HMS LEVIATHAN

A 74-gun, third-rate ship of the line, she weighed 1707 tons and was one of a class of six modelled on the captured French ship, Courageux. She was built at Chatham dockyard and launched on 9 October 1790.

Henry William Bayntun was appointed Captain of HMS Leviathan in 1804 and the ship assisted in the blockade of Toulon. At the Battle of Trafalgar, captained by Bayntun, HMS Leviathan was fourth in line in Admiral Lord Nelson’s column and she fired on both the French ship Bucentaure (74 guns) and the Spanish ship Santissima Trinidad (136 guns) before forcing the surrender of the Spanish 74-gun ship San Augustin. HMS Leviathan lost 4 of her crew with a further 22 injured.

After the Napoleonic Wars, she was converted into a prison hulk in 1816 and laid up at Portsmouth, finally ending her days as a gunnery target and broken up in 1846.

George Sauls was 36 years old when he joined HMS Leviathan on 23 November 1803 as a Landsman but was immediately made up to Ordinary Seaman. His place of birth appears as Mavigizet, but he is almost certainly from Mevagissey, Cornwall where he was born in about 1767. He made a will in favour of his wife on 15 March 1804 and on 12 August 1804 he was promoted to Able Seaman.

If the men highlighted above survived their service with the Royal Navy and lived to a reasonable age we might one day find their death recorded in General Registration from 1837. It is likely that the men who fought at Trafalgar would be held in some esteem, at least by their local communities, in the same way as the veterans of Waterloo were. We might therefore hope to find some mention in a local newspaper, or perhaps a memorial inscription referring to ‘a hero of Trafalgar’. Of course, the best outcome of all would be if one of Admiral Lord Nelson’s men were to be on your family tree

http://www.sole.org.uk/nelson.htm