Add MS 37953

MEMORANDUM by Admiral Horatio Nelson, Viscount Nelson, explaining for the instruction of his captains his plan for engaging the French fleet, as acted upon at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 Oct. following. Dated, "Victory," off Cadiz, 9 Oct. 1805. Holograph draft, unsigned. Printed from this MS., then in the possession of Adm. Sir George Mundy, in Nelson's Dispatches and Letters, ed. H. Nicolas, vii., 1846, p. 89, and, from a transcript (Add. MS. 33963, f. 104) of one of the signed copies communicated to each of the captains in the fleet, in the Guide to the Nelson Centenary Naval Exhibition held at the British Museum in 1905. See also J. S. Corbett, Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816, Navy Records Soc., 1905, p. 316. Paper; two sheets (ff. 4), quarto, in a glazed frame made of oak from the "Victory," presented by the Lords of the Admiralty. The document appears to have passed from Sir George Mundy to his nephew Adm. Sir George Rodney Mundy (d. 1884), who is said to have given it before his death, among the contents of an old desk, to his personal servant. On the latters death it came to his son, Mr. William Jackson, by whom it was sold at Messrs. Christie's auction-rooms 14 Mar. 1905. It was there purchased by Mr. Frank Sabin, book-dealer, and shortly after was sold by him to its late owner, who was patriotically anxious that it should not leave the country. Bequeathed to the nation by Benjamin Minors Woollan, Esq., J.P. (died 5 Dec. 1909), twice Mayor of the Royal Tunbridge Wells.