Nelson

by John Sugden

  Hood needed good officers for the job he had been given. At the outbreak of war Britain had not a single ship of the line in the Mediterranean. Now the admiral was expected to establish naval superiority, if not complete supremacy, in that quarter by destroying the French fleet or bottling it in Toulon. While stifling enemy trade and supplies, he had to protect British commerce and the country’s important communications with India and the East Indies, and assist the allied powers to resist French aggression. One such power, Sardinia, had already lost Villefranche and Nice.

  Unfortunately, Hood got little support from home. His government was not expecting a long war, for while France had won some military victories she was still internally divided and ringed by predatory powers eager to stove in her boundaries and restore her monarchy. The coalition against her grew as one state after another – Austria, Prussia, Britain, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Sardinia and Naples – entered the fight. Against this background Pitt’s war effort remained minimalist. He was content to contribute money and advice, but as long as the Low Countries were kept free of the enemy, he saw no reason to deploy British troops on the Continent. Certainly not in the Mediterranean. Instead, he planned to use the navy and most of his army to advantage overseas. While France was enmeshed in the European quagmire, Britain would ravage her seagoing trade and strip her of rich Caribbean islands. By recycling the pillage to finance allied armies, Britain could make her great rival pay towards her own defeat.

  Time would prove that the British had greatly misjudged the situation. Pitt and his advisers underestimated French endurance and overrated the utility of the allies. The war was not a quick, lusty clash of arms. It intensified, and went on and on. Pitt’s finances, which had begun to erode the national debt, were premised on a short war and fell into disarray. Instead of imposing emergency taxation to create a war chest, he relied upon uncertain spoils from the enemy and ruinous loans. Even more disastrous, Britain’s colonial and commercial strategy did not spare her casualties. Indeed, it cost her the flower of the British army. Between 1793 and 1796 eighty thousand troops were killed or disabled by diseases in the West Indies without having landed one significant blow upon the French.

  Hood, therefore, had few soldiers to help him regain the Mediterranean, and no base east of Gibraltar. He was expected to rely heavily upon the allies, particularly Austria and Spain. Unfortunately, Austria was bogged down in continental campaigns, and Spain’s great days as an imperial power, when she had tantalised the world with riches hewn from the New World, were spent. True, Spain had tried to reverse the decay of her fleet, and massively increased the numbers of her capital ships and frigates from the mid-century. With seventy-six ships of the line in 1790, Spain had the third largest navy in the world, boasting such impressive battle units as the Santissima Trinidad, the biggest warship afloat. But her fleets were chronically under-manned, and had yet to shrug off the unfortunate habit of carrying too great a proportion of soldiers to seamen. Moreover, like the French, the Spanish spent too much time languishing in port, recruiting hands for voyages at short notice. Without enough trained seamen or sea-going experience, even brave and patriotic Spanish crews tended to be undisciplined and incompetent.

  It did not take Nelson long to gauge the worth of the Spanish navy. To ease the watering situation at Gibraltar, Hood ordered Captain George Elphinstone to take six ships of the line, including the Agamemnon, into Cadiz. They reached the Spanish port in uncomfortable heat on 16 June. Nelson’s ship was in good shape, and he was able to wander around the dockyards, the arsenal on Isla de León, and the fortifications of Cortadura. He and the other captains sampled lavish Spanish hospitality dining with their admiral aboard the huge Concepción. The ‘Dons’, Nelson observed, had ‘very fine ships’ but they were ‘shockingly manned’ and unlikely to be of ‘much use’. In fact, ‘I am certain if our six barges’ crews . . . had got on board one of their first rates they would have taken her.’

  One spectacle Nelson and his fellow captains beheld at Cadiz filled them with revulsion. They were invited to a ‘bull feast’ in which ten animals were driven one by one into an amphitheatre to be baited, tortured and slaughtered before a blood-lusting, baying crowd of twelve thousand people. ‘We had what is called a “fine” feast’, Nelson wrote home, ‘for five horses were killed and two men very much hurt. Had they been killed it would have been quite complete. We felt for the bulls and horses, and I own it would not have displeased me to have had some of the Dons tossed by the enraged animal[s]. How women can even sit, much more applaud, such sights is astonishing. It even turned us sick, and we could hardly sit it out. The dead, mangled horses with their entrails tore out [and] the bulls covered with blood was too much. However, we have seen one [bull feast] and agree that nothing shall tempt us to see another.’21

  On 24 June Hood reassembled his fleet at Gibraltar, bringing together Elphinstone’s squadron, his own and a detachment of ships that had been sent in advance. Captain Nelson shopped for a cask of sherry for Locker, and exchanged warm greetings with old friends on the streets and quays of the great stronghold. The captain of the Britannia was John Holloway of Leeward Islands fame, while Skeffington Lutwidge, who had commanded the Carcass, was now at the head of the Terrible. No doubt opinions of the Spanish navy passed freely during these conversations, and the worst of them were vindicated when the fleet proceeded through into the Mediterranean.

  Nelson used Sunday 7 July to distribute his psalters and monitors to the crew, but towards the end of the day his attention was drawn to a large number of sails spotted off the Spanish port of Alicante. In case they were French ships from Toulon, Hood had his nineteen ships of the line in battle formation the next morning, but the newcomers proved to be part of the Spanish fleet bound for Cartagena. Nelson watched their allies wasting four fumbling hours trying to form a line of battle, and marvelled even more to hear that a mere sixty days at sea had reduced their ships to such a poor state that they had been forced to run for port. This seemed ‘ridiculous’ to the British, said Nelson, ‘for from the circumstance of [us] having been longer than that time at sea do we attribute our getting healthy. It has stamped with me the extent of their nautical abilities. Long may they remain in their present state.’22

  Impatient for action, Nelson may not have known that he had learned the decisive lesson of the outward voyage. Instinctively he understood that though the Spaniards and British were presently allies they were not naturally so, and might one day meet in battle. For that eventuality he was astutely priming himself, measuring the strengths and weaknesses of the Spanish fleet and finding it wanting. It was information he would supplement in the years ahead and tap for his first great battle.

  If the Spanish failed to impress Nelson, the French navy held no greater terrors for him. Even word that the French were installing forges in their ships so that they could fire red-hot shot did not diminish his ardour to fight them. He merely observed that ‘we must take care to get so close that the shot may go through both sides, when it will not matter whether they are hot or cold.’ Hood appreciated Nelson’s offensive spirit. His fleet advanced upon Toulon and Marseilles in three divisions, one headed by his own Victory (Captain John Knight) and the others by the Colossus and Agamemnon. The admiral declared the French coast to be under close blockade. Nelson, sanguine about the efficiency of economic warfare, hoped that starvation might drive ‘these red hot gentlemen’ out to offer battle. He was a terrier straining on a leash, desperate to distinguish himself and reluctant to tolerate anything protracted or sluggish.23

  Late on 15 July, after days crossing seas empty of French sail, the men of the Agamemnon heard distant firing to leeward. It came from the direction in which the Leda and the Illustrious had pursued strange sails, and everyone expected prizes in which the fleet would share. However, the next day their comrades brought in only a French corvette. They admitted that three enemy frigates had been engaged the night before but had escaped. How was it possible, Nelson grumble
d? The weather had been fair, the night moonlit and clear and the British the more practised seamen. If he ever made a fortune, he complained to Fanny, it would not be through gentlemen like the captains of the Leda and Illustrious. Somewhere, in the frustration of such moments, Nelson realised that one of the most important tasks of the admiral was to instil spirit and enterprise into his captains, and to encourage them to achieve with or without immediate supervision.

  Indeed, Nelson was already showing what could be done in the way of leadership on his own ship. His people were learning what was expected of them, and more or less working as a single body. William Hoste, who Nelson increasingly recognised as an unusually appreciative, bright boy, felt that moulding. His bubbling letters suggest a happy ship. ‘I like the sea very much indeed’, his father learned. ‘Captain Nelson is very well and is uncommon kind to me. I have the pleasure to inform you that Mr Weatherhead is made mate. I like him very much. We have a schoolmaster [Withers] on board. He is a very clever man.’ Nelson, said the boy, was ‘acknowledged to be one of the first captains in the service, and is universally beloved by his men and officers’. Most men liked Nelson because he liked them; even youngsters who could do little for him understood his interest in them. ‘In his navigation, you will find him equally forward,’ Nelson wrote to the Reverend Dixon Hoste of his son. ‘He highly deserves every thing I can do to make him happy . . . I love him; therefore shall say no more on that subject.’ When Hood offered Nelson the command of a seventy-four – the type of ship he had always wanted, the type that played the major part in fleet actions – he surprised the admiral by turning it down. ‘I cannot give up my officers,’ he told Fanny.24

  Conquering calms and inconstant winds, the British battleships finally closed the road into Toulon on 19 July. Hood sent in a flag of truce, ostensibly to negotiate an exchange of prisoners but in reality to spy. Sixteen French ships of the line were discovered in the outer road ready for service, and another five fitting in the harbour. Nelson supposed that once the French had put all of their ships into commission and tilted the odds in their favour, professional pride if not starvation would prompt them to test the British blockade. But though Hood’s ships braved fierce gales for several days, suffering and scattering, no such movement occurred.

  Both Toulon and nearby Marseilles were, in fact, gripped by civil strife. In some parts of France the forces of counterrevolution were on the move, prompted by the extremism of the National Convention in Paris. Supporters of the crown and Church had risen in rebellion in Vendée in the west, while in Marseilles and Toulon coalitions of royalists and moderate republicans overthrew their Jacobin opponents. The Toulon fleet was divided and paralysed. Its admiral, Jean-Honoré, Comte Trogoff de Kerlessy, struggled to keep it free of the local factions, but waited in vain for instructions from his government.

  The situation revealed itself to the British gradually. After probing towards Nice in August, Hood detailed the Agamemnon, Robust, Romulus and Colossus to maintain the watch in the Toulon area while he took the fleet to Genoa, a neutral port from which the enemy were securing supplies. No doubt Nelson enjoyed the greater freedom it gave him. Privately he complained that Hood had ‘done nothing but look into Toulon’, and relished the liberty to enforce the blockade in his own way.

  However, he was increasingly conscious of the difficulties created by neutral shipping. The Mediterranean was full of small, neutral states trying to continue their business with the war raging around them. The British allowed their ships to pass in and out of Toulon and Marseilles as long as they did not transport French freight or ‘contraband’ items deemed of value to the French war effort. In practice, distinguishing between what was and was not legitimate commerce was largely beyond officers on the spot. On 16 August, Nelson seized the Madonna di Bisson, a snow sailing from Marseilles to Smyrna under Ragusan colours. Among her cargoes were clothes, sugar and linen that Nelson believed to be French property, but though he sent the ship to the prize court in Leghorn he doubted that she would be condemned.

  The afternoon of 18 August saw Nelson in action again, pursuing two armed ships east of Toulon into the harbour of Cavalière. A French shore battery opened fire to defend them, but the ships themselves raised neutral Genoese colours. Nelson’s suspicions remained, however, and after exchanging some shots with the French he withdrew out of range to watch what happened next. In the morning he decided to use bluff. Intercepting a Genoese brig, he sent it into the harbour with a message for the masters of the fugitive vessels. If they were truly Genoese they should come out, or face being attacked and burned at anchor. The French certainly thought the British capable of landing in force, and while some locals fled up the hillside six hundred militia marched into the settlement to resist any assault. In the event Nelson’s message alone did the trick. The two armed ships, with five or six others using the harbour, came out for examination. Nelson was sure they were ‘loaded’ with French property, but their neutral papers seemed in order and he let them go.25

  Apart from pursuing ships back and forth, Captain Nelson gathered intelligence, and everything he discovered increased his animosity to the revolution. Though the people were starving, the squabbles of the political factions in Marseilles and Toulon sowed terror and murder. At the moment the more conservative republicans and monarchists had the upper hand, but the blade of the guillotine rose and fell all the same, dispatching radical opponents with a cruel and vengeful finality. The jails heaved with radical activists. Nelson was told that the people were tired of the dogma-ridden Jacobins, and that Provence might even declare itself a separate republic under the protection of Britain.

  On 20 August, Hood was back and Nelson had someone else to blame for a lack of progress. Nelson vacillated between his instincts and sense. Much as he admired Hood, he thought the fleet ‘inactive’ and convinced himself that Marseilles was so short of provisions and politically divided that it would prove an easy conquest if only the British had the courage to attack. ‘We have attempted nothing,’ he said, yet ‘Marseilles must fall if we attack it.’ But at the same time he knew that even if the town was captured it could not be held without larger numbers of troops than Hood could muster.26

  The admiral himself pursued a surer strategy by opening negotiations with representatives of both Marseilles and Toulon. After earlier military disasters the National Convention was striking back hard, introducing mass conscription to hurl ragged but fervent troops against reactionary invaders and internal insurrectionists alike. As food ran low in Marseilles and Toulon, and the avenging forces of the convention threatened to enclose them, the ports turned in desperation to Hood, suggesting the British take them under their protection. Hood’s luck was remarkable. Though Louis XVII was an imprisoned child, the admiral demanded the authorities declare for the monarchy, as defined in the reformed constitution of 1791, and surrender the dockyards, ships and forts at Toulon into British keeping. Nelson impatiently watched the boats hurrying to and from the Victory, but on 26 August he was summoned on board the flagship himself. He could scarcely have imagined better fortune. At a single stroke and with hardly a shot fired Toulon, the second greatest French naval base – indeed the whole of France’s sea power in the Mediterranean – was about to be enclosed within the British fist.

  However, to garrison the forts at Toulon, Hood desperately needed soldiers. As the Agamemnon was one of the fastest ships in the fleet, Nelson was ordered to carry dispatches to Sardinia and Naples. The allies were told that Toulon was expected to fall. Had he ‘5,000 or 6,000 troops’ with him, the war would soon be over, Hood wrote confidently to Sir William Hamilton, Britain’s man in Naples.27

  Nelson hurried away, sailing deeper into the Mediterranean than he had ever been before, but he was lumbered with the job of escorting a Sardinian frigate to Oneglia and Sardinia and on his way also seized a vessel carrying corn from Genoa to Marseilles. A prize crew was put aboard, though it would take almost a year for the vessel to be condemned in Gibraltar.
On the last day of the month Nelson was still at sea when he encountered the Tartar under Captain Thomas Fremantle, carrying Lord Hugh Seymour Conway with dispatches for England. They gave Horatio the latest news from the fleet.

  Marseilles had fallen to the national French army, and the party that had treated with Hood crushed. Royalist refugees had streamed into Toulon, strengthening the moderates there and edging them closer to the British. Hood offered Toulon protection provided he was given control of the military and naval installations. Soon the town had declared for the monarchical form of government outlined in the French constitution of 1791 and agreed to let Hood in. The day the Tartar left thousands of marines and seamen were being landed to secure the dockyard and forts, and the French fleet had been commandeered. A Spanish fleet had also arrived to support the British admiral, but his need of soldiers to man fortifications had intensified. Conway said that he had written a personal letter to Hamilton urging him to ‘hasten the Neapolitans’ and gave it to Nelson to deliver.28

  Britannia’s triumph exceeded anything Nelson had imagined. Never had he supposed that the French Mediterranean fleet would be so bloodlessly and effortlessly overthrown. True, the way Hood put it the French ships were being held in trust, awaiting a restoration of the monarchy, but if the Jacobin army now massing to attack Toulon forced Hood out the British still had it in their power to destroy the port and its fleet before retiring. As Captain Nelson strolled his quarterdeck he even wondered whether Toulon might become a bridgehead for an invasion of ‘that unhappy distracted country’ in support of royalist rebels and an honourable peace? At the very least news of its fall into British hands had to inspire the allied powers to greater efforts. Nelson was personally bound for Sardinia and Naples, both of them already smarting from the threats of the French navy. Sardinia, which then governed the island of Sardinia, as well as Piedmont, Lombardy and a stretch of the riviera, had lost Nice, Villefranche, Monaco and Menton to the French, but now stood to regain ground.29