In 1982 a friend staying with us visited nearby Shrubland Hall Health Clinic, then run by Lady Saumarez, the late mother of the present Baron, Eric de Saumarez. Our friend returned, bubbling with both health and news of boxes of unpublished private correspondence between the 1st Baron, James de Saumarez, and his wife Martha. Like most people I knew very little of Sir James’ place in naval history so I read the Navy Records Society edition of his official Baltic correspondence by A.N. Ryan. It made me aware that he was a much more interesting and significant Napoleonic Wars admiral than his present lack of fame implied. As Ryan stated at the end of his general introduction, the archive ‘shed new light on the war at sea, as well as upon European history, in the post-Trafalgar period of the Napoleonic war and upon the career of a distinguished officer whose unique contribution to the war was to keep open the gates of northern Europe after Napoleon had decreed that they be closed’. The need to earn a living in the commercial world prevented me from pursuing the find until I was able to sell my wine business and turn to research the admiral in 2000.

I am most grateful to Baron de Saumarez for his permission to have access to the archive, to Bill Serjeant, former Suffolk County Archivist and archivist of the Saumarez family records, for his extensive and enthusiastic help, and to the friendly staff of the Suffolk Record Office where much of my time was spent transcribing the mass of documents. The other major source of unpublished documents has been the private letters of Count Axel Pontus von Rosen, Governor of Gothenburg, to Baron von Engestrom, the Swedish Foreign Minister. I must thank Claes Tellvid, archivist at the National Archive in Stockholm for telling me of their presence in the Royal Library, for the help of Eva Dillman in the Manuscript section there, of Ingrid Karlsson in the War Archive and of Ingemar Carlsson on behalf of King Gustav at the Bernadotteska Archive in the Royal Castle.