by John Sugden
Nelson, however, rejected Moutray’s authority outright. ‘I beg leave to say that whenever he [Moutray] is in commission as commodore or captain I must obey him,’ he wrote to Hughes on 9 January. ‘It is my duty, and I shall have great pleasure in serving under him. Till then, as a [dockyard] commissioner, I never will obey any order of his. I should lower the rank of the service, and be unworthy to have a command in it.’ Notwithstanding Hughes’s order, he would continue to regard himself as the station’s second-in-command: ‘all officers . . . who are junior to me must obey my orders.’ His letter was deeply offensive to Hughes, for it did more than decline to obey. First, it dismissed and clearly disbelieved the commander-in-chief’s statement that Moutray had a special commission from the Admiralty; and second, by declaring that he could only comply with Hughes’s orders by acting unworthily he was accusing the admiral himself of being unworthy.46
Perhaps Sir Richard hoped the problem would go away, but it didn’t. No one did anything about the pendant dispute, in written word or deed . . . until the Boreas put back into English Harbour on 5 February 1785.
Sure enough, there was Moutray’s pendant, flying from the Latona as if the commissioner was a commodore with authority over the squadron. Nelson was in a quandary, partly because he saw a show-down coming and partly because of his friendship for the Moutrays, man and wife. He must have worried about Mary, and what would happen if an open quarrel developed between himself and her husband?
The next day aggrieved messages flew back and forth. Nelson drafted one to Sandys of the Latona, upbraiding him for not paying the respects due to the senior captain arriving in port. In other words, poor Sandys must repudiate the pretended authority of Moutray and publicly acknowledge Nelson’s supremacy.
Another of the messages Nelson received from the commissioner himself, upset at the Boreas’s failure to salute his pendant. Moutray was obviously still ignorant of Nelson’s opinions. Styling himself a ‘commander-in-chief’ he referred to Hughes’s instructions and required Nelson to place himself under orders. Nelson was ready with his answer. Enclosing a copy of his vitriolic letter to Hughes, he assured Moutray of his ‘personal esteem’ but stated unequivocally that he could accept no orders from him until he was placed in commission.47
Like Hughes, the wounded commissioner suffered with dignity. He shammed amicability, inviting Captain Nelson to dinner as usual, and allowing Mary to steer the conversation to safe ground with her exceptional dexterity. We must suppose that Nelson tried to explain, but he certainly held his ground and on the morning of the 7th called the captain of the Latona to account. Sandys had continued to act as Moutray’s flag captain, and flew signals on his behalf. When he called for the naval commanders to send details of their ships to the commissioner, Nelson peremptorily ordered him to the Boreas. 48
It was an uncomfortable moment for the junior captain. He was several years older than Nelson and had been his superior on the Lowestoffe, but ever since he had been falling behind and winning little respect from colleagues. Then in hot pursuit of one of the Eliot sisters, he was often ashore and even more often drunk and incapable. Nelson liked but pitied him. ‘Little Sandys, poor fellow, between Bacchus and Venus, is scarcely ever thoroughly in his senses,’ he said. ‘I am very sorry for him, for his heart is good, but he is not fit to command a man-of-war . . . such men hurt the service more than it is in the power of ten good ones to bring back.’ Sandys was no stranger to Nelson’s forgiving nature, but knew he was in trouble as he warily climbed aboard the Boreas to the customary shrill of pipes.49
Inside the captain’s cabin Nelson came directly to the point. ‘Have you any order from Sir Richard Hughes to wear a broad pendant?’ he asked.
‘No,’ replied the embarrassed Sandys.
‘For what reason do you then wear it in the presence of a senior officer?’ Nelson continued sternly.
‘I hoisted it by order of Commissioner Moutray,’ Sandys blurted out.
‘Have you seen by what authority Commissioner Moutray was empowered to give you orders?’ Nelson asked.
‘No,’ admitted the other miserably.
‘Sir,’ said Nelson grimly, ‘you have acted wrong to obey any man who you do not know is authorised to command you.’
Sandys had no retreat. ‘I feel I have acted wrong,’ he confessed, ‘but being a young [junior] captain did not think it proper to interfere in this matter, as there were you and other older [senior] officers upon this station.’
Nelson did not order the wretched fellow to haul the pendant down and Sandys sailed the next day. The Boreas followed shortly afterwards, heading for Barbados to collect Andrews from hospital. In reporting to Hughes Nelson referred to Moutray’s pendant but simply declared ‘he did not think [it] proper to pay the least attention’ to it.50
Nelson seldom saw himself as he appeared to others. Only recently he had written of a fellow captain, ‘I do not like him at all. He is a self-conceited young man.’ That, in truth, was how Hughes was now seeing Nelson: someone stuffed with opinions, constantly questioning or refusing orders, and, most terrifying of all, entirely capable of exposing incompetence in a commander-in-chief. All Hughes wanted to do was to survive his tour of duty with the minimum aggravation. Now Moutray was also complaining to him. He had raised the distinguishing pendant ‘in consequence of your several orders to me’, wailed the commissioner, but Captain Nelson had refused to recognise it.51
Reluctantly, Sir Richard tackled the firebrand again. On 14 February, when both were in Barbados, the admiral sent Nelson a letter. In it he repeated his claim that Moutray had a ‘special commission’ from the Admiralty, and said his authority to act as commodore was ‘comformable to the example of two late commanders-in-chief, my predecessors of high rank employed upon this station’. Hughes was plainly angry. ‘Why you should . . . judge that it was not your duty to pay any attention to that distinguishing pendant, or to receive any orders from Commodore Moutray, I cannot possibly conceive . . .’52
The water was beginning to boil around Captain Nelson and his reply was more conciliatory. He wrote a vindication of his conduct for the Admiralty, and begged Hughes to do him the justice of forwarding it. Hughes probably had not wanted the issue to reach their lordships back home, but now Nelson left him no choice. In his official report he made light of Nelson’s objections. It was true, for example, that the captain of the Boreas had presided over courts martial, but only when Hughes himself was on the station; Moutray’s acting powers became applicable solely when the admiral was away. However, Hughes let slip one interesting admission. Moutray, he said, had told him that he had ‘the same additional powers as had been vested in the hands of his predecessor, Commissioner [John] Laforey, namely with an especial commission from the Board of Admiralty, authorising and requiring him in the absence of a flag or senior officer to superintend and carry on the duty of the port . . . and . . . to take under his command such of His Majesty’s ships or vessels of war as might occasionally arrive’. Thus, it appears, Hughes himself had never actually seen Moutray’s supposed commission, but depended only upon precedent and hearsay.53
The affair of the pendant had unsettled more people than it was worth. Moutray felt rejected and bleated to Hughes, while Hughes, who had taken Moutray at his word, felt vulnerable and challenged. Nelson and Collingwood rejected the story about the special commission and thought their status was being undermined. And in between was the hapless Sandys, ducking and diving to avoid brickbats from both sides. It had become a tragicomedy and an entirely unnecessary one. For the truth was that Moutray really did have a commission from the Admiralty.
It was dated 25 July 1783 and designated Moutray ‘commander-in-chief, in the absence of a flag officer or senior captain, of such of His Majesty’s ships and vessels as shall, at any time, be at Barbadoes or the Leeward Islands’. He was empowered to expedite the dispatch of ships making use of the dockyard; ‘to oblige their commanders’ to return to their sea-going duties as soon as p
ossible; and to request details of ships using the dockyard, just as Moutray had attempted to do through the luckless Sandys. He was even authorised to keep naval commanders afloat and prevent them dallying ashore if he thought it would restore their ships to service more speedily. If Moutray had produced this commission much, if not all, of the heat about the pendant would have dispersed. The whole storm had been brewed by poor communications in a climate of pride and distrust.54
Nelson was beginning to appreciate the danger of being branded unreliable and insubordinate, but the Admiralty’s view when it came – that he should have submitted his doubts about Moutray’s status to the admiral, rather than taken unilateral action – was not expressed forcefully. To the board, far away and ignorant of the wider difficulties between Nelson and his commander-in-chief, the issue seemed trivial. And in the event it disappeared as quickly as it had blown in, for while Nelson was still in Carlisle Bay in Barbados he received a letter in a small, neat hand that sloped forward in a way he knew well.
What Mary wrote shocked him. The Moutrays were going home.
8
The commissioner’s health had not, as he expected, borne up well in the West Indian climate, but that was not the reason for his return. Now that the war was over, the lords of the Admiralty had decided to scale down the dockyard at Antigua and withdraw its naval commissioner. Moutray’s post was struck down by the economic benefits of the peace.
Collingwood had been expecting it, dolefully. ‘I shall miss them grievously,’ he told his sister. ‘She [Mrs Moutray] is quite a delight, and makes many an hour cheerful that without her would be dead weight.’55
Nelson was devastated. His behaviour towards the commissioner now seemed irrelevant and churlish, a spiteful act against a sick old man near the end of his career. Worse still, Horatio suddenly contemplated the emptiness that Mary would leave behind. As he told William a few days later,
I am not to have much comfort. My dear, sweet friend is going home. I am really an April day, happy on her account, but truly grieved were I only to consider myself. Her equal I never saw in any country or in any situation. She always talks of you, and hopes (if she comes within your reach) you will not fail visiting her. If my dear Kate goes to Bath next winter, she will be known to her, for my dear friend has promised to make herself known. What an acquisition to any female to be acquainted with. What an example to take pattern from! [Commissioner] Moutray has been very ill. It would have been necessary he should have quitted this country had he not been recalled.
The sense of impending loss did not blind Nelson to the other gossip on the Leeward Islands station.
Come [he told William] I must carry you to our love scenes. Captain Sandys has asked Miss Eliot – refused. Captain Sterling [Stirling] was attentive to Miss Elizabeth Eliot, but never having asked the question, Captain Berkeley is, I hear, to be the happy man. Captain Kelly is attached to a lady at Nevis, so he says. I don’t much think it. He is not steady enough for that passion to hold long. All the Eliot family spent their Christmas at Constitution Hill – came up in Latona. The Boreas, you guessed right, [was] at English Harbour. Rosy [Hughes] has had no offers. I fancy she seems hurt at it. Poor girl! You should have offered; I have not gallantry enough. A niece of Governor Parry’s [of Barbados] is come out. She goes to Nevis in the Boreas. They trust any young lady with me, being an old-fashioned fellow.56
Mary Moutray looked forward to England but promised to write to Nelson and Collingwood, and started packing the family possessions. Nelson sailed north again towards her, and on 26 February anchored in English Harbour for a precious thirteen days. Collingwood joined them on 7 March for a final rendezvous, and three days later the Boreas slipped out of harbour after a difficult parting. ‘My sweet amiable friend sails the 20th for England,’ wrote her captain. ‘I took my leave of her with a heavy heart three days ago. What a treasure of a woman. God bless her.’57
Collingwood remained about the island for a dozen more days and saw Mary again. When she gave him a purse, which she had made as a ‘trifle’ keepsake, the stern sea captain was moved to verse:
Your net shall be my care, my dear,
For length of time to come,
While I am faint and scorching here,
And you rejoice at home.
To you belongs the wondrous art
To shed around your pleasure;
New worth to best of things impart,
And make of trifles – treasure!58
For some time Nelson’s own heartaches remained, mixing promiscuously with other troubles. He called at Dominica on Locker’s business, but found the house Admiral Parry had bequeathed him levelled and the soil round about unprofitable, and the problem of the navigation laws refused to go away. With Mary gone, everything irritated him. The people in the islands were ‘a sad set’, he concluded. ‘Yesterday, being St Patrick’s day, the Irish colours with thirteen stripes in them was hoisted all over the town [St Kitts]. I was engaged to dine with the President, but sent an excuse, as he suffered those colours to fly. I mention it only to show the principle of these vagabonds.’59
Returning to English Harbour was the hardest of all. At seven in the morning of 26 April the ship anchored below Windsor once again. Sometime during the day, in moderate weather punctuated by an occasional stiff breeze, he climbed the hill for the last time and reflected mournfully about the empty house. It was silent in the sunlight, but in Horatio’s mind still echoed with the ghostly laughter of the woman he had loved and lost. ‘This country appears now intolerable, my dear friend being absent,’ he told William. ‘It is barren indeed. Not all the Rosys can give a spark of joy to me. English Harbour I hate the sight of, and Windsor I detest. I went once up the hill to look at the spot where I spent more happy days than in any one spot in the world. Even the trees drooped their heads, and the tamarind tree died. All was melancholy. The road is covered with thistles. Let them grow. I shall never pull one of them up. By this time I hope she is safe in old England. Heaven’s choicest blessing[s] go with her. We go on here but sadly.’60
He consoled himself by anticipating her letters, anxious at the time that passed without them. Actually, Mary was beset with troubles of her own. In June 1785 the Moutrays went to Bath, where John hoped to recover his health. He applied for light work with the Navy Board or in one of the outposts, but did not get well, and he still worried about the relationship between his wife and the two captains across the Atlantic. When Mary wrote to them, he (or someone) broke the wafers sealing both letters before they were posted. ‘They are welcome to read mine,’ Nelson observed to Collingwood. ‘It was all goodness, like the dear writer.’61
John Moutray died at Bath on 22 November. By the terms of her marriage settlement, signed at Berwick two days before her wedding, Mary had a pension of £150 per annum on Roxobie and four other properties in Scotland, willed by her husband to their children. She also inherited the use of furniture, plate and linen for the period of her life. But with two youngsters to bring up, the future looked bleak, and she petitioned the Admiralty for an allowance. It was refused, and Mary’s second letter to Horatio was ‘full of affliction and woe’ and talked about retiring to France, where the cost of living was cheaper. ‘What has this poor dear soul undergone in one twelve months,’ Nelson sighed. ‘Lost father, mother, husband and part of her fortune, and left with two children.’62
Mary was supported by a generally positive outlook, however, and lived a long life. Her son James entered the navy, won the praise of Hood and Nelson, and died of a fever at the age of twenty-one. In October 1805 the surviving heir, his sister Catherine, sold the Scottish properties to William and John Adam (of the famous architect family) for about £9,000. Kate, as everyone called her, then married Thomas de Lacey, the archdeacon of Meath, in Sussex in 1806, although when she died some ten years later she appears to have been childless. Mary outlived them all. Her last decades were spent in Ireland, where she died in her ninety-first year in 1841. 63
; It is surprising that Mary, who was widowed in her mid-thirties, never remarried, and we are left to ponder what might have happened if Commissioner Moutray had died nine months earlier, in Antigua rather than Bath. The impression Mary had made on Nelson and Collingwood endured. A decade later Nelson leaped to her defence over ‘a scandalous report’, protesting that no more ‘amiable woman or a better character exists on earth’. But his last letter to ‘my dear Mrs Moutray’, written in 1803, was a polite but terse nine-line affair. She had approached him in support of Lieutenant Edmund Wallis of the Victory, but while he agreed to be useful he squashed immediate prospects of promotion. His reply, neither offering nor soliciting personal news, suggests that the flame kindled in English Harbour had at last been extinguished.64
Not so with Cuthbert Collingwood, who corresponded warmly with Mary until his death in 1808. She asked for his portrait and keep-sakes; he, though happily married with a family of his own, forever concerned himself in her affairs. Cruising off Toulon shortly before his death the ageing admiral wrote to her, ‘I wish you had one of those fairy telescopes that can look into the hearts and souls of people a thousand leagues off. Then might you see how much you possess my mind, and how sincere an interest I take in whatever relates to your happiness, and that of your dear Kate.’65