HMS Temeraire (1798) - Legacy

Legacy

The immediate legacy of the Temeraire was the use of the timber taken from her as she was broken up. A gong stand made from Temeraire timber was a wedding present to the future King George V on the occasion of his marriage to Mary of Teck, and is held at Balmoral Castle. A barometer, gavel, and some miscellaneous timber are in the collections of the National Maritime Museum, and chairs made from Temeraire oak are in the possession of the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth, Lloyd's Register, London and the Whanganui Regional Museum, Whanganui. An altar, communion rail and two bishop's chairs survive in St. Mary's Church, Rotherhithe. A ship model of the Temeraire made by prisoners of war uses a stand made from wood taken from her, and is currently in the Watermen's Hall in London. Other relics of the Temeraire known to exist or have existed are a tea caddy made for her signal midshipman at Trafalgar, James Eaton, and sold at auction in 2000, the frame for an oil painting by Sir Edwin Landseer titled Neptune, and a mantelpiece made for Beatson's office, supported by figures of Atlas supposedly taken from Temeraire's stern gallery. The mantelpiece can no longer be traced, nor can a plaque once fixed to Temeraire's deck commemorating Nelson's signal at Trafalgar, nor a wooden leg made for a Trafalgar veteran from Temeraire's wood. John Ruskin foreshadowed the fate of the Temeraire's wood in an essay which claimed that "Perhaps, where the low gate opens to some cottage garden, the tired traveller may ask, idly, why the moss grows so green on its rugged wood, and even the sailor's child may not answer nor know that the night dew lies deep in the war rents of the wood of the old Temeraire."