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Patrick Wright on the Final Years of a Wandering Writer
December 11, 2020
A sign provided by the council identifies two noteworthy graves in the Isle of Sheppey’s main cemetery. The first, at plot 83 FF, marks the last resting place of Mr. Frederick Peake, who somehow managed to survive the Charge of the Light Brigade while serving with the 13th Light Dragoons during the Crimean War. Unlike so many who followed their Harrovian commander, Major General James Robert Brudenell, the 7th Earl of Cardigan, into the misdirected charge of October 25, 1854, Sergeant Peake emerged from “the Valley of Death” with no worse than a shattered arm, a pension and a job, both light and enduring, in the stores at the Admiralty dockyard at Sheerness. He was buried to the sound of rifle volleys and the “Last Post” on December 27, 1906, a local hero who had lived quietly across the fields from here, at 37 Alma Road in the part of Sheerness known as Marine Town.