Sir, The French naval vessel Duguay-Trouin (letter, Oct 30) was not captured at Trafalgar, although she participated, firing into HMS Victory, Téméraire and later Africa. She survived Trafalgar by two short weeks before surrendering to Sir Richard Strachan’s squadron on November 4. She became HMS Implacable, on being purchased into the Royal Navy, and was later renamed HMS Lion. She reverted to her earlier British name in the early 20th century.

In the years of austerity after the Second World War it was perhaps inevitable that neither France nor the UK were able to fund the restoration of this, the only other surviving major ship of the Napoleonic Wars, but it has always struck me as a signal tragedy that the normal British procrastination could not have stayed the executioner’s hand until the advent of more propitious times.

Were some national figure to emerge proposing the raising and restoration of this famous ship, I am sure that there would be sufficient interest to finance the project.

There is no surviving example of a 74-gun ship-of-the-line, the dominant warship type of that era, and she would indeed make a fitting companion for the Mary Rose, Victory and Warrior.

John R. Harvey
Colehill, Dorset

Sir, Frank Carr, of the National Maritime Museum, was so distraught by the loss of HMS Implacable that he was inspired, in 1979, to found the World Ship Trust, a body that encourages the rescue, maintenance and preservation of historic ships. She remains its inspiration and the trust’s motto is “Implacable — Never Again”.

Two parts of the vessel were rescued before the demolition and are today displayed at the museum: the ornamental stern and the figurehead. At her scuttling, the charges were too large and only separated the deck from the rest of her, which promptly sank. The deck floated free, and, ironically, parts of it were washed up on the French coast, returning to the country of her birth.

Lynn Mallet
Executive secretary, World Ship Trust

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