Admiral Collingwood

by Max Adams

  Meanwhile Nelson, in his relatively diminutive 74-gun two-decker, was caught in a shattering hail of fire as he engaged Santissima Trinidada and her consorts: two 112-gun three-deckers, and an 80-gun two-decker. It was enterprise close to the point of recklessness. Within a short time Captain had lost steerage and was a virtual wreck. Jervis on board Victory, and Troubridge and the others, were now catching up with the action, which became a general mêlée, as Jervis had intended. But Nelson’s situation looked irretrievable.

  Collingwood was already in the thick of it, realising that he was his friend’s salvation if he could come up with Captain and her enemies quickly enough. First, he had to engage the 112-gun San Salvador del Mundi. His first few broadsides against her were of unprecedented speed and accuracy, and had such a stunning effect that she struck her colours within minutes. Or so Collingwood thought. He hailed to ask if she had surrendered. The man who stood beside the colours bowed in submission, and Excellent pressed on to relieve Nelson. Shortly afterwards the San Salvador raised her colours again and kept up a desultory fire on other British ships as they came within range. Most British captains would have boarded her and taken her as a prize. Collingwood, though, had other things on his mind than glory:

  Our next opponent was San Ysidore of 74 guns. We did not fire on her until we were within 5 yards of her, and in less than a quarter of an hour made the Spaniards themselves display the British flag, for I did not stay to take any possession, leaving that to be done by the frigates, but with all my ragged sails set, made my way to the Sn Nicholas and Sn Josef, which ships had been long engaged with my good Commodore and Culloden [Captain Troubridge], and had done them much injury. My arrival up with Nicholas gave them breathing time. We went so near that until the smoke clear’d away I did not know whether we were fast to her or not. In her attempt to sheer from us she clapt alongside Josef, which was close to her, so that all my shot went through both ships.28

  Again Collingwood passed on, believing that both ships had struck to him, for now he aimed to have a go at Santissima Trinidada herself, who ended the battle virtually wrecked, but who lived to fight again at Trafalgar. During this, his last engagement of an extraordinary day, Collingwood nearly lost the number of his mess when a 50lb double-headed shot narrowly missed his head and, entirely spent, hit the base of the mainmast and rolled at his feet. He kept it as a souvenir to give to his father-in-law, presumably sending it back to Newcastle along with his letters. A vicious-looking object, it is still in the possession of the family. ‘These are no jokes,’ wrote a typically downbeat Collingwood, ‘when they fly about one’s head.’29 Another souvenir was the portrait of San Ysidro from the ship of that name, which Collingwood hoped Sarah would like, but which in the meantime adorned his great cabin in Excellent. Excellent lost eleven men dead and fourteen wounded.

  Nelson, meanwhile, was helping himself to a large portion of that glory which was to make him England’s Saviour. Collingwood described the famous scene, for his home audience:

  When I left San Nicholas they fell on board the Captain, which was very much disabled in the severe service she had had, when the Commodore, whose judgement supported by a most Angelic spirit is equal to all circumstances that arise, boarded the Sn Nicholas, and having reduced her to obedience sword in hand marched on to the Sn Josef, which was fast on the other side of her; the resistance they made was not great, a sort of scuffle in which a few lives were lost, and there on the quarter deck of a Spanish first rate, he received the submission & swords of the officers of the two ships, one of his seamen standing by him, and making a bundle of them with as much composure as he would tie a bundle of faggots.30

  Nelson himself called it his ‘patent bridge for boarding first-rates’. It was the stuff of penny-plain, twopence-coloured cartoonists, and the episode instantly passed into British military folklore. Though the British had only captured four of the Spanish fleet (all of them victims of Collingwood’s gunnery), the victory was overwhelming in its effect both on the British public, still smarting from withdrawal from the Mediterranean, and on the Franco-Spanish alliance, whose Irish plans were for the time being scuppered. The action also made a great deal of money for the captains of the British fleet, in prizes and head-money.

  For Collingwood, more importantly, there was immediate and unaffected praise for his gallantry. Dacres, in Barfleur, wrote to request that he would accept his congratulations ‘upon the immortal honour gained by the Excellent yesterday. The Admiral joins very sincerely in my ideas. God bless you, and may we all imitate you.’31 Admiral Waldegrave added his congratulations: ‘May England long possess such men as yourself: – it is saying everything for her glory.’32 But most importantly, he received the following communication from his friend:

  MY DEAREST FRIEND,

  ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed,’ was never more truly verified than by your most noble and gallant conduct yesterday in sparing the Captain from further loss; and I beg, both as a public officer and a friend, you will accept my most sincere thanks. I have not failed, by letter to the Admiral, to represent the eminent services of the Excellent … We shall meet at Lagos; but I could not come near you without assuring you how sensible I am of your assistance in nearly a critical situation.33

  Why does the word ‘nearly’ catch in the throat? Is there just a hint that, for all Collingwood’s evident brilliance on the day, Nelson could not accept that he had got himself out of his depth and had been in fact rescued by Collingwood? Is it a trace of guilt, that he attained the glory of the prizes which had been won at least as much by Collingwood as himself? Nelson, in his own account of the battle, noted that Collingwood ‘disdained’ the parade of taking possession of beaten enemies. Was he perhaps a little jealous of Collingwood’s disinterestedness?

  Collingwood seems not to have read anything into it at all. He was simply delighted that he had been recognised by his peers. And more than that. Nelson was given the Order of the Bath in recognition of his brilliance; he was now promoted to rear-admiral, having already been at the top of the post-captains’ list. Jervis was made Earl St Vincent. Now Collingwood was offered a medal, along with the other captains. He told Jervis that he could not accept it, for if he deserved a medal now he had deserved one for the First of June. Jervis replied that that was precisely the answer he had been expecting; and Collingwood, at last vindicated, duly got both. But it is hard to escape the conclusion, not for the first or last time, that had Nelson not been Nelson, Collingwood might also have been a public hero in this, his forty-ninth year.

  The year 1797 had started well, and it would end well with another famous naval victory. But in between, as if to emphasise how high the stakes were in this war of revolution and conservatism, there was trouble at home. On 16 April, Easter Sunday, the fleet at Spithead mutinied. Or to be more accurate, it went on strike. Mutiny is an unfortunate word to use, for there were as many variations on the theme as there were men prepared to disobey orders. Mutiny was naturally punishable by death; and yet, there were perfectly understood mechanisms in the Royal Navy by which a man, or group of men, might refuse to obey orders without being mutinous. A ship’s crew might at any time petition their captain over grievances. On rare occasions they might petition an admiral over their captain’s head. Frequently their grievances seem entirely reasonable. A good captain would negotiate from a position of strength and ensure that the grievances were addressed without surrendering the principle of authority: it was a nice trick to pull off.

  The first demand of the strikers was for more food.34 They wanted to receive sixteen ounces to the pound instead of fourteen. Traditionally the extra two ounces belonged to the ship’s purser (hence, a purser’s pound is a short measure), an object of more revulsion even than the enemy to most sailors. They also wanted better quality provisions, and an assurance that in port they would have access to fresh meat and vegetables. The most serious grievance of the Spithead strikers was pay. An able seaman received twenty-two shillings and sixp
ence a month (£1.13 in modern terms), an ordinary seaman just nineteen shillings, compared to an admiral’s pay of £1,000 per annum.35 The rate had not changed since the days of Oliver Cromwell, nearly 150 years before. What was worse, privates in the army got a shilling a day, a matter of great affront to sailors who considered their service both harder and more important. Not only that, but payment was in arrears, and by ticket, rather than coin. Often, sailors would be turned over to a new ship when theirs was laid off, without receiving even their arrears.

  The strike was well organised and represented by delegates from each ship. The demands were presented respectfully, and there was no physical threat to individual officers. It was understood that if the French came out, the ships would sail to meet them; otherwise, the Channel fleet would stay where it was until the grievances had been addressed. It is conspicuous that the navy’s notoriously harsh punishment system was not a source of open complaint. Arbitrary and cruel use of punishment was, but sailors accepted hard discipline as a necessary evil to maintain the safety and well-being of ships and their crews. However, the names of 107 officers considered tyrannical by their men were also presented.36

  The sailors’ complaints were badly handled. The fleet was in the process of changing command from Lord Howe to Lord Bridport, and somehow the Admiralty failed to ensure that Bridport knew of the strikers’ demands until the fleet for a second time refused to go to sea. There was a brief showdown during which five seamen were shot, and the officers commanding were sent ashore. Howe was briefly recalled, came to terms with the strikers, and peace was restored in the fleet after parliament had officially agreed to their terms and given the delegates a pardon.37 The 107 named officers did not return to their ships.

  However, two days after the fleet finally sailed, on 12 May, a much more serious mutiny, a real mutiny, broke out among the ships stationed off the Nore, and spread to the squadron off Yarmouth. These ships were watching and waiting for the Dutch fleet, close to sailing themselves and hoping to establish control in the North Sea prior to another attempt on Ireland.

  In this case sedition was at work. This time there was a leader, Richard Parker. There was also dissension among ships’ companies as they tried to enforce a blockade of the Thames. Their supply of victuals was cut off, and forts at Tilbury and elsewhere were put on alert to destroy the fleet. There was violence. Admiral Duncan, a man of huge proportions in every respect, suppressed the mutiny in his fleet at Yarmouth by sheer force of personality. Now the Admiralty sent him to the Nore, but the plan backfired, and when reports came of the Dutch fleet preparing for sea, Duncan was left with just his own flag ship and one other to blockade them in the Texel. Eventually the mutiny was suppressed. Parker and twenty-eight others were hanged, and some of the ships with the most disruptive crews were sent to join St Vincent off Cadiz. But a potentially fatal blow had been dealt to the delicate web of obligation and trust that tied men and officers together. Whether a permanent breach would open, and whether it would compromise the fighting efficiency of the fleet, remained to be seen.

  In St Vincent’s taut, disciplined fleet captains such as Nelson and Collingwood, each with their own methods, brought a measure of control. Collingwood, only too aware of the sensitivity of the situation, wrote to Alexander Carlyle in June that:

  The state of the fleet in England has given me the most poignant grief. How unwise in the officers, or how impolitic in the administration, that did not attend to, and redress the first complaints of grievance, and not allow the seamen to throw off their obedience and to feel what power there is in so numerous a body.38

  He thought that by their mishandling of the mutinies, the government had allowed the sailors to extort what they now regarded as rights, instead of privileges granted to them by a just and humane society. It was, in his mind, a dangerous and revolutionary precedent: ‘The times are convulsed and full of danger: peace alone can restore us to harmony. Heaven grant it!’39 St Vincent was confident that he could send Collingwood the most troublesome men. ‘Send them to Collingwood,’ he is reputed to have said, ‘he will bring them to order.’40 One man sent to him had been a seaman on Romulus. He had contrived to load a quarterdeck gun and point it at his officers, threatening to blow their heads off. When the man (who might easily have been hanged) was brought aboard Excellent, Collingwood spoke to him in front of the other men:

  I know your character well, but beware how you to attempt to excite insubordination in this ship; for I have such confidence in my men, that I am certain I shall hear in an hour of every thing you are doing. If you behave well in future, I will treat you like the rest, nor notice here what happened in another ship: but if you endeavour to excite mutiny, mark me well, I will instantly head you up in a cask, and throw you into the sea.41

  Dangerous times indeed. Collingwood’s personal authority came not just from his conspicuous bravery, skill and seamanship; it came also from his famous humanity towards his men. He demanded obedience and respect for officers, and in return he demanded that they show respect to their men. He would not countenance swearing from officers, and was particularly annoyed if he heard them calling to sailors in what he considered a rude manner: ‘If you do not know a man’s name, call him sailor, and not “you-sir”, and other such appellations; they are offensive and improper.’42

  For the time being, the immediate danger for Collingwood was the boredom of the Cadiz blockade: day after day, week after week of St Vincent’s manoeuvres, tight discipline, and almost no social contact. There was some solace in correspondence, and in Bounce’s company, but Collingwood had been away from his family since the beginning of the war, more than four years, and he longed for home.

  God knows when we shall break up this blockade, not while there is a chance of the Spaniards coming out, or a peace puts an end to it. What pleasure wou’d it give me, could I hope to pass my Christmas at home? Remember me kindly to all our friends. My best love to all at home …

  PS … Nelson is gone on an expedition, I believe, to Teneriffe.43

  Nelson had, indeed, gone on an expedition to Tenerife. This was designed to intercept a Spanish treasure ship inbound from the West Indies. It was an amphibious assault; and like Nelson’s other forays on to land, it ended in disaster: the loss of his right arm, and 250 men killed and wounded. Nelson was invalided home, and the humiliation of failure, combined with extreme pain from his wound, brought on an overwhelming depression.

  There was better news from the North Sea in October. Admiral Duncan brilliantly defeated the Dutch component of the French invasion fleet off Camperdown.44 Duncan had a numerical superiority of sixteen to fifteen and larger ships; the Dutch were aggressive and well-trained. Duncan led his fleet in two columns at right angles to the Dutch fleet in a tactic that presaged Nelson’s at Trafalgar: part of a tactical evolution which had begun with Rodney at the battle of the Saintes. It was designed to bring on a mêlée which suited the high level of training and seamanship of the Royal Navy. It would work again and again, and no enemy commander in the age of sail found a strategy to counter it.

  Duncan’s capture of eight ships of the Dutch line, together with two heavy frigates, was the most convincing victory in the first phase of the war. Not only did it decisively end the threat from the Dutch in the North Sea; it ‘clapped a stopper’ over all talk of mutiny. It gave Pitt’s beleaguered government a crucial breathing space, and determined Bonaparte to look elsewhere for a grand military project. Confounded in the Atlantic and North Sea, he turned his attention to another cherished project: Egypt, and the overland route to the Red Sea. Established there, he would be able to attack Britain’s most important mercantile asset: the route to the East Indies, which she had enjoyed more or less unopposed for twenty years.

  Once more the war was entering a critical phase. France had control of the Mediterranean. Britain’s closest base was Gibraltar, but as an isolated garrison it was vulnerable, both to attack by Spain, and from its own descent into dissoluteness:
/>   I do not understand … of what use Gibraltar is to us under these circumstances. It rather serves as a trap to catch Englishmen in, and a grave to bury drunken Soldiers in. There is perhaps more dissipation at Gibraltar than in any other station in the world. One great fee of the Governor arises from wine drunk there, and licenses for wine houses; therefore drunkenness is not a punishable offence in a Soldier. On the contrary, there is a sort of encouragement given to jolly fellows and I am told at least two thirds of the garrison are drunk every night.45

  The blockade of Cadiz could not be lifted because of the very obvious activity going on in the Spanish fleet, to all appearances ready to sail at short notice. Collingwood and the other captains, longing for home and not having dropped anchor for many months, had to look to their own resources to relieve the hardship and boredom of a winter at sea, when luxuries like the mail and fresh food were in intermittent supply:

  My wits are ever at work to keep my people employed, both for health’s sake, and to save them from mischief. We have lately been making musical instruments, and have now a very good band. Every moonlight night the sailors dance; and there seems as much mirth and festivity as if we were in Wapping itself. One night the rats destroyed the bagpipes we had made, by eating up the bellows; but they suffer for it, for in revenge we have made traps of all constructions, and have declared a war of extermination against them.46

  Collingwood himself was briefly made a commodore, but it was of little comfort to him, especially when news reached the fleet of the intended French invasion of Egypt, and Collingwood found that he was to be left behind. Nelson had returned, once more in fighting spirits now that he had finally been given the true independent command that he had sought for so long. He was to find Bonaparte’s fleet, determine their destination, and bring them to battle. After months of frustration he did so, immortally, at Aboukir Bay near Alexandria, in a brilliant and decisive action known to legend as the Battle of the Nile. Bonaparte and his army of Egypt were trapped. Britain once more had naval control of the Mediterranean, and the pride of the French navy had been humiliated. Like most other captains, Collingwood was torn between admiration for the genius of his friend, and fury that he had been left out of the action, by what he saw as favouritism on the part of St Vincent: