The Dido Papers

Aftertwo years at the Britannia Naval College at Dartmouth, Bryan Godfrey Faussettjoined his first ship, HMS Dido in June 1879. From the day he joined herhe wrote long letters home to his family and friends. The Dido went toWest Africa, South and East Africa and the letters recount his experiences as ayoung man of 15 from when he first joined. Remarkably, he made copies of allthe letters that he wrote home and these copies provide a very rare glimpse ofthe life of a young midshipman in the Royal Navy of the mid-Victorian era.

The letters cover the period fromJune 1879 until April 1881. He experiences not only the life of a youngmidshipman, learning the ways of a naval warship, but also visiting many placesin West Africa which very few, if any, of his contemporaries at home would haveany knowledge of whatsoever. His letters are fluent and well-written and it iseasy to forget that they are written by a 15-year-old boy. His descriptions ofWest Africa, his visits ashore and the remarkable experiences that occur,including the death of the Dido's captain and his funeral only a fewhours later in a west African graveyard, and a meeting of local kings andchieftains in a conference on board Dido in order to resolve disputes,are but two of the remarkable experiences that he undergoes and records. Didoalso spends time on the East coast of Africa, anchored off Durban at thetime of the first Boer war and his descriptions of that conflict, in which someof the crew of the Dido were sent tofight, are fascinating.

In his Foreword, Rear Admiral John Lang says 'Even acasual glance at this collection of letters is a joy. It is an extraordinaryrecord of a cadet and midshipman in the Victorian Navy and opens a window oflife in an era when the passage of time is marked by the receipt and dispatchof periodic letters to and from home'.