Men of Honour

by Adam Nicolson

  All year long they had listened to the gossip coming out of Cadiz and all of it was transmitted back to London. The Spanish fleet was watering and taking on provisions. Admiral Gravina had been appointed to command. The Spanish crews had received five months’ pay. It was now said that Villeneuve ‘was likely to lose his head for his conduct, and it was supposed he would be sent a prisoner to Paris.’ The Combined Fleet was reported bound to the Mediterranean. Couriers were seen leaving for Madrid and Paris at ten o’clock at night. Gravina was going to strike his flag, disgusted, the report said, with the conduct of the French.

  In early September a spy somehow got to Collingwood a complete breakdown of the ships in Cadiz, including precise information on their captains and the number of guns per ship. On 19 September the entire Combined Fleet was said to be stored and complete with provisions, but in want of sailors. There followed ‘a general press on shore, and a strict search of French, and Spanish Deserters on board all the merchant Ships of every nation.’ Battle would soon follow.

  In the British fleet, this constant vigilance and anxiety exacted its price. A Lieutenant Wharton, in HMS Bellerophon on station off Ushant with the Channel Fleet under Admiral Cornwallis, longs to go home. He has just heard that his father has died and his affairs are ‘in a very confused state’. He gives his request to his captain John Cooke, who sends it to the admiral, who sends it to the Admiralty. A minute in response, by Marsden, is written as usual on the corner of the letter: ‘The expence of the Service does not permit Lt Whartons request to be complied with.’ No relief; he must stick to the task.

  On 18 August, Lieutenant Pasco, flag lieutenant on Victory, was suffering from rheumatism and ‘my weak state of health’. Pasco wrote to Hardy, Hardy to Nelson, and Nelson to the Admiralty requesting that Pasco go ashore. The doctor on the flagship, William Beatty, recommended 14 days ‘Country Air, Exercise and change of diet’. Captain Hardy himself had been ‘for many months afflicted with very severe rheumatic complaints attended with maciation and privation of rest and obstinately resisting the efficacy of medicine’, for which Beatty recommends

  relaxation of some weeks, from the duties of Service, change of air, and Regimen, exercise on horseback, or in a carriage, together with the frequent use of the Tepid Bath.

  Sir Richard Bickerton had ‘confirmed affection of the liver’; Rear-Admiral Lord Northesk wants to go home ‘having urgent business in England’; Captain Morrison of the Revenge wants to go home: ‘A Rupture of some years Standing has lately become worse. I do not find my Health equal to the Duties of my profession.’ Admiral Knight in Gibraltar had become too ill to do anything. On the Achille on 21 September, different officers were suffering from repeated liver pain and visceral obstruction, ulcered leg and consumption. Lieutenant Will Davies on Spartiate was suffering from ‘rapid Constitutional Decay, privation of appetite and general debility’.

  By early October, John Wemyss, captain of the Royal Marines on board the Bellerophon wrote to his captain John Cooke:

  Sir,

  I beg leave to represent to you that Domestic Concerns of a most Urgent and particular Nature, render my immediate presence in England indispensably necessary to my private Interests, and induce me to request you would have the goodness to use your influence with the Commander in Chief, to permit me to proceed thither, either by appointing some Officer included in the late Promotion to serve on board the Bellerophon in my room, or granting me such leave of absence as his lordship may deem proper. From my situation on the List of Captains and having some time ago completed a Tour of Sea Duty, and not having during the last thirteen years troubled my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty for an indulgence, I trust will, in his Lordships Conscience, have due weight—

  I have the Honor to be

  Your most Obedient and

  Humble Servant

  John Wemyss

  Capt Royal Marines

  A month and a half later, on 16 November, after Trafalgar had come and gone, when Cooke was dead and Wemyss recovering from a dreadful wound, Barham wrote baldly:

  ’Aqunt Lord Collingwood that Capt Wemyss’s request cannot be complied with.’

  The ships themselves were as worn as their officers. By early October, Nelson had returned from England to join the fleet off Cadiz. He sent a list to the Admiralty of the state in which he found the ships: Victory was fit for service; Canopus would be better docked before the winter; Spencer was fit for service, Superbe ‘must be docked for her movement’—the shifting of timbers in heavy weather—Belleisle needs docking, Donegal ‘needs docking but not so much as Belleisle.’

  The inefficiencies of men, ships and supplies, the annoyance with others, the conscious display to superiors, the squabbles about prizes, prize money and the sums due to flag officers who may or may not have been absent from the station, the tendency to disobey orders, the sheer illness and exhaustion of many of the officers under this strain, the extreme tautness of the naval screen stretched around the European periphery from the Baltic to the Aegean, the vast army ranged opposite the British coast at Boulogne, the threat to the British possessions in the Caribbean, the slowness of communications, which meant that a conversation could take three months, the overriding anxiety about where the enemy fleets and squadrons were and how they were to be prevented from achieving the concentration they need to establish superiority in the Channel: all of this is the human and technical reality underlying the idea of an orderly fleet which they all held as the model of perfection in their mind. Alert they listen all the time for the truth straining at the horizon to identify the ships they see. On 12 September, Collingwood wrote to the Admiralty: ‘The intelligence I get of the Enemy is vague, and sometimes contradictory.’ It reads at this distance like a plea for understanding.

  There was undoubtedly high tension in the exactness. On the morning of Trafalgar, for the first time in his life, Nelson forgot to wear his sword; it was found in his quarters after the battle. All around him on the Victory, the anxiety was running at a high level. Nelson, Hardy and the frigate captains who were with them toured the various decks of the ship. Nelson urged the men not to fire unless they knew the shot would tell and ‘expressed himself highly satisfied with the arrangements.’ There were then discussions over the danger to Nelson himself. Hardy, Nelson’s secretary, the ship’s chaplain and others discussed the possibility of persuading Nelson to conceal the stars on his coat. None dared raise the question with him, as it was known with what contempt he would treat it. The great officer needed to maintain a heroic bearing. He should, in the aristocratic mould, ‘appear and be’, which meant that he should wear his stars.

  Instead, Blackwood raised the question with the admiral as to which ship should lead his column into the battle. The first ship would take an immense quantity of fire. On tactical grounds alone, the flagship should not be exposed to such fire. Nelson loved and admired Blackwood and accepted his advice. The Téméraire was sailing abreast of the flagship, so close that Nelson thought he might shout instructions over to her, that she should go ahead of the Victory, to take the brunt of the Combined Fleet’s defence. But Captain Harvey of the Téméraire could not hear and so Blackwood was sent in one of Victory’s boats to deliver the orders. The Neptune, one ship further back, was given the same orders by flag signals.

  The discussion is anxious, clipped, excited. Nelson’s subordinates scarcely dare approach him. Even as Blackwood is away, Nelson, without countermanding them, goes back on the orders and urges the Victory forward, asking Hardy to have still more sail set so that the Téméraire could not pass. Lieutenant John Yule, who was in command on the flagship’s forecastle, seeing that the starboard lower studding sail

  was improperly set, caused it to be taken in for the purpose of setting it afresh. The instant this was done, Lord Nelson ran forward and rated the Lieutenant severely for having, as he supposed, begun to shorten sail without the Captain’s orders. The studding-sail was quickly replaced; and Victory, as the gallant ch
ief intended, continued to lead the column.

  That is not the action or behaviour of the calm man. A Calder or a Villeneuve might have done the orderly thing, and allowed the Téméraire and the Neptune to go ahead. But Nelson’s battle agitation was governing him. ‘Lord Nelson’s anxiety to close with the enemy became very apparent,’ Henry Blackwood wrote afterwards. That too is another reason that battle was longed for: as a place in which the anxiety was over, a place paradoxically of ultimate order and calm.

  3

  Honour

  October 21st 1805

  9.30 am to 11.30 am

  Distance between the fleets: 5.9 miles—2 miles

  Victory’s heading and speed: 067°—101° at 3 knots

  Honour: nobleness of mind; scorn of meanness; magnanimity

  SAMUEL JOHNSON, A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755

  As the sun rose, and with all preparations made on all ships, there was little to do but think of home. The fleets were still more than five miles apart and the maximum range for even the heaviest guns was 2,000 yards. There would be no battle, no death and no resolution before midday. In the Bellerophon, the men chalked ‘Victory or Death’ on the barrels of their guns. In the Bucentaure, the French flagship, the eagle which Napoleon had granted to the ship was paraded from deck to deck accompanied by the admiral. Vive l’Empereur! Vive l’Amiral! the sailors cheered as it passed. In the Spanish ships, the crews assembled for prayers and absolution. On the San Juan Nepocumeno, the captain, Don Cosme Churruca—a 45-year-old, highly educated disciplinarian and scholar, a hidalgo of the highest class, El Gran Churruca—spoke to the men. ‘In the name of the God of Battles, I promise eternal happiness to all those who die today doing their duty.’ Anyone who did not, he went on, would either be ‘shot immediately or, if he escapes my eyes or those of the valiant officers I have the honour to command, bitter remorse will follow the wretch for the rest of his days, in misery and disgrace.’ He did not tell them what he had written to a friend before leaving Cadiz: ‘If you hear that my ship has been taken, you can say that I am dead.’ Nor the advice he had given to his nephew, then a volunteer on the San Juan: ‘Write to your friends that you are going into a battle that will be desperate and bloody. Tell them also that they may be certain of this—that I, for my part, will meet my death there. Let them know that rather than surrender my ship I shall sink her. It is the last duty that an officer owes to his king and country.’ Honour for the Spaniard was a matter more of death than of victory.

  On board this morning, Churruca told his secondincommand, ‘The fleet is doomed. The French admiral does not understand his business. He has compromised us all.’ They could look out to the west and see their fate approaching. The captain stood on his quarterdeck with his telescope fixed to his eye, trained on the masts of the Bucentaure, waiting for Villeneuve to respond to the threat which the two approaching columns of the British fleet posed. The British plan was becoming clear. Nelson would throw the weight of his attack on the centre and rear of the Combined Fleet. In the light winds, once the attack had begun, the French and Spanish van would not be able to turn in time to bring their force to bear. Arriving in force, the British would outnumber the centre and rear of the Franco-Spanish fleet. As Churruca understood, there was a perfectly clear tactical move Villeneuve could have decided on as the two British columns approached which would have made the British position much more vulnerable. All Villeneuve had to do was order his van to wear round and double on the rear squadron. That way they could envelop the British as they attacked. But no signal came and Churruca finally lowered his telescope and walked across the quarterdeck, saying to himself, ‘Perdidos, perdidos, perdidos.’ Why Villeneuve did not make this signal until far too late and why the Combined van did not take it upon themselves to turn back towards the battle are the two great conundrums of Trafalgar. It may, as Churruca thought, have been mere indecisiveness on the part of Villeneuve. It may have been a reluctance on the part of Dumanoir, the admiral commanding the van, to make an independent decision, without orders from his Commander-in-Chief. This fatal mistake may, in other words, have been a failure of morale on one side and a failure of initiative on the other. In that double weakness lay the roots of the British victory.

  Nemesis was on the western horizon. What was it like on the British commander’s quarterdeck? No word-by-word record survives of Nelson’s behaviour on the morning of Trafalgar, as it does of his tragic end during the afternoon, but an extraordinarily illuminating account of Nelson’s behaviour in pursuit of the enemy, also when hard on the chase of the French, survives from five years earlier. Scarcely any document describes more exactly the man he was.

  Nelson was in command of a small squadron in the central Mediterranean, on board his flagship the Foudroyant, with his friend Captain Sir Edward Berry on the quarterdeck beside him. They found themselves in the same stretch of sea as a French squadron, under Rear-Admiral Perrée, whose flagship Le Généreux had been one of the very few French ships-of-the-line to have escaped from the Battle of the Nile. The account was published by one of his lieutenants, George Parsons.

  ’Ah! An enemy, Mr Stains. I pray God it may be Le Genereux. The signal for a general chase, Sir Ed’ard, (the Nelsonian pronunciation of Edward) make the Foudroyant fly!’

  Thus spoke the heroic Nelson; and every exertion that emulation could inspire was used to crowd the squadron with canvas, the Northumberland taking the lead, with the flagship close on her quarter.

  ’This will not do Sir Ed’ard; it is certainly Le Genereux, and to my flagship she can alone surrender. Sir Ed’ard we must and shall beat the Northumberland.’

  ’I will do the utmost, my lord; get the engines to work on the sails—hang butts of water to the stays—pipe the hammocks down, and each man place shot in them—slack the stays, knock up the wedges and give the masts play—start off the water, Mr James, and pump the ship.’

  Nelson is competitive, goading, and extraordinarily hungry for conflict. Berry’s orders are all designed to get extra speed out of the ship and prepare her for battle. ‘Engines’ are pumps with which to wet the sails, since damp sails set fairer and will not catch fire in a fight; water butts on the deck are further fire precautions; shot placed in the windward hammock netting on deck helps balance the ship and a level ship sails faster; the slackened stays and masts given play both allow more sail to be set; pumping the ship and draining the water butts lightens the load.

  The Foudroyant is drawing a-head, and at last takes the lead in the chase. ‘The Admiral is working his fin (the stump of his right arm), do not cross his hawse I advise you.’

  The advice was good, for at that moment Nelson opened furiously on the quartermaster at the conn [wheel]. ‘I’ll knock you off your perch, you rascal, if you are so inattentive. Sir Ed’ard, send your best quartermaster to the weather wheel.’

  ’A strange sail a-head of the chase!’ called the look-out man.

  ’Youngster, to the mast-head. What! Going without your glass, and be d-d to you? Let me know what she is immediately.’

  ’A sloop of war or frigate, my lord,’ shouted the young signal-midshipman.

  ’Demand her number.’

  ’The Success, my lord.’

  ’Captain Peard; signal to cut off the flying enemy—great odds, though—thirty two small guns to eighty large ones.’

  An order which in itself is the mark of a ruthless commander: to set a 32-gun frigate against a ship of the line rated at 74 guns, with extra upper deck armament, was to set a poodle on a bear.

  ’The Success has hove-to athwart-hawse of the Genereux, and is firing her larboard broadside. The Frenchman has hoisted his tricolour, with a rearadmiral’s flag.’

  ’Bravo—Success, at her again!’

  ’She has wore round my lord, and firing her starboard broadside. It has winged her my lord—her flying kites [her lightest sails] are flying away all together. The enemy is close on the Success, who must receive her tremendous broadside.
’ The Genereux opens her fire on her little enemy, and every person stands aghast, afraid of the consequences. The smoke clears away, and there is the Success, crippled it is true, but bull-dog like, bearing up after the enemy.

  ’The signal for the Success to discontinue the action, and come under my stern,’ said Lord Nelson; ‘she has done well for her size. Try a shot from the lower deck at her, Sir Ed’ard.’

  ’It goes over her.’

  ’Beat to quarters and fire coolly at her masts and yards.’

  It might often have been the case that the French aimed for the rigging and the British for the hull, but that was never a universal rule. Where a chasing ship wanted to halt or slow the progress of the enemy, destroying the masts and yards, the source of any motive power, was the obvious option.