Admiral Collingwood

by Max Adams

  No swearing, no threatening or bullying, no starting were to be heard or seen. Boatswain’s mates, or ship’s corporals, dared not to be seen with a rattan, or rope’s end in hand; nor do I recollect a single instance of a man being flogged while he remained aboard. Was discipline neglected then? By no means. There was not a better disciplined crew in the fleet.

  And then how attentive to the health of his crew? How kind to them when sick or wounded! It would have done your hearts good, as it has often done mine, to see a roasted chicken, a basin of fresh soup, a tumbler of wine, a jug of negus, or some other nice little cordial, wending its way from his table to some poor fellow riding quarantine in the sick bay.

  In April 1804 Collingwood was promoted to vice-admiral, with a blue flag flying at Culloden’s foremast. By now William Pitt had forced Addington’s resignation, and against the background of a constant fear of invasion, Pitt returned to power on a wave of patriotic support much like that which propelled Churchill into Downing Street in 1940. With Addington had departed St Vincent, to be replaced as First Lord by Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville. Bonaparte, who on 16 May had been proclaimed Emperor of the French and now styled himself Napoleon I, was massing another army of England at Boulogne. Sir Sidney Smith had been put in charge of attacking the flotilla there. He was to have no more luck than Nelson had previously, despite the new technologies he had been given to experiment with. Fulton’s torpedoes and Congreve’s rockets had little effect on a well-organised defence. Collingwood thought the whole show a waste of time, but he approved of the change in administration, even though he himself was not what he called a ‘party man’:

  Mr Addington was a sensible man, and an honorable man, he was industrious and had the best intentions in the world. But the times require talents, which fall to the lot of few men. Perhaps Pitt is the only man in England who can find resources against all the evils we have to encounter.23

  Collingwood, briefly flying his flag in the old Prince, knew where he wanted to be now that events were coming to a head. Convinced that the Spanish were about to take a more active role in the war against England, he thought the Cadiz station, which he knew well, was the place to employ his own talents against Bonaparte: ‘as much villainy as ever disgraced human nature in the person of one man’.24

  By August he had been transferred yet again, this time to Dreadnought, a 98-gun second-rate with few sailing qualities, and he set himself to complaining about his midshipmen: ‘In general they are so abominably fine, and in their own conceit so wise, that they think nothing wanting to their perfection but a larger hat and a pair of boots and tassels.’25 Four men calling themselves deserters from the French fleet had brought on board the blockading squadron, with intelligence that their ships were in a deplorable condition and ripe for mutiny. Collingwood dismissed them as plants. He would have to wait until the New Year before being rewarded with a posting to Cadiz. After spending almost the entire year on blockade, he was grateful to be back at Cawsand Bay in December, writing to Nelson in concern for his health. There had been rumours that Nelson, whose frail body ‘was always a flimsy case for his Herculean soul’,26 might have to return home from the Mediterranean, where he was blockading Toulon. Collingwood brought his friend up to date with political and naval news, and reiterated his view that Napoleon was soon to make his move:

  The time is fast approaching when the Military Despotism which rules France, and awes all the powers on the continent, will be put to the test – whether it can be supported by the Army and insidious arts of Talleyrand against the opinions and interests of all mankind.27

  Nelson’s reply did not reach Collingwood until the spring of 1805. He admitted that his constitution was ‘much shook’, having been almost continuously at sea himself since the outbreak of war, and echoed Collingwood’s views of the next phase of the conflict:

  We have had a very dull war, but I agree with you that it must change for a more active one. I beg, my dear Collingwood, that you will present my most respectful compliments to Mrs Collingwood; and believe me, for ever and as ever, your most sincere and truly attached friend…28

  Collingwood himself was pretty nearly worn out, as he admitted to his old friend and patron Admiral Richard Braithwaite, his first commanding officer. He was depressed and languid, having not seen a green leaf all year except those he had drawn himself. ‘I think’, he wrote, ‘some of our ingenious citizens should apply their wits in inventing a sort of patent Admiral, a machine that would rub on a length of time without wearing out.’29

  The time was now coming when the naval policies of the two great maritime powers would be tested. England’s navy was wearing thin in its attempt at total blockade. Her ships, still suffering from St Vincent’s cutbacks, were being lost to accident and storm at an alarming rate. Her officers and men were exhausted; and yet, they were hardened and practised and ready for anything. Their gunnery was superb, and they sailed their ships with a skill and efficiency which they did not believe could be matched. Furthermore, in five major fleet actions since the start of the conflict with France, they had not lost once.

  The French navy boasted large numbers of fine ships. Her men and officers were fresh, and they were determined and brave. Many of them felt themselves a part of Napoleon’s glorious destiny, and they believed England could be beaten. What they and their Spanish allies lacked was the discipline and skill that could only come with active service.

  At the beginning of 1805 Napoleon began to implement his master plan, which was based on his belief that he needed only to command the English Channel for the time it would take his flotilla to cross from Boulogne to Kent and Essex. To do this he would combine the French Mediterranean fleet under Villeneuve with the Spanish fleets at Cadiz and Cartagena, and the squadron at Rochefort. They would rendezvous in the West Indies, drawing a substantial part of the Royal Navy with them, then double back to descend upon Ireland and the Channel. Villeneuve, and many of his fellow officers, believed Napoleon’s plan relied on a military precision which he had been able to impose on land but which no one could impose on the elements of the Atlantic Ocean.30

  Nevertheless, with little choice Villeneuve took his squadron out of Toulon, managed to avoid Nelson, and made for Cadiz in April. Here he picked up Admiral Gravina’s Spanish squadron, barely worth its name and down to six ill-manned ships. The combined fleet of eighteen sail of the line headed west on 9 April. Nelson, unsure of their destination, had to search for them at Sardinia and in Sicily before he got intelligence that they had passed through the Strait of Gibraltar. It was not until 11 May, while being resupplied off Cape St Vincent, that he was finally sure of their destination, and followed them to the West Indies with ten sail of the line.

  Collingwood, whose superior was now Admiral Gardner, was off Finisterre when he heard that Nelson had taken his squadron off in pursuit of Villeneuve. His Secret Letter book, discovered only in the last few years,31 makes it clear he was expected to follow Nelson, or at least detach a number of his ships and send them in support. The fact that he appeared to dither until it was too late can now be explained by an entry in this book. It refers to intelligence reports describing one of Villeneuve’s ships as containing a cavalry unit. Like most entries in what was effectively a draft book for dispatches and covert communications, this was written in his own neat and most distinctive copperplate. Cavalry, he noted in a dry statement of the situation to be sent to William Marsden, the new Secretary to the Admiralty Board, is ‘a species of force not calculated for the West Indies service, and which raises in my mind, a doubt of that being their destination.’32 He also had intelligence that another twelve Spanish ships were nearly ready for sea at Cadiz and Cartagena. ‘From these circumstances I judge it is expedient to proceed to Cadiz, with all possible dispatch.’ Collingwood had correctly inferred that Napoleon was creating a diversion, as he wrote in the last letter to his friend Alexander Carlyle, who died a month later:

  I think it is not improbable that I shall hav
e all those fellows coming from the West Indies again, before the Hurricane months, unless they sail from thence directly for Ireland, which I have always had an idea was their plan, for this Bonaparte has as many tricks as a monkey. I believe their object in the West Indies to be less conquest, than to draw our force from home.33

  Villeneuve and Nelson missed each other in the West Indies by a combination of chance and poor intelligence. Villeneuve managed to capture a small merchant convoy out of English Harbour, but then received news that Nelson was after him. Believing the two forces to be equal, and unsure of receiving reinforcements in time, he decided to follow his contingency orders and head for Ferrol to pick up a second Spanish squadron. Nelson, on 12 June, heard that the French fleet had left the West Indies, so he sailed for Gibraltar in the belief that Villeneuve would return to Cadiz. The two fleets missed each other. From Cadiz Nelson headed north to return to England while Villeneuve, receiving new orders, sailed south for Cadiz. In passing, Nelson and Collingwood brought each other up to date with developments. Collingwood left his friend with these words:

  This summer is big with events: we may all perhaps have an active share in them; and I sincerely wish your Lordship strength of body to go through it, and to all others your strength of mind.34

  Nelson warmed his friend’s heart with words of support in exchange:

  Your judgement on these points, and zeal for the Service, promise everything that can be expected, and no one more highly estimates both, than he who has the honour to be, Sir etc, Nelson and Bronte.35

  Before they met again on the eve of Trafalgar, Collingwood pulled off one of the most extraordinary tactical victories of the war. It is barely mentioned by the majority of historians, perhaps because no ship was damaged or captured, perhaps because it complicates the Nelsonian narrative. Without it, the battle of Trafalgar might not have happened. On 20 August Collingwood was keeping watch off Cadiz. With his flag ship, Dreadnought (a slow sailer but a deadly floating battery), he had Colossus and Achille, both 74s, and the Niger frigate. A bomb ship, Thunder, lay to the north almost out of sight. Inside the harbour were eight Spanish ships of the line.

  At six o’clock in the morning Dreadnought was close to the Cadiz lighthouse when, through the haze in the west, came Villeneuve’s combined fleet of twenty-six sail of the line. Collingwood’s immediate reaction, founded on thirty-odd years of sea experience, was to avoid any sign of panic. He was hopelessly outnumbered and his ships, from being at sea so long, were encumbered with weed (except the very swift Colossus), so there was no chance of winning a straight chase. His main concern was not that the enemy should be allowed into Cadiz – that was exactly where he wanted them. His fear was that they should pass the Strait and enter the Mediterranean, either to make an attempt on Sicily with no fleet to oppose them, or simply to pick up the ships remaining at Cartagena. So to begin with, he did what Villaret-Joyeuse had done on the Glorious First of June, and trailed his coat, sailing slowly to the east towards Gibraltar. It is hard to imagine ships of the line displaying body language, but they did; commanders on both sides would be watching intently to read the enemy’s intentions: a subtle shift of the helm to gain the weather-gage, an appearance of flight masking slack sheets; Collingwood’s body language on 20 August gave the distinct impression of indifference.

  After two hours of chasing, Villeneuve detached sixteen of his fastest ships in pursuit of Collingwood’s tiny squadron. They were approaching Gibraltar now, and this was the moment when Collingwood was forced to play his unsupported trump card: ‘put an impudent face on our shabby weak state’, as he himself termed it in a letter to his sister.36 He ordered the squadron to shorten sail and tack, and stood towards the combined fleet. Colossus he sent off to get as close to them as possible, as if to reconnoitre for an action (‘which she did most masterly’); and meanwhile, he threw out a series of signals to the east. False signalling to a non-existent relief force was the oldest trick in the book; by itself it would not have fooled an adolescent midshipman. But reinforcing as it did Collingwood’s insouciance and the master-stroke of detaching the Colossus, it raised sufficient doubt in his pursuers’ minds. They retired to Cadiz where Collingwood found them later, resuming his blockade with grim satisfaction. Thunder had escaped too, running so close to the shoals off Cape Trafalgar that the fleet could not follow her. Collingwood’s seamanship and battle skills had been tested at the highest possible level. With four ships, he had seen off a combined fleet of twenty-six, condemning Villeneuve and Gravina to the showdown at Trafalgar, just two months away. The Naval Chronicle called the action ‘an instance of genius and address that is scarcely to be paralleled in the pages of our naval history.’37 If he did not possess Nelson’s impetuous genius in attack, he had proved himself a defensive virtuoso.

  Within days Collingwood’s news reached the Admiralty, where Lord Barham, the new First Lord (Melville having been impeached on a technical charge of embezzlement) was now able to draw up his strategy for bringing the enemy out so they could be annihilated. Nelson prepared to leave England for the last time. Collingwood, gradually joined by other ships to reinforce the blockade, was worn to a thread by the tension and the huge weight of responsibility. He had had no leave in two years, and was beginning to rely very heavily on two men (neither of them his captain) to support him:

  I have a diligent young man for my secretary38 and Clavell, my lieutenant, is the spirit of the ship; but such a captain [Edward Rotheram], such a stick, I wonder very much how such people get forward. I should (I firmly believe) with his nautical ability and knowledge and exertion, have been a bad lieutenant at this day. Was he brought up in the navy? For he has very much the stile [sic] of the Coal trade about him, except that they are good seamen.39

  Collingwood was being disingenuous about his relations with Rotheram, a Hexham man. One of his more celebrated midshipmen, Hercules Robinson, remembered vividly in later life:

  Collingwood’s dry, caustic mind lives before me in the recollection of his calling across the deck his fat, stupid captain – long since dead – when he had seen him commit some monstrous blunder, and after the usual bowing and formality – which the excellent old chief never omitted – he said: ‘Captain, I have been thinking, whilst I looked at you, how strange it is that a man should grow so big and know so little. That’s all, Sir, that’s all!’ Hats off ; low bows.40

  Apart from Clavell and Cosway, Collingwood’s only consolation was Bounce:

  How happy I should be, could I but hear from home, and how my dear girls are going on! Bounce is my only pet now, and he is indeed a good fellow: he sleeps by the side of my cot, whenever I lie in one, until near the time of tacking, and then marches off, to be out of the hearing of the guns, for he is not reconciled to them yet. I am fully determined, if I can get home and manage it properly, to go on shore next spring for the rest of my life; for I am very weary.41

  By the end of September Collingwood had at last been reinforced by the addition of ships which brought his strength up to twenty-six. The enemy had thirty-four. Nelson was due to resume command of the fleet, and then both he and Collingwood believed they could force Villeneuve out, by starvation if nothing else. What they did not know was that Napoleon, having lost all patience with Villeneuve, had sent a replacement to supersede him; that Villeneuve had heard of this development; and that he was now determined to come out – either to fight the English in pitched battle, or escape into the Mediterranean. Napoleon, having abandoned his invasion plans for the year, now planned to strike a massive blow against Austria. The combined fleet would be more useful to him if they were to attack Sicily.

  On 7 September Collingwood received a note from Nelson with news that he would be arriving shortly to take command of the squadron. It has often been stated that Nelson, when asked by Lord Barham who should command the fleet, had suggested Collingwood as the right man, and that Barham had refused, saying only Nelson would do. This sounds suspiciously like apocrypha. Nelson had no intenti
on of letting anyone rob him of his destiny. In his note to Collingwood, Nelson said he hoped his friend would remain second-in-command of the fleet. He added, ‘You will change the Dreadnought for the Royal Sovereign, which I hope you will like.’ Nelson was having a little joke at his friend’s expense. Collingwood’s first reaction to this news must have been something like horror. He had with great pains worked Dreadnought’s crew to a state of near perfection in seamanship and gunnery. No other ship afloat could match her in a fight; now he was to be removed into a ship whose company were strangers to him. And worse, much worse, was the thought of having to sail and fight Royal Sovereign.

  Royal Sovereign was a 100-gun first-rate, built at Plymouth in 1786. She was such a slow sailer that she had acquired the nickname ‘The West-Country Waggon’. What Collingwood did not know, and what Nelson had chosen not to tell him, was that she had recently been recoppered, and was now the fastest ship in the fleet. It was just such tokens of friendship that men adored him for.

  By 25 September Victory was approaching the fleet, and Nelson sent another note to ask that no signals be raised or salute be fired on his arrival. On the 28th Nelson joined the fleet, and there was a flurry of social activity welcomed by everyone. A week later Nelson sent Collingwood another note, this time enclosed in a box with a lock and key. This was to be their own private dispatch box, but he urged Collingwood to telegraph him at any time. ‘We are one, and I hope ever shall be,’ he wrote. Collingwood replied that he believed the combined fleet must come out soon, as their supply of provisions from France had been completely cut off by Collingwood’s blockade of Cadiz. He believed the Mediterranean was now their destination, an opinion which Nelson shared.