Burnham Thorpe to London Coast


Burnham Thorpe to London

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People come to the coast to indulge their passions.

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It's one of my ultimate heroes that's brought me here,

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to the home turf of Horatio Nelson.

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I think there's something mesmerising about the sea that turns us all into dreamers,

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and I suspect, as a boy, Nelson was no different.

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I imagine young Nelson coming here, looking out,

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dreaming of dashing victories, distant battles, faraway seas.

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But the truth is, not even his wildest dreams could have matched the reality of his own life.

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You've got to admire Nelson.

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I think he was a tactical genius.

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Without his naval victories over the French in the Napoleonic Wars,

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Britannia wouldn't have ruled the waves.

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But mighty as Nelson's reputation is now,

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he was born into humble surroundings.

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On from The Wash, just a mile inland from the north Norfolk coast,

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is the small village of Burnham Thorpe.

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Nelson was the son of the local parson here.

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In 1787, during a period of peace,

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29-year-old now Captain Nelson was temporarily unemployed.

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So like many of us have, he moved back home,

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where he spent the next five years waiting for war.

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The parsonage at Burnham Thorpe is long gone,

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but its garden is still here,

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and this is where he left a lasting legacy.

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Frustrated not to be fighting the French,

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Nelson did some digging instead.

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In fact, it's said that he dug out this pond.

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But he was still dreaming of the sea.

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He dug this pond to represent the deck of a ship.

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That's why this end is square - this is the stern, the back of the ship.

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If you imagine being at the top of the crow's-nest, on top of the mast,

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the whole thing narrows to a point 30-odd feet away.

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That's the bow, the pointy bit of the ship.

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It's a lot smaller than the gun deck of The Victory,

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but you can see that if all these lilies and all the grass and slime was scraped away,

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it would be quite obvious - it's shipshape.

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After five landlocked years,

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Nelson was recalled to the Senior Service.

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Finally, he was back at sea, where he belonged,

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and 10 years later, he achieved his destiny

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onboard his flagship - The Victory.

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It's impossible to walk through this village without constantly

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catching glimpses and reminders of the life and times of Nelson.

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As a parson's son, the church in Burnham Thorpe would have been a second home for Nelson,

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so it's fitting that memorabilia of my hero hangs from every wall.

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And there's the man himself -

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a bust of Nelson -

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and he's looking over the graves of his mother and father.

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Now, the great warrior wanted, at the end of everything,

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to rest in peace in this church beside the graves of his mother and father,

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but that didn't happen.

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Nelson's mortal remains are in St Paul's Cathedral.

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Boats were crucial to the culture of our early ancestors,

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a heritage that's alive and well around our coast.

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In living memory, sailing boats were still used

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as fishing and cargo vessels

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all around this coastline.

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Today, enthusiasts prefer to race them.

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So Mark has risen early to join a crew on competition day.

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'Andy Harman, skipper of a Thames sailing barge, the Edme.

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'He's hoping for a strong start.'

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GUNSHOT There's the gun.

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Look at them all lined up down there!

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The secret to this racing lark is start first and finish first.

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The Edme's a Thames thoroughbred. Built of wood in 1898,

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they could achieve high speeds with a small crew.

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Today, a big group of enthusiasts bring these swift cargo carriers back to life by racing them.

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They do it for the sheer love of sail.

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GUNSHOT AND CHEERING

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'We finish first, but what counts is the camaraderie of the competitors

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'and the joy of handling a living piece of history.

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'It's amazing that these vessels survive

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'despite the tide of progress.

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'People will go to extraordinary lengths

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'to preserve old working boats...

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'..even resurrecting their wrecks.'

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This is the remains of the Xanthe,

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an Essex fishing smack,

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about 100 years old.

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Look, you can see the ribs perfectly preserved under all this seaweed.

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This must be the stem.

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You can see it's all... Take the seaweed off,

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there she is.

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Boats like this are actually worth a fortune.

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People spend something like £50,000 - £100,000

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restoring Essex fishing smacks like this.

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I just want to know what makes these boats quite so special.

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Smacks were workhorses, used for dredging and trawling.

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You appreciate their sheer beauty in action.

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Cue another competition -

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oyster dredging this time.

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They love contests here.

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Hi.

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-You must be Gerard.

-Mark, hello. How are you doing?

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'I've joined the crew of the Kate, skippered by Gerard Swift.

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'Gerard and his wife Helen have lovingly restored this Essex smack.

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'It's a far cry from the skeleton I've just seen in the mud.'

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So why are these oyster smacks so special?

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They're very graceful craft from a very much earlier...

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Just work boats, but very yacht-like in their appearance

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with the long counter-stern. Very fast, easy boats to sail.

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For workboats, they were something really special.

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The design frees up space to work at the stern.

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The three dredges are thrown overboard

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and hauled in at regular intervals.

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So you've got just enough sail to drag them along the bottom.

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-Yeah, going along like a garden rake.

-Here's the first catch.

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Look at them all!

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Most of it's dead shell.

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I've only got one.

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THEY LAUGH

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Not a good day in the oyster beds.

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We're in the wrong spot.

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How many do you reckon we're going to get?

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I'd like about 10 kilo, that'd be nice.

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Well, we've got four oysters at the moment.

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The competition has two prizes -

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one for the most oysters,

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another for the smack which dredges with the most style.

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That's bound to be us.

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What are the points that the judges are looking for?

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The boat going the right speed, the dredgers towing evenly, the boat in control,

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just going along whilst the guys work the dredgers basically.

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There's the judges boat over there. They're checking us out.

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So what do you think you should mark the Kate?

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-Certainly an eight.

-An eight, yeah.

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'Eight out of ten isn't bad.

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'Right now, it's double our number of oysters, but the morning is still young.

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'The competition takes two hours...'

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-It's hard work.

-Back-breaking.

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'..by which time we're all exhausted.'

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-Is that it?

-That's it, the last.

-The last one.

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There's another one, Mark.

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-Oh, fantastic!

-And another.

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-Bonus time. I reckon the last has been our best.

-Yes, it probably has.

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We haven't brought the greatest weight, I don't think.

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I'm sure we had the greatest style.

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Hope so, hope so.

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'We take our meagre catch to Packing Shed Island,

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'where oysters have been packed for more than 100 years.

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'The weigh-in is very strict.'

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Let's get ours weighed in, shall we?

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-Moment of truth.

-2.8.

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'Needless to say, less than three kilos isn't a winning catch,

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'and we're robbed of the trophy for the most stylish dredging too.

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'But the real reward is in taking part,

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'putting these historic boats back to work,

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'dredging for oysters as they were perfectly built to do.'

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And so we're into the mighty Thames Estuary.

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Just 12 miles out to sea from here,

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you're beyond our territorial waters.

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Handy if you're in a business that's not strictly legal.

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In the 1960s, that was pirate radio.

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Back then, listeners only had one option - the BBC -

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so a group of DJs took to the waves to broadcast their kind of music.

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They called their station Radio Caroline.

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One former DJ is off to visit a boat that rocked.

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# Her name is Caroline... #

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I'm Tom Anderson, and I was one of the last DJs on the Mi Amigo,

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the Radio Caroline ship, nearly 30 years ago.

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I grew up in Clacton-on-Sea,

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where I saw the pirate-radio era start from my bedroom window.

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It was in my blood to start with,

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but the main reason it was Caroline, was the music.

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We were on the cutting edge of music at the time.

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The whole operation was very clandestine,

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it was rough and ready. Often we ran out of very basic supplies.

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Sex and drugs and rock and roll? I doubt it very much, to be honest.

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We knew the boat was on its last legs, but we thought she was invincible,

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and when you're young you think you're invincible

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and none of us ever foresaw the day that she'd sink at sea.

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'Well, we're sorry to tell you that due to the severe weather conditions,

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'and also to the fact that we're shipping quite a lot of water, we're closing down. Tom.

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'Yeah, it's not a very good occasion, really.

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'I'm going to have to hurry this because the lifeboat is standing by.'

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It's nearly 30 years ago that I uttered those words,

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and now I'm on my way back.

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The Port Of London Authority regularly check wrecks in the area,

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and they have allowed me to come along with them.

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Here we are at the moment, tracking along,

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then the wreck site is bounded by this red square.

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That's where we're heading.

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Look forward to seeing my old home.

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So this is the 3D image of the wreck.

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That's superb, that really is incredible.

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The lifeboat approached us from this side here.

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We were told to bring nothing and I stuffed a carton of cigarettes up my jumper.

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Absolutely everything went with it.

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There were some very valuable autographed copies of records by The Beatles that are no more.

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Very sad.

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The pirates haven't sunk without trace.

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Their off-shore antics ushered in commercial stations,

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which made radio broadcasting into a business.

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Profit and loss are shipmates on this shore.

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The Thames was the revenue stream for the growth of Britain's capital.

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They're abandoned now, but the expansion of London's docks in the 19th century

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was built on global trade from the Empire.

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British companies enjoyed the freedom to sail the globe because the Royal Navy ruled the waves,

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thanks to the heroic efforts of a seafarer that London honoured in stone at the heart of the capital.

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By the time that Nelsons Column was completed in 1843,

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the true scale and significance of his victory at Trafalgar was plain for all to see.

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Nelson won his greatest and final victory in October 1805.

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The French fleet was crushed

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and the British Navy went virtually unchallenged

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for more than 100 years.

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The news of triumph and tragedy at Trafalgar

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was painfully slow to filter back to London.

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A small ship left the battle immediately

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with a message for the Lords of the Admiralty.

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On the night of 6th November, just after midnight, William Marsden,

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the First Secretary to the Admiralty,

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was still working in the boardroom.

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Making his way to meet Marsden as fast as his horses could carry him

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was British Naval Officer Lieutenant John Richard Lapenotiere.

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Just 37 hours earlier, his schooner, The Pickle, had docked at Falmouth,

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returning from the Battle Of Trafalgar.

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Now, after 21 stops for fresh horses, the news had finally reached London.

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Lapenotiere arrived exhausted into the cobbled courtyard of the Admiralty.

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He headed straight to the boardroom to deliver his bitter-sweet message

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to the First Secretary of the Admiralty.

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Sir, we have gained a great victory, but we have lost Lord Nelson.

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'If only these walls could talk.

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'Stepping into the Admiralty boardroom,

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'it looks almost exactly as it did to Nelson himself.

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'He'd come here to receive his orders ahead of the Battle Of Trafalgar.

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'The Lords of the Admiralty no longer sit here, so they're not here to meet me,

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'but Professor Andrew Lambert is,

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'an expert in naval history and as much of a Nelson fan as I am.'

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How much of a plan of battle did Nelson have?

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He's not such a fool as to have a detailed point-by-point plan

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because they always go wrong,

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so this is Nelson's concept of battle.

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It's a very brief sketch jotted down on the back of an envelope.

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Quite literally, it's a scrap piece of paper,

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and he shows this linear battle,

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and we're going to have to break through the formation

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to set up this close-quarters or pell-mell battle,

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and great leadership is about setting up the position for his subordinates.

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He knows that if his captains and crews are led to battle in the right way, they can do the job.

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Just how significant then was the victory at Trafalgar?

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Trafalgar is the capstone on 150 years

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in which the British have gone from being a significant European player

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to being the first true global power.

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Nelson is the capstone on that, so it's the defining moment

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when Britain goes from being a European power to being THE world power.

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After triumph at Trafalgar,

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the threat of invasion from France was gone,

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and the Royal Navy reigned supreme.

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Nelson, the boy from Norfolk who stood on the shore and dreamt of glory at sea,

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had helped propel Britain into an unparalleled age of empire.

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From earliest times, the coast nurtured the people of our isles.

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It welcomed settlers and repelled invaders.

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Reaching out from the coast, the Empire would draw in more than 400 million people,

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enriching and expanding our small island with bonds across the seas.

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