by John Sugden
On board Scotland told his story in the presence of Lieutenant Dent. He had been crossing the old churchyard and encountered a number of armed men running about in all directions and shouting out that a press gang was ashore. Passing him, one of the men said, ‘That’s one of them’, and another – looking closer, ‘the boatswain of the Boreas, by God!’ Scotland drew his pistol to warn the mob to keep its distance, and then bolted in the direction of one of the ship’s boats some one hundred and fifty yards away. He slipped, pistol in hand, and a man was hit. ‘This is his story,’ Nelson wrote, ‘and I think it most probably to be true. He could have no reason for shooting any person, more especially one whom he never saw before in his life.’
Credible or not, that, at least, is how Nelson represented the whole affair more than four months later, but the depositions taken at the time tell a different story. Only two witnesses were material: James McCormick, a twenty-one-year-old sailor, and John Mitchell, an illiterate sailor of twenty-four who had shared lodgings with the dead man. They did not impress Captain Nelson, who thought them men of ‘infamous character, one . . . what is vulgarly called [a] “bully to a house of ill fame”, and the other a street vagabond’, but that was not the opinion of the civil authorities. They seem to have accepted the depositions at face value, and the story of press-gang violence and wilful murder they contained.
According to McCormick and Mitchell two press gangs from the Boreas were raiding the waterfront for recruits that fatal evening, one led by a midshipman, the other by Scotland. The officers clapped pistols to the heads or chests of local sailors, demanding to know whether they belonged to any of the ships in the bay.29
Scotland, armed with a brace of pistols, with two marines and several cutlass-carrying sailors at his back, twice stopped McCormick, who protested – with a pistol in his ear – that he belonged to the Latona, one of Hughes’s squadron. At about the same time another gang consisting of the midshipman and two stalwart tars intercepted three more seamen in St Michael’s churchyard – Mitchell, Elliott and one Robert Hall. These last had been warned about the press gang, but with the midshipman’s pistol pointing at him, Mitchell stood still. Elliott, unfortunately, ran down an alley and straight into Scotland’s party as it was taking the unfortunate McCormick in tow. The boatswain flourished his pistol at Elliott and demanded to know the name of his ship. ‘The general’s brig,’ Elliott replied, catching his breath. Scotland did not believe him, and pronounced him a prisoner, and it was then that Elliott made his fatal mistake. He promised to go quietly, begging not to be dragged away ‘like a dog’, but as his captors relaxed he suddenly darted away and made a dash for freedom. Scotland raised his pistol, shouting that if Elliott did not stop he would ‘drop him’. The fugitive ignored him, and Scotland fired. Elliott staggered into the marketplace and collapsed.
Nelson’s story that Scotland took Elliott to hospital received no support at the inquest on 16 April, which merely implied that the truculent boatswain fled after the shooting. According to the statement of the doctor who attended Elliott, a hospital steward reported that ‘a gentleman whom he did not know who addressed him as a doctor’ asked for assistance to be given a wounded man. Since Scotland was known in the naval hospital, and indeed was said to have been there that very day, this hardly converges with Nelson’s claim that Scotland took Elliott to hospital, assisted in the operation to remove the bullet and surrendered his pistols to the steward. At the inquest the doctor did testify that he was personally acquainted with the boatswain of the Boreas, who was supposed to have shot Elliott, but failed to mention his presence in hospital. Had Scotland acted as Nelson said, it seems inconceivable that the doctor would not have mentioned it.
Mystification only increased during the following days. When the inquest was finished Governor Parry was called upon to bring the murderer to justice. He heeded protocol, and applied to Rear Admiral Hughes, asking that a boatswain named Scotland, said to belong to the Boreas, be surrendered for a civil trial. On 20 April Sir Richard went aboard the frigate, partly on the business of a court martial being held there to try three deserters from the Rattler, and spoke with Nelson about the killing. Later the same day the admiral reported back to Parry that no one ‘answering the description’ given in the coroner’s investigation was known, but if such a person was found aboard any of His Majesty’s ships at Barbados Hughes would certainly hand him over.
This, of course, was pure prevarication, at least on the part of Nelson, who knew very well that the offender was his boatswain. The admiral himself might have been an innocent party, because the following day he addressed a letter to the captains of the squadron informing them that ‘a man called Scotland, said to belong to one of His Majesty’s ships in this bay’ was charged with murder. ‘It is therefore my particular direction that if there is any person of that name on board the respective ships and vessels under your commands, that you do immediately acquaint me therewith in order that he may be delivered to the civil power to take his trial.’30
Yet even this order failed to produce the fugitive and Nelson continued to shield Scotland. Secrets, unfortunately, have a way of slipping out. On the 21st the same Mitchell and McCormick who had deposed to Elliott’s last moments got talking to seamen belonging to watering parties from the Boreas. Someone blabbed that Scotland was still aboard their frigate, but ‘kept himself close in his cabin to prevent his discovery’. Messrs Mitchell and McCormick swore to what they had heard before a justice of the peace, and Parry not only relayed the information to Hughes, but also directed Judge Weeks to issue a warrant for the boatswain’s arrest.31
Both tactics failed miserably. Hughes probably asked his flag-captain to tackle Horatio about the subject when he went aboard the Boreas on the 22nd to participate in a trial of the officers of the Cyrus, a government store ship wrecked on the coast a few days before. At any rate, the same day Hughes wrote to Parry saying that no such person as Scotland was on board any naval vessel in Carlisle Bay, nor could the admiral say what had become of him.
On 23 April, Weeks ordered Marshal Thomas Gretton to board the Boreas and apprehend the wanted man, but though under marshals Arthur and Jones immediately took the warrant and copies of relevant depositions to the ship they got no more satisfaction. Nelson was suffering from a violent migraine produced by the trial of the previous day and was nowhere to be seen. Lieutenant Dent received the marshals and disappeared with their papers to consult the sick captain. He returned shortly with the report that Nelson had said ‘it was very well, and he would send the papers to the admiral’. Scotland’s presence on board was neither denied nor admitted, and the marshals were forced to retreat without even recovering their documents.32
Nelson certainly did send the sequestrated papers to the admiral, and Hughes responded by telling Parry that a ‘report had been made from Capt. Nelson that the said Scotland was not on board her’. Parry did not believe it, but he could only publish a proclamation on 23 April. It called upon justices and officials to cause ‘all and any places and place throughout the island’ to be scoured for the offender, and cautioned all merchant ships against taking him aboard. A reward of £20 was offered for information about the fugitive, or for his apprehension.
When Parry wrote to Lord Sydney, the home secretary could not believe that Nelson or Hughes would have contrived Scotland’s escape, but on that subject Parry had the surer view. Despite the reward, the searches and the warnings to merchant ships Scotland was never seen again in Barbados. Nelson, who later admitted dissuading Scotland from surrendering to the authorities on the day of the shooting, unquestionably facilitated his subsequent escape and reported dishonestly on his whereabouts. His responses to Hughes and the under marshals were transparently obstructive, and he was no more candid in writing to Fanny on the 23rd. The Parrys were relatives and friends of the Herberts, and Horatio’s dilemma was to explain his estrangement from them. He claimed to be one of four naval captains who had experienced ‘a little difference’
with the governor, and that he would never set foot in Pilgrim again unless Parry tendered ‘a very handsome apology’. If Fanny ever heard the true story, she never held it against him.33
5
Given the entrenched contradictions in our primary sources, the Scotland affair remains puzzling today. None of the essential questions can be answered satisfactorily. How was Elliott really shot? What happened to Scotland? And why did Nelson shield the fugitive? Yet this was the most extreme example of Nelson’s willingness to intervene on behalf of distressed followers. It reflects upon both his commitment to his men, and their loyalty to him, and it is worth pursuing in detail.
While the McCormick–Mitchell account of Elliott’s death may have been inaccurate, Nelson’s own version of the shooting is the least convincing of the two, and vulnerable at every stage. To begin with, Nelson denied that his men were hunting recruits that night. His complement was complete ‘to a man or two’ and ‘dozens [of applicants] were daily refused from merchant ships’. Horatio went so far as to admit that a master and some marines with side arms had been sent ashore on the night of the shooting, but that was to search for a deserter who had swum from the ship. This expedition, Nelson claimed, ‘they turned into a press gang’.
But this would seem to have been at best only a half-truth. The muster of the Boreas does record that Able Seaman Hugh Robinson fled the ship the day of the shooting, and men were probably sent to search for him. But the muster also contains other telltale facts. We learn, for example, that four men were recruited that same night. Their names were John Jones, Robert Anderson, George Devereaux and George Long, and they were certainly not all volunteers. Anderson deserted five days later, and Devereaux was discharged on 7 May as ‘unfit for His Majesty’s service through drunkenness’. These entries alone suggest that parties from the Boreas were pressing sailors into service the day Elliott was shot.
More than this, the muster contains the name of a fifth man enrolled that night. He was none other than James Elliott, the unfortunate victim who died in hospital without ever setting foot on the ship. Incredibly, on 14 April Elliott was rated on the books of the Boreas as no. 361, a captain’s servant, and discharged dead the following day. Why Nelson should have officially recorded a dead man as a member of his ship’s company is a mystery. It is just possible that he was trying to represent the matter as a purely naval affair, between Scotland, a petty officer, and his subordinate, and thereby to remove the shooting from civil jurisdiction to the more lenient and malleable environment of a naval courts martial. Whatever the case, this remarkable entry supports the view that, notwithstanding Nelson’s smoke screen, there had been an element of recruitment in the waterfront fracas.34
If Nelson’s denial of the press gang fails to convince, what about his version of the shooting itself? Scotland’s account of his pistol being discharged accidentally as he ran from a mob sounds very implausible. One wonders, for instance, what happened to this mob, and why, if a bystander was hit, it did not gather round in indignation. Yet Nelson, who arrived almost immediately, mentions nothing about an irate or outraged crowd. Equally, if Scotland took Elliott to the hospital, assisted the doctor in treating him and surrendered his pistols to the steward, as Nelson claimed, why did the doctor make no reference to it at the inquest?
Whatever happened, there is no doubt that Nelson protected Scotland. He sent him to the ship instead of surrendering him to the authorities and frustrated attempts to root him out. Eventually, as we shall see, he went further, discharging Scotland from the Boreas without declaring him a deserter and fighting for the full payment of his wages.
As one would expect, Scotland’s escape is equally wreathed in conjecture. Governor Parry believed that he was aboard Nelson’s ship as late as 23 April, when the marshals failed to make an arrest. The muster of the Boreas seems to bear him out, since it recorded Scotland as being present at two full musters following the shooting, on 16 and 23 April. Further, against the boatswain’s name is the discharge date of 30 April – seven days after the under marshals had attempted to serve their warrant.
Some months later Nelson admitted to Sir Charles Middleton, the comptroller of the Navy Board, that he had discharged Scotland willingly and with the approval of Sir Richard Hughes, something about which the admiral himself was understandably silent. At that time Nelson also gave an account of Scotland’s flight that contradicts the signed muster of his ship but strikes a chord with other circumstances. According to Nelson, Scotland remained doing his duties on the Boreas until the afternoon of Saturday 15 April, when he was discharged. This makes sense. Elliott’s death that day changed the boatswain’s prospects. If convicted he stood to hang, and Scotland probably preferred to take his chances running. A flight on or soon after the 15th would also have allowed Nelson truthfully to deny that Scotland was on his ship between the 20th and the 23rd, though in a way that afforded no help to the authorities whatsoever.
Scotland apparently got aboard the Cyrus store ship, or at least the carpenter of that vessel later deposed as much. The log book of the Boreas records one possible means of transfer in its reference to a delivery of staves made to the Cyrus shortly before the store ship sailed for Antigua on 16 April. But Captain Sandys was shipping aboard the Cyrus as an invalid, and it is possible that Nelson prevailed upon him to take Scotland aboard. Whatever, the Cyrus was unlucky, and ran upon a rock one and a half miles off the northwestern shore of Barbados the day she sailed. She sank in seventy fathoms with some loss of life, and Nelson took a number of the survivors on to his own ship and presided over the court martial that condemned her commander and master for the accident. Scotland made it ashore but was not among those survivors who returned to service. With some comrades he apparently reached a coastal plantation and then slipped away again to work his passage to England.35
The affair ended with Parry and Nelson wrestling for Scotland’s fate with mutual dissatisfaction. The governor urged the Admiralty and the British home secretary to bring the boatswain to justice and reprobated Nelson’s conduct, while at the end of August Nelson made a serious attempt to secure the fugitive a pardon and his pay. In support of these requests he sent the Navy Board three depositions he had caused to be sworn by himself, Jameson, the master, and Balentine, the gunner, of the Boreas. Nelson’s statements have been given, and those of Jameson and Balentine carry little weight. Neither saw the actual shooting, and their accounts lack the diversity of detail one would expect of spontaneous, undirected statements, and were obviously contrived to reinforce circumstantial points favourable to Scotland. However, they emphasised the hostility naval parties encountered ashore. Some days before the fatal incident Balentine and Scotland were abused by a waterfront crowd, had bottles thrown at them and took refuge in a house. The mob only dispersed after ‘expressing the most bitter oaths that if they had catched [sic] this deponent and the said boatswain they would have done for us’. Jameson, who was ashore the day Elliott was killed, took six armed men for security against ‘the several bodies of armed men who constantly paraded the streets of Bridgetown’. The master also testified that he was on the spot immediately after the shooting. ‘He, this deponent, ordered the said [wounded] man to be carried to the naval hospital, when the said boatswain with the assistance of some others, conveyed him there.’36
Nelson spoke with passion for his boatswain. It had all been a tragic accident, whipped up by a hostile Barbadian population. The inquest had reached a decision without consulting anyone from the Boreas. ‘If the said jury had taken the trouble to enquire of this deponent,’ he said, ‘or summoned any one of the supposed press gang . . . they would never have been able to state upon their oaths such falsities as would deprive the boatswain of even that pity which the most vile of men deserve.’ But his pleas fell unheeded. In August, Scotland visited his agents in London, explaining that he had come home to recover his health, and applying for the wages that had accrued over several years on the Boreas. Unfortunately, the Admiralty had
put a stop on his pay and a warrant was issued in Bow Street for his arrest. A constable even went to Deptford, where Scotland was supposed to be hiding, but arrested the wrong man. The final upshot is unclear, but the probability is that Scotland neither received his pay nor ever answered for his offence before a court. Had he done so Nelson would surely have been summoned as a witness.
But why did Nelson defend Scotland so disingenuously and determinedly? It is a fair question given the gravity of the charge and the risks attending the obstruction of justice. Captain Nelson’s conduct pitted him against the civil authorities in Barbados and created difficulties for Sir Richard Hughes and the Admiralty. More crucially, even today it bears upon his reputation as a law-abiding man of honour.
Loyalty was one dimension. Nelson obviously respected Scotland. He had promoted him, and probably knew that if occasion demanded the man would have fought and died for his country. In deciding whether to surrender or shield Scotland, Nelson also had to weigh his own standing with his men. The company of the Boreas worked to an unwritten contract. The men obeyed, and if necessary suffered for their officers, but in return they looked to the captain for protection and help in difficulties. He was their representative in the mysterious, inaccessible and intimidating world of gentrified officialdom above. He knew how to fight for their just rights, and what to do if they got into trouble. Scotland now put that contract on trial. Perhaps no one aboard the frigate but Scotland knew the truth about the shooting, but they all knew that a man with whom they had forged a clannish camaraderie in a dangerous service was facing a hanging offence, and they looked to the captain to arbitrate his fate.