On 4 November 1805 Robert Hope, a member of the sailmakers’ crew of HMS Temeraire, wrote to his brother to recount his involvement in the Battle of Trafalgar.  Recently acquired by the National Maritime Museum after 205 years in private hands, October’s Library item of the month is a fascinating below-deck account of the famous battle.

The manuscript has recently received quite a bit of attention.  If you would like to view the letter in person it will take a starring role in Thursday’s archive journey session.

I have recently looked after the development of a new online Archive catalogue at the NMM. The archival collections were previously accessed through the Library catalogue.
The new catalogue gives you:

• More search and browse options
• Persistent URLs (pages you can bookmark…)
• Findability through search engines

I’m also really pleased with the way it looks.

We’ve built in loads of extensibility to the catalogue so we can give you exciting new features, but why not browse the relaunched catalogue to see what you can find in the most important dedicated archive for the study of maritime history in the world?