One of the city’s newest developments, Temeraire Road, in the grounds of the former Manadon House (and later the Royal Naval Engineering College, Manadon), has a name that conjures up a very famous image – that of JMW Turner’s celebrated painting – The Fighting Temeraire. Turner so loved the image that he never parted with it. A romanticised depiction (the sunset and the masts were added by the artist) of the Temeraire being taken up the Thames to Rotherhithe to be broken up, in 1838, the painting shows the Navy’s second HMS Temeraire.
This wooden warship was built at Chatham in 1798, endured a mutiny in 1801 (which eventually led to eighteen of her crew being hanged at the yardarm in Spithead) and played a notable role in the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Unfit for further duties after that historic encounter, alongside Nelson’s Victory, she later enjoyed a spell as a receiving ship in Devonport.
A third HMS Temeraire was later launched at Devonport in 1907 and she saw action at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. In 1955 the name was adopted at a Naval Training College in Scotland, upon its closure five years later the Temeraire Division of the Naval College at Dartmouth was established and when that closed, it moved, in 1971, to Portsmouth and it is now the Centre of Naval Sporting Activity.
