Naval Blacketts

Sarah Blackett, the daughter of John Erasmus Blackett, yet another Mayor of Newcastle, after whom Blackett Street in Newcastle is named, married Cuthbert Collingwood at Newcastle on 16 June 1791. Cuthbert later became Admiral Lord Collingwood, and served as second-in-command to his old friend, Lord Nelson, at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, taking over command after Nelson’s death. In later life he was appointed commander of the Mediterranean fleet. When his health began to fail he made repeated requests to be allowed to return home. His pleas were finally answered, but he died of cancer on board HMS Ville de Paris having just set sail from Port Mahon en route for Britain, without seeing Sarah and their two daughters again. Lord Collingwood’s statue stands at the mouth of the River Tyne, looking out to sea.

Approximately 200 years after Trafalgar, Commodore Jeff Blackett, (see also Sporting Blacketts ), then Commander of HMS Collingwood, the Royal Navy’s Weapons Electrical Training Establishment in Fareham, Hampshire, was asked to name newly built cabin accommodation. He decided to call it the “Sarah Blackett Suite” after Lord Collingwood’s wife, thus inviting the charge that he had named it after his own wife, Sally (a derivitive of Sarah)!

Several Blacketts served in the Royal Navy. In 1837 Midshipman John Charles Blackett, father of Admiral Henry Blackett, purchased at Pitcairn Island the medical book of H.M.S. Bounty from a descendant of Fletcher Christian. (The book is now held by the National Maritime Museum.) Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands, the scene of the sinking in 1943 of PT109, commanded by a young John F. Kennedy, later 35th President of the United States, may be named after him. In 1841, four years after his visit to Pitcairn Island, John Charles Blackett arrived in Auckland Harbour, New Zealand in rather more style, in his own 80 ton yacht, Albatross, and entertained the Governor on board. Blackett’s Building in the centre of Auckland (see Blacket(t)s Down Under) is named after him.

In “My Name is Blacket” Nick Vine Hall recounts how he learned of a family story about “Ma coosin Jarmie Cook” the famous explorer. Details of the link between Captain Cook and the Blackets can be found on John Barker’s excellent website, The Lamplugh-Brooksbanks of Cumberland and Yorkshire.