Captain Peculiar Cromwell is the secondary antagonist of the Bernard Cornwell novel Sharpe's Trafalgar. He is a British sea captain in 1805.
Biography[]
Cromwell was named "Peculiar" by his deeply religious parents after a passage in the Bible, and sent away to sea to keep him from temptation. He initially served in the Royal Navy but concluded there was more profit in joining the East India Company. He became the captain of the merchant ship Caliope, keeping only a modest cabin on board so he could sell the larger cabins to passengers.
On a journey from India bound for England, his passengers included Ensign Richard Sharpe, who was one of the guests at his captain's table. Cromwell expounded to his guests his belief that the British would be unable to raise a large enough army to defeat the French and would either be invaded or have to sue for peace. He conspired with Anthony Pohlmann, who was posing as a passenger called Baron von Dornberg, and French diplomat Michel Vaillard, who was posing as Pohlmann's servant, to surrender his ship to the French in return for a share of the prize money. Pohlmann and Vaillard were trying to reach France with papers that would ensure an alliance with the Mahrattas against the British.
Cromwell convinced Sharpe, Major Arthur Dalton and Lord William Hale to place their valuables in his safekeeping and tried to do the same with merchant Ebenezer Fairley. He took the Caliope away from the convoy it was travelling with and deliberately allowed it to be caught by the French ship Revenant, first ignoring warnings that the ship had been sighted, and then sabotaging attempts to outrun it by ordering constant course changes. He surrendered to the ship's captain, Louis Montmerin, and boarded the Revenant with Pohlmann and Vaillard, taking with him his own belongings and the valuables he had taken from his passengers.
The Revenant ended up joining up with the French ships massing for the Battle of Trafalgar, despite Cromwell trying to convince Montmerin that they should ignore the battle and stay on course. During the battle, the Revenant was crippled and boarded by HMS Pucelle. Sharpe led the boarding party from the Pucelle, having come aboard the ship when its crew recaptured the Caliope from the French, and was under orders from the Pucelle's captain, Joel Chase, to take Cromwell alive to stand trial. Sharpe captured the traitor without a fight and left him in the care of Pucelle crewmember Clouter, telling him to recover Sharpe and Dalton's property from where Cromwell had concealed it and to take the rest of Cromwell's plunder for himself.
