by Sam Willis
The dispatches also illustrate, and sometimes disguise, significant personality clashes. We know that Nelson and James Saumarez, both highly ambitious, talented and successful men, riled each other; that Duckworth was not even on speaking terms with his flag captain, Richard Keats; that Collingwood loathed Howe’s flag captain, Roger Curtis; and that Jervis referred to the ‘notorious imbecility’ of one of his captains, Charles Knowles.
The tale is hardly one of uninterrupted British success with each captain or flag-officer behaving as he should and without exception; it is far more complex than that. At times the alternative narrative is clear in these letters, with dismay and anger bubbling irresistibly to the surface; at others it is hidden. There is a lesson here: to understand the dispatches one must learn to discern what is not there as much as to read what is. Some of the omissions are quite extraordinary. Why did Howe name some captains for their good behaviour at The Glorious First of June but ignore others equally deserving? Why did Jervis fail to mention Nelson once after St Vincent, when he had just boarded and captured one enemy ship from another, an event unique in naval history? After the Nile, why did Nelson himself fail to mention or even to identify his second in command? Why did Hyde Parker fail to offer any detailed description of the engagement off Copenhagen and why did Nelson not mention his own cunning diplomacy which actually stopped the fighting? And why did Collingwood fail to mention the unmistakably poor behaviour of several captains during the Battle of Trafalgar? There are many mysteries here.
We shall see how courageous action did not guarantee public recognition nor even that the deserving officer would be ‘mentioned in dispatches’. Personal relationships, politics and sheer luck all had to be negotiated first. A commanding officer might witness an act of courage but easily choose to ignore it in his dispatch in order to strike a calculated blow against a rival. He may have looked away at exactly the wrong moment and have missed just such a courageous act. He may simply have felt unable to comment on an act that he had not personally witnessed. It all rather depended on the man writing the dispatches, his relationship with his subordinates and the logistics of the battle. These dispatches have a much more multi-dimensional character than one might suspect.
The Commanders And Their Fleets
The main dispatches were written by eight different commanding officers: Admiral Richard Howe (First of June), Vice-Admiral Alexander Hood (Groix), Admiral John Jervis (St Vincent), Admiral Adam Duncan (Camperdown), Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson (The Nile), Admiral Hyde Parker (Copenhagen), Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood (Trafalgar) and Vice-Admiral John Duckworth (San Domingo). Each of these admirals was unique in command experience, style and personality. To lump any two or three together would be to do each man, and each battle, a grave injustice, and here the original documents do lend a hand. It is impossible to read the dispatches without becoming rapidly and acutely aware of the personalities of those composing them, if only from their handwriting.
Have you ever written a letter on board a ship? You expect it to be a normal experience but it is not; it is extraordinarily different. On a pitching or rolling ship, writing can be disorientating. To bend low and focus on a single point is to render oneself vulnerable to the dizziness of sea-sickness while the movement of the desk can make the careful formation of letters a distinct challenge. The tails of letters can suddenly shoot off in unexpected directions; ‘o’s can easily become lozenge-shaped or even triangular; ‘i’s can become ‘u’s; ‘v’s can become ‘n’s; ‘m’s so easily transform into ‘w’s. Sometimes, however, the sea is so calm that one could be writing at a desk in a library.
The writing technology of the age also encouraged variety. If the nib of a quill is cut too thickly, the ink pools and dribbles; cut it too thinly and it fades and dries up mid-sentence, just as it always will with an old or brittle nib. Then, of course, there is the handwriting style of each man with which to contend. Sometimes we see the unmistakable flowing hand of a trained secretary. At others we have a series of sharp, fierce darts and jabs with the nib, the writing of an exhausted, stressed man. Some handwriting, Hyde Parker’s in particular (p. 218), is barely legible, as frustrating for us now as it must have been for the staff of the Admiralty then. Imagine receiving a hugely significant letter and being unable to read it. Mode of expression and grammar also varied greatly. Most correspondents were long-winded, in the style of the time, but some, like Howe, were far more long-winded than others. Others, like Duckworth, even became entirely lost in their own rambling syntax. Most of the admirals’ letters describing battles were published, either in the contemporary press or subsequently in collections of correspondence, but they were usually edited, occasionally heavily, to make them more readable and, in some cases, understandable.9 To go back to the originals therefore offers us valuable insights into the men who wrote them. Some, like Nelson and Collingwood, were talented wordsmiths; others, like Duncan, were men of deeds and not words. Some, like Hyde Parker, were clearly not at home with the physical art of writing at all and some, like Howe and Duckworth, entirely lacked the mental agility and discipline required for concise self-expression in a written form. Their dispatches necessarily reflect their personalities. Howe’s text is lengthy and rambling; St Vincent’s careful and clear. Duncan’s is rushed and excited; Nelson’s evocative and generous. Hyde Parker’s is vague and uninformative; Collingwood’s sombre and dignified and Duckworth’s energetic and unctuous. Only the closing of their letters follows any standard form: all end with the common ‘Your obedient and humble servant’, although some admirals adopt a particularly grovelling or self-satisfied tone and are careful to make it clear that they are ‘the most obedient’ or ‘very humble’.
The enemy, of course, varied. The British fought the French alone in only four of the eight battles in this period, those of The Glorious First of June, Groix, The Nile and San Domingo. They also fought the Spanish, alone at St Vincent and allied with the French at Trafalgar, the Dutch at Camperdown and the Danes at Copenhagen. Both the Spanish and the Dutch changed sides during the period, the Spanish twice. The ships varied too. These wars involved a continuing process of navy-building and fighting. Fleets were never homogenous, comprising warships all built at the same time and to the same design, but were collections of ships, some old and some new, some small for their rate and some large. HMS Victory is the best known of all of the British warships but she also provides one of the best examples of career longevity. She is most famous for being Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar, but she was actually launched in 1765, forty years previously. She had served as Vice-Admiral Augustus Keppel’s flagship at the Battle of Ushant in 1778 during the War of American Independence, and as Rear-Admiral Richard Kempenfelt’s flagship later in the same war. She then served as Admiral John Jervis’s flagship at the Battle of St Vincent in 1797. By the time that she fought at Trafalgar, therefore, she was a veteran of the Royal Navy. In fact, by 1805, many of the newly constructed Second Rates, such as HMS Temeraire, were of a similar size to, and some even larger than, elderly First Rates like Victory, while the newest generation of First Rates were significantly larger still. There was no British First Rate in the fleet at the last of these battles, San Domingo in 1806, but there was the very latest incarnation of the very largest French First Rates, L’Impérial. Her displacement was over a third or 787 tons greater than Victory’s, the difference in size being equivalent to the displacement of a good-sized 32-gun frigate. L’Impérial was also the first three-decker to mount 18-pounder cannon on her top deck; Victory was only built for 12-pounders. The weight of broadside from her upper deck was nearly 50 per cent larger than Victory’s upper deck and her total weight of broadside was larger by nearly a third. However, the ships of every nation had other individual characteristics that we must add to this variety in age, size and power. French ships were large and swift, Spanish large and beautiful, Dutch small with shallow draughts and British short and stout. Moreover, each nation’s fleet comprised both ships it
had built itself and ships it had captured from others.
The location of service of each ship depended on the reputation of the station, the type of service for which it was intended and the resources available. For the Royal Navy the most high-status station was the Mediterranean. The climate was good, there was a deep pool of potential prizes and there were fine resources for ship repair and maintenance at Gibraltar. The Caribbean had a similar reputation, but sickness was a real problem at certain times of year and the infrastructure was not as good as the Mediterranean. The distance from home and the constant cruising to protect or attack trade also meant that First Rate warships were rarely used as flagships in the Caribbean in the way that they were in the Channel or Mediterranean fleets. The North Sea command was the poor relation. Yarmouth was cold and windy and the ships sent there were usually elderly or poor sailers.
We therefore see a significant variety in the fleets that fought these battles. At The Glorious First of June we have the powerful Channel fleet strengthened throughout the line by huge First Rate warships; at Camperdown we have a fleet scratched together from small, elderly warships and converted Indiamen; at the Nile we have a crack squadron of beautifully maintained 74-gunners; and at Trafalgar we have a combination of the Mediterranean fleet, the Channel fleet and several ships which, if they had not recently been repaired through a novel strengthening method, would have been unserviceable wrecks.
The Demands Of Seapower
Although these powerful ships were built to fight, it is wrong to assume that this was always their purpose. Naval strategy shifted with the tides of war. At The Glorious First of June, the French Admiral Villaret’s task was to lure the British away from a French grain convoy that the British had intended to seize; Admiral Córdóba’s fleet, when caught off St Vincent by Jervis, was at sea to protect four ships laden with mercury; Napoleon’s fleet, destroyed by Nelson at the Nile, was there to transport and supply his army; in 1806 Rear-Admiral Leissègues’ fleet was in the Caribbean because it had brought troops to reinforce the beleaguered French forces on San Domingo and then had instructions to raid British trade. The very last thing that any of these fleets wanted to do was to fight the British.
Every battle was characterised by its own strategic, tactical and logistical ingredients. Some of these dispatches describe ponderous formal fleet actions in which each side was aware of the other’s presence and was willing to fight. Others record dramatic chase actions in which one fleet was surprised and made every exertion to get away while the other strained every muscle to prevent their flight. There are fleet battles in mid-ocean and others in confined coastal waters; battles fought in daylight and others at night; battles involving merchant convoys and treasure ships; battles against single enemies and battles against allied fleets. There are battles in cold water, in freezing rain over iron-grey sea and battles in a tropical haze; battles fought under full sail and battles fought at anchor; battles fought at close range and others at extreme range; and battles fought against monstrous First Rates, against whippy frigates, against immobile blockships, against stout 74-gunners and against powerful bomb vessels.
The dispatches do share certain characteristics, however. As a rule they fail to reveal the human experience of naval warfare. They imply, but do not describe, pain and fear. They do not bring to life the realities of a man falling to the deck with his bones sticking out through the skin of his leg or of men’s arms evaporating in a mist of gristle or their skin melting off their skulls. Nor do they mention the smell of shit as dying men voided their bowels as their lives slipped away, the pervading stench of beer that soaked the decks from shattered barrels or the reek of burned gunpowder that hung thick in the air. Some witnesses who sat down and pondered their experience later revelled in this sort of detail. One who fought at St Vincent subsequently described a defeated enemy ship ‘full of dead bodies, some with their heads off, and others both their legs and arms off, and the rest knocked all to pieces, and their entrails all about, and blood running so thick we could not walk the decks in parts without going over our shoes in human blood.’10 The official dispatches, written in the immediate aftermath of battle by admirals and captains, are not like that. They are about the business of war, though there is something chilling in that. They are written by men who are hardened to its realities to other men who are also hardened to those realities and whose imaginations are restrained by the demands of their task.
By the time that the official dispatches arrived, rumour of battle had usually reached London, in at least one case from a smuggler.11 However, the Lords of the Admiralty needed solid information upon which they could act and prepare for the logistics of receiving a battle-damaged fleet crammed with thousands of prisoners and with their own injured and dying sailors. Hospitals and prisons had to be made ready for the men and drydocks for the ships. Vast quantities of naval stores would be needed to repair masts, hulls and sails; even sailors’ clothing and bedding had to be replaced when so much was lost or destroyed in the chaos of battle. The overall war strategy then had to be considered. To what extent had the enemy been beaten? Did their fleet still pose a threat? Was the way now open for British amphibious operations or invasion?
These letters showcase how the Admiralty first heard of the actions, when the facts were still raw, stripped of any concept of glory and burdened with a business-like indifference. They are important in their own right, but they are only one type of account. They paint some aspects of the battle in glorious colour and leave others in the darkest shade. Each letter is a piece from a jigsaw puzzle, valuable on its own but also powerfully suggestive of what is absent. We have here letters from flag-officers, captains and petty officers but nothing from anyone else aboard; nothing from the people who formed the majority of a ship’s company, the seamen, landsmen, artisans, marines, servants, children and women. Nor do we have the idealised and allegorical compositions of journalists, artists, poets and playwrights that helped form and then sustain the national myths that grew up around the battles. The dispatches are the evidence of historical reason, not of historical romance.
Another of the characteristics that the dispatches share is, surprisingly, inaccuracy. The letters represent the first attempts to write historical narratives of the battles when their authors were restricted in their access to descriptions from different perspectives. Battles were fought over vast areas of sea and were shrouded in smoke. They were also fought over long periods, sometimes of several days. It would be impossible for an admiral to know in detail what had happened all the time and at every location. Even when the action was right in front of him he could easily get things wrong. Ships are frequently misidentified. Casualty figures are also very fluid. The figures given here are not accurate, nor are they meant to be accurate for the entire action. They are a snapshot of a shocked and recovering fleet at a given moment. Men who are listed as injured later died, while some who were listed as dead were merely lost and later found. In almost every instance the casualty figures given in these dispatches are not the figures that are now generally accepted.
For all of these reasons, it does not necessarily follow that these documents are accurate just because they were written by men who witnessed and took part in the action. Indeed, the opposite is often the case; the fact that they took part necessarily renders their testimony flawed. It is one of the most important lessons that a naval historian can learn.
The Navy And The Nation
To understand the full impact of these dispatches one must first consider the position and reputation of the Royal Navy within its contemporary society because this has a direct bearing on why the dispatches were so revered and later collated, preserved and presented. The letters must be understood from the perspective of the public who so avidly consumed them.
There is no equivalent volume of army dispatches, and the collection was important to Britain because it described naval victories. Britain has always had a special relationship with the sea and with her navy. As
an island nation, her security and economic health rely on an impossible dream: the ‘control’ of the sea. But the world’s oceans are too large to control, even for the largest and most modern navy, and everything was twice as difficult in the age of sail. It was all very well trying to keep the enemy in port but no blockade was ever perfect. In fact, most of the battles in this book were fought because the enemy had eluded a blockading force. Howe was blown deep into the Atlantic by a gale in the late spring of 1794 which allowed the French fleet under Villaret to leave Brest; in 1797 the Dutch escaped the Texel when Duncan’s fleet was back in Yarmouth; in 1798 Napoleon escaped Toulon unnoticed because Nelson had been blown off station; in 1806 Leissègues left Brest when the British blockaders were withdrawn to Torbay in poor weather. In a curious way, therefore, most of the opportunities for the British successes featured in this book were created by British naval failure, by her inability to control the sea, even after repeated victories.
The dispatches themselves emphasise this point, particularly those relating to the last and least well-known of the battles, San Domingo in 1806. So many assume that Britain achieved absolute ‘control’ of the sea after Trafalgar in 1805, but that, of course, is nonsense. The entire Brest fleet took no part at all in the Trafalgar campaign, there was another unscathed squadron in Rochefort and the British were unable to keep either in port. Just a few months after Trafalgar, French naval squadrons threatening the security of British interests in the Caribbean and East Indies led to the Battle of San Domingo.