Nelson: Britannia's God of War

by Andrew Lambert

  The year after Korda’s film was released, an edited version of Mahan’s Life was published by Penguin, pioneers of the cheap paperback. The unnamed editor cut ‘a considerable amount of material, dealing with Nelson’s early career and domestic life’. In his foreword, A. V. Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, stressed that the book would enable thousands ‘to learn from Mahan something about the creation by Nelson of the tradition of Britain’s mission at sea, which has done so much to make today’s victories possible.’ Alexander also implied that Mahan’s book had been chosen to express the nation’s gratitude to the Americans, now that all had combined under ‘the flags of freedom’.33

  The physical locations associated with Nelson, too, played an important role as a focus for national identity throughout the war. Down in Portsmouth, the Victory was visited by countless heads of state, military leaders and other worthies, paying tribute to the man who died saving Europe from tyranny. She was hit by German bombs, but fortunately no serious damage was done. Her survival, like that of St Paul’s, only increased the talismanic quality of the man. HMS Nelson, meanwhile, served throughout the war, being mined twice, and hit by a torpedo. After forming the backbone of the initial British war effort, securing command of the sea and escorting several crucial Malta convoys, she spent the second half of the war supporting a succession of amphibious landings, on Sicily, and Salerno in July to September 1943. The success of these landings led Italy to seek an armistice, the official ceremony taking place on board the Nelson in the Grand Harbour at Malta on 29 September 1943. In June 1944 Nelson supported the D-Day landings, and completed her service operating on the Malayan coast against the Japanese. At the end of the war, the natural focal point for the VE Day and VJ Day celebrations was Trafalgar Square: civilians mixed freely and jubilantly amid a sea of uniforms from many nations. However, the man the square commemorated passed out of the minds of the nation, as it turned from war to peace, from danger to opportunity. Nelson, like Churchill, was a hero for times of war: now new heroes were needed.

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  In the aftermath of a second total war, Britain was exhausted and bankrupt – and yet she recovered, as the Beveridge Report and the arrival of the Welfare State gave people a new belief in their leaders and new enthusiasm for the future. Perhaps it was time to shed the old ideas of Britain, and the old heroes who sustained it? The Empire, rigid class barriers, deference and deprivation were consigned to the history books, and with them went much of the justification for Nelson. Having been transformed by the late Victorians into the creator,or saviour of their Empire, he was now guilty by association of all the crimes and misdemeanours that it soon became fashionable to load onto Britain. He was a symbol from the bad old past, and would soon be subverted and mocked. Once again the historical Nelson was irrelevant to this process: it was the Victorian image, not the Georgian hero, who earned the ridicule of the anti-imperialists. Even the strategic pattern suggested the time had come to abandon Nelson: in an age of jet bombers, ballistic missiles and atomic bombs, surely the future lay with air power?

  After the war HMS Nelson resumed her role as Flagship of the Home Fleet, but only briefly, and after a period in the training squadron she was sold in February 1948, suffering the ultimate indignity of being used to test RAF bombs before being scrapped. She was replaced not by a new aircraft carrier, or a powerful cruiser, but by a concrete accommodation block in Portsmouth – an absurd waste of the most powerful name in naval history. It is inexplicable and shameful that this situation should continue into the twenty-first century: no other navy in the world would waste the names of their greatest naval heroes – Nelson, Collingwood, Drake – on barrack blocks and training establishments. Surely Britain can find a ship to honour the greatest name in naval history?

  Nelson’s family fared little better after the war than the ship that bore their name. Their pension had expired in 1913, and the family had not prospered: Trafalgar House had to be sold, which allowed several treasures to be acquired for the nation. The spark of genius had touched only Horatio: his brothers had been dull fellows, and the descendants of his sister were no better. Brother William’s dynastic hopes had rested on his son, also named Horatio, but he died in 1809, and the title passed to his nephew Tom Bolton, who had changed his name to Nelson. His son, the third Earl, was politically active, if undistinguished. Unfortunately the family had no money beyond the Parliamentary pension and the grant that purchased their estate near Salisbury – without a major injection of funds or another man of genius the Nelsons were doomed to return whence they came. Meanwhile Horatia’s family, the Nelson-Wards, were numerous, and her descendants still bear a resemblance to their famous ancestor.

  Nelson must have seemed a complete irrelevance in the post-warworld, and there was no interest in large scale projects that would revitalise his memory. When the last French seventy-four from Trafalgar, HMS Implacable, needed preservation, the Navy was not prepared to help: in 1949 they towed the old warrior out into the Channel, and blew her up. Not a few officers were heard to say that the Navy would be better off with less of Nelson, or none at all – this was not a reflection on the man, of course, but on the simplistic, boring story that had been taught at Dartmouth for decades, using pious texts as dated as the architecture of the building. The heady days of Fisher’s Edwardian Admiralty reforms were but a distant memory, and the Navy wanted to be modern.

  In 1946 the twentieth century’s major Nelson biography appeared, half a decade too late to meet the pressing national need, but welcome nonetheless. Carola Oman’s seven-hundred-page masterpiece reflected two significant trends: first, the growing interest in Nelson’s private life, which she handled with commendable balance, and second, the steady increase in access to Nelson material. It was a book for a nation at war, about heroes and their proper setting; it has challenged all those who follow to do the job as well for their own day. Among the post-war studies, Tom Pocock’s 1987 book is particularly noteworthy, distilling a lifetime of travel, research and reflection and adding many new insights. Yet, for all the Nelson books, there can be no ‘definitive’ life: Southey used his Nelson to set a standard for popular biography; Mahan, Oman and Pocock offer rich insight based on serious research, personal aptitude and the spirit of their age. Future works –and no doubt the bicentenary of Trafalgar in 2005 will bring several –will reinterpret Nelson and the meaning of his heroism in the light of the preoccupations of their own period.

  The events of the post-war years seemed to make Nelson, if anything, still less relevant to contemporary Britain. The Suez crisis of 1956 was interpreted by many historians as the end of the British Empire, and of any independent role for Britain in world affairs; though the Navy did well in its assigned task, the discredited cause did it no favours. This, with the further cuts in naval spending announced in 1957, made Nelson’s model of naval dominance seem still more remote. In 1966 the Irish Republican Army decided it was time to end Nelson’s occupation of O’Connell Street, blowing the top off the Dublin pillar. The skill they displayed should have warned the Government that they intended to remove the six counties from Great Britain by similar means. Britain’s entry into the Common Market in 1973 seemed to settled the issue: Britain was now no more than a middle-ranking European state; Commonwealth trading connections were cut, and the Empire was history. The mood of the time was summed up in the first major text of the modern naval-history revival: Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (1976). Kennedy consciously reworked Mahan’s ‘sea power’ approach to argue that Navy and Empire were intimately linked by economic factors, the decline of industry presaging the decline of British power.

  Trafalgar Square, meanwhile, became better known as a site for political protest – against Margaret Thatcher’s infamous ‘poll tax’ in 1989, for example – than for its association with imperial greatness, glory and national self-confidence.34 More recently, it has taken on a third function as the epicentre for national celebrations of sporting tr
iumph. When the teams being celebrated have been English rather than British, as with the rugby World Cup triumph of 2003, the flag waved has been the St George banner so well known to Nelson and the Royal Navy. The first Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has transformed the atmosphere of the square by pedestrianising the platform linking it with the National Gallery, and by banning the sale of feed to end the infestation of filthy, disease-ridden pigeons. Fortunately for Nelson his image has been far above the political battles and triumphant partying, and he has been spared such indignities as are now commonly heaped on memorials of the famous dead.

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  The national role of the Royal Navy was thrust into unexpected prominence in 1982, when Britain went to war on her own account for the first time in a generation. In a last desperate ploy for political popularity, the Argentine military junta had invaded and seized the British South Atlantic dependency of the Falkland Islands, known to the Spanish-speaking world as ‘las Malvinas’. Ironically, Prime Minister Thatcher had just signed off the 1981 Defence Review that would have annihilated the Navy’s ability to act outside the North Atlantic Treaty area. Fortunately the Argentines did not wait for the cuts to take effect. First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Henry Leach argued that the Navy could and should do the job: what, he asked, was the point of having a navy if it were not used to oppose blatant aggression? If Britain did nothing her word would be ignored, and her international standing severely depreciated.35 It was the decisive moment in the history of post-war Britain. Were the purveyors of gloom and despair, of decline and fall right? Was Britain fit only to limp along in the wake of other nations?

  Leach’s resolve paid off. Thatcher’s confidence was bolstered by this determined professional man, making his case with not a little of that political courage Nelson had prized so highly.36 A task force under Admiral ‘Sandy’ Woodward sailed eight thousand miles from home and took on the entire Argentine air force with twenty-four untried Sea Harriers. The critical moment came when the Argentine Navy threatened to attack the task force: the danger was nipped in the bud by the nuclear powered submarine HMS Conqueror, named for the seventy-four that Nelson had been admiring at Trafalgar just before he was hit. She sank the cruiser General Belgrano in a textbook attack. Even so, the task force took heavy losses, but the same spirit that had been so evident since Nelson’s day ensured the army was put ashore and given unconditional support.

  One short war a long way from home reminded the British why they had a Navy, and everyone else that the Royal Navy was still the best, even if it had ceased to be the biggest. Navies are about people, not ships, and the Royal Navy has had the best people since the sixteenth century – as Nelson put it, ‘I knew what stuff I had under me.’ For Prime Minister Thatcher, whose political fortunes were made by the conflict, the war rekindled the spirit of the past, allowing Britain to find herself once more.37 The national identity created in Nelson’s day had survived the vicissitudes of war and peace, changing social and economic conditions, and the introverted maunderings of declinists.38 If the expression of those ideas occasionally verged on the disgraceful, notably when the Sun printed the headline ‘Gotcha!’ over a picture of the General Belgrano sinking, this should not confuse the point. The British national identity, shaped in war and consciously designed to meet the demands of total conflict, mass social mobilisation and the threat of invasion, had no room for refined attitudes and liberal platitudes. They were a luxury for peacetime.

  The 1981 Defence Review disappeared along with its unpopular author, and domestic policy took centre-stage for the next few years as Thatcher embarked on a radical reconstruction of British economic and social policy whose effects are still felt today. In 1989 the Cold War – for thirty years an excuse not to think about defence policy –ended with striking speed. It found Britain already partly prepared: the Royal Navy had re-established a global role after 1982, and this was merely confirmed by the fall of the Berlin Wall. The British, having defined their cultural identity in war, remain more bellicose than their European neighbours,39 and Britain is the only western European nation with armed forces capable of acting at short notice at the highest level.

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  Nelson continued to occupy an important place in popular culture in the post-war years: the trend of concentrating on his private life, already evident by 1918, persisted, with Emma the key element of his story. Terence Rattigan’s 1969 play Bequest to a Nation, developed from a 1966 television play and filmed in 1973, speculated on the nature of their relationship, focusing on the brief period they spent together at Merton in 1805. By contrast Lady Hamilton, a mildly pornographic German film of 1968, treated the subject with less delicacy, and the evidence suggests this might be the right genre. In 1982, with immaculate, if entirely fortuitous timing, a television series entitled I Remember Nelson: Recollections of a Hero’s Life was broadcast. The final episode was postponed until the Falklands war was over, as the focus on death at Trafalgar was judged incompatible with the maintenance of good morale in the forces. By the late twentieth century, the tendency to idolise the dying hero was seen as suspect: Barry Unsworth’s Losing Nelson (1999) offered a distinctive, alarming view of obsession, presenting the worship of Nelson as a sociopathic complaint.

  Nelson retained his fame among the general public, however, as the BBC’s 100 Great Britons programme of 2002 showed. Nelson was the only warrior voted into the top ten, far outstripping his contemporaries: he could still excite the nation, though doubtless this had as much to do with Emma as Trafalgar.

  Among the more interesting manifestations of Nelson worship since his death has been the mythical status often accorded to artefacts from his career. Even in his lifetime, his letters were used as gifts and favours: Lord Hood used those he received as a form of currency.40 After 1805 they were traded, bought, and hoarded with religious devotion, as were physical remains, from the famous uniform coat to swords, furniture and china. Such artefacts have always attracted high prices, but the £117,000 paid for a single letter in November 2003 (admittedly one with a particularly salacious theme) suggests something more than enduring celebrity. The last remaining source for ‘genuine’ relic material is the Victory, now approaching the end of a massive restoration programme to coincide with the bicentenary. The replacement of decayed oak with teak generated a large pile of timber, with old copper bolts and sheet. These remains have been transformed into something resembling fragments of the True Cross, each with a certificate of authenticity. Moreover, the early years of the twenty-first century have witnessed a remarkable upsurge of interest in Nelson in his native Norfolk: a new museum has been opened in Great Yarmouth, a town he passed through on three occasions, and in October 2003 the Heritage Lottery Fund announced an £850,000 grant to restore Wilkins’ Nelson monument.

  If continued interest in relics from his lifetime and memorials to his achievement is one aspect of Nelson’s legacy, a more important one is found in the activities of the Royal Navy. The brief, salutary Falklands conflict of 1982 and the years that followed demonstrated that the ‘declinist’ doom and gloom that had dominated post-war analysis of Britain’s position in the world was based on erroneous assumptions: contrary to popular belief, the British Empire, that wonderful construct of capital, commerce and trade that Nelson had fought to secure, was alive and well. The flag might have come down across the globe, but the continuing economic power of the informal empire is demonstrated by Britain’s position as the world’s fourth largest economy, an astonishing fact for so small a country. Britain remains the world’s largest maritime trading economy, with a unique range of international interests. This fact is reflected in the sophistication and professionalism, if not the size, of her navy: the heirs of Nelson continue to sail the world’s oceans in support of British interests.

  Nelson’s example, moreover, is still considered relevant by the men and women of today’s Navy. In 1996, the official handbook British Maritime Doctrine opened with a clearly formulated explanation of how Nelson used do
ctrine to facilitate the most effective use of forces, citing the Trafalgar memorandum as the obvious example. His concern to enable his officers to use their initiative, while taking care to provide basic guidance in case all else failed, remains an outstanding example.41 The Royal Navy is perhaps more comfortable with Nelson now than it has ever been: his legacy is now properly studied, rather than simply parroted in hackneyed old phrases.

  In 2005 Britain, and the world, will commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of Nelson’s death, and of his finest achievement. This time the naval pageant will be adequate: Spain and France will join every other fleet with a soul at Spithead, and HMS Victory will emerge from her restoration to serve as the focal point for worship. The museums at Portsmouth and Greenwich will present new and old versions of Nelson, while the bookshelves and souvenir stalls will groan under a weight of memorabilia. And then it will all be over.

  Before we return the British national hero to storage for another century, we should take care that we have brought our Nelson into the twenty-first century, and understood how he fits into our national identity. Like Nelson we need to ask questions, make up our own minds. Over the past two centuries we have created many Nelsons, far removed from the man of flesh and blood: there is a Nelson to suit every need. Having been deified, worshipped, damned and occasionally ignored, he remains the national icon of the British state in adversity. His greatness lay in rising to every challenge, in working above and beyond the professional expertise of a naval officer to become a strategist, statesman and diplomat in pursuit of his nation’s interests. He had the courage to act when others waited for orders, and the genius to be right on almost all occasions. In a secular age he remains an inspiration, tangible proof that mankind can achieve immortality. Nelson remains the ultimate expression of those qualities that made Britain wealthy, secure and free. If we value such things we must honour his memory: a public holiday on Trafalgar Day should surely be instated.