THE STORY
OF NELSON

Uniform with this Volume

THE STORY OF NAPOLEON

By Harold F. B. Wheeler, F.R.Hist.S. With 16 full-page Illustrations.

FAMOUS VOYAGES OF THE
GREAT DISCOVERERS

By Eric Wood. With 16 full-page Illustrations.

THE STORY OF THE CRUSADES

By E. M. Wilmot-Buxton, F.R.Hist.S. With 16 full-page Illustrations by M. Meredith Williams.

STORIES OF THE
SCOTTISH BORDER

By Mr and Mrs William Platt. With 16 full-page Illustrations by M. Meredith Williams.

The “Belleisle” went into action at Trafalgar with the words “Victory or Death” chalked on her guns

Frank Craig, from a sketch by C. W. Cole

Fr.

THE BOYS’
NELSON

BY
Harold F. B. Wheeler F.R.Hist.S.

MEMBER OF THE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
JOINT-AUTHOR OF
‘NAPOLEON AND THE INVASION OF ENGLAND’ AND
‘THE WAR IN WEXFORD 1798’
AUTHOR OF
‘THE MIND OF NAPOLEON’ ‘THE BOYS’ NAPOLEON’ AND
‘THE MAXIMS OF NAPOLEON’

‘He is the only man who has ever lived
who, by universal consent, is without a peer’
ADMIRAL SIR CYPRIAN BRIDGE G.C.B.

NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Printed by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh

DEDICATED TO
MY FATHER AND MOTHER

Foreword

The career of the little one-eyed, one-armed man who frustrated Napoleon’s ambitious maritime plans for the subjugation of England, who is to sailors what Napoleon is to soldiers, who represented in his person all that sea power meant when the very existence of our forefathers was threatened in the latter days of the eighteenth century and the first half-decade of its successor, must ever appeal to those for whom Great Britain means something more than a splash of red on a coloured map.

I do not wish to suggest that his fame is insular. On the contrary, it is universal. Other lands and other peoples share in our admiration of him. We must not forget that it was an American naval officer, Admiral Mahan, who first gave us a really great book about this truly great man. In his “Life of Nelson,” we have the hero’s career reviewed by an expert whose knowledge of tactics has not blinded him to the more romantic aspects of Nelson’s forty-seven years of life. Before its appearance readers were dependent upon the facts and fancies of the biography by Clarke and McArthur, the “Memoirs” of Pettigrew, or the stirring but often inaccurate pictures of Southey. The seven substantial tomes of “Nelson’s Letters and Despatches,” edited with indefatigable industry by Sir Harris Nicolas, were not compiled for the general public, although they have furnished much material for later historians and must necessarily be the foundation of every modern book on Nelson.

On our own side of the Atlantic there is no more eminent authority than Sir J. Knox Laughton, Litt.D., Professor of Modern History at King’s College, London. He has not only epitomised Nicolas’s work, but added to our knowledge by his excellent “Nelson” (English Men of Action Series), “Nelson and his Companions in Arms,” and “From Howard to Nelson.” His numerous miscellaneous contributions to the subject are also of great interest to the serious student.

Although there is no Nelson cult like that which is associated with the memory of Napoleon, England’s great sailor has inspired a considerable literature, as even the shelves of my own library bear witness. There are works on his career as a whole, the campaigns associated with his name, his relations with Lady Hamilton, and so on. The only excuse I can offer for adding to the list is, I hope, a valid one. It seems to me that Nelson’s life, told in his own words as much as possible, would specially appeal to the young, and there is, so far as I am aware, no book which does this in the simple manner which I deem to be necessary. For help in carrying out my plan of writing a volume of the kind indicated I am particularly indebted to Nicolas’s “Letters” and Prof. Sir J. Knox Laughton’s edition of them.

For good or evil the name of Emma, Lady Hamilton, is inextricably associated with that of Nelson. Many and varied have been the attempts to whitewash the character of her whom he regarded as “one of the very best women in the world.” While it is difficult to associate the possessor of the beauty which appealed with such irresistible force to such painters as Romney, Reynolds, Lawrence, and Madame Vigée Le Brun, with “a most inherent baseness,” it is an indisputable fact that she exercised an adverse influence on Nelson’s career. Her humble origin, her loveliness, her poses, her attempts at statecraft, above all, her connection with the great sailor, have made her the subject of almost innumerable volumes. For those who wish to read an impartial study I would recommend Mr Walter Sichel’s “Emma, Lady Hamilton.”

Nelson’s written communications are not studied literary efforts, but spontaneous expressions of his inmost thoughts. For these reasons they are of inestimable value in an attempt to sum up his life and aims. The kindest of men, he sometimes chose to mix vitriol with his ink. He wrote what he meant, and it was always very much to the point. Less eminent folk have sometimes disguised what they thought and written what they imagined would please. Such was never Nelson’s way.

“This high man with a great thing to pursue,”[1] was never a trifler. He recognised the importance of a supreme navy and the supreme importance of its personnel. He watched the health of his men as a loving mother watches that of her children. Proof of this is furnished in a Report of the Physician to the Fleet, dated the 14th August 1805.[2] In it Dr Leonard Gillespie says that “the high state of health” was “unexampled perhaps in any fleet or squadron heretofore employed on a foreign station.” He attributes this to such causes as the attention paid to the victualling and purveying for the ships; a sane system of heating and ventilation; lack of idleness and intemperance, due to “the constant activity and motion in which the fleet was preserved”; the promotion of cheerfulness by means of music, dancing, and theatrical amusements; comfortable accommodation of the sick; and by the serving of Peruvian bark, mixed in wines or spirits, to men “employed on the service of wooding and watering,” which obviated any ill effects.

Nelson was quite able to “stand on his dignity,” to use a colloquial and comprehensive phrase, and several instances will be discovered by the reader as he peruses the following pages, but it is quite wrong to think that he was in the least a martinet. For instance, during the trying period when he was hungering for the French fleet to leave Toulon, he wrote to an officer: “We must all in our several stations exert ourselves to the utmost, and not be nonsensical in saying, ‘I have an order for this, that, or the other,’ if the king’s service clearly marks what ought to be done.” Everyone has heard how Nelson referred to his captains and himself as “a band of brothers.” You have only to turn to the memoirs of these gallant officers to learn the truthfulness of this remark. They loved him: that is the only term that exactly meets the case.

What of the humbler men who worked the ships? Read the following, which was sent home by a rough but large-hearted sailor of the Royal Sovereign, Collingwood’s flagship at Trafalgar, when he heard that the Master Mariner lay cold in the gloomy cockpit of the Victory: “Our dear Admiral is killed, so we have paid pretty sharply for licking ’em. I never set eyes on him, for which I am both sorry and glad; for to be sure I should like to have seen him—but then, all the men in our ship who have seen him are such soft toads, they have done nothing but blast their eyes and cry ever since he was killed. God bless you! Chaps that fought like the Devil sit down and cry like a wench.”

This spontaneous and perhaps unconscious tribute is worth more than the encomiums of all modern historians and biographers put together.

In studying the life of one who has played a leading rôle on the stage of history there are always a number of subsidiary authorities which will repay perusal. The memoirs of the men who were associated with him, of those of his contemporaries who occupied official or high social positions, even of much humbler folk who have transferred their opinions to paper or had it done for them, are oftentimes extremely important. To print a bibliography of the works of this kind which I have consulted would be inadvisable in such a volume as this, necessarily limited as it is to a certain number of pages. I need only say that the nooks and crannies have been explored besides the main thoroughfare.

In the Foreword to my companion volume upon Napoleon, I endeavoured to show that periods of history are merely make-believe divisions for purposes of clearness and reference. I wish to still further emphasise this extremely important point, because I find that one of our most cherished delusions is that history is largely a matter of dates. Nothing of the kind! Those who think thus are confusing history with chronology—in other words, mistaking one of the eyes for the whole body. Dates are merely useful devices similar to the numerals on the dial of a clock, which enable us to know the hour of the day without abstruse calculations. The figures 1805 help us to memorise a certain concrete event, such as the battle of Trafalgar, but they do not tell us anything of the origin of that event any more than a clock defines the meaning of time.

The age in which Nelson lived was not conspicuous for its morals. This is a factor which must be taken into consideration when we attempt to sum up his character. The standards of 1911 are scarcely the standards of over a century ago. The code of virtue varies, although the law does not. The grave of Nelson’s moral reputation was dug in Sicily, where he had every provocation, but he certainly never attempted to extricate himself from the pit into which he had fallen. “De mortuis nil nisi bonum” is a good maxim for the Gospel of Things as they Ought to Be, but cannot apply to the Testament of Things as they Were. The vanity of both Nelson and Lady Hamilton contributed to their downfall, the sordid story of which is necessarily referred to in later pages of this work. I am of opinion that the lack of sympathy shown to the Admiral, particularly during Pitt’s administrations, was largely due to Court influence. George III. was a man of frigid austerity, and Nelson’s private life was too well known for the King to countenance it by showing him favours. He recognised the value of the man’s services, but preferred to take as little notice as possible of the man himself. In this he was unjust.

Although Nelson hated the French so vehemently, I cannot help thinking, after a prolonged study of his career, that he had many of their characteristics. His vivacity, his imagination, his moods tend to confirm me in this. A less typical specimen of John Bull would be difficult to find.

A word or two concerning Nelson’s crowning victory and then I must bring my lengthy introduction to a conclusion. It has a literature all its own. A wordy warfare, which was indulged in the correspondence columns of the Times from July to October 1905, made one almost believe that it is easier to fight a battle than to describe it accurately. To use Prof. Sir J. Knox Laughton’s terse phrase, “the difficulty is that the traditional account of the battle differs, in an important detail, from the prearranged plan.” The late Admiral Colomb held a brief for the theory that the two columns of the British fleet moved in line abreast, or in line of bearing, as against the old supposition of two columns, line ahead. In this contention, he is supported by Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, G.C.B., whose ideas are set forth in a pamphlet issued by the Navy Records Society, an institution which is doing excellent work in rescuing historical documents relating to the service from ill-deserved oblivion. To add further to the discussion would probably serve no useful purpose. The second volume of “Logs of the Great Sea-fights (1794–1805),” and “Fighting Instructions, 1530–1816,” both published by the Society already mentioned, will be found extremely useful to those who would pursue the subject in detail.

Tennyson’s “Mighty Seaman” has been apotheosised in poetry as well as in prose,

“For he is Britain’s Admiral
Till setting of her sun,”

to quote Meredith’s superb lines. Wordsworth, Scott, Rossetti, Henley, Swinburne, Newbolt and others have said noble things of the Man of Duty, while Nelson looms large in Thomas Hardy’s magnificent epic, “The Dynasts.” No one who has read it is likely to forget:

“In the wild October night-time, when the wind raved round the land,
And the Back-Sea met the Front-Sea, and our doors were blocked with sand,
And we heard the drub of Deadman’s Bay, where the bones of thousands are,
We knew not what the day had done for us at Trafalgar.

(All) Had done,
Had done,
For us at Trafalgar!

* * * * *

The victors and the vanquished then the storm it tossed and tore,
As hard they strove, those worn-out men, upon that surly shore;
Dead Nelson and his half-dead crew, his foes from near and far,
Were rolled together on the deep that night at Trafalgar.

(All) The deep,
The deep,
That night at Trafalgar!”

Contents

Illustrations

For ages past our admirals brave
Pre-eminent have stood;
And, spite of all the world, have held
The mast’ry of the flood,
Howe, Duncan, Hood,
And Collingwood,
Long triumphed o’er the main;
While Nelson’s name,
So dear to Fame!—
We may never see their like again

The headpiece, a sketch by Mr W. L. Wyllie, R.A., is printed by permission of the Art Union of London, 112 Strand.

Chapter I—Boyhood and First Years at Sea (1758–1773)

Thus[3] runs one of the verses of a song dear to the British sailor for many a long year. Nelson, dead over a century, is still revered in the King’s Navy. To the landsman there is no more popular hero. The Victory, riding at anchor in the placid waters of the Solent and in view of the cobble-covered sally port through which the Hero walked to his barge, still flies an admiral’s flag. One of the most modern battleships in the service bears his name, the most famous of London’s many columns is crowned by his effigy. Canvas sails have given place to steam turbines, the days of oak and hemp are gone, but the memory of “the greatest sea captain of all time” is at once an incentive and an inspiration to every true patriot. His ashes lie in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral; his spirit lives in the nation for whom he sacrificed his life. Perhaps we should not be far wrong in venturing the apparent paradox that the further we recede from his life and times the more clearly we understand his consummate genius and appreciate the value of his achievements. There is no sunset, only an added glory with the passing of the years.

Horatio Nelson was born in the quaint old parsonage house of Burnham Thorpe, a Norfolk Sleepy Hollow, on the 29th September 1758. His father, the Rev. Edmund Nelson, M.A., was rector of the parish, and as a clergyman was following the profession of his immediate ancestor. His mother, Catherine Nelson, was the daughter of the Rev. Dr Maurice Suckling, Rector of Wooton, Norfolk, Prebendary of Westminster, and grandnephew of Sir John Suckling, whose name is known to all students of English literature and of history. Galfridus Walpole, another of Mrs Nelson’s relatives, had displayed considerable bravery in an engagement with the French in Vado Bay in 1711. It was through Captain Maurice Suckling, Nelson’s uncle, that the young son of the parsonage eventually entered the Navy. In addition, his mother was a grandniece of Sir Robert Walpole, the famous Whig statesman, and could therefore boast a distinguished lineage.

Horatio was the sixth child of a constantly growing family, and early caused anxiety owing to his delicate constitution. In later years his letters and despatches teem with reference to his ill-health, which was accentuated, of course, by injuries which he received in the performance of his duty. However, he breathed deeply of the North Sea air which wafted through his native village, was tenderly cared for by loving parents, and became sufficiently robust to be sent to the High School at Norwich. The venerable building, endowed by Edward VI., stands within the cathedral precincts. It is now fronted by a statue of its illustrious scholar. Later he attended a school at North Walsham, now one of the yachting centres of the Norfolk Broads, where the curious will find a brick on which the letters H. N. are scratched.

It is somewhat remarkable that so few boys who become great men ever attract sufficient notice during their early scholastic career for their comrades to remember anecdotes about them likely to be of assistance to the biographer. Few anecdotes of Nelson in his younger days have been handed down to posterity, but the following have probably some basis of fact.

When quite a small boy he stayed for a time with his grandmother. On one occasion he did not return at the accustomed dinner-hour, thereby causing the good dame considerable anxiety, especially as gipsies were in the neighbourhood and kidnapping was by no means unknown. He was eventually found seated on the banks of a brook examining with considerable interest a number of birds’ eggs he had secured in company with a chum. “I wonder, child, that fear did not drive you home!” the old lady said when the missing Horatio was restored to her. “Fear, grandmamma!” he replied in a tone of disgust, “I never saw fear—what is it?”

There you have the secret of Nelson’s life summed up in a single pregnant sentence. His total lack of fear carried him through many a trying ordeal, enabled him at times to defy the command of a senior officer when he was convinced that his own plan of operations was better, and helped him to bear the heat and burden of the day when his physical energy was almost exhausted.

On another occasion he was “dared” by some companions to visit the graveyard unattended at night. As a token of good faith he was to bring a twig from a certain yew tree at the south-west corner of All Saints’ Church. The uncanny task was successfully accomplished. From thenceforth he was a hero, as he deserved to be.

A further instance of Nelson’s early lack of fear is afforded us. His master at North Walsham was particularly proud of a certain pear-tree, and his scholars were equally covetous of the delicious fruit which it bore. Each preferred the other in the task of picking any of the pears because of the speedy retribution which they knew would follow. One night Horatio volunteered the task. His friends tied several sheets together and lowered him from the dormitory to the garden. He swarmed up the tree, secured the forbidden and therefore much prized fruit, and was hauled up again. On distributing the booty, he justified his action in his own mind by assuring the recipients that he had only taken the pears “because every other boy was afraid.” Few hours passed before the schoolmaster found that his tree had been plundered. It redounds to the credit of the boys that they refused to “split” on their comrade, although it is said that a tempting reward was offered for the discovery of the culprit.

One winter morning Horatio and his brother William set out for school on their ponies. They had not gone very far before they found the snow so deep as to be almost impassable. They returned to the Parsonage and told their father of the great drifts. He persuaded them to try again, adding that he left it to their honour not to turn back unless it was absolutely necessary.

The snow was falling in heavy flakes when they made their second attempt. William’s heart soon failed him. He suggested that they had sufficient reason to return. Horatio was as adamant. “Father left it to our honour. We must go forward,” he replied, and in due course they arrived at the school.

William, who was the elder by seventeen months, had the greatest affection and esteem for his brother. In later years he was his constant correspondent, and after Horatio’s death he was created Earl Nelson of Trafalgar. Like his father and grandfather, William became a clergyman, in which profession he rose to the dignity of Prebendary and Vice Dean of Canterbury.

It was during the Christmas vacation of 1770 that Nelson casually picked up a newspaper and read of Captain Maurice Suckling’s appointment to the Raisonnable, a ship of sixty-four guns. The announcement seems to have had an instant effect upon Horatio. “Oh, William,” he exclaimed to his brother, who was standing near, “do, do write to father, and tell him that I want to go to sea with uncle!”

The Rev. Edmund Nelson was staying at Bath owing to ill-health. When he received his son’s letter he was inclined to dismiss the proposition as a mere boyish whim. On thinking it over a little more carefully he decided that perhaps the youngster really desired what he asked, and he accordingly consulted his brother-in-law on the matter. The officer replied in the easy-going manner of sailors, “Well, let him come and have his head knocked off by the first cannon-ball—that will provide for him.” He was afraid Horatio would never be able to stand the rough-and-ready life, but he had the good sense to know that there is nothing like putting a theory to a practical test.

The Navy was not then the skilfully-organised machine it has since become. It was one of the privileges of a captain that he might take two or three lads to sea with him as midshipmen or to serve in some subordinate position. Captain Suckling accordingly sent for Horatio, and we find his name on the ship’s books under date of the 1st January 1771. The Raisonnable was then anchored in the Medway.

The lad’s father accompanied his twelve-year-old son as far as London, put him into the Chatham stagecoach, and then left him to his own resources. It was neither a pleasant journey in the rambling old carriage, nor were the streets of Chatham particularly inviting when he set foot in them. Nobody met the adventurer, and for some time he wandered about until he met an officer who directed him to the ship which was to be his temporary home. When he was safely on board it was to find that his uncle had not arrived.[4]

The Raisonnable was one of the vessels commissioned when hostilities between Great Britain and Spain appeared imminent owing to trouble respecting the Falkland Islands, a group in the South Atlantic. In 1770 Spain had insulted the British colonists there by compelling the garrison at Fort Egmont to lower their flag. The matter was settled amicably, for the all-sufficient reason that Spain did not feel strong enough to come to blows with Great Britain unless she was assisted by France, and as the support of that Power was not forthcoming, she climbed down. Consequently Nelson was not introduced to the horrors of naval warfare at this early stage, and the cannon-ball which his uncle prophesied would knock off the lad’s head did not leave the cannon’s mouth.

When the Raisonnable was paid off Captain Suckling was given command of the guard-ship Triumph (74), stationed in the Medway, and recognising that no good could come to his nephew by staying on such a vessel, he secured a position for him shortly afterwards in a merchant ship bound for the West Indies. This was not a difficult matter, because the Master was John Rathbone, who had served with Suckling on the Dreadnought during part of the Seven Years’ War, that great struggle in which Louis XV. of France had been forced to cede Canada to Great Britain.

Nelson seems to have enjoyed the experience. In a sketch of his life, which he wrote several years later for the Naval Chronicle, he says:

“From this voyage I returned to the Triumph at Chatham in July 1772; and, if I did not improve in my education, I returned a practical seaman, with a horror of the Royal Navy, and with a saying, then constant with the seamen, ‘Aft the most honour, forward the better man!’ It was many weeks before I got in the least reconciled to a man-of-war, so deep was the prejudice rooted; and what pains were taken to instil this erroneous principle in a young mind! However, as my ambition was to be a seaman, it was always held out as a reward, that if I attended well to my navigation, I should go in the cutter and decked longboat, which was attached to the commanding officer’s ship at Chatham. Thus by degrees I became a good pilot, for vessels of that description, from Chatham to the Tower of London, down the Swin, and to the North Foreland; and confident of myself amongst rocks and sands, which has many times since been of the very greatest comfort to me. In this way I was trained, till the expedition towards the North Pole was fitted out; when, although no boys were allowed to go in the ships (as of no use), yet nothing could prevent my using every interest to go with Captain Lutwidge in the Carcass; and, as I fancied I was to fill a man’s place, I begged I might be his coxswain: which, finding my ardent desire for going with him, Captain Lutwidge complied with, and has continued the strictest friendship to this moment. Lord Mulgrave, who I then first knew, continued his kindest friendship and regard to the last moment of his life. When the boats were fitted out to quit the two ships blocked up in the ice, I exerted myself to have the command of a four-oared cutter raised upon, which was given me, with twelve men; and I prided myself in fancying I could navigate her better than any other boat in the ship.”

In this cold, matter-of-fact way, Nelson dismisses a phase of his life fraught with peril and adventure. When the majority, if not all, of his former school-fellows were reading of the doings of gallant seamen and brave soldiers he was undergoing actual experiences. The expedition in question had been suggested by the Royal Society, and was commanded by Captain Constantine John Phipps, eldest son of Lord Mulgrave. The Racehorse and Carcass, heavy ships known as bombs because they mounted one or more mortars for use in bombardments when on ordinary service, sailed from the Nore on the 4th June 1773. All went well until the 31st July, when the ice closed upon the vessels, and further progress became impossible.

Nelson and the Bear

Stephen Reid

“The following day,” says Colonel J. M. Tucker in his “Life and Naval Memoirs of Lord Nelson,” “there was not the smallest opening, the ships were within less than two lengths of each other. The ice, which the day before had been flat, and almost level with the water’s edge, was now in many places forced higher than the mainyard by the pieces squeezing together. A day of thick fog followed; it was succeeded by clear weather; but the passage by which the ships had entered from the westward was closed, and no open water was in sight, either in that or any other quarter. By the pilot’s advice, the men were set to cut a passage and warp[5] through the small openings to the westward. They sawed through pieces of ice twelve feet thick; and this labour continued the whole day, during which their utmost efforts did not move the ships above three hundred yards, while they were driven together, with the ice, far to the north-east and east by the current. Sometimes a field of several acres square would be lifted up between two larger islands, and incorporated with them; and thus these larger pieces continued to grow by cohesive aggregation. Another day passed, and there seemed no probability of getting the ships out, without a strong east or north-east wind.

“The season was far advanced, and every hour lessened the chance of extricating themselves. Young as he was, Nelson was appointed to command one of the boats which were sent out to explore a passage into the open water. It was the means of saving a boat belonging to the Racehorse from a singular but imminent danger. Some of the officers had fired at, and wounded, a walrus.... The wounded animal dived immediately, and brought up a number of its companions; and they all joined in an attack upon the boat. They wrested an oar from one of the men; and it was with the utmost difficulty that the crew could prevent them from staving or upsetting her, till the Carcass’s boat, under Nelson, came up. The walrusses, finding their enemies thus reinforced, dispersed.

“A short time after this occurrence, young Nelson exposed himself in a more daring manner. One night, during the mid-watch, he stole from the ship with one of his comrades, taking advantage of a rising fog, and set out over the ice in pursuit of a bear. Nelson, in high spirits, led the way over the frightful chasms in the ice, armed with a rusty musket, as was his companion. It was not, however, long before the adventurers were missed by those on board; and, as the fog had much increased, the anxiety of Captain Lutwidge and his officers for them was very great. Between three and four in the morning, the mist having nearly dispersed, the hunters were discovered at a considerable distance, attacking a large bear. The signal for their return was instantly made; but it was in vain that Nelson’s companion urged him to obey it. He was at this time divided by a rent in the ice from his shaggy antagonist, which probably saved his life; for the musket had flashed in the pan, and their ammunition was expended. ‘Never mind,’ exclaimed Horatio, ‘do but let me get a blow at this devil with the butt end of my musket, and we shall have him.’ His companion, finding that entreaty was in vain, left him, and regained the ship. The Captain, seeing the young adventurer’s danger, ordered a gun to be fired to terrify the enraged animal; this had the desired effect; but Nelson was obliged to return without his bear. Captain Lutwidge, though he could not but admire so daring a disposition, reprimanded him rather sternly for such rashness, and for conduct so unworthy of the situation he occupied; and desired to know what motive he could have for hunting a bear. ‘Sir,’ he replied, pouting his lip, as he was wont to do when agitated, ‘I wished to kill a bear, that I might carry its skin to my father.’”

Towards the middle of August the two ships were able to forge their way through the ice, although not without considerable difficulty, and duly sailed for home waters.

CHAPTER II
A Hero in the Making
(1773–1783)

“True honour, I hope, predominates in my mind far above riches”

—Nelson.

We are fortunate in having an account of Nelson’s early career at sea penned by himself, otherwise the material at our disposal would be extremely scanty. The story of the next few years is therefore told in his own words. What it lacks in picturesqueness is made up for in authenticity:

“On our arrival in England,” he says, “and paid off, 15 October [1773], I found that a squadron was fitting out for the East Indies; and nothing less than such a distant voyage could in the least satisfy my desire of maritime knowledge: and I was placed in the Seahorse of 20 guns, with Captain Farmer, and watched in the foretop; from whence in time I was placed on the quarter-deck: having, in the time I was in this ship, visited almost every part of the East Indies, from Bengal to Bussorah. Ill-health induced Sir Edward Hughes, who had always shown me the greatest kindness, to send me to England in the Dolphin of 20 guns, with Captain James Pigot, whose kindness at that time saved my life. This ship was paid off at Woolwich on 24 September, 1776. On the 26th I received an order from Sir James Douglas, who commanded at Portsmouth, to act as lieutenant of the Worcester, 64, Captain Mark Robinson, who was ordered to Gibraltar with a convoy.[6] In this ship I was at sea with convoys till 2 April, 1777, and in very bad weather. But although my age might have been a sufficient cause for not entrusting me with the charge of a watch, yet Captain Robinson used to say, ‘he felt as easy when I was upon deck, as any officer in the ship.’

“On [the 9th] April, 1777, I passed my examination as a lieutenant; and received my commission the next day, as second lieutenant of the Lowestoffe frigate of 32 guns, Captain (now Lieutenant-Governor of Greenwich Hospital) William Locker. In this ship I went to Jamaica; but even a frigate was not sufficiently active for my mind, and I got into a schooner, tender to the Lowestoffe. In this vessel I made myself a complete pilot for all the passages through the (Keys) Islands situated on the north side [of] Hispaniola. Whilst in this frigate, an event happened which presaged my character; and, as it conveys no dishonour to the officer alluded to, I shall relate it.

“Blowing a gale of wind, and very heavy sea, the frigate captured an American letter of marque.[7] The first lieutenant was ordered to board her, which he did not, owing to the very high sea. On his return on board, the captain said, ‘Have I no officer in the ship who can board the prize?’ On which the master ran to the gangway, to get into the boat; when I stopped him, saying, ‘It is my turn now; and if I come back, it is yours.’ This little incident has often occurred to my mind; and I know it is my disposition, that difficulties and dangers do but increase my desire of attempting them.

“Sir Peter Parker, soon after his arrival at Jamaica, 1778, took me into his own flag-ship, the Bristol, as third lieutenant; from which I rose by succession to be first. Nothing particular happened whilst I was in this ship, which was actively employed off Cape François, being the commencement of the French war.”

A few words with reference to the hostilities mentioned are needed as explanation. The war between Great Britain and her colonists in North America, which culminated in the birth of a new World-Power, now known as the United States, had broken out in 1775, although the seeds of dissension had been sown much earlier. This unfortunate and disastrous quarrel had also embroiled “the mother of nations” in a strife with France and Spain, whose help the New Englanders secured in 1778 and 1779 respectively. In 1780 Holland became involved. The foolishness of not having sufficiently watched the doings of a potential enemy now became apparent. For several years “resolute Choiseul, the abrupt proud man” of Carlyle, had bent his energies on increasing the French navy, and when the Brest fleet of thirty-two sail-of-the-line, under Count D’Orvilliers, met the British fleet of thirty sail, under Vice-Admiral the Hon. A. Keppel, off Ushant on the 27th July 1778, the action was indecisive. In American waters Lord Howe hove in sight of the fleet under D’Estaing, the French commander having better ships and heavier metal, but while Howe was manœuvring to attack the enemy a storm parted the would-be contestants. Both suffered considerable damage by wind and not by shot as had been anticipated. Shortly afterwards Admiral Byron took over Howe’s command and endeavoured to come up with D’Estaing’s ships. Unfortunately the Frenchman had sailed to the West Indies, which “in this protracted contest,” to use the words of Admiral Mahan, was to be “the chief scene of naval hostilities....” “The West Indies is the Station for honour,” said Nelson sometime later. Froude, the historian, predicted that “If ever the naval exploits of this country are done into an epic poem—and since the Iliad there has been no subject better fitted for such treatment or better deserving it—the West Indies will be the scene of the most brilliant cantos.” We shall have occasion to refer to this great strategic point many times in these pages, especially in the great game of hide-and-seek between Napoleon’s captains and Nelson immediately preceding the Trafalgar campaign.[8] The year 1778 was not a brilliant one in British naval annals, although it closed by Hotham and Barrington attacking D’Estaing off St Lucia and preventing him from landing more than half the troops intended for the subjugation of that island. As a consequence the force under Chevalier de Michaud surrendered, and St Lucia was won.

“On 8 December, 1778,” Nelson continues, “I was appointed commander of the Badger brig; and was first sent to protect the Mosquito shore, and the Bay of Honduras, from the depredations of the American privateers. Whilst on this service, I gained so much the affections of the settlers, that they unanimously voted me their thanks, and expressed their regret on my leaving them; entrusting to me to describe to Sir Peter Parker and Sir John Dalling their situation, should a war with Spain break out. Whilst I commanded this brig, H.M.S. Glasgow, Captain Thomas Lloyd, came into Montego Bay, Jamaica, where the Badger was laying: in two hours afterwards she took fire by a cask of rum; and Captain Lloyd will tell you, that it was owing to my exertions, joined to his, that her whole crew were rescued from the flames.”

This stirring incident merits a more detailed description than the bare facts which Nelson chose to set forth. The crew was in a panic when he and his men set foot on the deck of the doomed vessel, and by almost superhuman exertions managed to throw all the gunpowder in the magazine overboard before the flames reached it. He also ordered that the loaded cannon should be directed upward, so that when they exploded, owing to the intense heat, no damage would result. Thus early in his career did Nelson show that he was not at a loss when the unusual and unexpected happened. In a letter to Captain Locker, who was ill, the young officer describes the fate of the Glasgow as “a most shocking sight; and had it happened half an hour later, in all probability a great many people would have been lost.” He also notes that the company of the derelict were falling ill very fast owing to the constant tropical rains to which the men were exposed, there being no room for them on the Badger.

“On 11 June, 1779,” Nelson continues, “I was made post into the Hinchinbrook. When, being at sea, and Count d’Estaing arriving at Hispaniola (Haïti) with a very large fleet and army from Martinique, an attack on Jamaica was expected. In this critical state, I was by both admiral and general entrusted with the command of the batteries at Port Royal; and I need not say, as the defence of this place was the key to the port of the whole naval force, the town of Kingston, and Spanish Town, it was the most important post in the whole island.”

D’Estaing’s fleet consisted of twenty-two sail-of-the-line, excluding transports and privateers which had attached themselves to him, and it was commonly reported that he had no fewer than 20,000 troops on board. Nelson, as noted above, was now Post-Captain, and although he had no occasion to prove his ability as a commander of land batteries, he seems to have taken kindly to the situation. In a letter to his friend Captain Parker, dated the 12th August 1779, he states that “Jamaica is turned upside down since you left it,” and furnishes particulars of the measures made for the defence of the island. “You must not be surprised to hear of my learning to speak French,” he remarks as a humorous aside.

To help to achieve the downfall of the wily d’Estaing was not to fall to Nelson’s lot. That worthy hastened to Savannah, which was attacked by troops under General Lincoln and himself. They were routed by the British lines, whereupon d’Estaing sailed away.

Great Britain was now at war with Spain, which had thrown in her lot with France, and was soon to feel the effects of the Armed Neutrality, consisting of Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and Prussia. They resented England’s right to search neutral ships, with the result that the latter Power could not retain her supremacy at sea, a cause of Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown and the consequent loss of the American Colonies. In January 1780 it was resolved to make an attempt to take the important post of Fort San Juan, on the river of that name. This would materially aid the British to secure the city of Granada, on Lake Nicaragua, and to sever the communications of the enemy between their northern and southern dominions. The idea originated with Dalling, Governor of Jamaica, to whom history has scarcely done justice. The naval force was entrusted to Nelson, the command of the troops to Captain John Polson.

The soldiers at the disposal of the intrepid adventurers were a mere handful, scarcely 500 in all, but perhaps that fact added the necessary spice of danger. Nelson left his ship, and “carried troops in boats one hundred miles up a river, which none but Spaniards since the time of the buccaneers had ever ascended,” to use his own words. He “boarded” an outpost of the enemy, situated on an island in the river; “made batteries, and afterwards fought them, and was a principal cause of our success.” When the miniature expedition arrived at Fort San Juan the rainy season had commenced, bringing malaria in its train. Nelson was all for making an immediate attack, but Polson ruled the slower, and perhaps surer, method of erecting batteries and so forth, in which Nelson lent a willing hand. “I want words to express the obligations I owe to Captain Nelson,” Polson told Governor Dalling. “He was the first on every service, whether by day or night. There was not a gun fired but was pointed by him, or by Captain Despard, Chief Engineer.” Fever played havoc with the men; of the 200 sailors of the Hinchinbrook, no fewer than “eighty-seven took to their beds in one night; and of the two hundred, one hundred and forty-five were buried in mine and Captain Collingwood’s[9] time: and I believe very few, not more than ten, survived of that ship’s crew; a proof how necessary expedition is in those climates.” Nelson’s own health was undermined by dysentery. A few hours before the Spanish flag gave place to the Union Jack he left the region of the fort in order to join the Janus (44 guns), of which he had been given command. The ship being stationed at Jamaica, he was taken to Port Royal in a sloop. Here he met with a good and tender-hearted friend in Lady Parker, the wife of Sir Peter Parker, Commander-in-Chief at Jamaica, but he gained so little in strength that he was compelled to ask leave of absence and leave the West Indies for England. Had he stayed it is improbable that he could have rendered useful service while in such a low condition. The expedition eventually ended in failure. He sailed on the 4th September 1780 in the Lion, commanded by Captain the Hon. William Cornwallis, a younger son of Earl Cornwallis, who acted the part of nurse to the patient’s entire satisfaction, and cemented a friendship which lasted until Nelson’s death.

Having to resign the Janus probably caused Nelson more torture than his physical suffering, for he was intensely ambitious. It is stated that when he arrived in England he would not proceed to Bath to drink the waters until he had been conveyed to the Admiralty to beg for another vessel. “This they readily promised me,” he observed in a humorous way, “thinking it not possible for me to live.” At Bath he stayed with Mr Spry, an apothecary, who resided at 2 Pierrepont Street; his medical adviser was Dr Woodward.

On the 23rd January 1781 Nelson was able to inform Captain Locker that he was “now upon the mending hand,” although he had been “obliged to be carried to and from bed, with the most excruciating tortures.” Some three weeks later further progress was reported; “My health, thank God, is very near perfectly restored; and I have the perfect use of all my limbs, except my left arm, which I can hardly tell what is the matter with it. From the shoulder to my fingers’ ends are as if half dead; but the surgeon and doctors give me hopes it will all go off. I most sincerely wish to be employed, and hope it will not be long.”

Again the flicker of ambition is evident, always a good sign in a patient. “I never was so well in health that I can remember,” he writes on the 5th March. On Monday of the following week he began his return journey to London. Unfortunately his progress was intermittent. He had “good” days and “bad” days. Two months later we find Nelson telling his beloved brother William that he has entirely lost the use of his left arm and nearly of his left leg and thigh. However, the surgeon who was attending him gave him hopes of recovery, “when I will certainly come into Norfolk, and spend my time there till I am employed.”

At this period Nelson did not have to eat out his heart in chagrin and disappointment owing to neglect as some of our modern naval officers have had to do. In August 1781, when his health had improved, he was given command of the Albemarle, a frigate of 28 guns, and on the 23rd of that month he hoisted his pennant at Woolwich. The appearance of the little vessel pleased him considerably, his officers and men even more so, as his letters abundantly testify. “My quarter-deck is filled, much to my satisfaction, with very genteel young men and seamen”; “I have an exceeding good ship’s company. Not a man or officer in her I would wish to change”; “I am perfectly satisfied with both officers and ship’s company. All my marines are likewise old standers,” are some of his remarks to correspondents. We must not imagine that Nelson necessarily had a pattern-ship and a pattern-crew because of the kind things he said of them. His recent recovery from serious illness has doubtless to be taken into consideration. We all see the world and its inhabitants through rose-coloured glasses after an enforced absence from the ordinary duties and modes of life. A natural sweetness of disposition may also partly account for his optimism. In later years Samuel Rogers, the Banker-poet, recorded in his entertaining “Table Talk” that “Lord Nelson was a remarkably kind-hearted man. I have seen him spin a teetotum with his one hand, a whole evening, for the amusement of some children.”

The young captain’s first voyage in the Albemarle was not unattended by adventures. His reference to his experiences in the Autobiography is slightly tinged with a semi-humorous cynicism one can readily forgive, although it contrasts oddly with the remarks just quoted. “In August, 1781,” he writes, “I was commissioned for the Albemarle; and, it would almost be supposed, to try my constitution, was kept the whole winter in the North Sea.” He cruised to Elsinore, where he found a number of vessels waiting for convoy to Portsmouth and Plymouth. “We have not had any success;” he complains, “indeed, there is nothing you can meet, but what is in force: the Dutch have not a single merchantman at sea. One privateer was in our fleet, but it was not possible to lay hold of him. I chased him an hour, and came fast up with him, but was obliged to return to the fleet. I find since, it was the noted Fall, the pirate.... What fools the Dutch must have been not to have taken us into the Texel. Two hundred and sixty sail the convoy consisted of.”

On another occasion the British ships in the Downs mistook Nelson and his motley collection for a Dutch fleet. Many of the sail-of-the-line prepared for action and would have chased their friends had not Nelson sent a cutter to inform the officers of their ludicrous error. In the early days of 1782 the Albemarle was ordered to Portsmouth to take in eight months’ provisions, “and I have no doubt was meant to go to the East Indies with Sir Richard Bickerton,[10] which I should have liked exceedingly, but alas, how short-sighted are the best of us.” The young captain then goes on to tell his brother William of the fate which overtook him. During a fierce gale an East India store ship collided with the Albermarle. “We have lost our foremast, and bowsprit, mainyard, larboard cathead, and quarter gallery, the ship’s [figure] head, and stove in two places on the larboard side—all done in five minutes. What a change! but yet we ought to be thankful we did not founder. We have been employed since in getting jury-masts, yards, and bowsprit, and stopping the holes in our sides. What is to become of us now, I know not. She must go into dock, and I fear must be paid off, she has received so much damage.”

A letter to the same correspondent, dated the 8th February 1782, reveals something of Nelson’s philosophy of life. “We all rise by deaths,” he asserts. “I got my rank by a shot killing a post-captain, and I most sincerely hope I shall, when I go, go out of [the] world the same way; then we go all in the line of our profession—a parson praying, a captain fighting.” He had his wish gratified, as we all know. There was something more than a suspicion of the Stoic in Nelson, for while it cannot be said that he was unaffected by passion, he certainly displayed praiseworthy indifference to creature comforts when at sea. That he grumbled to the authorities proves nothing to the contrary. It was usually with reference to half-unseaworthy ships, which added to the trials and troubles of his men and oftentimes precluded him from doing himself justice where the enemy was concerned. His letters prove conclusively that he had the utmost faith in God, whom he regarded as a powerful Ally.

Shortly afterwards Nelson sailed with a convoy to Newfoundland and Quebec. The experience was anything but pleasant, and when he returned to the latter place in the middle of September he was “knocked up with scurvy,” the old-time sailor’s curse, owing to a diet of salt beef for eight weeks. “In the end,” he says, “our cruise has been an unsuccessful one; we have taken, seen, and destroyed more enemies than is seldom done in the same space of time, but not one arrived in port. But, however, I do not repine at our loss: we have in other things been very fortunate, for on 14 August we fell in with, in Boston Bay, four sail-of-the-line,[11] and the Iris, French man-of-war, part of M. Vaudreuil’s squadron, who gave us a pretty dance for between nine or ten hours; but we beat all except the frigate, and though we brought to for her, after we were out of sight of the line-of-battle ships, she tacked and stood from us. Our escape I think wonderful: they were, upon the clearing up of a fog, within shot of us, and chased us the whole time about one point from the wind....” Nelson managed to avoid the enemy by “running them amongst the shoals of St George’s Bank,” a manœuvre which caused the larger ships to stop pursuit. When he prepared for action the commander of the frigate, deeming discretion the better part of valour, wisely decided to rejoin his comrades.

After taking another convoy from Quebec to New York, Nelson sailed under the command of Lord Hood for the West Indies, “the grand theatre of actions.” Here he captured a French vessel attached to Vaudreuil’s fleet, thereby getting some compensation for the loss of the frigate. Her cargo consisted of naval material, and as some of the British ships were urgently in want of topmasts the prize was more than usually valuable.

He also attempted to recapture Turk’s Island, which had been taken by the French. The proceeding was audacious in the extreme, as he had very few ships at his disposal. An officer was sent on shore, under cover of a flag of truce, to demand surrender. This proving abortive, a little band of 167 seamen and marines, under Captain Charles Dixon, was landed. The Admiral Barrington then came up, and together with the Drake, was about to bombard the town, when a concealed battery opened upon them. A steady fire was maintained for an hour before Captain Dixon, who had hoped to reach the enemy’s works while the ships were engaging some of the French defenders, decided that the experiment was too dangerous. The enemy’s guns were fought by seamen, the troops had several field-pieces at their disposal, and two pieces of cannon were mounted on a hill, consequently continued persistence would have been foolhardy. “With such a force,” says the instigator of this expedition, “and their strong position, I did not think anything further could be attempted.”

Nelson succeeded in making himself thoroughly acquainted with Lord Hood, who in his turn introduced him to Prince William, then a midshipman and afterwards William IV., “our Sailor King.” There was mutual admiration. “He will be, I am certain, an ornament to our Service,” Nelson tells Locker. “He is a seaman, which you could hardly suppose. Every other qualification you may expect from him. But he will be a disciplinarian, and a strong one: he says he is determined every person shall serve his time before they shall be provided for, as he is obliged to serve his.” Such is Nelson’s comment. That of the future monarch was not made at the time, but when Nelson went on board the Barfleur the incident made such an impression on the Prince that he was able to paint a graphic word-picture of the event many years after. Nelson “appeared to be the merest boy of a captain I ever beheld.... He had on a full-laced uniform; his lank, unpowdered hair was tied in a stiff Hessian tail, of an extraordinary length; the old-fashioned flaps of his waistcoat added to the general quaintness of his figure, and produced an appearance which particularly attracted my notice; for I had never seen anything like it before, nor could I imagine who he was, nor what he came about. My doubts were, however, removed when Lord Hood introduced me to him. There was something irresistibly pleasing in his address and conversation; and an enthusiasm when speaking on professional subjects that showed he was no common being.... Throughout the whole of the American War the height of Nelson’s ambition was to command a line-of-battle ship; as for prize-money, it never entered his thoughts: he had always in view the character of his maternal uncle.”

On the 25th June 1783 Nelson was again at Portsmouth. After seeing to the well-being of his sailors he travelled on the leisurely stage-coach to London, where he was presented to the King by Lord Hood. In the following September hostilities were concluded between Great Britain, America, France, Spain, and Holland by the signature of the Treaty of Versailles. The officer, therefore, found no difficulty in obtaining six months’ leave to visit France. There he realised that perhaps there might be some truth in the old adage to the effect that Jack has a sweetheart in every port.

CHAPTER III
Pleasure in France and Work in the West Indies
(1783–1793)

Admirals all, for England’s sake
Honour be theirs, and fame;
And honour, so long as waves shall break,
To Nelson’s peerless name.

Henry Newbolt.

Nelson took the greatest possible interest in everything he saw in France: “Sterne’s ‘Sentimental Journey’ is the best description I can give of our tour.” He travelled in a chaise without springs, slept on a straw bed—“O what a transition from happy England!”—but had less fault to find with the scenery about Montreuil, which he describes as “the finest corn country that my eyes ever beheld, diversified with fine woods, sometimes for two miles together through noble forests. The roads mostly were planted with trees, which made as fine an avenue as to any gentleman’s country seat.” At St Omer he lodged with “a pleasant French family,” and incidentally made the acquaintance of “two very agreeable young ladies, daughters, who honour us with their company pretty often.... Therefore I must learn French if ’tis only for the pleasure of talking to them, for they do not speak a word of English.” Soon all thoughts of study and of the “very agreeable” maidens were banished from his impressionable mind by his introduction to a Miss Andrews, the daughter of an English clergyman. The affair rapidly ripened into something more than friendship.

Her faults he knew not, Love is always blind,
But every charm resolved within his mind.

Nelson’s letters go far to prove the truth of Pope’s couplet. Miss Andrews was, according to him, “the most accomplished woman my eyes ever beheld.” Unfortunately marriage is necessarily based on that mundane and concrete thing, money. When the ardent young officer came to look into the financial aspect of the matter he found that his income did not exceed £130 a year. His lady-love’s dowry was “1,000l. I understand.” He therefore appealed to his uncle, William Suckling, to allow him £100 per annum until he could earn that sum for himself. Failing this source of supply, would his relative “exert” himself “to get me a guard-ship, or some employment in a public office where the attendance of the principal is not necessary...? In the India Service I understand (if it remains under the Directors) their marine force is to be under the command of a captain in the Royal Navy: that is a station I should like.” He prays that his uncle and his family “may never know the pangs which at this instant tear my heart.”

Cupid’s shaft neither proved deadly nor barbed. On his return to England Nelson dismissed his love affair, and was soon “running at the ring of pleasure” in London. He visited Lord Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty, “who asked me if I wished to be employed, which I told him I did”; dined with Lord Hood, who made him feel quite at home, and told him “that the oftener I came the happier it would make him.” In January 1784 he was at Bath, and wrote to his brother that he thought of paying a second visit to the Continent till autumn and then spending the winter with him at Burnham Thorpe. “I return to many charming women, but no charming woman will return with me,” is the plaint. “I want to be a proficient in the language, which is my only reason for returning. I hate their country and their manners,” which hatred, it may be said, increased with the passing of the years. This pessimistic strain is doubtless due to Nelson’s undesirable position as a half-pay officer, but in the middle of March his somewhat mercurial temperament underwent a change to “set fair” on his appointment to the Boreas, a frigate of 28 guns, under orders for the Leeward Islands. The passengers included Lady Hughes, wife of Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Hughes, Bart., the Commander-in-Chief, and her daughter, whom he very ungallantly described as “lumber.” His brother, the Rev. William Nelson, accompanied him as chaplain of the Boreas, but returned on the last day of September 1784 owing to ill-health.

Before leaving Spithead Nelson had an alarming adventure. He was riding what he describes as a “blackguard horse” in company with a lady, when both animals bolted. In order to save his legs from being crushed in a narrow road blocked by a waggon the young gallant was obliged to throw himself, and he had the ill-luck to fall upon hard stones, which injured his back and one of his limbs. His fair companion was only saved from death by the presence of mind of a passer-by who pluckily seized the bridle of the terrified animal to which she was frantically clinging.

“He had the ill-luck to fall upon hard stones”

Stephen Reid

The voyage to Antigua was devoid of incident. It was monotonous, and Nelson hated nothing so much as monotony. Lady Hughes bored him, although it is only just to add that he does not appear to have let her know it. The lady herself was certainly impressed with the kindly way Nelson treated “the young gentlemen who had the happiness of being on his Quarter-Deck,” to quote a letter written by her in 1806. “It may reasonably be supposed,” she goes on, “that among the number of thirty, there must be timid as well as bold: the timid he never rebuked, but always wished to show them he desired nothing of them that he would not instantly do himself: and I have known him say—‘Well, sir, I am going a race to the masthead, and I beg I may meet you there.’ No denial could be given to such a wish, and the poor fellow instantly began his march. His Lordship never took the least notice with what alacrity it was done, but when he met in the top, instantly began talking in the most cheerful manner, and saying how much a person was to be pitied that could fancy there was any danger, or even anything disagreeable, in the attempt.... In like manner he every day went to the schoolroom and saw them do their nautical business, and at twelve o’clock he was first upon the deck with his quadrant. No one there could be behindhand in his business when their Captain set them so good an example. One other circumstance I must mention which will close the subject, which was the day we landed at Barbadoes. We were to dine at the Governor’s. Our dear Captain said, ‘You must permit me, Lady Hughes, to carry one of my aides-de-camp with me,’ and when he presented him to the Governor, he said, ‘Your Excellency must excuse me for bringing one of my midshipmen, as I make it a rule to introduce them to all the good company I can, they have few to look up to besides myself during the time they are at sea.’ This kindness and attention made the young people adore him; and even his wishes, could they have been known, would have been instantly complied with.”

When Nelson made the acquaintance of Sir Richard Hughes he disliked him as much as he did her ladyship. Probably the officer’s methods rather than the man aroused this feeling of antagonism. “The Admiral and all about him are great ninnies,” he writes, and he soon showed in no vague way that he refused to support the Commander-in-chief’s happy-go-lucky policy. Truth to tell, Nelson had no love of authority. He preferred to be a kind of attached free-lance, although he was a strict disciplinarian in all relations between his junior officers and himself. “I begin to be very strict in my Ship,” is an expression he used while in the Boreas. In particular he fell foul of Hughes in the matter of putting the Navigation Act into force. This law had been passed by the Rump Parliament in 1651, when the Dutch held the proud position of the world’s maritime carriers. It was enacted that only English ships, commanded by an Englishman and manned by a crew three-fourths of whom were also of the same nationality, should be allowed to carry the products of Asia, Africa, and America to home ports. In a similar manner, European manufactures had to be brought in English vessels or those of the countries which produced the goods. In the latter case the duties were heavier. It was Protection pure and simple.

The Government of Charles II. and the Scottish Parliament passed similar Acts in later years, thereby fostering the trading companies which helped to lay the foundations of our colonial empire. Such measures were a constant “thorn in the flesh” to foreign statesmen. Several of the statutes were repealed in 1823, but the Navigation Act was not entirely abandoned by Great Britain until 1848, after an existence of nearly two hundred years.

Owing to their separation from the Motherland, the former British colonists of America were, technically, “foreigners,” and should have been subject to restrictions in their commercial intercourse with the West Indies. “I, for one,” Nelson confides to Locker, “am determined not to suffer the Yankees to come where my Ship is; for I am sure, if once the Americans are admitted to any kind of intercourse with these Islands, the views of the Loyalists in settling Nova Scotia are entirely done away. They will first become the Carriers, and next have possession of our Islands, are we ever again embroiled in a French war. The residents of these Islands are Americans by connexion and by interest, and are inimical to Great Britain. They are as great rebels as ever were in America, had they the power to show it.... I am determined to suppress the admission of Foreigners all in my power.”

“The Americans,” Nelson tells us in his Autobiography, “when colonists, possessed almost all the trade from America to our West India Islands; and on the return of peace, they forgot, on this occasion, that they became foreigners, and of course had no right to trade in the British Colonies.

“Our governors and custom-house officers pretended that by the Navigation Act they had a right to trade; and all the West Indians wished what was so much for their interest. Having given governors, custom-house officers, and Americans, notice of what I would do, I seized many of their vessels, which brought all parties upon me; and I was persecuted from one island to another, so that I could not leave my ship.” In this matter it may be said that Nelson found it necessary to keep himself “a close prisoner” to avoid being served with writs which had been issued against him by the owners of certain vessels which he had taken, and who assessed their damages at several thousands of pounds. “But conscious rectitude,” he adds, “bore me through it; and I was supported, when the business came to be understood, from home; and I proved (and an Act of Parliament has since established it) that a captain of a man-of-war is in duty bound to support all the maritime laws, by his Admiralty commission alone, without becoming a custom-house officer.”

The ardent captain also fell foul of Hughes in another matter. The commissioner of the dockyard at Antigua was Captain Moutray, a half-pay officer whom Hughes, going beyond his powers, made commodore. Nelson refused to recognise him as such. The case was investigated by the Admiralty at the instigation of both parties, with the result that Nelson was reprimanded for taking the law into his own hands. Professor Sir J. Knox Laughton, while admitting that “In both cases Nelson was right in his contention,” is forced to add that “The first duty of an officer is to obey orders, to submit his doubts to the Commander-in-chief, and in a becoming manner to remonstrate against any order he conceives to be improper; but for an officer to settle a moot-point himself, and to act in contravention of an order given under presumably adequate knowledge of the circumstances, is subversive of the very first principles of discipline. And these were not, it will be noticed, questions arising out of any sudden and unforeseen emergency, in providing for which Nelson was forced to depart from his instructions. Such emergencies do arise in the course of service, and the decision of the officer may be a fair test of his personal worth; but neither at St Kitts nor at Antigua was there anything calling for instant decision, or any question which might not have waited, pending a reference to the Commander-in-chief or to the Admiralty. And this was the meaning of the Admiralty minute on Nelson’s conduct at Antigua, a most gentle admonition for what might have been punished as a grave offence.”

It must not be inferred that there was any personal bitterness on Nelson’s part regarding the Moutray affair. He conceived it to be a question of principle, of doing right and shunning wrong: “The character of an Officer is his greatest treasure: to lower that, is to wound him irreparably.” He was certainly on excellent terms with the Commissioner’s wife, for whom he cherished the most friendly feelings. Indeed, in one of his letters he calls her his “dear, sweet friend.... Her equal I never saw in any country, or in any situation.” Let it be frankly admitted, however, that Nelson sometimes wore his heart on his sleeve, and readily betrayed a state of feeling approaching deep affection for any member of the gentler sex who showed by her ready sympathy that she possessed a kindly disposition. In the communication in which the above passage occurs he notes that several of his comrades had similar amorous tendencies. One officer has proposed and been refused, another is forestalled in proposing to the lady of his choice by a more venturesome lover, a third is “attached to a lady at Nevis,” the said lady being a relation of the future Mrs Nelson. He concludes with a reference to a niece of Governor Parry, who “goes to Nevis in the Boreas; they trust any young lady with me, being an old-fashioned fellow.”

On the 12th May 1785 Nelson confides to his brother William that he has made the acquaintance of “a young Widow,” and towards the end of the following month he tells the same correspondent, “between ourselves,” that he is likely to become a “Benedict.... Do not tell.” The lady of his choice was Mrs Nisbet, then twenty-seven years of age and the mother of a boy. We are fortunate in having copies of many of his letters to her, for there is a wealth of affection—scarcely love—and much sage philosophy in them. “My greatest wish is to be united to you;” he writes on the 11th September 1785, “and the foundation of all conjugal happiness, real love and esteem, is, I trust, what you believe I possess in the strongest degree towards you.... We know that riches do not always insure happiness; and the world is convinced that I am superior to pecuniary considerations in my public and private life; as in both instances I might have been rich.” “You are too good and indulgent;” he avers on another occasion, “I both know and feel it: but my whole life shall ever be devoted to make you completely happy, whatever whims may sometimes take me. We are none of us perfect, and myself probably much less so than you deserve.” “Fortune, that is, money, is the only thing I regret the want of, and that only for the sake of my affectionate Fanny. But the Almighty, who brings us together, will, I doubt not, take ample care of us, and prosper all our undertakings. No dangers shall deter me from pursuing every honourable means of providing handsomely for you and yours....”

The messages lack the passionate fire of Napoleon’s notes to Josephine, and on occasion are apt to be rather too business-like for love letters. The romance did not end like the fairy stories, they did not live “happily ever after,” but there is no reason to doubt that Nelson cherished a fond affection for the young widow. “Her sense,” he informs his brother, “polite manners, and to you I may say, beauty, you will much admire: and although at present we may not be a rich couple, yet I have not the least doubt but we shall be a happy pair:—the fault must be mine if we are not.” Subsequent events proved the truth of the latter remark.

In due course Sir Richard Hughes was succeeded in the command of the Leeward Islands by Sir Richard Bickerton. Nelson complains towards the end of 1786 that “A total stop is put to our carrying on the Navigation Laws,” thereby showing that the old problem had by no means been solved so far as he was concerned.

On the 12th March 1787 Nelson and Mrs Nisbet were married at Nevis. Prince William Henry, then captain of the Pegasus and under Nelson’s command, gave away the bride. Three months later the newly-wedded captain was at Spithead, the almost unseaworthy condition of the Boreas making it impossible for her to stand another hurricane season in the West Indies.

Nelson was placed on half-pay, a state which he by no means liked. In May 1788 he had reason to believe that he would be employed again. “I have invariably laid down,” he tells a friend, “and followed close, a plan of what ought to be uppermost in the breast of an Officer: that it is much better to serve an ungrateful Country, than to give up his own fame. Posterity will do him justice: a uniform conduct of honour and integrity seldom fails of bringing a man to the goal of Fame at last.”

Nelson visited Plymouth, Bath, and London, and finally settled down at Burnham Thorpe. His letters reveal the keenness with which he desired to obtain employment. He applied to both Viscount Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty, and to Lord Hood, but all his overtures came to nought. In September 1789 he tells his old friend Locker that “I am now commencing Farmer, not a very large one, you will conceive, but enough for amusement. Shoot I cannot, therefore I have not taken out a license; but notwithstanding the neglect I have met with, I am happy, and now I see the propriety of not having built my hopes on such sandy foundations as the friendships of the Great.”

Not until January 1793 were his dearest wishes granted. “After clouds comes sunshine,” he writes to his wife from London. “The Admiralty so smile upon me, that really I am as much surprised as when they frowned. Lord Chatham yesterday made many apologies for not having given me a Ship before this time, and said, that if I chose to take a Sixty-four to begin with, I should be appointed to one as soon as she was ready; and whenever it was in his power, I should be removed into a Seventy-four. Everything indicates War....”

CHAPTER IV
The Beginning of the Great War
(1793–1794)

“Duty is the great business of a sea officer”

Nelson.

So far back as 1753 Lord Chesterfield prophesied a revolution in France. “All the symptoms,” he said, “which I have ever met with in history, previous to great changes and revolutions in government, now exist and daily increase in France.” Warning rumbles heralded the storm, disregarded and thought of no account by some, full of grave portent to others. It burst in 1789.

At first William Pitt, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, steadily refused to believe that England was menaced by the Power which Fox had termed “the natural enemy of Great Britain.” In January 1792 he assured Parliament that “unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this country when, from the situation of Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace than we may at the present moment.” Either he was over anxious to persuade himself that things were as he would like them to be, or he was sadly mistaken. Pitt had by no means the pugnacious disposition of his father, the famous first Earl of Chatham. He thought that the fire would burn itself out, that it would be of short duration, whereas it steadily gained strength and eventually involved practically every country in Europe. Not until he was convinced that war was inevitable did the youngest Premier who ever handled the reins of a British government accept the French Revolution as of more than local consequence. Hitherto domestic and financial questions had occupied his attention and absorbed his energies. If France ignored the nation which he represented, if she refrained from poaching on British preserves or those of her allies, he was quite content to return the compliment. Then came the decree that the navigation of the river Scheldt should be thrown open. It had previously been guaranteed to the Dutch by Great Britain as well as by other Powers, including France. The execution of Louis XVI. followed, which led to Chauvelin, the French Ambassador, being given his passports. If Pitt had been slumbering he had wooed somnolence with one eye open since the annexation of Savoy. He was now fully awake, calm and self-reliant, for he recognised the inevitable. It came in a declaration of war by the French Convention against Holland and Great Britain on the 1st February 1793. Macaulay, writing from an essentially Whig point of view, states that Pitt’s military administration “was that of a driveller,” but to the impartial historian nothing is further from the truth. He abandoned his schemes of social reform to plunge whole-heartedly into the titanic struggle which was to cost him his life. That he made mistakes is obvious—what statesman has not?—but he fell in his country’s cause as nobly as Nelson at Trafalgar and Moore at Coruña.

When Nelson joined the Agamemnon he was immensely pleased with her. He describes the vessel as “without exception, the finest 64 in the service, and has the character of sailing most remarkably well.” She was a unit of the fleet under Lord Hood, her destination the Mediterranean. The captain was accompanied by his step-son, Josiah, whose first experience of life at sea cannot have been pleasant. Off the Nore the Agamemnon encountered a gale, with the result that Josiah was “a little sea-sick.” However, “he is a real good boy, and most affectionately loves me,” as his mother was informed. Off Cadiz Nelson is able to report, “My Ship is remarkably healthy; myself and Josiah never better.”

While part of the fleet was watering at Cadiz, Nelson dined on board the Concepcion (112), a huge Spanish sail-of-the-line. The experience afforded him food for thought as well as for physical sustenance. He relates the incident to his wife, criticises the four Spanish first-rates in commission at the port as “very fine Ships, but shockingly manned,” and adds that if the crews of the six barges attached to the British vessels had boarded one of these great vessels they could have taken her: “The Dons may make fine Ships,—they cannot, however, make men.” This summing-up of the morale of the Spanish Navy is particularly valuable. A dozen years later, when Napoleon was planning his wonderful combinations to elude the prowess of Nelson, the lack of skill displayed by the Spaniards was a constant source of annoyance both to the Emperor and his naval officers. Their bravery in action during the Trafalgar Campaign is not questioned; their happy-go-lucky code of discipline is on record in documentary evidence. A bull fight which Nelson saw sickened and disgusted him. “We had what is called a fine feast, for five horses were killed, and two men very much hurt: had they been killed, it would have been quite complete.”

The royalists at Toulon had not only openly rebelled against the National Convention, but had requested the assistance of the British fleet, then blockading the harbour of the great southern arsenal, under Hood, who was shortly afterwards joined by Langara in command of a number of Spanish vessels. Nelson’s Agamemnon was a fast sailer. He was therefore sent to Naples with despatches to the courts of Turin and Naples requesting 10,000 troops for the assault of Toulon. The ardent young officer, proud of the service which had been delegated to him, was a little too sanguine as to Hood’s triumph, yet his cheery optimism is tinged with cynicism when he writes to his wife: “I believe the world is convinced that no conquests of importance can be made without us; and yet, as soon as we have accomplished the service we are ordered on, we are neglected. If Parliament does not grant something to this Fleet, our Jacks will grumble; for here there is no prize-money to soften their hardships: all we get is honour and salt beef. My poor fellows have not had a morsel of fresh meat or vegetables for near nineteen weeks; and in that time I have only had my foot twice on shore at Cadiz. We are absolutely getting sick from fatigue. No Fleet, I am certain, ever served their Country with greater zeal than this has done, from the Admiral to the lowest sailor.”

At Naples Nelson was received by the King “in the handsomest manner,” and a promise of troops was exacted without delay. He also made the acquaintance of Lady Hamilton, wife of the British Minister, but the romantic attachment between them did not begin until several years later. His Majesty was on the point of visiting the Agamemnon when the Captain received intelligence from the Prime Minister—Sir John Acton, an English baronet—that a French sail-of-the-line convoying three vessels had anchored under Sardinia. Nelson acknowledges to his brother, on the 27th September 1793, that “Fortune has not crowned my endeavours with success. The French have either got into Leghorn, or are housed in some port of Corsica.... I purpose staying three days in Port, when I shall get to Toulon, for I cannot bear the thought of being absent from the scene of action.” His unsuccessful search for the enemy had precluded him from accompanying such Neapolitan troops as were ready to be sent to the scene of conflict. In addition a large French frigate had put into the neutral port of Leghorn, which gave him further anxiety. As her commander did not think it wise to attempt an issue with the Agamemnon Nelson left him to his own devices. He anchored off Toulon, on the 5th October, to find Lord Hood “very much pleased” with him. This must have been particularly gratifying after so luckless a voyage, but what he most desired was action.

Within a few days of his arrival he received sealed orders from the Admiral directing him to join Commodore Linzee off Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia. His longing to get at the enemy was to be satisfied in an unexpected manner. When he was nearing the island just before dawn on the morning of the 22nd October, five strange sail made their appearance. Later they resolved themselves into four of the enemy’s frigates and a brig. After an engagement which lasted nearly four hours and was ably contested on both sides, the action terminated in the French Melpomène being reduced to “a shattered condition,” and the Agamemnon having her “topmast shot to pieces, main-mast, mizen-mast, and fore-yard badly wounded”—the last expression is typically Nelsonian. The Frenchmen did not attempt to renew the fight; Nelson was prevented from doing so because “The Agamemnon was so cut to pieces, as to be unable to haul the wind towards them.” The enemy’s squadron made for Corsica, Nelson for Cagliari, according to orders, with one man killed and six wounded.

When Nelson joined hands with Linzee he found that the immediate business in hand was to endeavour to bring the Bey of Tunis to reason, in other words, to the British side. The Bey was an exceedingly crafty individual who, believing that the best time for making hay is when the sun shines, had sided with the French because he saw an immediate financial return. Another object was to secure a convoy which had put in at Tunis under a sail-of-the-line, the Duquesne (84) and four frigates, the force with which Nelson had already dealt. As the Bey had purchased the cargoes of the merchantmen at a handsome profit, he was not disposed to change his policy. Nelson hated pacific overtures; he was all for contest on the open sea. “Thank God,” he is able to write to William Suckling, his uncle, on the 5th December 1793, “Lord Hood, whom Linzee sent to for orders how to act, after having negotiated, ordered me from under his command, and to command a Squadron of Frigates off Corsica and the Coast of Italy, to protect our trade, and that of our new Ally, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and to prevent any Ship or Vessel, of whatever Nation, from going into the port of Genoa. I consider this command as a very high compliment,—there being five older Captains in the Fleet....

“Corsica, December 8th:—I have been in sight of the French Squadron all day, at anchor; they cannot be induced to come out, notwithstanding their great superiority....”

On the 19th of the same month Lord Hood vacated Toulon.[12] The troops of the National Convention, aided by the consummate skill of Napoleon Bonaparte, a young officer then beginning his amazing career, had proved too powerful for the British, Spanish, Piedmontese and Neapolitan forces. The British fleet carried away no fewer than 14,000 fugitives from the doomed city, which for hours afterwards was given up to pillage. “Everything which domestic Wars produce usually, is multiplied at Toulon,” Nelson writes to his wife. “Fathers are here [i.e. Leghorn] without their families, families without their fathers. In short, all is horror.... Lord Hood put himself at the head of the flying troops, and the admiration of every one; but the torrent was too strong. Many of our posts were carried without resistance; at others, which the English occupied, every one perished. I cannot write all: my mind is deeply impressed with grief. Each teller makes the scene more horrible. Lord Hood showed himself the same collected good Officer which he always was.” The siege of Toulon was a qualified success. The place was lost, but a dozen French ships and the naval stores were set on fire, and four sail-of-the-line, three frigates, and several smaller vessels were secured as prizes. To cripple the French navy was the most desired of all objects.

Meanwhile Nelson’s division was blockading Corsica, which had passed from the Republic of Genoa into the hands of the French in 1768, to the disgust of the patriotic party headed by Pascal Paoli. It was arranged that Hood should assist the latter to rid the island of the hated “tyrants,” and that in due course it should be ceded to Great Britain. In the preliminary negotiations Nelson was represented by Lieutenant George Andrews, brother of the young lady to whom Nelson had become attached during his visit to France in 1783;[13] the final arrangements were made by a commission of which the gallant Sir John Moore was a member. Hood joined Nelson on the 27th January 1794, and on the following day the fleet encountered “the hardest gale almost ever remembered here.” The Agamemnon “lost every sail in her,” her consorts were dispersed “over the face of the waters.” This delayed the landing of the troops Hood had brought with him, but Nelson had already made a preliminary skirmish on his own account near San Fiorenzo, the first object of the admiral’s attack. He landed 120 soldiers and seamen, emptied a flour storehouse, ruined a water-mill, and returned without the loss of a man, notwithstanding the efforts of the French gunboats to annihilate the little force. Similar expeditions were undertaken at the beginning of February, when four polaccas, loaded with wine for the enemy’s fleet, were burned, four other vessels set on fire, a similar number captured, and about 1,000 tuns of wine demolished.

On the 7th of the same month the inhabitants of Rogliani showed National colours, and the Tree of Liberty—the emblem of the French Revolution—was planted. Nelson struck a flag flying on the old castle with his own hand, and ordered the tree to be cut down. More craft and wine were destroyed. Paoli was highly gratified by this performance, carried out in the true Nelson spirit, and shortly afterwards the Captain tells his wife with conscious pride, “I have had the pleasure to fulfil the service I had been employed upon, since leaving Tunis, neither allowing provisions nor troops to get into Corsica,”—which he describes later as “a wonderfully fine Island”—“nor the Frigates to come out.”

Hood now took over the command at San Fiorenzo and sent Nelson to blockade Bastia. The latter calculated that “it would require 1000 troops, besides seamen, Corsicans, etc., to make any successful attempt” against the place. Lieutenant-General David Dundas, the commander of the military forces, refused his aid unless considerable reinforcements came to hand, although he had at his disposal over 1700 regulars and artillerymen. Hood, relying on Nelson’s statements to a certain extent, endeavoured to persuade Dundas that the task was by no means so difficult as he imagined, but the military authority positively refused to listen to the project. The General entered into the arrangements for the capture of San Fiorenzo with more goodwill, for in his opinion it was a less formidable undertaking. Without in any way disparaging the exertions of the troops it must be admitted that the gallant conduct of the sailors, who dragged heavy guns up the heights in order to place them in a position to cannonade the tower of Mortello, which commanded the situation, contributed largely to the success of the operation. Dundas and Linzee attacked this formidable fortification from the bay with a sail-of-the-line and a frigate on the 8th February with ill success. Its defenders hurled hot shot at the vessels with such precision that they were obliged to move to a less dangerous position. The tower was bombarded from the steeps for two days before its garrison surrendered. Meanwhile Lieutenant-Colonel John Moore had carried the batteries of Fornelli, which led directly to the fall of San Fiorenzo on the 17th instant. The French retreated to Bastia, on the opposite side of the promontory, where Nelson was exerting himself to the utmost. The British troops marched to within three miles of the town, as noted below, and were then ordered to return to San Fiorenzo.

On the 23rd February the Agamemnon and two frigates dislodged the French from a battery of six guns; “they to a man quitted the works.” For Lord Hood’s encouragement he sent him word that shot and shells had been hurled at the vessels “without doing us any damage of consequence: our guns were so exceedingly well pointed, that not one shot was fired in vain.... Indeed, my Lord, I wish the troops were here: Bastia, I am sure, in its present state, would soon fall.”

In describing “our little brush” to his wife, he says it “happened at the moment when part of our Army made their appearance on the hills over Bastia, they having marched over land from St Fiorenzo, which is only twelve miles distant. The General sent an express to Lord Hood at Fiorenzo to tell him of it. What a noble sight it must have been! indeed, on board it was the grandest thing I ever saw. If I had carried with me five hundred troops, to a certainty I should have stormed the Town, and I believe it might have been carried.... You cannot think how pleased Lord Hood has been with my attack on Sunday last, or rather my repelling of an attack which the Enemy made on me.”

Nelson’s ardent temperament, his longing to be up and doing, made him think bitter things of Dundas. He confides to his Journal on the 3rd March 1794 that it is his firm opinion that if the Agamemnon and the attendant frigates could batter down the sea-wall and then land 500 troops they would “to a certainty carry the place.” “God knows what it all means,” he writes to his wife with reference to the general’s retreat. “Lord Hood is gone to St Fiorenzo to the Army, to get them forward again.... My seamen are now what British seamen ought to be, to you I may say it, almost invincible: they really mind shot no more than peas.”

The delay was simply playing into the hands of the enemy, who occupied the time in adding to the defences of the town. One can imagine with what glee Nelson scribbled in his Journal, under date of the 11th March, “Romney joined me from Lord Hood: brought me letters to say that General Dundas was going Home, and that he hoped and trusted the troops would once more move over the Hill.” The crew of the Agamemnon suffered no little privation. “We are absolutely without water, provisions, or stores of any kind, not a piece of canvas, rope, twine, or a nail in the Ship; but we cheerfully submit to it all, if it but turns out for the advantage and credit of our Country.”

Dundas was succeeded by General Abraham D’Aubant, an appointment which gave the Captain of the Agamemnon no satisfaction, for he also thought it improper to attack Bastia. Not to carry to a finish a project already begun was considered by Nelson “a National disgrace.” Hood determined to act contrary to the opinions of his military colleague. “I am to command the Seamen landed from the Fleet,” Nelson tells his brother. “I feel for the honour of my Country, and had rather be beat than not make the attack. If we do not try we never can be successful. I own I have no fears for the final issue: it will be conquest, certain we will deserve it.” “When was a place ever yet taken without an attempt?” he asks Sir William Hamilton. “We must endeavour to deserve success; it is certainly not in our power to command it.... My dear Sir, when was before the time that 2,000 British troops, as good as ever marched, were not thought equal to attack 800 French troops, allowing them to be in strong works? What would the immortal Wolfe have done? as he did, beat the Enemy, if he perished in the attempt. Our Irregulars are surely as good as the Enemy’s; and in numbers we far exceed them. I truly feel sorrow, but I have hope and confidence that all will end well.” Again, “We are but few, but of the right sort: our General at San Fiorenzo not giving us one of the five Regiments he has there lying idle.”

On the 4th April 1794 a definite start was made. Some 1400 troops and sailors, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Villettes and Nelson respectively, landed at the tower of Miomo, some three miles to the north of the town. “At noon the Troops encamped about 2,500 yards from the citadel of Bastia, near a high rock.” The night was employed in felling trees for the purpose of constructing an abattis, a temporary defence formed by placing trees with their boughs sharpened to a point in such a position as to obstruct the enemy and at the same time afford a certain amount of cover for the riflemen. The getting up of the guns and ammunition “was performed with an activity and zeal seldom exceeded.” The French began firing on the night of the 9th and kept it up until daylight without inflicting injury on a single man, although the tents were considerably damaged. After sending a flag of truce to no effect, Hood began the siege in earnest on the 11th. On that day the frigate Proselyte was set on fire by the enemy’s red-hot shot, and as her captain could not get her off the shore, he set his ship on fire in several places and burnt her to the water’s edge so that she might not fall into the hands of the hated Frenchmen.

“Only recollect that a brave man dies but once, a coward all his life long,” Nelson writes to his wife at the beginning of May, when fighting was of daily occurrence and many a brave man fell on either side. His only fear was that D’Aubant might alter his mind and advance with his troops “when Bastia is about to surrender, and deprive us of part of our glory.” This is exactly what happened. On the 19th May the troops from San Fiorenzo were seen marching over the hills. Three days later, as the result of negotiations begun by the enemy, the French colours were struck and the Union Jack hoisted, and on the 24th “the most glorious sight that an Englishman can experience, and which, I believe, none but an Englishman could bring about, was exhibited;—4,500 men laying down their arms to less than 1,000 British soldiers, who were serving as Marines.” Nelson gives the number of British killed at 19, wounded 37, and of the enemy 203 killed, wounded 540, “most of whom are dead.” He himself received “a sharp cut in the back.” Not until the end of January 1795 did he confess to his wife that he had information given to him “of the enormous number of Troops we had to oppose us; but my own honour, Lord Hood’s honour, and the honour of our Country, must have all been sacrificed, had I mentioned what I knew; therefore, you will believe, what must have been my feelings during the whole Siege, when I had often proposals made to me by men, now rewarded, to write to Lord Hood to raise the Siege.”

Calvi, in the north-west of Corsica, was next attacked. “Dragging cannon up steep mountains, and carrying shot and shells, has been our constant employment”; “I am very busy, yet own I am in all my glory: except with you, [Mrs Nelson] I would not be any where but where I am, for the world”; “Hallowell[14] and myself take, each one, twenty-four hours of duty at the advanced battery,” are extracts from some of Nelson’s letters and despatches at this period. On the 12th July 1794 he modestly confesses to Hood that “I got a little hurt this morning: not much, as you may judge by my writing,” but in his Journal he notes, “at seven o’clock, I was much bruised in the face and eyes by sand from the works struck by shot.” The “little hurt” proved far otherwise, and Nelson subsequently became permanently blind in the right eye. At the moment he attached little or no importance to the injury: “Hallowell and myself are both well, except my being half blinded by these fellows, who have given me a smart slap in the face, for which I am their debtor, but hope not to be so long”; “My right eye is cut entirely down; but the Surgeons flatter me I shall not entirely lose my sight of that eye. At present I can distinguish light from dark, but no object: it confined me one day, when, thank God, I was enabled to attend to my duty. I feel the want of it; but, such is the chance of War, it was within a hair’s breadth of taking off my head.” To Mrs Nelson he tones down the news considerably: “Except a very slight scratch towards my right eye, I have received no hurt whatever: so you see I am not the worse for Campaigning: but I cannot say I have any wish to go on with it. This day [4th August 1794] I have been four months landed, except a few days when we were after the French Fleet, and I feel almost qualified to pass my examination as a besieging General.”

Nelson not unnaturally felt himself slighted when his name did not appear in the list of wounded. However, he consoled himself by saying, “Never mind, I’ll have a Gazette of my own.”

As the result of negotiations between the enemy and General Stuart, the commander of the 1500 soldiers who had taken part in the siege, the French garrison marched out with the honours of war on the 10th August, a proceeding not at all in keeping with Nelson’s ideas. However, it was not for him to decide, and he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had materially assisted in the conquest of Corsica. He was specially delighted with the thought that in future the enemy’s navy would be deprived of the pine, tar, pitch, and hemp which the island had formerly sent to Toulon.

1765–1911

Comparison of the “Victory” with the “Hercules”

Photo Stephen Cribb, Southsea

Nelson now looked forward to reaching the quiet waters of Spithead before the end of the year. In this he was disappointed. Hood returned to Toulon, where French naval preparations were going on apace, and Nelson was sent with the Agamemnon to Leghorn in order that his ship might refit and his men have a little rest after their arduous exertions in Corsica. On his own showing, he was “the best in health, but every other Officer is scarcely able to crawl.” When ready for further service Nelson joined the admiral off Toulon, from whence he proceeded to Genoa “to keep peace and harmony” with that Republic by enforcing its neutrality. This mission was not of long duration, and on the last day of September 1794 he was directed to proceed off Gourjean and place himself under the orders of Vice-Admiral Hotham, Hood’s successor as Commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean.

At this stage of our story it may not be unfitting to study the accompanying table,[15] which reveals at a glance the active list of ships, exclusive of harbour and stationary vessels, troop and storeships, ships building, etc., in the British Navy, at the beginning of the Great War and in 1805:

When we come to compare the Navy of Nelson’s day with that of our own, the result is astounding. The estimates for 1910–11 amount to £40,603,700. Of this sum, £13,279,830 is for ships either under construction or about to be laid down. There are 95 battleships and first-class cruisers afloat or building, and there is a total strength of 710 vessels, including torpedo gunboats, destroyers, torpedo boats, and submarines.[16] The entire personnel, exclusive of the reserves, numbers 131,000.

The accompanying illustration gives an exact idea of the enormous difference in size between the Victory and the Hercules. The former, launched in 1765, has a gross tonnage of 2,164; the latter—at the time of writing, the largest British battleship afloat—has a displacement of 20,250 tons, over nine times that of the Victory. Nelson’s flagship is still afloat, but who can tell when the Hercules will be obsolete? Progress demands many and costly victims.

CHAPTER V
“I wish to be an Admiral”
(1795–96)

“A brave man runs no more risk than a coward”

Nelson.

The French fleet at Toulon mustered fifteen ships; Hotham had fourteen at his disposal, including one Neapolitan sail-of-the-line. On the 8th March 1795 it was known that the enemy was at sea with the object of retaking Corsica, but it was not until the morning of the 13th, that the Admiral flew the signal for a general chase. While this was proceeding the Ça-Ira (84) collided with the Victorie, which precluded her from keeping up with her consorts. Seizing his opportunity, the captain of the British frigate Inconstant (36) pounced down upon the huge battleship and immediately brought her to action. A French frigate, the Vestale, then went to the assistance of the Ça-Ira, and took her in tow. Considerable damage had been done on board the Inconstant owing to the double fire to which she was subjected. Nelson, keenly alert to the slightest advantage, got abreast of the two Frenchmen, and continued to wage a gallant fight for nearly two hours until called off by Hotham because of the near approach of several of the enemy’s ships. The action was thereby rendered indecisive. Nelson describes the Ça-Ira as “absolutely large enough to take Agamemnon in her hold. I never saw such a ship before.”

During the night the Sans Culottes (120) separated from her consorts, and the Censeur (74), with the damaged Ça-Ira in tow, was also unable to keep up with the remainder of the French fleet. This enabled the Bedford (74) and the Captain (74) to attempt to capture them on the following morning. The British ships, as they bore down on the enemy, were received by a tremendous fire, which they could not return. For nearly an hour and a half the fight was sustained until the Captain was little more than a floating wreck, and the distressed state of the Bedford made her recall imperative. Eventually the Ça-Ira and the Censeur surrendered to other vessels of the fleet. “On the 14th,” Nelson relates with reference to the Agamemnon, “although one of the Van-ships, and in close Action on one side and distant Action on the other for upwards of three hours, yet our neighbours suffered most exceedingly, whilst we comparatively suffered nothing. We had only six men slightly wounded. Our sails were ribbons, and all our ropes were ends. Had our good Admiral have followed the blow, we should probably have done more, but the risk was thought too great.” His ambition is aflame when he considers the possibilities of the day. “In short, I wish to be an Admiral, and in the command of the English Fleet; I should very soon either do much, or be ruined. My disposition cannot bear tame and slow measures.... At one period I am ‘the dear Nelson,’ ‘the amiable Nelson,’ ‘the fiery Nelson’: however nonsensical these expressions are, they are better than censure, and we are all subject and open to flattery.”

Several weeks were spent in refitting, a necessary process too slowly carried out. Meanwhile six French vessels slipped out of Brest harbour and made their way to Toulon. Then there was delay in sending reinforcements not at all to Nelson’s liking. He desires “a complete victory,” and his correspondence betrays his anxiety for the appearance of Hood, “the best Officer, take him altogether, that England has to boast of.” His absence was “a great national loss;” Hotham’s continued appearance, although he did not definitely say so, a calamity.

On the 6th June 1795 Nelson was appointed a Colonel of Marines, the welcome intelligence being conveyed to him by his father. This meant an increase of income not to be despised, as well as “an appointment certainly most flattering to me, as it marks to the world an approbation of my conduct.”

Nelson, with the Agamemnon and a small squadron of frigates, was now sent “to co-operate with the Austrian General de Vins, in driving the French out of the Riviera of Genoa,” and “to put an actual stop to all trade between Genoa, France, and the places occupied by the armies of France,” the invasion of Italy then being an object much to be desired by the Republicans. On the 6th of July he sighted a French fleet of seventeen sail and six frigates, an overpowering force it would have been madness to attack had the opportunity been given to him. His little squadron was chased to San Fiorenzo, where Hotham was stationed but unable to get out owing to contrary winds. It was not until the 13th that the enemy was again seen. There was a general chase and a partial action: “Hotham has no head for enterprise, perfectly satisfied that each month passes without any losses on our side,” is Nelson’s criticism.

He still endeavoured to be more or less of a freelance. “I am acting, not only without the orders of my Commander-in-chief,” he tells his wife, “but in some measure contrary to them. However, I have not only the support of his Majesty’s Ministers, both at Turin and Genoa, but a consciousness that I am doing what is right and proper for the service of our King and Country. Political courage in an Officer is as highly necessary as military courage.” His position was difficult in the extreme, for while Genoa posed as a neutral the French did very much as they pleased, and the Austrian Army, subsidised by England, was “slow beyond all description.” He found it impossible to patrol the coast as he would have done had he been able to procure sufficient cruisers and transports. However, he managed to secure a convoy of provisions and ammunition, various attacks were made, and for more than a year his service was one of continual worry and dissatisfaction.

With the resignation of Hotham and the coming of Sir John Jervis in November 1795 the naval policy in the Mediterranean underwent a change. The latter officer believed in watching an enemy’s port at a convenient distance so as to render pursuit easy if necessary. With the exception of two or three squadrons on special service the fleet therefore took up its station off Toulon.

The victory of the French at the battle of Loano, on the 24th November 1795, was followed by their occupation of the Riviera of Genoa as a matter of course, the Austrians retreating into Piedmont. A certain amount of blame was laid on Nelson, who, as already noted, was in the neighbourhood of Genoa in order to see that the pretended neutrality was observed. Rumour had it that he and his officers had connived at the landing of supplies for the French army. This drew from him an indignant letter to Lord Grenville. It was certain that Genoa was a hot-bed of sedition and French partisanship. An Austrian commissary had been robbed, and Voltri temporarily captured; it was said that an insurrection of the peasantry was imminent and that men were publicly enlisted for service in the French army. The recruits were to embark in French ships lying in the port of Genoa and in coasters at Borghetto and to proceed to a landing-place near Voltri. Nelson, far from sympathising with the malcontents, prevented the sailing of the expedition by leaving Vado Bay and proceeding to the scene of the trouble. He placed the Agamemnon across the harbour-mouth and allowed none of the enemy’s vessels to leave.

It is a mournful letter which he pens to Sir Gilbert Elliot, Viceroy of Corsica, on the 4th December 1795. “My campaign is closed,” he begins, “by the defeat of the Austrian Army, and the consequent loss of Vado and every place in the Riviera of Genoa, and I am on my way to refit poor Agamemnon and her miserable Ship’s company at Leghorn. We are, indeed, Sir, worn out; except six days I have never been one hour off the station.” The despatch is too lengthy to quote in full, but it is significant that he adds, “My being at Genoa, although contrary to my inclination, has been the means of saving from 8000 to 10,000 men, and amongst others, General de Vins himself, who escaped by the road, which, but for me, the Enemy would have occupied. I must, my dear Sir, regret not having more force.”

Nelson, who now made the acquaintance of Jervis, early discerned that his senior officer was a man more after his own heart than either Hotham or Sir Hyde Parker, who had held the command during the interim. He was offered either a 90-gun or a 74-gun ship, but preferred to keep to the well-tried Agamemnon, for whose crew he cherished a fond affection. He was confident that in the succeeding Spring the victorious French would “make a great exertion to get into Italy.” This they did, but by land and not by sea as Nelson anticipated. After refitting Nelson was still kept on the lookout, descents on Italy being thought not improbable, but in February 1796 he was off Toulon for a short time to spy on the doings of the French fleet. His health was by no means good: “I am grown old and battered to pieces, and require some repairs. However, on the whole, I have stood the fag better than could be expected.” In the following month Nelson became a Commodore, hoisting his distinguishing pennant on the Captain (74) a little later, the condition of the ship which had served him so long and so well being such that she could no longer be patched up to withstand the gales without being overhauled in England.

The war was going from bad to worse so far as the allies were concerned. The armies of the King of Sardinia and Piedmont and of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire acted in separate bodies, whereas they would have been superior to the enemy had they concentrated. The battle of Montenotte, fought on the 12th April 1796, took the Austrians completely by surprise, and enabled Napoleon to boast that his “title of nobility” dated from this great victory. Millesimo, Dego, Mondovi, and Cherasco fell, France and Sardinia made peace, followed by an armistice between Naples and the Republic which preluded a cessation of hostilities in the following October.

Although Nelson was gradually rising in the service he was by no means a wealthy man. “If we have a Spanish war,” he confides to his brother on the 20th June 1796, “I shall yet hope to make something this war. At present, I believe I am worse than when I set out—I mean in point of riches, for if credit and honour in the service are desirable, I have my full share. Opportunities have been frequently offered me, and I have never lost one of distinguishing myself, not only as a gallant man, but as having a head; for, of the numerous plans I have laid, not one has failed, nor of opinions given, has one been in the event wrong. It is this latter which has perhaps established my character more than the others; and I hope to return in as good health as I set out with.”

The French having taken possession of Leghorn, Nelson was ordered to blockade that important port. At the same time he received intelligence from Sir Gilbert Elliot that there was a likelihood of the enemy making an attempt on the fortress of Porto Ferrajo in order that Elba might be used as a stepping-stone to Corsica. The place was secured by the British without resort to the sword, the good understanding between the military and naval forces being in marked contrast to Nelson’s previous experience at Bastia, “a farther proof of what may be effected by the hearty co-operation of the two services.” He was soon back at his former station, carrying out his work efficiently and to Jervis’s complete satisfaction. The Commodore’s letter to his wife, dated the 2nd August 1796, reflects his high spirits and relates two anecdotes of more than ordinary interest. After telling Mrs Nelson that “Wherever there is anything to be done, there Providence is sure to direct my steps. Credit must be given me in spite of envy,” he proceeds as follows:

“Even the French respect me: their Minister at Genoa, in answering a Note of mine, when returning some wearing apparel that had been taken, said, ‘Your Nation, Sir, and mine, are made to show examples of generosity, as well as of valour, to all the people of the earth.’...

“I will also relate another anecdote, all vanity to myself, but you will partake of it: A person sent me a letter, and directed as follows, ‘Horatio Nelson, Genoa.’ On being asked how he could direct in such a manner, his answer, in a large party, was ‘Sir, there is but one Horatio Nelson in the world.’ The letter certainly came immediately. At Genoa, where I have stopped all their trade, I am beloved and respected, both by the Senate and lower Order. If any man is fearful of his Vessel being stopped, he comes and asks me; if I give him a Paper, or say, ‘All is right,’ he is contented. I am known throughout Italy; not a Kingdom, or State, where my name will be forgotten. This is my Gazette.”

Towards the end of September Jervis was directed by the Home Authorities to assist the Viceroy in the evacuation of Corsica, “and with the fleet to retreat down the Mediterranean.” This was deemed advisable by the knowledge that war was likely to be declared against Great Britain by Spain, that Power having entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with the ever victorious French Republic on the 12th September 1796. Nelson, who had but recently assisted at the capture of the little island of Capraja, which he hoped with some reason would “give additional security to the Kingdom of Corsica,” was not pleased when duty called him to undertake the evacuation of the country so inseparably associated with Napoleon. “God knows what turn the minds of the Corsicans may take when the measure comes to be known,” he tells Jervis. Leaving the Mediterranean was a sore trial, “a measure which I cannot approve. They at home do not know what this Fleet is capable of performing; anything, and everything. Much as I shall rejoice to see England”—he was writing to his wife—“I lament our present orders in sackcloth and ashes, so dishonourable to the dignity of England, whose Fleets are equal to meet the World in arms; and of all the Fleets I ever saw, I never beheld one in point of officers and men equal to Sir John Jervis’s, who is a Commander-in-chief able to lead them to glory.”

The Commodore was next instructed to embark the garrison of Porto Ferrajo preparatory to the abandonment of Elba. Certain of the troops were then to be landed at Gibraltar and the remainder at Lisbon: “The object of our Fleet in future is the defence of Portugal, and keeping in the Mediterranean the Combined Fleets,” namely those of Spain and France. While on his way to carry out his important mission Nelson was to meet with a surprising adventure.

CHAPTER VI
Nelson’s First Great Fight: The Battle of Cape St Vincent
(1797)

“To have had any share in it is honour enough for one man’s life, but to have been foremost on such a day could fall to your share alone”

Sir Gilbert Elliot.

Sir John Jervis had concentrated his fleet in Gibraltar Bay. Nelson was making his way from thence to Elba in the Minerve, accompanied by the Blanche, both 32-gun frigates. All went well until late in the evening of the 19th December 1796, when they fell in with two Spanish frigates named the Santa Sabina (40) and the Ceres (40) off Cartagena. The Commodore at once instructed Captain Cockburn to bring the Minerve to close action with the former. The struggle which ensued lasted for nearly three hours. The lengthy resistance of the enemy is proof that there were still gallant officers in the naval service of what was once the mightiest Sea Power in the world, now long since fallen from her high estate. Captain Don Jacobo Stuart fought his ship with praiseworthy calm and daring. Not until 164 of the 286 men who comprised the crew of the Santa Sabina had been killed or wounded did the Don strike his colours. The vessel had then lost both main and fore-masts, and the deck must have resembled a shambles. The Blanche had also behaved well, although the action was trifling compared with the determined encounter between the other vessels. The approach of three additional ships prevented the captain of the Blanche from following up his advantage and capturing the Ceres, which had hauled down her colours and sustained considerable damage to her sails and rigging.

Nelson’s prize was put in charge of Lieutenants Culverhouse and Hardy and taken in tow by the Minerve. They had not proceeded far before a third Spanish frigate came up and engaged the Minerve, necessitating the casting-off of the Santa Sabina, thereby leaving the two young, but able, junior officers to their own resources. The encounter lasted a little over half-an-hour, when the frigate having had enough of Nelson’s pommelling hauled off. The vessels from which Captain D’Arcy Preston of the Blanche had escaped were now approaching, their commanders having been attracted by the sound of distant firing. Dawn revealed them to Nelson as two sail-of-the-line and a frigate. By hoisting English colours above the Spanish flag on the prize the enemy’s Admiral was attracted to her, a ruse which enabled the Minerve and the Blanche to escape, for it would have been foolish for Nelson to run the risk of sacrificing them because of the prize crew. Indeed, the situation was so perilous that Nelson afterwards wrote to Sir Gilbert Elliot, “We very narrowly escaped visiting a Spanish prison.” Neither before nor since have British Tars behaved in finer fashion. They sailed the Santa Sabina until she was practically a hulk, when she was recaptured.

“The merits of every officer and man in the Minerve and her Prize,” Nelson reports to Jervis, “were eminently conspicuous through the whole of this arduous day.” He likewise said the kindest things of his antagonist: “My late prisoner, a descendant from the Duke of Berwick, son of James II., was my brave opponent; for which I have returned him his sword, and sent him in a Flag of truce to Spain ... he was reputed the best Officer in Spain, and his men were worthy of such a Commander; he was the only surviving Officer.” He reserved more picturesque details for his brother.

“When I hailed the Don,” he relates, “and told him, ‘This is an English Frigate,’ and demanded his surrender or I would fire into him, his answer was noble, and such as became the illustrious family from which he is descended—‘This is a Spanish Frigate, and you may begin as soon as you please.’ I have no idea of a closer or sharper battle: the force to a gun the same, and nearly the same number of men; we having two hundred and fifty. I asked him several times to surrender during the Action, but his answer was—‘No, Sir; not whilst I have the means of fighting left.’ When only himself of all the Officers were left alive, he hailed, and said he could fight no more, and begged I would stop firing.” Culverhouse and Hardy, after having been conveyed to Carthagena, were subsequently exchanged for the unlucky but brave Don, and returned to the Minerve.

“I’ll not lose Hardy!”

H. C. Seppings Wright

Nelson duly anchored at Porto Ferrajo, and met with a lack of co-operation on the part of the military authority similar to some of his previous experiences. Lieutenant-General de Burgh, in command of the troops, declined to evacuate the town. Nelson, having no other alternative, removed the naval stores, left a number of sloops and gunboats for use in emergency, and sailed for Gibraltar, which he reached on the 9th February 1797, having looked into the enemy’s ports of Toulon and Cartagena on the way. Two days later the Commodore again set out in his endeavour to join Jervis, and was chased by two Spanish ships. It was then that a memorable incident occurred in the lives of both Nelson and Hardy, names inseparably associated. A man fell overboard, and Hardy and a crew in the jolly-boat hastened to the rescue. The current was strong, the poor fellow sank, and the boat rapidly drifted in the direction of one of the oncoming vessels, so that Hardy stood a very good chance of again falling into the hands of the enemy. “I’ll not lose Hardy; back the mizen topsail,” shouted Nelson without a moment’s hesitation. This was done, and the lieutenant and his sailors were rescued. The Spaniards were completely put off their guard. Led to imagine by the peculiar manœuvre of the Minerve that other British ships had been sighted, they gave up the chase. No further exciting incidents occurred as the doughty frigate ploughed the blue waters of the Mediterranean, although the Spanish fleet was passed at night. On the 13th Nelson joined Jervis, off Cape St Vincent, and was able to assure him that a battle appeared imminent. “Every heart warmed to see so brave and fortunate a warrior among us,” says Lieutenant G. S. Parsons, then not quite thirteen years of age and a first-class volunteer on board the Barfleur (98). During the succeeding hours of darkness the low and distant rumble of signal guns proved the truth of the Commodore’s assertion. The enemy’s fleet of twenty-seven sail-of-the-line and twelve 34-gun frigates was certainly hastening in the direction of Jervis. It had sailed from Cadiz for a very important purpose. After concentrating with the Toulon fleet the allies were to attempt to raise the English blockade of Brest, thus releasing the important armament there, gain command of the Channel, and invade Ireland. We shall have occasion to notice that in later years Napoleon conceived a similar idea. It is open to question whether Admiral Don Josef de Cordova would have been quite so eager for the fray had he known the full British strength. He believed it to be nine sail-of-the-line, whereas fifteen battleships and seven smaller vessels were awaiting his coming. When the signal-lieutenant of the Barfleur exclaimed of the oncoming leeward line of vessels, “They loom like Beachy Head in a fog! By my soul, they are thumpers, for I distinctly make out four tier of ports in one of them, bearing an admiral’s flag,” he expressed plain, honest fact. “Don Cordova, in the Santissima Trinidad,” Jervis correctly surmised, “and I trust in Providence that we shall reduce this mountain into a mole hill before sunset.” The Spanish flag-ship was the largest vessel afloat, and carried 130 guns. She must have towered above the insignificant Captain (74), to which Nelson had transferred his broad pennant, much like an elephant over a Shetland pony. Nor was the Santissima Trinidad the only vessel built on what was then considered to be colossal lines. No fewer than six of the Spanish three-deckers carried 112 guns each; two of them had 80 guns each, and seventeen were 74-gun ships. England was represented by two sail-of-the-line of 100 guns each, two of 98 each, ten of 74 each, and one of 64.

“The British had formed one of the most beautiful and close lines ever beheld,” Parsons tells us. “The fog drew up like a curtain, and disclosed the grandest sight I ever witnessed. The Spanish fleet, close on our weather bow, were making the most awkward attempts to form their line of battle, and they looked a complete forest huddled together; their commander-in-chief, covered with signals, and running free on his leeward line, using his utmost endeavours to get them into order; but they seemed confusion worse confounded. I was certainly very young, but felt so elated as to walk on my toes, by way of appearing taller, as I bore oranges to the admiral and captain, selecting some for myself, which I stored in a snug corner in the stern-galley, as a Corps de réserve. The breeze was just sufficient to cause all the sails to sleep, and we were close hauled on the starboard tack, with royals set, heading up for the Spanish fleet. Our supporting ship, in the well-formed line, happened to be the Captain, and Captain Dacres hailed to say that he was desired by the vice-admiral to express his pleasure at being supported by Sir Horatio Nelson.”[17]

Men famous in British naval annals were present at this memorable contest, fought on St Valentine’s Day, 1797. Jervis was in the Victory (100), Troubridge in the Culloden (74), Collingwood in the Excellent (74), and Saumarez in the Orion (74). Twenty-four years before Troubridge and Nelson had sailed together in the Seahorse; Collingwood was the Commodore’s life-long friend, and Saumarez, whom the great little man did not like, was to become second in command at the battle of the Nile eighteen months later.

“England,” the Admiral averred, “was in need of a victory,” and he gave her one. Jervis was indeed a doughty champion of his country’s rights at sea. “The British Admiral made the signal to prepare for battle,” says an eye-witness. “As he walked the quarter-deck the hostile numbers were reported to him, as they appeared, by signal. ‘There are eight sail-of-the-line, Sir John.’ ‘Very well, sir.’ ‘There are twenty-five sail-of-the-line.’ ‘Very well, sir.’ ‘There are twenty-seven sail, Sir John,’ and this was accompanied by some remark on the great disparity of the forces. ‘Enough, sir—no more of that: the die is cast; and if there were fifty sail-of-the-line, I would go through them.’” Sir Benjamin Hallowell-Carew, then a supernumerary on the quarter-deck of the Victory, disregarding the austerity of naval etiquette and thinking only of the determined utterance of the grim old veteran, so far forgot himself as to give the Admiral a hearty slap on the back.

The Spanish fleet was in two divisions of twenty-one and six sail-of-the-line respectively, separated by a distance of some miles. Three of the main squadron joined the latter a little later, while one “sailed away.” Jervis’s fleet, in single column, separated the two lines. By a skilful manœuvre he held in check the smaller division and brought his ships to bear on the larger, the Culloden being the first vessel to attack, which elicited warm praise of Troubridge from Jervis. The fight at once became general and was waged for some time without decisive results. Then several of the leading Spanish ships endeavoured to get round the rear of the British. Had they succeeded in doing so it would have enabled them to join the detached leeward division and escape to Cadiz. Nelson at once discerned the project, and without hesitation placed the Captain in the path of the oncoming ships. He “dashed in among the Spanish van,” to quote Parsons, “totally unsupported, leaving a break in the British line—conduct totally unprecedented, and only to be justified by the most complete success with which it was crowned....”

The Captain, the smallest 74 in the fleet, stood a good chance of being annihilated by the oncoming squadron of Spanish ships, which included the Santissima Trinidad, a gigantic four-decker. Lieutenant-Colonel Drinkwater, who was an eye-witness, tells us that for a considerable time Nelson “had to contend not only with her, but with her seconds ahead and astern, of three decks each. While he maintained this unequal combat, which was viewed with admiration, mixed with anxiety, his friends were flying to his support: and the enemy’s attention was soon directed to the Culloden, Captain Troubridge; and, in a short time after, to the Blenheim, of 90 guns, Captain Frederick; who, very opportunely, came to his assistance.

“The intrepid conduct of the Commodore staggered the Spanish admiral, who already appeared to waver in pursuing his intention of joining the ships cut off by the British fleet; when the Culloden’s arrival, and Captain Troubridge’s spirited support of the Captain, together with the approach of the Blenheim, followed by Rear-Admiral Parker, with the Prince George, Orion, Irresistible, and Diadem, not far distant, determined the Spanish admiral to change his design altogether, and to make the signal for the ships of his main body to haul their wind, and make sail on the larboard tack.

“Advantage was now apparent, in favour of the British squadron, and not a moment was lost in improving it. As the ships of Rear-Admiral Parker’s division approached the enemy’s ships, in support of the Captain, and her gallant seconds, the Blenheim and Culloden, the cannonade became more animated and impressive. The superiority of the British fire over that of the enemy, and its effects on the enemy’s hulls and sails, were so evident that there was no longer any hesitation in pronouncing a glorious termination of the contest.

“The British squadron at this time was formed in two divisions, both on the larboard tack[18]: Rear-Admiral Parker, with the Blenheim, Culloden, Prince George, Captain, Orion, and Irresistible, composed one division, which was engaged with the enemy’s rear; Sir John Jervis, with the other division, consisting of the Excellent, Victory, Barfleur, Namur, Egmont, Goliath, and Britannia, was pressing forward in support of his advanced squadron, but had not yet approached the real scene of action.

“While the British advanced squadron warmly pressed the enemy’s centre and rear, the Admiral meditated, with his division, a co-operation which must effectually compel some of them to surrender.

“In the confusion of their retreat, several of the enemy’s ships had doubled on each other; and, in the rear, they were three or four deep. It was, therefore, the British admiral’s design to reach the weather-most of these ships; and, then, to bear up, and rake them all in succession, with the seven ships composing his division. His object, afterwards, was to pass on to the support of his van division; which, from the length of time they had been engaged, he judged might be in want of it. The casual position, however, of the rear ships of his van division, prevented his executing this plan. The admiral, therefore, ordered the Excellent, the leading ship of his own division, to bear up; and, with the Victory, he himself passed to leeward of the enemy’s rearmost and leewardmost ships; which, though almost silenced in their fire, continued obstinately to resist the animated attack of all their opponents.

“Captain Collingwood, in the Excellent, in obedience to the admiral’s orders, passed between the two rearmost ships of the enemy’s line; giving to the one most to windward, a 74, so effectual a broadside, in addition to what had been done before, that her captain was induced to submit. The Excellent afterwards bore down on the ship to leeward, a three-decker: but, observing the Orion engaged with her, and the Victory approaching her, he threw into her only a few discharges of musquetry, and passed on to the support of the Captain, at that time warmly engaged with a three-decker, carrying a flag. His interference here was opportune, as the continual and long fire of the Captain had almost expended the ammunition she had at hand, and the loss of her fore-topmast, and other injuries she had received in her rigging, had rendered her nearly ungovernable.

“The Spanish three-decker had lost her mizen-mast; and, before the Excellent arrived in her proper station to open on this ship, the three-decker dropped astern aboard of, and became entangled with, a Spanish two-decker, that was her second. Thus doubled on each other, the Excellent gave the two ships her fire; and then moved forwards to assist the headmost ships in their attack on the Spanish admiral, and the other ships of the enemy’s centre.

“Meanwhile, Sir John Jervis, disappointed in his plan of raking the enemy’s rear ships, and having directed, as before observed, the Excellent to bear up, ordered the Victory to be placed on the lee-quarter of the rearmost ship of the enemy, a three-decker; and having, by signal, ordered the Irresistible and Diadem to suspend their firing, threw into the three-decker so powerful a discharge, that her commander, seeing the Barfleur ... ready to second the Victory, thought proper to strike to the British Commander-in-chief. Two of the enemy’s ships had now surrendered; and the Lively frigate, and Diadem, had orders to secure the prizes. The next that fell were the two with which Commodore Nelson was engaged.

“While Captain Collingwood so nobly stepped in to his assistance, as already mentioned, Captain R. W. Miller, the Commodore’s captain, was enabled to replenish his lockers with shot, and prepare for a renewal of the fight. No sooner, therefore, had the Excellent passed on, than the gallant Commodore renewed the battle.

“The three-decker with which he was before engaged having fallen aboard her second, that ship, of 84 guns, became now the Commodore’s opponent. To her, therefore, he directed a vigorous fire; nor was it feebly returned, as the loss on board the Captain evinced, nearly twenty men being killed and wounded in a very few minutes. It was now that the various damages already sustained by that ship, through the long and arduous conflict which she had maintained, appearing to render a continuance of the contest in the usual way precarious, or perhaps impossible, that Commodore Nelson, unable to bear the idea of parting with an enemy of which he had so thoroughly assured himself, instantly resolved on a bold and decisive measure; and determined, whatever might be the event, to attempt his opponent sword in hand. The boarders were accordingly summoned, and orders given to lay his ship, the Captain, on board the enemy.”

“At this time,” says Nelson, “the Captain having lost her fore-topmast, not a sail, shroud, or rope left, her wheel shot away, and incapable of further service in the line, or in chase, I directed Captain Miller to put the helm a-starboard, and calling for the Boarders, ordered them to board. The Soldiers of the 69th Regiment, with an alacrity which will ever do them credit, and Lieutenant Pierson of the same Regiment, were amongst the foremost on this service. The first man who jumped into the Enemy’s mizen-chains was Captain Berry, late my First Lieutenant (Captain Miller was in the very act of going also, but I directed him to remain); he was supported from our spritsail-yard, which hooked in the mizzen-rigging. A soldier of the 69th Regiment having broke the upper quarter-gallery window, jumped in, followed by myself and others as fast as possible. I found the cabin-doors fastened, and some Spanish Officers fired their pistols; but having broke open the doors, the soldiers fired, and the Spanish Brigadier (Commodore with a Distinguishing Pendant) fell, as retreating to the quarter-deck, on the larboard side, near the wheel. Having pushed on the quarter-deck, I found Captain Berry in possession of the poop, and the Spanish ensign hauling down. I passed with my people and Lieutenant Pierson on the larboard gangway to the forecastle, where I met two or three Spanish Officers prisoners to my seamen, and they delivered me their swords.

“At this moment, a fire of pistols or muskets opened from the Admiral’s stern gallery of the San Josef, I directed the soldiers to fire into her stern; and, calling to Captain Miller, ordered him to send more men into the San Nicolas, and directed my people to board the First-rate, which was done in an instant, Captain Berry assisting me into the main chains. At this moment a Spanish Officer looked over the quarter-deck rail, and said—‘they surrendered;’ from this most welcome intelligence it was not long before I was on the quarter-deck, when the Spanish Captain, with a bow, presented me his Sword, and said the Admiral was dying of his wounds below. I asked him, on his honour, if the Ship were surrendered? he declared she was; on which I gave him my hand, and desired him to call to his Officers and Ship’s company, and tell them of it—which he did; and on the quarter-deck of a Spanish First-rate, extravagant as the story may seem, did I receive the Swords of vanquished Spaniards: which, as I received, I gave to William Fearney, one of my bargemen, who put them with the greatest sangfroid under his arm.”

Nelson afterwards went on board the Irresistible. It was then late in the afternoon, and he did not think it advisable to take possession of the Santissima Trinidad because he was convinced that “a night Action with a still very superior Fleet” must inevitably follow. Jervis received the Commodore with great affection and was not sparing with well-deserved praise. The hero of the day was no less generous in acknowledging the services of Collingwood. He described his conduct as “noble and gallant.” Nelson had no truer friend than the commander of the Excellent, whose admiration for the Commodore’s genius knew no bounds. “The highest rewards are due to you and Culloden:” Collingwood replied, “you formed the plan of attack—we were only accessories to the Dons’ ruin; for had they got on the other tack, they would have been sooner joined, and the business would have been less complete.”

While the interest of the fight centres about the Captain, each ship contributed to the victory. In addition to Nelson’s vessel, the Colossus and Culloden were badly battered but fortunately the loss in men was remarkably small. Four prizes fell to the British fleet on St Valentine’s Day, 1797.

To his wife, Nelson confesses that “the more I think of our late action, the more I am astonished; it absolutely appears a dream.... The Spanish war will give us a cottage and a piece of ground, which is all I want. I shall come one day or other laughing back, when we will retire from the busy scenes of life: I do not, however, mean to be a hermit; the dons will give us a little money.” This must not be taken too seriously, for within forty-eight hours of the battle he had confided to Sir Gilbert Elliot that “to take hereditary Honours without a fortune to support the Dignity, is to lower that Honour it would be my pride to support in proper splendour.” He did not wish a “baronetage,” but on the other hand, “There are Honours, which die with the possessor, and I should be proud to accept, if my efforts are thought worthy of the favour of my King.” George III. created him a Knight of the Bath; Jervis became Earl of St Vincent. Six days after the battle Nelson was promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral of the Blue, not as a reward for his meritorious conduct but as his due according to seniority.

A beautiful gold casket containing the much-coveted Freedom of the City and a sword of honour was given to Sir Horatio, as we must now call him, by the Corporation of London, and Norwich, where some of his school days were spent, likewise conferred its Freedom upon him. Nelson on his part presented the county town of Norfolk with the sword of the Spanish Rear-Admiral who had died of his wounds on board the San Josef. Other cities extended “the right hand of friendship” to the hero, including Bath and Bristol. Nelson’s father was overcome when he heard of his son’s brilliant success: “The height of glory to which your professional judgment, united with a proper degree of bravery, guarded by Providence, has raised you, few sons, my dear child, attain to, and fewer fathers live to see. Tears of joy have involuntarily trickled down my furrowed cheek. Who could stand the force of such general congratulation? The name and services of Nelson have sounded throughout the City of Bath, from the common ballad-singer to the public theatre. Joy sparkles in every eye, and desponding Britain draws back her sable veil, and smiles.”

Although he had clearly disobeyed Jervis’s order for the ships to attack in succession, the Commodore’s daring action had rendered the battle decisive. Sir Robert Calder, the Captain of the Fleet, is said to have protested against Nelson’s conduct, but the Admiral’s reply, “If you ever commit such a breach of orders I will forgive you,” was entirely worthy of the stern old disciplinarian. Jervis was not one of those officers who bestow praise on every possible occasion, both in and out of season. He was just, and therefore recognised the extremely valuable service which Nelson had rendered to him. We shall have occasion to see how Calder himself behaved at a certain critical period, when a stroke of genius such as had been displayed at St Vincent would have robbed Nelson of the glory of Trafalgar.[19]

CHAPTER VII
From Triumph to Failure: The Attempt on Santa Cruz
(1797)

“I have had flattery enough to make me vain, and success enough to make me confident.”

Nelson.

All hopes on the part of Britain’s enemies for the invasion of the British Isles were quashed for a time by the victory off Cape St Vincent. Although the distressed Spanish fleet reached Cadiz safely, minus four sail-of-the-line which the British had captured, there was no likelihood at the moment of the ships showing their “noses” out of port, many of the aforesaid noses being much out of joint. For several weeks Nelson was engaged in a fruitless search for a treasure-ship, convoyed by three sail-of-the-line, supposed to be making for Spain; but in April 1797 he was directed by the Admiral to blockade Cadiz, a task not altogether devoid of incident if for no other reason than that no neutral vessel was permitted to enter or leave the port without his permission. He was particularly concerned as to the welfare of the garrison at Elba. The Commander-in-Chief believed that the soldiers were on their way to Gibraltar; Nelson was of opinion that “If the French get out two sail-of-the-line, which I am confident they may do, our Troops are lost, and what a triumph would that be to them!” At his own suggestion he was sent to Porto Ferrajo to make enquiries about the luckless little army. The convoy had started, and he met it off the south of Corsica. He learned of Napoleon’s wonderful success in the subjugation of Italy and the humbling of Austria, admitting that “there seems no prospect of stopping these extraordinary people,” the French. Shifting from the Captain, which required to be docked, he hoisted his rear-admiral’s flag on the Theseus, and was given command of the inshore squadron of the fleet blockading the great seaport, “in sight of the whole Spanish Fleet. I am barely out of shot of a Spanish Rear-Admiral.” The citizens not unnaturally dreaded a bombardment; Nelson confessed, “I long to be at them.” At the same time he reverted to the old idea of a cottage in Norfolk. “The imperious call of honour to serve my Country,” and a not ignoble desire to add to his prize money in order to give his wife “those little luxuries which you so highly merit,” did not, however, permit him to give more than a passing thought to retirement.

On the night of the 3rd July 1797 all the barges and launches of the British blockading fleet, carrying carronades, ammunition and pikes, were placed at Nelson’s disposal by the Earl of St Vincent for the bombardment of Cadiz. A spirited action took place between the British and Spanish sailors, the latter using mortar gunboats and armed launches. The Spanish met with a repulse and three prizes were taken. Referring to the blockade in his Autobiography, Nelson says: “It was during this period that perhaps my personal courage was more conspicuous than at any other part of my life,” the remark obviously referring to the following incident. The barge of the Commander of the enemy’s gunboats came up alongside Nelson’s little craft, containing thirteen persons in all, and a desperate hand-to-hand fight ensued. The Rear-Admiral would have lost his life had it not been for the good services of John Sykes, the coxswain, one of those humble heroes of whom one hears too little, so predominant are the greater figures of history. The enemy paid dearly for the exploit. Eighteen of the crew were killed, several wounded, the Commander was taken prisoner, and the boat captured. On the 5th of the same month Cadiz was again bombarded, and according to the official despatch, the cannonade “produced considerable effect in the Town and among the Shipping.” The Earl of St Vincent now proved how strict a disciplinarian he was. The crews of some of the ships had shown unmistakable signs of mutiny, and the Court Martial having passed sentence on four of the ringleaders, the Commander-in-Chief saw no reason for delaying the execution of the sentence. He had the men hanged on a Sunday, a few hours after they had been found guilty. Nelson strongly approved of the execution, “even although it is Sunday. The particular situation of the service requires extraordinary measures.” It is significant that no signs of dissatisfaction made themselves felt in any of the Rear-Admiral’s ships, but Nelson’s words show that he would not have condoned anything of the kind.

An attack on Santa Cruz, where it was believed that the Principe d’Asturias, a ship of considerable value belonging to the Philippine Company, had taken shelter, next fell to Nelson’s lot. He had already hinted to the Admiral that the conquest of Teneriffe was an object very dear to him, which he was confident “could not fail of success, would immortalize the undertakers, ruin Spain, and has every prospect of raising our Country to a higher pitch of wealth than she has ever yet attained....” His plan was to utilise the 3700 soldiers from Elba; “I will undertake with a very small Squadron to do the Naval part.” The scheme fell through, to be revived by the Earl himself, but it was to be carried out without the assistance of the troops. Three sail-of-the-line and the same number of frigates were placed at Nelson’s disposal. Ladders, sledge-hammers, wedges, axes, additional iron ram-rods, and a sleigh for dragging cannon formed a necessary part of the equipment. A perusal of the regulations recommended by the Rear-Admiral shows that he took the most elaborate precautions to ensure success. Captain Thomas Troubridge, of the Culloden, was given command of the entire force, Captain Oldfield directing the Marines, Lieutenant Baynes his detachment of the Royal Artillery. The first attempt was made on the night of the 21st and failed, largely owing to adverse weather. As a consequence the spot which Nelson had indicated as most suitable for landing was not reached, and dawn disclosed the whereabouts of the little expedition to the Spaniards. It was also found impossible to get the battle-ships close enough to the fort to create a diversion by bombardment while the storming party attempted to gain the heights.

Any blame which may have been attributable to Troubridge was minimised by Nelson in his despatch to the Admiral, “all has hitherto been done which was possible, without effect.” He therefore decided to command in person, “and to-morrow my head will probably be crowned with either laurel or cypress.” Did some premonition of disaster lead him to write to the Earl of St Vincent to recommend his step-son “to you and my Country,” and to add that “should I fall in the service of my King and Country” the Duke of Clarence would “take a lively interest” in Josiah Nisbet? It was certainly not his way of saying things at this stage of his career, although we know that in 1805 he avowed that Trafalgar would be his last battle.

Nelson wounded at Santa Cruz

R. Caton Woodville

On the 24th Nelson was able to get his ships nearer land than on the previous occasion. He and nearly a thousand men set out in small boats at about eleven o’clock at night for the Mole, where they were to disembark. The oars being muffled and dead silence enjoined, the enemy did not discover their approach till they were within half gun-shot of the appointed rendez-vous. Immediately thirty or forty cannon blazed out, the sharp ping of musket shots rent the air, but, says Nelson, “nothing could stop the intrepidity of the Captains leading the divisions. Unfortunately, the greatest part of the Boats did not see the Mole, but went on shore through a raging surf, which stove all the Boats to the left of it.”

With the companies of four or five boats and two Captains, the Rear-Admiral stormed the landing-place in the darkness and took possession of it in the presence of several hundred of the enemy. They then proceeded to spike the guns, but were driven back by the heavy fire which seemed to issue from every available point. Scarcely a man escaped death or a wound. Nelson was shot through the right elbow as he was stepping from the boat. With rare presence of mind he quietly transferred the sword he carried to his left hand. This weapon, once the property of his uncle Maurice Suckling, was treasured by him almost more than any other possession. He was not going to leave that of all things on Spanish soil! Young Nisbet happened to be near his step-father at the moment he received his wound, and placed him in the bottom of the boat. He then held the arm so as to staunch the blood, untied the silk handkerchief round his neck and bound up the injury as best he could. After passing under the enemy’s batteries the few men who had regained the little craft bent to the oars and eventually pulled out of range of the guns, but not before some of the crew of the Fox, who had been flung into the sea owing to the sinking of that cutter, had been rescued by them. Someone suggested that Nelson should be taken to the nearest vessel for surgical treatment. He would not hear of this because the captain’s wife happened to be on board and he had no intelligence of her husband’s fate. Whatever agonies Nelson suffered, as the sadly denuded crew made their way to the Theseus, were kept to himself; scarcely a groan escaped his lips.

“At two o’clock [A.M.],” says a midshipman who saw the sorrowful boatload, “Admiral Nelson returned on board, being dreadfully wounded in the right arm with a grape-shot. I leave you to judge of my situation, when I beheld our boat approach with him who I may say has been a second father to me, his right arm dangling by his side, whilst with the other he helped himself to jump up the Ship’s side, and with a spirit that astonished every one, told the surgeon to get his instruments ready, for he knew he must lose his arm, and that the sooner it was off the better. He underwent the amputation with the same firmness and courage that have always marked his character.”

Captain Troubridge and his men landed near the citadel after most of the ammunition had been soaked by the surf, which was so violent that it filled the boats and stove them against the treacherous rocks. With a handful of heroes he proceeded to the Square, previously appointed as the meeting-place of the various parties before the final attack. The scaling ladders having been lost, and no further men making their appearance after an hour’s wait, he set out to meet Captains Hood and Miller, whom he believed had effected a landing elsewhere. “By day-break,” runs his official report to Nelson, “we had collected about eighty Marines, eighty Pike-men, and one hundred and eighty small-arm Seamen. These, I found, were all that were alive that had made good their landing. With this force, having procured some ammunition from the Spanish prisoners we had made, we were marching to try what could be done with the Citadel without ladders; but found the whole of the streets commanded by field-pieces, and upwards of eight thousand Spaniards and one hundred French under arms, approaching by every avenue. As the boats were all stove, and I saw no possibility of getting more men on shore—the ammunition wet, and no provisions—I sent Captain Hood with a Flag of Truce to the Governor, to say I was prepared to burn the Town, which I should immediately put in force if he approached one inch further; and, at the same time, I desired Captain Hood to say it would be done with regret, as I had no wish to injure the inhabitants; that if he would come to my terms, I was ready to treat, which he readily agreed to....”

The terms were, “That the Troops, etc., belonging to his Britannic Majesty shall embark with all their arms of every kind, and take their Boats off, if saved, and be provided with such other as may be wanting; in consideration of which it is engaged on their part they shall not molest the Town in any manner by the Ships of the British Squadron now before it, or any of the Islands in the Canaries; and prisoners shall be given up on both sides.”

Troubridge’s game of bluff succeeded. His Excellency Don Antonio Gutierrez, Commandant-General of the Canary Islands, rid himself of the invaders and was rewarded by Nelson with a cask of English beer and a cheese!

It says much for Nelson’s indomitable pluck and recuperative powers, as well as for his keen interest in the service, that he allowed only two days to intervene before he penned a letter with his left hand to the Admiral. That he was depressed is obvious, that he still had a fund of grim humour is equally evident by the quaint postscript. The communication runs as follows:

Theseus, July 27th, 1797.

“My Dear Sir,

“I am become a burthen to my friends, and useless to my Country; but by my letter wrote the 24th,[20] you will perceive my anxiety for the promotion of my son-in-law, Josiah Nisbet.[21] When I leave your command, I become dead to the World; I go hence, and am no more seen. If from poor Bowen’s loss,[22] you think it proper to oblige me, I rest confident you will do it; the Boy is under obligations to me, but he repaid me by bringing me from the Mole of Santa Cruz.

“I hope you will be able to give me a frigate, to convey the remains of my carcase to England. God bless you, my dear Sir, and believe me, your most obliged and faithful,

“Horatio Nelson.

“You will excuse my scrawl, considering it is my first attempt.

“Sir John Jervis, K.Bth.”

In another despatch to his senior officer the leader of the ill-fated expedition avers that “A left-handed Admiral will never again be considered as useful, therefore the sooner I get to a very humble cottage the better, and make room for a better man to serve the State.” The noble Earl’s reply must have been as healing balm to the wounded body and depressed spirit of the man whose brilliant success had been followed so quickly by disastrous failure. “Mortals cannot command success;” he begins, “you and your Companions have certainly deserved it, by the greatest degree of heroism and perseverance that ever was exhibited.” Such praise from St Vincent was praise indeed, and he whimsically concludes by saying that he will “bow to your stump to-morrow morning, if you will give me leave.”

On the 20th August 1797, Nelson struck his flag on the Theseus and hoisted it on the Seahorse, in which ship he made “a very miserable passage home.” He arrived at Spithead on the 1st September and proceeded to Bath. To his brother he reported that his health “never was better, and my arm is in the fairest way of soon healing.” He intended to journey to London, perhaps pay a short visit to Norfolk “for a few days, especially if a decent house is likely to be met with near Norwich; but Wroxham very far indeed exceeds my purse. Bath will be my home till next spring.” On the other hand Lady Nelson wrote on the same date that her husband suffered “a good deal of pain—the arm is taken off very high, near the shoulder,” and he only obtained rest by resorting to opium.

If he never minimised a victory in his communications Nelson certainly did not remark unduly on his wounds. In writing to the Duke of Clarence he merely referred to “my accident,” and passed on to assure his royal friend “that not a scrap of that ardour with which I have hitherto served our King has been shot away.” It is only right, however, to add that in communicating with the Comptroller of the Navy he was perhaps a little unjust to Troubridge in the matter of the initial attempt on Santa Cruz: “Had I been with the first party, I have reason to believe complete success would have crowned our endeavours.[23] My pride suffered; and although I felt the second attack a forlorn hope, yet the honour of our Country called for the attack, and that I should command it. I never expected to return, and am thankful.”

On the 27th September, Nelson was invested with the Ensigns of the Order of the Bath by George III. at St James’s Palace. In addition he was granted a pension of £1000 a year, having been “engaged against the Enemy upwards of one hundred and twenty times.” He became a popular hero, but as he himself said, “Success covers a multitude of blunders, and the want of it hides the greatest gallantry and good conduct.” Compared to the victory off Cape St Vincent the Santa Cruz fiasco was of little moment. Kind-hearted John Bull dismissed the latter incident and thought only of the former.

CHAPTER VIII
In Chase of the French Fleet
(1798)

“No Frigates!—to which has been, and may again, be attributed the loss of the French Fleet.”

Nelson.

The year 1797 had been a particularly trying one for Nelson both as regards health and reputation; the succeeding twelve months were to test his powers of endurance and his skill even more. The services of the one-eyed, one-armed little man were not to be dispensed with, as he had suggested in a moment of despondency. He neither retired to “a very humble cottage,” although he had purchased a small property known as Round Wood, near Ipswich, nor made room for “a better man.” Truth to tell, there was no better man, and for once the Admiralty knew its business. Nelson hoisted his flag as Rear-Admiral of the Blue on board the Vanguard (74) at Spithead on the 29th March 1798, sailed for Lisbon with a convoy on the 10th April, and joined his old fleet off Cadiz on the last day of that month, the times “big with events.” Within forty-eight hours he was ordered by St Vincent to ascertain the destination of an immense armament which was preparing at Toulon and other ports in the Mediterranean. For this important service a squadron of three sail-of-the-line, including his own ship, three frigates and a sloop were placed at his disposal. A small French corvette was captured, and by closely examining each member of the crew it was ascertained that although Bonaparte had appeared at the great French port it was not believed he would embark. The most important point of all, namely, the destination of the expedition, was not revealed: “all is secret.”

While off Toulon, Nelson encountered one of the worst gales he ever experienced. His own account of the fight with this universal enemy lacks the picturesque details given by Captain Berry, of the Vanguard, and we shall therefore quote from Berry’s letter. Nelson tells his wife that “it was the Almighty’s goodness, to check my consummate vanity”; his more matter-of-fact captain sees only a natural cause. Just before sunset on Sunday, the 20th of May, it became evident that the spell of fine weather, which had been enjoyed hitherto, was over. The wind increased in violence so much that it became necessary to furl all the sails with the exception of a main storm-staysail. “At about two,” says Berry, “the main-topmast went over the side, with the top-sailyard full of men. I dreaded the inquiry of who were killed and drowned; fortunately only one man fell overboard, and one fell on the booms, and was killed on the spot. At half-past two the mizen-topmast went over the side; the foremast gave an alarming crack, and at a quarter past three went by the board with a most tremendous crash, and, what was very extraordinary, it fell in two pieces across the forecastle. Our situation was really alarming: the wreck of the fore-topmast and foremast hanging over the side, and beating against the Ship’s bottom; the best bower-anchor was flung out of its place, and was also thumping the bottom; the wreck of the main topmast swinging violently against the main-rigging, every roll endangering the loss of the mainmast, which we expected to fall every moment: thus circumstanced, we endeavoured, though with but little hopes of success, to wear,[24] having no head-sail, and knowing we were driving on an Enemy’s shore. Fortunately there was a small rag of the sprit-sail left, and by watching a favourable moment, we got her on the other tack. The bowsprit did not go, though it was sprung in three different places. The Ship rolled and laboured dreadfully, but did not make any water, more than we shipped over all. We cut the anchor from the bows, and got clear of the wreck, with the loss of a boat and top-sailyard, etc., and were not apprehensive of our bottom being damaged.... For want of masts we rolled dreadfully. The storm did not abate till Tuesday afternoon, which enabled the Alexander to take us in tow. Our situation on Tuesday night was the most alarming I ever experienced....” At one time Nelson was of opinion that both ships would go down, and wished the Vanguard to be cast off. Captain Alexander Ball, with whom the Rear-Admiral had struck up a slight acquaintance at St Omer on the occasion of his visit to France in 1783, would not hear of it, and brought the vessels safely to the shelter of the islands of San Pietro. After being patched up the three sail-of-the-line again proceeded on their way to Toulon, minus the smaller craft which had parted company long since, and eventually returned to St Vincent’s fleet.

Fortune had played Nelson false. The Toulon fleet had escaped on the 19th May. While the three English battle-ships were riding out the gale it was making for Genoa, Ajaccio, and Civita Vecchia to rally transports. The destination of the expedition was Egypt; Malta the first object of prey. Shortly after the signature of the Treaty of Campo Formio on the 17th October 1797, which pacified the Continent for a time, Napoleon had returned in triumph to Paris from his victorious Italian Campaign. He was then appointed by the French Directory Commander of the Army of England, so called because the purpose for which it was brought into being was the subjugation of that country. Napoleon certainly devoted much of his time to the project, but soon came to the conclusion that the plan was not practicable at the moment. He dreamed of Oriental conquest, of occupying Egypt and invading India: “We may change the face of the world!” How could the command of the Channel be secured when Admiral Lord Bridport commanded a formidable fleet in those waters and frequently appeared off Brest, when Admiral Lord Duncan patrolled the North Sea, and the naval highways of Spithead, the Downs, the Nore, St George’s Channel, and the Bay of Biscay were strongly guarded by British fleets or divisions? The Mediterranean seemed the only vulnerable point, for the Earl of St Vincent’s fleet was alone stationed within striking distance of that great inland sea.

It is necessary at this point to briefly refer to the naval strength of Great Britain as compared with that of France. At the beginning of 1798 the Republic possessed fifty-seven sail-of-the-line, forty-six frigates and seventy-two smaller vessels, to which must be added nine remnants of the Venetian navy and whatever forces could be commanded from Spain and Holland. Fourteen sail-of-the-line, seventeen frigates, and three cutters were on the stocks in French shipyards. During the same year England had no fewer than one hundred and twenty line-of-battle ships and over five hundred smaller vessels at her disposal. The recent mutiny at the Nore had shown that there was some dissatisfaction in the British naval service, but the ships were not undermanned as in France, they were in finer condition, and the victories off Cape St Vincent and Camperdown had acted as a stimulant. If those before the mast occasionally grumbled, nothing further was heard of organised insubordination.

The Admiralty had now sent a reinforcement of eight battle-ships and two fire-ships to the Admiral, who was told “to lose no time in detaching from your Fleet a Squadron, consisting of twelve Sail-of-the-line, and a competent number of Frigates, under the command of some discreet Flag-Officer, into the Mediterranean, with instructions to him to proceed in quest of the said Armament;[25] and on falling in with it, or any other Force belonging to the Enemy, to take or destroy it.” The officer was also “to remain upon this service so long as the provisions of the said Squadron will last, or as long as he may be enabled to obtain supplies from any of the ports in the Mediterranean.” According to later orders supplies were to be exacted “from the territories of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the King of the Two Sicilies, the Ottoman Territory, Malta, and ci-devant Venetian Dominions now belonging to the Emperor of Germany.” The Dey of Algiers, the Bey of Tunis, and the Bashaw of Tripoli were also believed to be friendly. Lord Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty, suggested Nelson as the most likely man for this extremely important service. Several eminent personages claimed to have aided him in his selection, including Sir Gilbert Elliot and the King.

Sir Horatio was accordingly given command of a squadron which numbered thirteen line-of-battle ships, all carrying seventy-four guns, and one fifty-gun ship, the Leander. St Vincent’s selection awoke the ire of Nelson’s two seniors in the Earl’s fleet, namely, Sir William Parker and Sir John Orde. As we have seen, the Admiral had scarcely a voice in the matter, and subsequent events abundantly confirmed the wisdom of the appointment. Unfortunately there were no frigates, “the eyes of a fleet.” As to the destination of Napoleon and his army of adventurers, the Rear-Admiral was not far wrong when he wrote to Lord Spencer on the 15th June, after interrogating the captain of a Tunisian cruiser who had seen them on the 4th off Trapani, that “If they pass Sicily, I shall believe they are going on their scheme of possessing Alexandria, and getting troops to India—a plan concerted with Tippoo Saib, by no means so difficult as might at first view be imagined; but be they bound to the Antipodes, your Lordship may rely that I will not lose a moment in bringing them to Action, and endeavour to destroy their Transports.” Off Messina he heard that the French had taken possession of Malta. After discussing the matter with his captains he decided to sail for Alexandria, which he reached two days before the enemy’s arrival. He then “stretched the Fleet over to the Coast of Asia,” and “passed close to the southern side of Candia, but without seeing one Vessel in our route.” This was the position on the 12th July, when he was still “without the smallest information of the French Fleet since their leaving Malta.” A week later the squadron anchored in Syracuse harbour to obtain water and provisions, set off again on the 25th, and on the 28th the important news was obtained that about a month before the French fleet had been seen sailing in the direction of the south-east from Candia. To Nelson this intelligence meant but one destination—Alexandria. His surmise was correct: “I attacked at sunset on the 1st of August, off the Mouth of the Nile.”

CHAPTER IX
The Battle of the Nile
1798

As long as Egypt’s pyramids shall stand,
Long as the Nile shall fertilize her land;
So long the voice of never-dying fame
Shall add to England’s glory Nelson’s name!

W. T. Fitzgerald.

It is difficult for a landsman to appreciate the joy with which Nelson’s captains, his “Band of Brothers,” as he called them, as well as the men of lower rank, beheld the enemy moored in line of battle parallel with the shore in Aboukir Bay on what might well be termed “the glorious first of August.” They had been searching the Mediterranean for long, weary weeks, anxious to try conclusions with Napoleon’s fleet, but thwarted at every turn by lack of information. At last they were face to face, led by an admiral of unequalled resolution in whom they placed implicit confidence.

“The utmost joy,” says Berry,[26] “seemed to animate every breast on board the Squadron, at sight of the Enemy; and the pleasure which the Admiral himself felt, was perhaps more heightened than that of any other man, as he had now a certainty by which he could regulate his future operations. The Admiral had, and it appeared most justly, the highest opinion of, and placed the firmest reliance on, the valour and conduct of every Captain in his Squadron. It had been his practice during the whole of the cruize, whenever the weather and circumstances would permit, to have his Captains on board the Vanguard, where he would fully develop to them his own ideas of the different and best modes of attack, and such plans as he proposed to execute upon falling in with the Enemy, whatever their position or situation might be, by day or by night. There was no possible position in which they could be found, that he did not take into his calculation, and for the most advantageous attack of which he had not digested and arranged the best possible disposition of the force which he commanded. With the masterly ideas of their Admiral, therefore, on the subject of Naval tactics, every one of the Captains of his Squadron was most thoroughly acquainted; and upon surveying the situation of the Enemy, they could ascertain with precision what were the ideas and intentions of their Commander, without the aid of any further instructions; by which means signals became almost unnecessary, much time was saved, and the attention of every Captain could almost undistractedly be paid to the conduct of his own particular Ship, a circumstance from which, upon this occasion, the advantages to the general service were almost incalculable.”

We must now try to understand the strength and position of the French fleet. It consisted of thirteen line-of-battle ships, three carrying eighty guns and one one hundred and twenty guns, and four frigates. Napoleon, who was far away adding triumph to triumph, had left Admiral Brueys with three alternative plans. He could enter the port of Alexandria, Aboukir Roads, or sail for Corfu, leaving the transports at Alexandria. Brueys soon found that the harbour scarcely held sufficient water for the navigation of his largest ships. Once inside, it would be next to impossible to get them out in front of a hostile fleet on account of the narrow exit. He chose Aboukir Bay, in a position some ten miles from the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. Here he anchored his thirteen battle-ships, with great gaps between them, in a line roughly parallel with the shore, and flanked by gunboats and frigates. His van was placed as close to Aboukir Island as was practicable. Dr Fitchett has rather overstated the case in saying that “a battery of mortars on the island guarded, as with a sword of fire, the gap betwixt the headmost ship and the island.”[27] In another place he also refers to the head of the French line being “protected by a powerful shore battery.”[28] There were certainly a few guns, but “a sword of fire” suggests a heavy armament, and Napoleon had occasion later to severely criticise the Admiral’s arrangement in this matter.[29] Brueys was ill, his marines had almost got out of hand, many of the sailors were raw recruits, and subversive of discipline, and some of the vessels were scarcely seaworthy. In tonnage and guns the French had the advantage, in morale and fighting capacity, the British were first.

Nelson determined to sail between Brueys’ line and the shallows. Five British ships, led by the Goliath, crossed the bows of the first ship of the French van, inshore of the enemy’s line, and anchored abreast of one of the Frenchmen, while three more, including Nelson’s Vanguard, stationed themselves on the outer side. Some of the captains for various reasons were unable to take up their correct fighting positions, the Culloden, for instance, struck a shoal and took no part in the battle. The enemy’s van was surrounded and conquered; the centre became engaged; the rear alone escaped, Villeneuve, its commander, making off with two battleships and two frigates without attempting to fight.

“The actions,” Captain Berry relates, “commenced at sunset, which was at thirty-one minutes past six, p.m., with an ardour and vigour which it is impossible to describe. At about seven o’clock total darkness had come on, but the whole hemisphere was, with intervals, illuminated by the fire of the hostile Fleets. Our Ships, when darkness came on, had all hoisted their distinguishing lights, by a signal from the Admiral. The Van ship of the Enemy, Le Guerrier, was dismasted in less than twelve minutes, and, in ten minutes after, the second ship, Le Conquérant, and the third, Le Spartiate, very nearly at the same moment were almost dismasted. L’Aquilon and Le Peuple Souverain, the fourth and fifth Ships of the Enemy’s line, were taken possession of by the British at half-past eight in the evening. Captain Berry, at that hour, sent Lieutenant Galwey, of the Vanguard, with a party of marines, to take possession of Le Spartiate, and that officer returned by the boat, the French Captain’s sword, which Captain Berry immediately delivered to the Admiral, who was then below, in consequence of the severe wound which he had received in the head during the heat of the attack. At this time it appeared that victory had already declared itself in our favour, for, although L’Orient, L’Heureux, and Tonnant were not taken possession of, they were considered as completely in our power, which pleasing intelligence Captain Berry had likewise the satisfaction of communicating in person to the Admiral. At ten minutes after ten, a fire was observed on board L’Orient, the French Admiral’s Ship, which seemed to proceed from the after part of the cabin, and which increased with great rapidity, presently involving the whole of the after part of the Ship in flames. This circumstance Captain Berry immediately communicated to the Admiral, who, though suffering severely from his wound, came up upon deck, where the first consideration that struck his mind was concern for the danger of so many lives, to save as many as possible of whom he ordered Captain Berry to make every practicable exertion. A boat, the only one that could swim, was instantly dispatched from the Vanguard, and other Ships that were in a condition to do so, immediately followed the example; by which means, from the best possible information, the lives of about seventy Frenchmen were saved.[30] The light thrown by the fire of L’Orient upon the surrounding objects, enabled us to perceive with more certainty the situation of the two Fleets, the colours of both being clearly distinguishable. The cannonading was partially kept up to leeward of the Centre till about ten o’clock, when L’Orient blew up with a most tremendous explosion. An awful pause and death-like silence for about three minutes ensued, when the wreck of the masts, yards, etc., which had been carried to a vast height, fell down into the water, and on board the surrounding Ships. A port fire from L’Orient fell into the main royal of the Alexander, the fire occasioned by which was, however, extinguished in about two minutes, by the active exertions of Captain Ball.

“The flame that lit the battle’s wreck”

Charles Dixon, R.I., from a sketch by C. W. Cole

“After this awful scene, the firing was recommenced with the Ships to leeward of the Centre, till twenty minutes past ten, when there was a total cessation of firing for about ten minutes; after which it was revived till about three in the morning, when it again ceased. After the victory had been secured in the Van, such British ships as were in a condition to move, had gone down upon the fresh Ships of the Enemy, which occasioned these renewals of the fight, all of which terminated with the same happy success in favour of our Flag. At five minutes past five in the morning, the two Rear ships of the Enemy, Le Guillaume Tell and Le Généreux, were the only French ships of the Line that had their colours flying. At fifty-four minutes past five, a French frigate, L’Artemise, fired a broadside and struck her colours; but such was the unwarrantable and infamous conduct of the French Captain, that after having thus surrendered, he set fire to his Ship, and with part of his crew, made his escape on shore. Another of the French frigates, La Sérieuse, had been sunk by the fire from some of our Ships; but as her poop remained above water, her men were saved upon it, and were taken off by our boats in the morning. The Bellerophon, whose masts and cables had been entirely shot away, could not retain her situation abreast of L’Orient, but had drifted out of the line to the lee side of the Bay, a little before that Ship blew up. The Audacious was in the morning detached to her assistance. At eleven o’clock, Le Généreux and Guillaume Tell, with the two frigates, La Justice and La Diane, cut their cables and stood out to sea, pursued by the Zealous, Captain Hood, who, as the Admiral himself has stated, handsomely endeavoured to prevent their escape; but as there was no other Ship in a condition to support the Zealous, she was recalled. The whole day of the 2nd was employed in securing the French ships that had struck, and which were now all completely in our possession, Le Tonnant and Timoleon excepted; as these were both dismasted, and consequently could not escape, they were naturally the last of which we thought of taking possession. On the morning of the third, the Timoleon was set fire to, and Le Tonnant had cut her cable and drifted on shore, but that active officer, Captain Miller, of the Theseus, soon got her off again, and secured her in the British line.”

It was a decisive victory, the only kind of victory that appealed to Nelson, who styled it a “conquest.” Of the thirteen French battleships, nine were taken, one was blown up, one was burnt, and two escaped; one frigate sank, another was destroyed by fire, and two got away. Napoleon had been deprived of his only means of communication with France. Thus the sea swallowed his triumphs. From a political point of view the battle of the Nile paved the way for the formation of the Second Coalition against France, in which six Powers took part, namely, England, Russia, Austria, Turkey, Naples, and Portugal.

Nelson received his wound by being struck in the forehead by a piece of iron. The skin was torn so badly that it hung over his face, the blood streaming down with such profusion that he was afraid his left eye had gone like the right. “I am killed”; he cried to Captain Berry, “remember me to my wife.” But the Admiral had been “killed” in battle before, and the intense pain of the wound sufficiently justified the exclamation. He was carried to the cockpit, the cut bound up, and strict quiet enjoined. This was easier said than done with a patient such as Nelson. His abnormal mentality speedily gained ascendancy over his physical infirmities. He soon declared that he felt better, and shortly afterwards had so far recovered as to begin a dictated despatch to the Admiralty. On the Captain informing him that L’Orient was ablaze he insisted on clambering to the deck, as we have seen. Berry gave him his arm, and together they witnessed the disaster. Nelson was certainly more fortunate than Brueys, who was shot almost in two.

On the 2nd August the Admiral returned Public Thanksgiving on the Vanguard, an example he desired to be followed on every ship “as soon as convenient.” He also took the opportunity to thank the men of the squadron for the part they had played in the late action: “It must strike forcibly every British Seaman, how superior their conduct is, when in discipline and good order, to the riotous behaviour of lawless Frenchmen.”

In those days precedent was a fetish. To depart from what had previously obtained was not to be thought of, much less suggested. For this reason Nelson was created a Baron, the lowest rank in the peerage, but the highest that had been conferred “on an officer of your standing,” as he was informed. In addition he was voted a pension of £2000 a year, which was also to be paid to his two next heirs.

Mention of the “great and brilliant Victory” was made in the King’s Speech at the opening of Parliament, its organiser received the thanks of both Houses, as well as of the Parliament of Ireland, and many foreign potentates and British Corporations paid him honour. Among the numerous presents he received were two boxes set with diamonds, a superb diamond aigrette, a gold-headed cane, pieces of valuable plate, and a coffin. The latter, made of wood and iron from the ill-fated L’Orient, was sent to him by Captain Hallowell. By a strange coincidence Thanksgiving services were held in the churches of the United Kingdom on the 21st October, a date ever associated with Nelson, because of Trafalgar. It may be thought that there was unnecessary delay, but it must be remembered that the wonders of telegraphy were then undreamed of. News of the victory was not received in London until the fifty-seventh day after the event. “God be praised,” writes the Earl of St Vincent, “and you and your gallant band rewarded by a grateful Country, for the greatest Achievement the history of the world can produce.” Perhaps this noble sentiment from the Commander-in-chief was valued above the insignificant rewards of the Government.

To “Fighting” Berry Nelson entrusted the charge of his despatches for the Admiral, for which purpose he was given the Leander (50). With grim irony Fate played a trick entirely unworthy so gallant an officer. On the 18th August, off Gozo, near Candia, the Généreux, which it will be remembered escaped from Nelson’s vengeance at the Nile, appeared on the horizon. The frigate attempted to show “a clean pair of heels,” but recognising that the enemy was gaining in the race, sail was shortened and the decks cleared for action. The brave defenders of the Leander resisted manfully for over six hours until the mastless, rudderless hulk could be fought no longer. Berry, who was wounded, together with the officers and crew were landed at Corfu and thence sent to Trieste, where the officers were released on parole, and the crew kept prisoners. On being exchanged, the captain received the honour of knighthood, a reward richly deserved and valiantly won. Berry got even with the French after all, for in 1799 he turned the tables on the victors by capturing the Généreux with Nelson’s flagship, the Foudroyant.