Abstract
Nelson’s, wrote the Whig historian G.M. Trevelyan in 1926, was “the best-loved name” in British history.1 So let us begin this investigation of Britishness with the Battle of Trafalgar! One of my Welsh peasant ancestors, Evan Evans, was pressganged for the Royal Navy while working in the fields of Merioneth in mid-Wales some time around 1800. He served under Nelson and fought against the French at that climactic naval battle of October 1805. He was later wounded in the face. I have his pension form, which says that he left the navy on March 30, 1813, and that he would be paid an annuity of £10 a year for life by the Directors of the Chest at Greenwich for the relief of Seamen maimed or wounded in His Majesty’s service. This was a considerable sum for those days and he had a long and, no doubt,
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