Diaries of a 19th Century Military Wife Uncovered

Modern military wives typically don't ship out alongside their husbands, but the young wife of a British naval officer did just that during the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century. Now a historian who tracked down 40 unpublished volumes of her diaries has gotten the go-ahead to write a book investigating her life.

Elizabeth "Betsey" Wynne accompanied her husband aboard his warship during a disastrous British assault on the Spanish Canary Islands. She spent the voyage home-nursing the wounded Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson, whom lost his right arm during the attack and would go on to become one of England's greatest military heroes of all time.

From what Chalus has so far learned, Wynne began writing her diaries at age 11 in 1789 - just weeks after the French Revolution had begun shaking Europe. She kept up her journaling until she died in 1857.

Her early diary entries told of living with her family in Switzerland along with one of King Louis XVI's leading political agents and other French emigres who fled the turmoil in France. The Wynne family later fled before Napoleon's conquest of central Europe and ended up at the Italian port city of Livorno, where they found refuge with the British navy.

Wynne's journeys aboard her husband's warship as a young and, for some time, pregnant wife may sound odd today. But many British navy ships carried the wives or mistresses of tradesmen, and even the captains' wives.

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	Antiquity Journal & archive Archaeologica Archaeology Archaeology Channel BAR Bronze Age Forum Discover Dogpile Eurekalert Google LiveScience Mirabilis.ca Nat Geographic PhysOrg Science Daily Science News Texas AM Yahoo Excerpt, or Link only?	Thanks decimon! Elizabeth "Betsey" Wynne accompanied her husband aboard his warship during a disastrous British assault on the Spanish Canary Islands. She spent the voyage home-nursing the wounded Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson... Wynne began writing her diaries at age 11 in 1789 -- just weeks after the French Revolution had begun shaking Europe. She kept up her journaling until she died in 1857. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
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