by John Sugden
With Surridge at his elbow Horace and the other juniors learned how to make lunar observations against a fixed star, using a quadrant or sextant, and then to turn them into Greenwich time through a process of spherical trigonometry. A comparison of the result with local time, ascertained from routine observations, gave an estimate of the ship’s longitude. Each day the readings were carefully entered into the logs, often in Surridge’s own sloping hand, with illuminating remarks that testified to the pride he took in the work. ‘The observation this day,’ he wrote on 17 January 1774, ‘is seventeen miles to the southward of the reckoning, and as we have not had an opportunity of trying the current, I suppose it must set strong to the southward.’ The master also had his students testing Foxon’s hydrometer, a new navigational device the Admiralty wanted to evaluate, but they found it gave very different results from those produced by orthodox practices. It measured sixteen miles short over a trial of 193 miles towards the Cape.11
It was as the ship forged southwards from Madeira with young Nelson garnering wisdom from Mr Surridge that the first difficulties occurred.
Some one hundred and thirty men and boys made their homes on the Seahorse, less than half the number manning the Salisbury, but necessarily shoulder to shoulder all the same. Many of the men slung their hammocks in cramped, uncomfortable spaces only big enough to accommodate them when one watch was up and about, and they messed eight to twelve at a table. There was little or no privacy. Yet these men lived with each other month after month, and sometimes year upon year, working as a team. Indeed, their lives depended upon it, for neither the sea nor the enemy forgave easily. Every man depended upon the others, and a failing in one became a failing in all. Whether one of the top men out on a yard to reef a sail in ferocious conditions, with nothing but a foot rope between him and eternity; a member of a gun crew with an allotted part in the complicated manhandling and firing of huge pieces of artillery amidst the carnage of battle; or one of a gang laboriously extricating the heavy and obdurate anchor cable from the bitts, each had to synchronise movement and work with precision. There were no facilities for rehabilitating slackers or malcontents, or for providing them with time out on a working man-of-war. If the efficiency and safety of the ship, and all aboard her, were to be preserved it was necessary for men and boys to shape up fast.
Those who threatened the equilibrium of a crew, impairing its efficiency or damaging its cohesion, were far from popular. Antisocial activities such as quarrelling or theft damaged fragile relationships, and a man too drunk, lazy or inattentive to do his duty merely increased the heavy burdens on his fellows, who had to make good the deficiency. Most men accepted that a degree of disciplinary violence was necessary to the wellbeing of the crew as a whole and expected a good captain to provide it. As long as it was justly administered and measured in its severity, they regarded it as an inevitable if bloody deterrent to undesirable and dangerous behaviour.
Captains enjoined loyalty at all times. They regularly had the Articles of War read to the ship’s company, reminding them of the penalties of disaffection, as well as a portion of an act of parliament for the encouragement of seamen in the Royal Navy. The endless gun salutes commemorating the king’s birthday, his accession and coronation, and such notable events in royal history as the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot, the restoration of Charles II and the landing of William of Orange, also emphasised the connection between obedience, duty and patriotism. Equally, all captains flogged substantial offenders.
During his twenty-nine months with the Seahorse Horace saw eighty-eight floggings on board, but most of them (87.5 per cent) consisted of the token twelve lashes. On one occasion a mere six lashes were administered, which suggests that mitigating circumstances were weighed, and rather more often severe offences earned twenty-four lashes. The majority of floggings concerned a minority of difficult men. Forty-eight (54.5 per cent) were inflicted on just ten individuals, such men as the marine Thomas Harrington, an incorrigible thief and shirker, who received 204 lashes in twelve floggings, and a seaman named John Clark, who ran up a total of seventy-two lashes covering drunkenness, theft and neglect of duty. Among other offences punished by flogging were disobedience, fighting, and being absent without leave.12
There is no evidence that the official violence on board the Seahorse raised any eyebrows, but unfortunately an undercurrent of bullying was developing. The trouble was Lieutenant Drummond. His commission was two years old but he had a weak grasp of the responsibilities of command. Drink betrayed him first. One day he came to relieve Surridge on watch, ‘reeling about the deck’ in an inebriated condition. When the master refused to surrender the watch, Drummond tottered back to his cot and could not be roused hours later. Nelson, who would never be a heavy drinker and was rarely intoxicated, may have learned that duty and drink made poor shipmates on this voyage in the Seahorse. Even when Drummond took his watches, he was sometimes semiconscious, and slumped on the arms chest swaddled in his boat cloak, oblivious of whatever danger might threaten the ship. At other times he was livelier, but to no advantage. On one occasion he sent his servant to bring a bottle to the quarterdeck, and distributed drink to the inferior officers, including the ‘young gentlemen’ unfortunate enough to be assigned to his watch. Then, calling for a fiddler to strike up a tune, he commanded his company to dance. A mate, John Murray, seized the lieutenant by the coat to warn him that the commodore might hear the ruckus from the Salisbury, and eventually dismissed the servant to avoid further damage.13
No less disturbing were rumours of gratuitous brutality. Farmer himself may have set the pattern, for according to Murray the captain once urged him to ‘beat the scoundrels all round’ in order to get the topsails hoisted faster. If so, it was an appalling example to set before the likes of Drummond. One day a seaman reported to the sick bay complaining of bleeding in an ear. Though the surgeon, John Bullen, could find nothing amiss upon examination, he was perturbed to hear that Drummond had beaten the sailor about the head with the end of a rope.
The lieutenant’s litany of misdemeanours expanded to include insubordination. Somehow he had an entirely mistaken view that when officer of the watch he had the right to issue every order given on board. The captain directly ordered a ladder to be ‘shipped up’ during Drummond’s watch one day, but the lieutenant had it brought down again because the order had not been given through him. Shortly thereafter Farmer tramped up from his cabin and ascertained what had happened. He exchanged words with Drummond but failed to impose authority.
Almost inevitably the breach widened. The ships reached Table Bay at Cape Town on 3 March 1774. They had survived some punishing weather, and the Seahorse needed a new mizzen mast as well as supplies. Working into the bay to join five Dutch and French East Indiamen sheltering there, Farmer lost his longboat, which was swept under the Seahorse’s stern as she was turning her bow into the teeth of a strong gale. Capsizing with the loss of two men, the boat’s fate reaffirmed the old lesson that at sea, even entering a haven, danger and death were never far away. But instead of reinforcing the importance of cooperation, the stay at the Cape merely drove the captain and his first lieutenant further apart.
Words between the two grew so heated that Farmer threatened to report Drummond to Commodore Hughes. The lieutenant declared ‘he did not care a pin who he complained to’ for ‘he [Drummond] was first lieutenant of the ship and would be so’. Unwisely Farmer faltered and dropped the matter, and when he spoke to Hughes it was only to request the services of a second lieutenant. At the back of Farmer’s mind was Drummond’s inability to perform satisfactorily, but he did not say so, and when the commodore inspected the Seahorse the case the captain made for additional help was simply a general one. Hughes was amenable, nonetheless. He promoted an able seaman, Samuel Abson, to the post of second lieutenant of the Seahorse on 6 January 1774. Abson seems to have been an adequate officer because he got command of the Swallow in February 1776, but his career was cut short when he drowned two yea
rs later.14
Allowing his threat against Drummond to lapse, Farmer hoped his difficulties would go away, or maybe that Drummond would mature in time. But he merely advertised his own weakness and encouraged waywardness. There was more trouble ahead.
3
The long passage across the Indian Ocean began on 23 March, when the ships left Table Bay. They took what was known as the ‘outward’ course, proceeding eastwards to the islands of Amsterdam and St Paul before turning north towards India, rather than by way of Madagascar. For a boy the trip had many fascinations. Horace saw the great guns exercised regularly, and men fish for sharks, and on 5 April he was rated able seaman and sent to watch from the foretop. The reason for this is not clear, but the weather had got squally and gusty again, and there was much to be done aloft. Visibility was often poor, and the day before Nelson got his fresh rating the ships had lost sight of each other in gales and had to use signal fires and guns to keep in touch. Conceivably Farmer decided new eyes were needed above.
Horace, it seems, belonged to what was called the larboard watch, kept originally by Mr Surridge and perhaps now also by Lieutenant Abson. If so he was fortunate, for the starboard watch was in the hands of Lieutenant Drummond, and on that steamy leg between the Cape and Madras it sank into greater disrepute.
The bullying climaxed with a disgraceful attack upon a seaman, Thomas Muckle. He was supposed to have been in the tops with the ‘young gentlemen’ but for some reason went missing. A fuming Drummond sent the boatswain’s mates to find the absentee and haul him onto the quarterdeck, where he was evidently beaten with the end of a rope. Exactly what happened depends on the version preferred, but the chastised Muckle hurried up the main shrouds, either fleeing in fear of his life or merely returning to duty. According to one account he was encouraged to climb by blows aimed at his toes. However, before completing his ascent the unhappy miscreant was summoned back down. If we may believe the testimony of Bullen, the surgeon, Muckle was then struck in the face until he fell to the deck, where Drummond kicked him once or twice as he lay helpless. Though sent up to the top again, and told to climb in silence, the sailor reported to the sick bay the next day. His shoulders were bruised, his face swollen, one eye was inflamed and he complained of a pain in his side.
The best relationships between captains and crews were partnerships. In return for the loyalty and industry of the men, the good captain offered protection. As far as he was able, he ensured the crew got fair treatment, and he was prepared to intervene with superiors and naval authorities to secure the payment of wages or prize money owed, or to assist the injured get necessary compensation. Many captains took these obligations extremely seriously and amassed considerable followings among their men, followings that went with them from ship to ship. But conversely, captains who disappointed their men attracted little support and found their standing and authority undermined.
While crews accepted a measure of corporal punishment, they quickly turned against officers who perpetrated or condoned gratuitous brutality. We cannot say how Farmer stood with his men, but he had failed to protect at least one of them from an incompetent lieutenant. It seems that the captain learned of Drummond’s excesses and summoned him, Surridge and probably Abson into his cabin to declare that he would not suffer an officer to strike the men.
It was not the issue that finally prompted him to act decisively, however. That occurred on the evening of 19 April, some time in Drummond’s dogwatch between the hours of four and six in the afternoon. The quarterdeck was crowded with inferior officers, while others, including Lodington, one of Nelson’s companions, were working on a damaged main mast. Farmer wanted the fore-topgallant sail set to catch more wind and ordered Murray, the mate, to see to it. Drummond, still labouring under the misapprehension that all orders had to pass through himself, protested in public, and the captain and lieutenant went head to head before an astonished audience. Farmer said he would order Drummond below, to which the irate lieutenant replied that the quarterdeck belonged to the king, not Farmer, and as he carried the king’s commission none but His Majesty could tell him to leave it. In effect he was denying the captain’s right to command. Turning to the embarrassed spectators Farmer could only appeal, ‘Gentlemen, is this to be borne?’
But he could no longer prevaricate and reported the incident to Commodore Hughes. There was a swift response from that capable officer. On the evening of 25 April Drummond was arrested and suspended from duty. When the ships eventually reached Madras he was court-martialled on board the Salisbury on 30 May. For some reason a charge of inhumanity was deemed unproven; perhaps the court thought that one or two incidents did not warrant a conviction, or that Farmer himself had set a bad example to an inexperienced lieutenant. Anyway, indictments for drunkenness and disobedience were carried and Drummond was dismissed the service – the first officer Nelson saw disgraced in that way.
Unfortunately, Drummond was not an isolated case. A replacement, promoted on 5 June, was sent to the Seahorse, but Thomas Henery was little improvement. The same patterns of misbehaviour began to reappear and it is difficult not to believe that Farmer was somehow to blame.
For Horace Nelson, able seaman and sentinel, the gossip about Drummond was merely one facet of a diverse learning experience. He continued to stand by the master’s side when the observations were made each day at noon, profiting from Surridge’s endless curiosity. As the Seahorse bowled northwards under the influence of the southeast trade winds, the master scrupulously pondered the interplay of wind and current. ‘This day the current had set the ship nine miles to the Northwest of the reckoning,’ he wrote on 6 May, ‘and the weather, which before was cloudy with frequent squalls, became serene with very smooth water; and, as the wind continues steady, I suppose we must have advanced into the southwest monsoon.’ The next day the ship seemed to be as much as sixteen miles northwest of the reckoning, and Surridge concluded that the current was pushing them westwards of Ceylon, when they were purposing to pass east of it to Madras. He therefore hauled the ship up to get around Ceylon, and put into Madras road on 16 May. We know that young Nelson absorbed these lessons well. Fourteen years later he warned Cornwallis that the Indian Ocean currents in April to June could confound reckonings so much that ships fancying themselves east or north of Ceylon could actually be around about the Maldives, to the southwest, or even on the Malabar coast of India.15
Horace found Madras hot, wet and throbbing. It was one of the three principal outposts of the East India Company, the legendary fraternity that still controlled Britain’s rich eastern trade in Indian cottons, muslins, tea and oriental spices. The company was mired in debts and peculation, propped up by loans and bedevilled by internal unrest in the subcontinent, but to youngsters such as Nelson, raised on romanticised tales of Clive’s victories, it represented fabled wealth and excitement. Certainly sweltering Madras was busy. Ships were plentiful. The Northumberland was still there, flying the flag of Rear Admiral Sir Robert Harland, who was waiting to hand the East Indies squadron over to Hughes before heading for England with some of his ships. Others came and went, exchanging salutes as they did so, naval vessels such as the Buckingham, Warwick and Dolphin, and British, Dutch and French Indiamen. Boats rushed here and there shipping supplies or transporting officers to and from meetings with the commodore, and guns from Fort St George, a garrison of the East India Company, and the garden of the Nabob of Arcot added to the constant thunder that heralded the exits and entrances.
The navy had disciplinary matters to resolve. Drummond’s career disintegrated in the cabin of the Salisbury, while on 3 June the ferocious punishment reserved for serious cases of desertion was meted out to three men of the same ship. To a sinister drumbeat the prisoners were ‘flogged around the fleet’, rowed from ship to ship to receive twenty-five lashes alongside each. Nelson remembered poor Smith of the Triumph, but the two hundred strokes each of these men received exceeded any punishment he had seen.
Before the end of the
year Horace met another hazard of the tropical service, disease. Harland left for home on 20 July, and after the Salisbury and the Seahorse had been refitted and provisioned, Hughes took them back to sea with the Dolphin. They sailed north to Kedgeree in the Hooghly River in September. There was little of interest there – a few houses, a small sandy bay, and a trio of merchantmen riding at anchor – and sickness increased the discomfort. Two men on the Seahorse died and twenty-three had to be carried ashore to a hospital. On this occasion all the invalids appear to have been retrieved before the ship left for the return journey to Madras on 16 January 1775, but these were climes and conditions to which Europeans were little accustomed and death by disease was a continuing concern.
For the moment Nelson seemed immune. As his teens advanced the frailty of his earliest years diminished, and away from the marshy, damp atmosphere of the Norfolk coast his frame and constitution toughened. With Surridge to turn to in difficulty, and Troubridge and Hoare to share boyish foolishness, these years were good ones for Nelson, if not for British India.
4
The subcontinent was in chaos. The old Moghul empire based on Delhi had collapsed and everywhere resurgent Hindu powers fought over the bones. Bloodshed, murder and intrigue were rife. To protect their trade amidst such turmoil, the East India Company’s ‘presidencies’ at Bombay, Madras and Calcutta were reluctantly drawn into expensive entanglements with various Indian princes, and took direct control of Bengal and part of the Coromandel coast. Particularly worrying to the British were the Mahrattas, who controlled a huge swath of northern and central India, and Haidar Ali, the ruler of Mysore on the Malabar coast south of Goa. The Mahrattas had already expelled the Portuguese from Bassein and the island of Salsette near Bombay, and seemed destined to clash with the troublesome British.