Nelson

by John Sugden

  William James, mate of the same ship, tried at English Harbour on 16 August 1785. He had destroyed a boat in the storehouse and used insubordinate language, ‘but the court out of lenity, and in consideration of the prisoner’s situation do only . . . adjudge him to serve seven [instead of six] years in the Royal Navy before he shall be deemed qualified to pass for a lieutenant’.

  John Freebairn, a seaman of the Rattler, convicted of desertion at English Harbour, 17 August 1785. But ‘in consideration’ of his ‘good character’ the court reduced his sentence from sixty to fifty lashes.

  John Hale, carpenter’s mate, also of the Rattler, tried in Barbados on 20 April 1785. He and his associate, James Humphreys, attempted to desert. ‘In consideration of the very good character’ given Hale by his captain his sentence was commuted to fifty lashes, but Humphreys was awarded the full three hundred. Punishment had to be suspended after Humphreys had received 121 strokes of the first 150 to be administered.

  Whatever difficulties Nelson was experiencing, no one hauled before his courts appears to have received inadequate consideration. His final judgements were dispensed at Antigua on 9 and 10 April 1787 and conformed to the pattern already described. Of the five captains sitting augustly in cabin of the Solebay, the oldest was Nelson himself, at twenty-eight. The youngest members were Prince William Henry and Wilfred Collingwood, both aged twenty-two, and Holloway and Newcome made the necessary quorum.

  Two seamen of the Solebay were convicted of desertion, but neither was heavily punished. Benjamin Williams was commended for his ‘long and faithful servitude’ in the navy and his ‘exceeding good character’ and given the comparatively lenient sentence of fifty lashes. Thomas Rickaby suffered twice as many strokes, but his penalty had also been reduced on account of his former good conduct.

  John Woodhouse was found guilty of theft, deserting from the Adamant and attempting to desert from the Rattler. He cannot have expected less than a capital sentence, and duly received it. However, ‘the court, as the ship’s books of His Majesty’s ship Adamant have not appeared before them, from motives of humanity, and to show the squadron how cautious they are of taking away the life of a fellow creature, think proper that the sentence of death just passed should not be carried into execution until the pleasure of [their] Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty is known’. The court felt it imperative that Woodhouse’s desertion from the Adamant be confirmed by reference to the relevant musters, and wanted to provide the Admiralty with an opportunity to stay the execution.

  Ironically, it was another act of compassion that drew further official obloquy on Nelson’s head. The focus of the controversy was William Clark, a sailor belonging to the Rattler. He was an incorrigible deserter who had exhausted the patience and penalties of the authorities. Clark first fled his ship in July 1785, but he was recaptured within weeks, brought before Nelson’s court at English Harbour on 17 August and sentenced to five hundred lashes. The prisoner received three hundred and forty strokes in two sessions before being spared further punishment by Admiral Hughes. This clemency did not reform Clark, and in January and June of 1786 his captain flogged him twice for drunkenness and being absent without leave. It was only days after the last punishment that he absconded from a party sent to the dockyard in English Harbour and made his way to St John’s hoping to escape on a merchantman. But he was not free for long. Two weeks later the fugitive was taken drunk in the market place, and on 9 April 1787 Nelson and his captains again sat in judgement of him. The man pleaded drink as his only excuse, and a mere handful of witnesses were needed to establish his offence. There could be but one verdict. Nelson sentenced Clark to hang.

  At ten-thirty on the morning of 16 April the sound of a gun rolled ominously across the still waters of English Harbour. It was a signal for the boats of the squadron to bring spectators to an execution. A yellow flag flew aboard the Rattler to symbolise its grim task, and the miserable prisoner was led from below and carried to the ship’s cathead, where he stood while a rope was run through a block at the fore yardarm. While perfect silence was preserved on board the Rattler and in the surrounding boats, an officer read the Articles of War, a bag and noose were placed over the prisoner’s head, and a death squad stood at the safe end of the rope, braced to haul Clark to the yardarm at the trill of a boatswain’s pipe. But that chilling sound never came. At eleven-thirty the execution was halted, and Clark was told that he had been reprieved by the wish of His Royal Highness, Prince William Henry. The boats were dismissed and Clark was extricated from his halter. His luck was boundless, for he was not only alive but free; Nelson gave the man a total discharge and he left the service.49

  In circumstances such as these it was usual to pardon publicly at the last moment – if, of course, any pardon was intended. Nelson was no doubt relieved that he had avoided executing anyone in the Leeward Islands, and was sure his actions conformed to precedent. He remembered, for example, that Sir Richard Hughes had pardoned Thomas Ray in exactly the same way two and a half years before.

  But the Admiralty did not agree with Nelson’s assessment. Their lordships eventually told him that only the king himself could pardon a convicted felon, and if there were grounds for clemency the sentence should have been suspended and the case referred to London for due process. Clark should have remained a prisoner. The fact that William Henry had approved of the pardon, or even suggested it, did not legitimise Nelson’s action. Then there was the issue of the prisoner’s discharge. By releasing Clark, Nelson had merely compounded the original offence of desertion. Defending his decision, Horatio explained that he had always understood that a man was ‘dead in law’ once he had been condemned to death, and consequently no longer under the navy’s impress. The Admiralty did not find the argument convincing.50

  On the whole Nelson’s management of the court martial proceedings on the Leeward Islands station had been reasonable, and his treatment of Clark compassionate and consistent with practice as he understood it from his predecessor. In the eyes of a jaundiced first lord of the Admiralty, however, the young captain had exceeded his authority with Clark and added one more blot to an increasingly chequered record.

  7

  At the heart of Howe’s disapproval of Nelson was Prince William Henry, whose every act was subjected to an anxious scrutiny. In blaming Nelson, Howe was less than fair. After all, if Nelson – a junior captain – had failed to control the volatile prince so too had the Admiralty. The board had allowed the king to impose upon it, and had promoted a boy to a position that would have tried a man, yet their lordships expected the likes of Schomberg and Nelson to save their bacon.

  Almost everything Nelson did intensified the blight. Towards the end of April he was sailing from Antigua to Nevis when bad news overtook him. Wilfred Collingwood was dead. He had been ill for some time. At English Harbour a pestilence had run through the ships and a number of men went to hospital. Nelson became feverish, perhaps his old complaint, and Collingwood, whose constitution was similar, declined so rapidly that a doctor advised him to put to sea. Nelson was preparing to scatter his ships to various destinations, and sent the Rattler away early to Grenada. On the evening of the 21st her commander died quietly, according to William Henry of a sudden inflammation of the bowels.

  Nelson had left Antigua on 25 April, bent upon preparing Fanny and her uncle for their prospective voyage to England. He was deeply moved by the death of Collingwood, for through all his troubles in the islands he had had no stauncher ally. ‘I have lost my friend, you an affectionate brother,’ he wrote to Cuthbert. Nelson organised a funeral on the island of St Vincent, and arranged to have personal effects sent home. ‘If the tribute of tears are valuable, my friend had them,’ he reflected.51

  From the professional point of view the death of an officer, however regrettable, created a promotion for somebody else, and Nelson had to find an acting commander for the Rattler. He rewarded his own first lieutenant, James Wallis; Dent moved from second to first lieutenant of the
Boreas in turn; and a vacancy opened up below. At this point William Henry intervened again.

  For some time relations between Third Lieutenant Hope of the Pegasus and his captain had been deplorable. Hope’s criticism of the prince for his treatment of Schomberg had reached Nelson through several channels, though the acting commander-in-chief had done nothing useful to reconcile the parties. When Hope heard of the opening on the Boreas he saw a way out and applied for a transfer. Nor was William Henry inimical to the idea. One of his friends had advised him to get Hope exchanged, and now the prince asked Nelson to oblige. Accordingly a relieved Hope went to the Boreas, though William Henry was spiteful enough to withhold his necessary certificate of good conduct until Nelson personally appealed for it. Hope’s transfer left the Pegasus a lieutenant short, and Nelson allowed William Henry to elevate one of his own protégés, Stephen George Church, to an acting position. Church would shortly be having his own difficulties serving the prince.52

  In making these appointments Nelson acted out of plain necessity, and he asked the Admiralty to confirm them. Unfortunately, since he only commanded the station on an acting basis he suspected that his appointments might be revoked, and asked William Henry to support him in the event of resistance. His prophecy came true. Church, probably for no better reason than that he was a choice of the prince, got his lieutenancy confirmed in August, but poor Wallis had to wait seven years for a permanent place on the list of commanders.

  As the spring matured Nelson’s difficulties with the prince and the Admiralty came to a head. There was the matter of his next destination. William was under orders to return to Commodore Sawyer’s squadron at Halifax for the summer, and as late as 15 March Nelson assured the Admiralty that the Pegasus would be ‘fitted for [her] voyage to the place mentioned in their Lordships’ secret orders’. However, the gangrenous plight of Schomberg worried him. That miserable officer had been under confinement since January, waiting for a court martial that never came. Nelson had expected to be superseded by a new station commander, but weeks had turned to months without a sign of his replacement. In the meantime he still lacked a quorum to try Schomberg in the Leeward Islands. Since the dispute had become a personal one between William Henry and his lieutenant, involving the veracity of one or both, the prince could not take his regular place in a court and Nelson was a captain short. He doubted a quorum would be found anywhere in the West Indies or even in Halifax, but felt that something had to be done to end Schomberg’s uncertainty.53

  By May Nelson had an idea that promised to solve several problems at a single stroke. For some time he had been convinced that the rotten state of the Rattler necessitated her return to England. He had sent her to English Harbour for preparatory repairs, and informed the Admiralty of his intentions. The prince approved, because the Rattler could take his letters home, explaining his conduct to his father, but Nelson was more concerned to pack the prince back to Halifax in compliance with his instructions and release Schomberg from his predicament. He therefore suggested the prince return to Canada by way of Commodore Alan Gardner’s squadron in Jamaica, taking the Rattler with him to enable a court martial to be formed on that station. The Schomberg affair settled, both ships would be freed to continue, the Pegasus to Halifax and the Rattler to England. It was another proposal that pleased William Henry, who had been clamouring to detour to Jamaica before returning to Halifax, and he may even have thought up the idea himself.54

  In his letters to Gardner, Nelson carefully left the question of Schomberg’s guilt open, but speculated that neither party had acted dishonourably and that the accused lieutenant might have ‘misunderstood’ his captain’s order about sending boats ashore. Though he realised that diverting the Pegasus to Jamaica rather than dispatching her direct to Halifax also breached the Admiralty orders he had inherited from Hughes, he weighed it a minor digression against the opportunity to end Schomberg’s dilemma. The prince’s further movements Nelson left to Gardner, supplying him with a copy of Howe’s instructions and alerting him to the somewhat contradictory orders the prince had received from Commodore Sawyer. In effect, Nelson was passing the buck to a superior, though for the commendable purpose of bringing the dispute aboard the Pegasus to a conclusion.55

  And so in May, while Nelson remained in Nevis preparing his wife for her homeward passage (‘it is impossible to move a female in a few hours,’ he complained), he ordered William Henry to take the Pegasus and Rattler to Jamaica. The prince arrived at Nevis on 20 May and sailed the same day. For the last time twenty-one guns roared their salute as the pugnacious prince finally put the station behind them.56

  Nelson’s plan worked because Gardner was an experienced senior officer with a sure hand. He did what every sensible person wanted, putting together a shaky compromise between William and Schomberg and sparing them a damaging court martial.

  But little of this was satisfactory in the boardroom of the Admiralty, where the unauthorised redeployment of the Pegasus and Rattler added to a feeling that the Schomberg affair had been botched. Howe evidently thought Nelson might have done more to prevent the Schomberg affair reaching such a pass, or at least waited for a new commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands to handle the matter. The first lord also disapproved of the prince’s diversion to Jamaica, although confusion about the Admiralty’s wishes in that respect were rooted in the board’s own contradictory orders. ‘I am sorry Capt Nelson, whom we wished well to, has been so much wanting in the endeavours which I think could not have failed of success, if they had been judiciously exerted, to dissuade the prince from the idea of going so prematurely to Jamaica,’ Howe confided to Lord Hood. On 17 July the Admiralty secretary, Philip Stephens, wrote to Nelson – after he had returned to England – censuring him for sending two ships to Jamaica.57

  Thankfully, Nelson’s troubled West Indian commission was at an end. Only four days after the departure of the prince a government brig arrived at Nevis with letters from the new commander-in-chief, Commodore William Parker. He and his second, Sir Richard Bickerton, had left Barbados with the Jupiter and Sybil, and Nelson was ordered to meet them in St John’s, Antigua. For the last time Nelson’s frigate steered towards the detested hurricane hole. He was there when Parker and Bickerton arrived on 3 June but too sick to see them that day. Bruised by three years of service, his morale and body were wasted.

  Parker lost no time in throwing more mud on Captain Nelson. He was furious that Nelson had sheered two ships from his squadron. Presuming that Nelson had known of his imminent arrival, Parker erroneously concluded that the Rattler and the Pegasus had been sent to Jamaica in a deliberate effort to keep them out of his hands. In particular he resented losing the opportunity to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Commander Collingwood, an important piece of patronage. Parker told Howe that Nelson had sent the Pegasus and Rattler to Jamaica purely to reward his own followers, either through the prince’s influence with Gardner or by the Rattler sailing direct for England. Unjustified as these charges were, Nelson would certainly have wanted the best for Wallis, and found his next task a disagreeable one to perform. When he left Antigua on the morning of 4 June, the welcome orders to sail for England in his pocket, he carried one of the new commander-in-chief’s protégés on board as a passenger. Lieutenant John Watheston, Parker wrote to the Admiralty, should be promoted commander of the Rattler in Wallis’s stead.58

  Weary, Captain Nelson wanted only to leave. He felt dreadfully ill, and if he was fit for a ship at all he wanted it to be in the British home fleet. He called at Nevis to wish his wife and the Herberts an anxious farewell, and sailed for England from St Eustatius on 7 June. Inside the hold of the Boreas were presents for friends, including a sixty-gallon cask of rum for Locker, but one puncheon of spirit served an altogether more macabre purpose. It was there to receive the body of the captain if he should die on the voyage.59

  The frigate reached Spithead on 4 July 1787 and Captain Nelson was still alive. Somewhere behind President Herbert and Fanny
followed in a merchantman named the Roehampton.

  8

  Nelson arrived home amid talk of war. The French were building a powerful naval base at Cherbourg, and by a 1785 treaty with the Dutch had increased their influence across the Narrow Seas. In Parliament the opposition howled at Pitt for sitting a silent spectator to the growing strength of the arch enemy across the Channel.

  Fanning the excitement was internal unrest in the Dutch United Provinces, where the stadtholder, William V, was defending his power against a reforming but fragile alliance of aristocratic families and populist radicals. The French used their enhanced sway in the United Netherlands to encourage the ‘patriots’, so the harassed stadtholder turned to Prussia and Britain for help, and Prussian soldiers were soon marching across the Dutch frontier to support William and to clear the rebels out. When Horatio Nelson came home the Dutch factions were on the brink of crossing swords, and there was a possibility of the Royal Navy entering the fray.

  As it happened, British arms were not needed. The French declined to intervene, the Prussians gained control of Amsterdam and the triumphant stadtholder, the head of the Dutch republic, was soon unscrambling the Dutch treaty with France and forming new agreements with Britain and Prussia. Yet for the brief period that the affair hung in the balance, Nelson was itching to see action, battered as he was. Though English rain and cold greeted him on his return from the tropics, adding a cold and a slight fever to other afflictions, his health was improving and he felt capable of handling another command.

  Refreshed to be home and pleased to meet such old friends as Pole and Kingsmill, Nelson was still as sick in spirits as body. He believed that his conduct had been entirely conscientious and self-sacrificing. He had championed the navigation laws in a campaign praised by the government, and defended the public purse from profligacy and corruption in the dockyards, surely no unwelcome act to a government striving might and main to reduce the burden of national debt left by the late war. But instead of accolades he received a series of stinging rebukes.