Do other villages have a local hero who is well known elsewhere but goes unremarked in his local area? We have one in Cawsand Bay – the so-called Nelson’s Avenger, John Pollard. The many folk interested in Nelson know that this Cawsand-born man not only raised the famous signal England expects … but also reputedly shot and killed the Frenchman who shot Nelson.
But do we have a plaque on our village green, an entry about him in our local guide – or better still, a rather splendid seaside pub with the wonderful name ‘Nelsons Avenger’? No we do not.
The year 2005 being the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar we thought we’d put this right. Jack Spence, the secretary of the Rame Peninsula History Group has written a book about him, profits from which are going towards the restoration of the historic buildings of Kingsand and Cawsand. I volunteered to research his family history.
And what a task it turned out to be! Being in the Navy and later the Customs Service he married and had his 6 children in every port you can name – including Dublin. He spent his final years as a pensioner at the Naval Hospital in Greenwich. Along with the usual trail of bad luck encountered by we family historians – there were virtually no records about him at Kew, his will was completely unreadable etc etc - I had something most unusual to contend with. This was that 5 or 6 different people from far and wide swore they were descended from him, but couldn’t prove it.
So a lot of time was spent doing family trees for various people called Pollard who had been raised in the certain knowledge that this hero was theirs. One family made a pilgrimage to from Australia to Cawsand in this belief. And, sadly, all were mistaken. In the outturn John Pollard had had five daughters and only one son, called Horatio, and he died unmarried aged 23.
Only two of the daughters married, but we couldn’t find them until one day our luck turned. The BBC Radio history programme chose to feature one of the claimants and this flushed out the only descendants – and a most interesting final twist to the tale. Of the two married daughters the son of one married the daughter of the other, so the descendants are related to John Pollard twice over – and one is coming to raise an England Expects flag for us at our village Trafalgar dinner in October.
Gillian Kempster
Nelson’s Avenger, the life of Commander John Pollard of Cawsand, Cornwall is available from:
Nelson’s Avenger
10 Armada Road
Cawsand
Cornwall
PL10 1PQ
The cost including postage is £8, cheques payable to Nelson’s Avenger