined by vanity, tactlessness towards his King, his appalling treatment of his wife, and Emma, her baby bump obscured by a mounting pile of blubber as she empties Nelson's well-filled purse with her gambling - but keeping up with the Neapolitan Joneses had been no help there.After Nelson meets his destiny at Trafalgar we see the Chelengk as it cascades down through the Nelson family via ennobled, acquisitive, unlovable, even emetic brother William. We also see the unedifying family in-fighting over the division of spoils including the Brontë title and land. From the Nelsons the Chelengk passes to the Hoods, until its sale, by now much mutilated, when it is rescued (as is much other Nelsonia) for the nation, ending up in the then new National Maritime Museum, whence it was stolen in 1951.This is a very rich book, not to be speed read. It is packed with anecdotes - whose wardroom was forced to eat roast rat?A large cast of characters is illustrated via contemporary paintings reproduced in colour and there is a further section of black and white illustrations. Sources are meticulously recorded, supported by a good bibliography, all indicative of a great depth of research. As a minor carp, the rather sparse index failed me occasionally when I wanted a reminder of how so-and-so had first come into the story. I also felt the lack of a family tree to sort out three generations of Nelsons, Nisbets, Hamiltons, Boltons, Matchams and Hoods.The picture, supplied by the publisher, is of the 2017 replica.