Nelson: The Dreadful Havoc

by Jan Needle

  The rebels in the Thirteen Colonies, however, judged their need for French assistance to be more important than the downfall of Jamaica. To general astonishment, it was soon reported that the enormous fleet had changed course for the coast of Georgia.

  Admiral Parker wrote to Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, ‘Strange that Comte d’Estaing should let slip so favourable an opportunity of attacking this island.’ Nelson, his work at Fort Charles no longer of the essence, went cruising the Mosquito Shore for smugglers.

  At last, he took command of Hinchinbrook at Port Royal on Thursday, September 1. On September 5, the bowsprit was found to be rotten and sent ashore, followed shortly by the fore and main masts. On September 12, although still in harbour, a frustrated Nelson exercised his main armaments and small arms, and waited impatiently for the new bowsprit and other spars to be got on board and rigged. But it was not until October 5, at seven o’clock in the morning, that the frigate cleared the entrance to the Palisades.

  Even then the troubles were not over. Within two days of sailing, the main topgallant yard had to be replaced through heavy weather damage, and within a handful more the fore topsail split and the fore topmast sprung, requiring it to be ‘sent down’ and another hoisted up and shipped. By the time they neared the northern shore of South America, Nelson’s only action had been the flogging of Edward Roe for neglect of duty. He was boiling with frustration.

  The day after Roe got twelve, though, Hinchinbrook raised an unknown sail and set off in chase at six in the morning. Two guns were fired before the quarry, a Dutchman from Amsterdam, brought to. Nelson was hardly mollified. ‘When will they fire back?’ he muttered. ‘That’s what I’m wanting. When will they stand and fight?’

  He took some prizes in the next four months or so, in consort with the 32-gun Niger and the Penelope, 24, but the total prize money would not add up to much. Guns were fired, but very few ships fought back, leading to intensive gunnery exercise in compensation. Collingwood’s Badger kept them company for some days, but an inordinate amount of time was spent on repairing masts and rigging, painting, and refitting.

  ‘My man grew broody, call it what you will,’ wrote Hastie. ‘At one point he was certain that the Penelope’s men had risen and killed poor Captain Jones, and it proved a phantasie. He was not earning treasure was the fact of it, and he was dying for the want of action. We practised our great guns more than any vessel needed to because, I think, he needed smoke and roars. At war with Spain and France, but all we had, day after day, was a very dismal time.’

  Nelson’s slow decline was halted only temporarily by his next posting. After both he and Collingwood returned to Port Royal from their cruising, Governor Polson recruited Horatio – with Parker’s permission – for the expedition up the San Juan river with the Hinchinbrook. After this foray into the steaming jungle of the Main, he was carried ashore but a dying shadow, and saved from the hospital’s deadly ministrations only at Cornwallis’s insistence.

  Mrs Cuba and her ‘pretty little trim-rigged doxies’ nursed him back to some form of health, though far less than robust, until the testy and insistent Lady Parker took charge of everything, and sent poor Cuba packing.

  ‘She moved us to a mountain fastness,’ Tim wrote to Sarah, ‘and watched him clutch at strength and health and happiness. Then she destroyed it. She abandoned us, returned downhill again without us, and left us to untender mercies, to those who did not care for us at all. We were on our own on Admiral’s Mountain, bereft. And then he got the greatest blow of any.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  This greatest blow, which Hastie learned about only indirectly, and in the midst of incoherent babblings of high fever, involved Nelson’s sister Ann.

  Although ‘abandonment’ by Lady Parker – on an opulent estate in the Jamaica foothills – he acknowledged as perhaps too strong a word, it was true that his captain’s health quickly deteriorated.

  Both young men were well aware that the admiral’s wife and her entourage had gone back to Admiral’s Pen down on the coastal strip. The skeleton staff they left behind ‘to rot up here with us on Cooper’s Hill,’ quickly proved themselves to be lazy and inferior, and they were neglected sorely.

  Nelson wrote to Hercules Ross: ‘Oh Mister Ross, what would I give to be at Port Royal? Lady P is not here, and the servants let me lay here like a log, and take no notice.’ He was missing Cuba Cornwallis, too – and her ‘hussies.’

  People did come to visit – important people, from time to time – but rarely with good news. Sir John Dalling, the governor who had recruited him to the raid on Nicaragua, brought reports that threw him into a deeper gloom, in terms of gaining glory.

  When he had been evacuated down the Rio San Juan half dead, at least the fortress he had fought to capture was on the point of surrendering. It had fallen almost immediately he had gone downstream, indeed, and would have done much sooner had his own plan of attack not been overruled.

  Although implicitly invited by Dalling to criticise Colonel Polson for the change of plan, Nelson had refused, even when he learned that the Spanish had retaken the fort. The English soldiers, ravaged by illness and lack of food and medicines, had finally been forced to retreat back to the coast. With ignominy and further loss of life.

  Such information clearly cut him deeply, and as his condition deteriorated his delirium increased, providing Hastie with more insights and garbled truths. On more than one occasion a letter was referred to, although never produced. The very mention of it clearly brought mental strife.

  ‘I have a family, Tim,’ Nelson started once. ‘I have brothers, sisters, and they cause great pain to me. My Uncle Suckling chose me, I am sure of it, as the only one of mother’s children quite worthy of her name.’

  Then he collapsed into himself, and would not speak for some long time. When he did, it was to apologise and deny.

  ‘I did not say that, Tim,’ he said, in pleading tones. ‘Or believe me if I did, I did not mean it. I love my brothers and my sisters all, and some time they will…Oh, Mr Hastie. Oh.’

  There were many hours in this vein, on the sweat-stained bed, and Hastie gradually drew a picture for himself. For himself only, he insisted to himself, which would never go no further. His brother Maurice, Nelson mumbled, was in debt, and forever would be. His brother William was a selfish, idle lump, who might join the clergy like their father for want of any other thing to do. Edmund swore he’d be a lawyer, but would end up as a clerk, while Suckling – the bearer of that noble name! – was good for nothing but drink and gambling on dogs.

  The sisters were Susannah, Ann and Catherine, and it was Ann who caused most anguish, however much he tried to hide it from his friend. It was do with the letter, received just before or after the San Juan expedition, which Nelson would not show. Its contents did come out, in little dribs, in periods of feverish despair.

  ‘She went away,’ said Nelson, one weary afternoon. He was lying on his bed, all windows open, sweat pouring from his emaciated body. ‘She is two years younger than me, Hastie, and she went when she was fifteen, apprenticed in London at a lace establishment. An old man then seduced her, Timothy, a man of power and persuasion. She had a baby, and he ran away from her, she was abandoned. She…’

  That was the end of it, for a long, long time. All the questions he did not dare to ask. Did the baby die? Go home with its mother to Burnham Thorpe? Get put out on the parish, go to a nunnery or the church? Did poor Ann try to bring it up, or was it stillborn, or did it die, even? It. He could not even ask if it were girl or boy.

  ‘She went home to the parsonage at nineteen years or so, but I did not know why,’ Nelson said on another afternoon. ‘She lived some time there with father and her sister. She may be there now, I am not sure, no one has told me. My poor Ann. My poor, poor Ann.’

  ******************

  It was Cornwallis, Mr Coachee, Billy Blue, who decided at the end of September that Nelson must return to England or die – or perhaps to di
e, he joked, characteristically. He was readying his own ship, the Lion, and Tim took his invalid on board with open gratitude. Cornwallis was a kind and tender man, and would work exceeding hard to save ‘Mr Hastie’s runt.’

  Nelson’s talk was often almost ceaseless – ‘to stop himself from slipping away perhaps’ – so the writing of the journal carried on. Sometimes he seemed indifferent, but Tim exhorted him with cajoling and sometimes threats. Before too long he was able to boast again (‘although a minor boast, and true to boot’), to the effect that halfway up the San Juan river he had ‘boarded an outpost of the enemy, fought with batteries, and was a principal cause of our success.’

  Then, as the Lion plugged slowly across the Atlantic, west to east, ambition seemed rising in his breast once more, first weak, and then insatiable. He wrote to Hercules Ross back in Jamaica, ‘I shall recover, and my dream of glory be fulfilled, my friend. Nelson will yet be an Admiral.’

  But when he arrived at Portsmouth, in December, 1780, the emaciated post captain still had to be lifted ashore in a cot. His next stop – and hope – was Bath, and its famous healing waters.

  ‘There could also be young women there,’ he smiled at Hastie. ‘And who knows, Tim? Who knows?’

  He was twenty two.

  If you enjoyed reading Nelson: The Dreadful Havoc you might be interested in The Devil’s Luck by Jan Needle, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from The Devil’s Luck by Jan Needle

  Historical Note

  Although this book, and those that follow it, is set very firmly in the eighteenth century, it does not deal with a specific phase in the never ending struggle for world supremacy between Britain and France, nor any of the shorter-lived interventions by other nations. Daniel Swift features later in the century as a captain of the frigate Welfare, but here he is a lieutenant, learning his trade with characteristic single-minded ruthlessness. The Seven Years War is yet to come, and naval skirmishes, rather than set piece battles, are the order of the day.

  Chapter One

  Like many men who have been at sea too long, Captain Hector Maxwell had an uncertain constitution and a stomach that was ten times worse. This early evening, bowling along the Channel with a stiff easterly right on his tail, his mood should have been all sunshine. It was not.

  ‘Look at him,’ he told the assembled dinner table. He pointed. ‘Regard. A fine young man foisted upon me by the strictures of the service, with all the backbone of a maiden’s pap.’

  His first lieutenant, a stolid man called Stewart, belched gently into his fist. This was a permitted solecism; the ship was rolling like a bitch on heat, and everyone was feeling it. The light frigate Pointer was over-canvassed, because Maxwell was in a hurry, so Stewart belched. The midshipman who was the captain’s target, however, was going green.

  ‘He is young, sir,’ said the second, with a smile that was almost gentle. Lieutenant Bullen was a kindly soul, who still bore the scars of bullying from his own first years. ‘What one of us has not felt likewise in a dead-stern ripper?’

  The officer next to him snorted, quietly. It was delicate, because the young man was the captain’s nephew. How far should one go in reasonable contempt?

  He had not gone far enough, it seemed.

  ‘You are too soft,’ said Captain Maxwell. ‘It is blows he needs, Lieutenant Swift, not farmyard noises. This youth is the fruit of my sister’s loins, and he is too much like her. Too much like her and her milksop of a husband.’ An infinitesimal pause. ‘God rest his soul.’

  The midshipman, despite himself, gave a deep-rooted shudder, manfully suppressed. A noise escaped his throat, which might have been a half a sob.

  ‘For the devil’s sake!’ the captain shouted. ‘If you are sick here I will have you flogged! I will flog you myself, and throw you overboard! Pull yourself together, man. You shame yourself and us!’

  The first lieutenant, stolid soul, signalled to a servant, who looked on in concern as he slid the mutton trencher on the table.

  ‘The young gentleman may need a bowl, perhaps?’ he asked. ‘Have I the liberty…’

  The words died in his mouth. He was from the captain’s Sussex home and household. No other servant would have dared to say such words.

  ‘It’s a bucket of water he needs, on his shitty head!’ roared Maxwell. ‘You boy, Charles Raven! Craven, more like it! One speck of vomit from your lips and you are overboard! My sister should be flogged for sending you!’

  Even Stewart showed signs of mild discomfort. He pulled the platter more firmly onto the table as the Pointer gave a reeling lurch, and reached out a helping hand. But Lieutenant Bullen got there first, and gripped the midshipman as he tried to stand. Lieutenant Swift, by contrast, moved smartly back from Raven, who had gone from green to white, a glaring white with large and round black eyes.

  ‘Look out!’ he said. ‘By God sir, I fear he will defy you!’

  The servant, a big man called Winterson, did what none of his masters cared or dared to do. He threw an arm round Raven’s neck and shoulders, lifted him from his chair, and in the fluid movement of a seaman, rolled to the stateroom door and through it. Above the sudden clamour of the Channel squall, all heard the burst of retches that tore from out of Raven’s guts and chest.

  ‘By Christ,’ snapped Captain Maxwell. ‘And now I suppose I have to carve my own damned butcher-meat!’

  Smooth as a dancer, Daniel Swift reached for the trencher, and the knife and steel. With great dexterity the mutton was uncovered, the blade clashed along the steel, the slices severed as by the hand of a French chef. Bullen watched him with a strange contempt, while the first lieutenant’s face remained unreadable. Captain Hector Maxwell speared two great hunks on the point of his own knife and slapped them on his plate.

  ‘Potatoes and kale,’ he said. ‘Fit for a king. Good Christ, who gives a man such poltroons as Charlie Raven to have on board their ship? How dare their lordships force such bastards on me? It would try the patience of a greater saint that me!’

  Despite himself, Daniel Swift caught Lieutenant Bullen’s eye. Taking the youth on board had been Maxwell’s own choice, a fact known well to both of them. It serves you damn well right, thought Swift, but it is your place and pleasure now to knock him into shape, so stop your griping, man.

  ‘It is indeed a trial for you, sir,’ he said. ‘I know he is your family, but surely… Well, before God, no man can choose his relatives; and that is more the pity.’

  The look on Bullen’s face became more complex. You are a stuck-up prig, thought Swift. I think that I must watch you, like a hawk.

  ‘I think that he is rather young, sir,’ Bullen said. ‘Perhaps it is a pity the service takes them in so tender. But he will surely rise under your tutelage. He is from your stock, sir. Depend on it, he will turn out a seaman born.’

  The first lieutenant, Stewart, belched gently once again, which seemed to Swift to hide a sneer. The captain jammed more meat into his mouth and chewed.

  ‘If one sick craven is the worst I bear today, I suppose the case is not so bad,’ he said. ‘We are well down Channel, and may come upon those Frogs within not very long. Please God we fall on them as a great surprise, like wolves on a pen of bleating lambs. It is time the dear Lord smiled on me. The bugger’s not dished out much luck so far.’

  Even Swift felt a tremor of discomfort at this speech. They needed all the luck that they could get to bring this expedition off in the time intelligence had said that they might have, and Maxwell’s casual blasphemy was an awful hostage to on high. He made a noise in his throat. A non-committal noise.

  Lieutenant Bullen went further.

  ‘In terms of wind,’ he said, ‘His mercy in the last two days has been extreme. Easterly, and strong, and steady, and a blessed boon. I cannot see we could have made it in this time without such smiling providence.’

  ‘Aye,’ muttered Stewart, into his chin. ‘But will it last, that’s all?’

  Did he know somethin
g? Did he feel a change of movement in the flying hull? For within two minutes, the sailing master put his head into the cabin, without even a knock. Nobody else, perhaps, would have dared.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he told Hector Maxwell. ‘Unless I’m very much mistook this wind is falling light. It is dying, sir, and fastish. Perhaps you’d care to come and have a look?’

  Three stomachs round the table fell. To catch and kill these Frenchmen was a make or break for Captain Maxwell. It was a prize he had to win, and every last minute to do it in was precious.

  He stood and left the stateroom without another word.

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