Nelson

by John Sugden

  Much that Nelson brought from his experiences with Hood was allowed greater expression under his successor, Admiral Hotham. Most significantly, it was during Hotham’s command that Nelson had finally come gun to gun with the French fleet and judged its worth. The vast superiority of the Royal Navy’s combat skills, he almost instinctively realised, could best be turned to account in close-quarter engagements, and that meant greater tactical flexibility and a readiness to modify or discard the traditional line of battle.

  The power of the line-ahead formation, which protected vulnerable bows and sterns and presented discouraging broadside batteries right and left, was obvious. To approach such a line head-on, or even at an angle, offering the weakly defended bow or quarter to those formidable rows of guns, invited terrific risks. The safety of the line, and the potential disaster courting any who departed from it, was written into the printed Admiralty fighting instructions, but a consequence had been the distant sterile exchanges between fleets facing one another in roughly parallel lines, each afraid of abandoning the standard defensive formation.

  Nelson understood the importance of the line, but appeared to have relatively little reverence for it in his early years, placing more emphasis upon the need for individual captains to use their initiative to get to close quarters. He was by no means alone in his desire for greater tactical flexibility, but rather part of a tradition that had been growing for half a century.

  Some admirals had long elaborated the standing Admiralty instructions to erode the tyranny of the line. Hawke used a ‘general chase’ to release ships to pursue flying enemies in the preliminaries to his defeat of the French at Quiberon Bay in 1759, a victory immortalised in the patriotic song ‘Hearts of Oak’, which Nelson had known since childhood. In 1780 Admiral Sir Charles Henry Knowles opined that while the line was useful as a way to approach an enemy fleet, it was advisable for ships to pursue their opponents as they saw fit once engaged. Two years later the battle of the Saintes appeared to demonstrate the potential of aggressive tactics when an accidental rupture of the French line enabled some of Rodney’s captains to slip through, double the enemy’s ships and catch them in a destructive crossfire. A Scottish laird, John Clerk of Eldin, advocated exactly such manoeuvres in his Essay on Naval Tactics, published in 1790.

  Perhaps the most inventive assault upon an enemy fleet, however, was that made by Lord Howe in 1794. He planned to attack from windward, pierce the French line and finish the engagement in the lee of the enemy fleet. Theoretically, this would have given him the advantage of the wind in the opening phase of the battle, and enabled him to attack when he chose. Passing through the enemy line, the British ships would also have been able to rake the French sterns and bows with their broadsides, and once under their opponents’ lee they would have been well positioned to cut off the retreat of any disabled enemies. A badly crippled ship unable to work to windward had to fall to leeward before the wind. Howe’s plan was complicated, but at ‘The Glorious First of June’ some of his ships managed to cut the enemy line and produce a modest victory. Howe had also contributed to more sophisticated tactics by issuing an improved signal book in 1790. 93

  In his willingness to shed the line, therefore, Nelson was in keeping with the changing perceptions of enterprising forebears. There were a growing number of precedents for new and aggressive tactics. But those battles under Hotham had arguably been even more formative, for they confirmed Nelson in his opinion that a tremendous gulf was opening up between the French and British fleets. Its implications were not lost upon him. The defence offered by the line was no longer imperative, and captains were justified in taking risks to get to close quarters.

  Professionally, Nelson had grown in his year with Hotham and become an admiral in the making, but a commander-in-chief needed more than a grasp of the naval tactics. A grasp of the broader strategical situation and the elements of interstate diplomacy were essential. Nelson had seldom been required to think through the ramifications of policy, and sometimes gushed intemperate opinions about what should or should not be done, with little regard for their political consequences. However, when Nelson returned to his duties off the riviera in the summer of 1795, he entered a vortex where the ambitions of enemies, allies and neutrals crunched head-on. The captain not only acted as a commodore, developing his leadership skills at the head of a squadron, but he also entered the murky waters of Mediterranean diplomacy, filling the one obvious vacuum in his professional education.

  XXI

  DRIFTING TO LEEWARD

  As Nelson’s calm eternal face went by,

  Gazing beyond all perishable fears

  To some imperial end above the waste of years.

  Alfred Noyes, The Phantom Fleet

  1

  WRITING to the Honourable John Trevor, the British minister plenipotentiary in the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont at Turin, Horatio Nelson admitted wearily that ‘We English have to regret that we cannot always decide the fate of empires on the sea.’1

  Never did he feel the truth of that assertion more than during his operations off the riviera coast in 1795 and 1796. Despite all his customary energy and will he watched Britain’s position in the Mediterranean disintegrate, her allies humbled and the triumphal tour de force of her foes gather spectacular pace. Try as he might, Nelson found himself largely a tool of damage limitation. It was a dispiriting, disempowering business, akin to being the commander of a crippled ship driven to inexorable destruction by wind and tide. During the eighteen months Nelson cruised off the riviera the old fleet phrase ‘drifting to leeward’ reasonably described his country’s position east of Gibraltar.

  There were many reasons for the deterioration. While the British wasted tens of thousands of redcoats in largely fruitless West Indian forays they had no significant military force for the Mediterranean. They relied on allies – allies who proved to be ropes of sand.

  Prussia made peace with France in 1795, then Holland, and then Spain. Even before the Franco-Spanish alliance of August 1796, diminishing tension between the two countries allowed the French to transfer soldiers from their western frontier to Italy. Off the riviera, where the war continued, Nelson found the remnants of the once mighty allied coalition frail and fractious. The Austrians were afraid the Sardinian king would strike a separate bargain with the French, and try to regain his lost possessions of Nice and Savoy at the expense of Austria. On their part the Sardinians resented the overall command of the allied armies being given to a sixty-three-year-old Austrian general, Joseph Nikolaus, Baron De Vins, an officer notoriously unpopular with the Piedmontese. Further east the score of Italian states were incapable of uniting against French invaders. The republic of Genoa, supposedly a neutral buffer between the French and Italy, was economically bound to its powerful western neighbour as well as afraid of her, and it was rife with Jacobin sentiment. The other Italian states were enfeebled by mutual suspicions, internal revolt and irresolute leadership, and to Nelson it seemed that only the Neapolitan Kingdom of the Two Sicilies showed any spirit whatsoever.

  With little support from home, and irresolute and fragmented allies at his elbow, Nelson felt a crumbling breakwater against the eastward tide of French imperialism. These new soldiers of the French republic were the fodder of mass conscription, many of them mere ill-provisioned boys, but they fought with a new spirit and in a new style. The time-honoured lines of the traditional armies that faced them were repeatedly weakened by musket fire or artillery before being pulverised by loose but powerful columns of infantry. Rediscovering the military secrets of the ancient Mongols, the French often moved swiftly and flexibly, without the encumbrance of ponderous baggage and supply trains. If they had no artillery, they did without, and food was pillaged from the ground they marched over. What they lacked in discipline they requited by numbers, a reckless courage and the experience of battle after battle. Even ‘half-naked’ they ‘determined to conquer or die’. Reluctantly, Nelson acknowledged the new vibrancy of the French armies
. When it came to war they were as unorthodox as he was, and as enthused by revolutionary fervour as he was by a growing hatred of it. On land these alien warriors were ‘like our seamen; they never stop, and know not the word halt’. The contrast with the Austrian whitecoats opposing them became inescapable. As a British army officer with the Austrians wrote, the emperor’s forces were paralysed by ‘indecision, indifference and indolence’.2

  What was more, from among Lazare Carnot’s new breed of young and vigorous generals, the French had found a leader of unusual ruthlessness, ambition and enterprise. He would face Nelson for the first time here, on the riviera coast, but his towering figure would throw a giant shadow over the remainder of the admiral’s life. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte.

  2

  The evening of 17 July 1795 found Nelson in Genoa, making a careful note of the four French frigates and corvettes that sat invulnerable at their moorings. Unable to do anything about them in a neutral port, Nelson talked to Francis Drake, the British minister plenipotentiary who had been appointed to liaise with the Austrian army and had also just arrived. Six years younger than Nelson, and like him the son of a parson, Drake shared the captain’s appetite for business and soon briefed him on the military situation.3

  In June the Austrians and Sardinians had thrown the advancing French ‘Army of Italy’ under General François-Christophe Kellermann, the hero of Valmy, back across the Apennines, but now the opposing forces were stalemated near the coast at Albenga. Thirty thousand French had dug into the St Esprit mountains with Nice to their rear, while the Austrians under De Vins were quartered at Vado Bay near Savona with their advanced posts a few miles further west, near Loano. For the moment both sides glowered at one another, unable to move forward. But the ability of the French to advance or even to hold their existing positions depended upon supplies. With the Sardinians at Ormea and Garessio threatening the enemy’s land communications, most of their provisions had to be brought in by sea. If Nelson could stifle them and drain the French of strength, he might be able to force them to retreat or at least weaken their lines and expose them to Austrian attack. The Austrian general was grumbling about the lack of naval support, and not without some justification. Even as Drake was briefing Nelson in Genoa a score of feluccas were landing provisions for the French at Oneglia and rescuing them from a regimen of a quarter of a ration a day.4

  Stopping such supplies would not be easy, however – if possible at all. For one thing many of the sea-borne supplies were sneaked along the coasts at night, in light-draught vessels capable of exploiting the treacherous shallows inshore, where larger ships could not go. For another, the trade was largely in the hands of Genoese, Italian and Algerian neutrals who had endless ruses to protect their livelihoods. False flags and forged papers were used to disguise the ownership of freight, and any legitimate property seized by mistake could involve the hapless captors in damaging lawsuits. Nelson had been ordered to avoid offending the neutral states whenever possible, but as the French had now penetrated the republic of Genoa itself it was possible for Genoese merchants to supply them without leaving their own territorial waters. It was a diplomatic minefield. To help his allies Nelson had to stop those provisions, but in doing so he risked financial penalties and the full weight of diplomatic disapproval.

  Back in the reassuring surroundings of his cabin on the Agamemnon, Nelson was mortified to find that Hotham’s instructions were also peculiarly obstructive, ordering him to abide by a misconceived Admiralty circular. It demanded that inventories of the cargoes of impounded neutrals be sent to London, where any decision to prosecute would be taken. This long-winded and preposterous injunction would not only have congested the processes of seizure and trial, but also have destroyed the bulk of the disputed cargoes, which consisted of perishable foodstuffs. Spoiled goods could not be restored, even if the Admiralty deemed them unlawful prize, and the captors would inevitably become liable for their value. Neither Nelson nor any of his captains could be expected to labour under such an imposition.5

  Nelson liked Hotham but not his inertia and want of ‘political courage’. The admiral was ‘alarmed at everything, and dreads doing wrong, which makes him err twenty times in a month’. He ‘must get a new head’, wrote Nelson. ‘No man’s heart is better, but that will not do without the other.’ So, encouraged by Drake and Trevor, Nelson decided to overturn the Admiralty’s instructions himself, presenting Hotham with a fait accompli. 6

  With typical self-confidence, Nelson waived his instructions and resolved to seize all vessels, whether neutral or not, found transporting supplies to the enemy, either in France or territories occupied by the French. Captures would be brought into Vado Bay for Nelson’s inspection. Neutral ships would be released, but any suspect cargoes would be taken to Leghorn, their perishables sold and the proceeds held by an agent pending the outcome of the legal process. As for Genoese merchants shipping goods to areas of their republic occupied by the French, but for the specific use of the native populations, they would be required to show passports from De Vins, Drake and the secretary of state in Genoa, who went under the exhausting name of Felice Giacinto Gianelli Castiglione.

  Nelson’s dictum would not endear him to neutrals, whether they were shipping contraband or not, but he intended to back it all the way. In July he ordered Cockburn to be ‘particularly vigilant’ in examining vessels sailing under Genoese colours, as he suspected that many of them were transporting money from France. The Genoese government acquiesced reluctantly. Mindful of the rights of neutrals to trade with whomsoever they pleased, it stopped short of positively approving Nelson’s plans. There was even the shadow of a challenge to them in August, when Castiglione attempted to send a national war galley to escort a convoy of provisions to the Genoese garrison at San Remo. But when Nelson made it clear that he was still prepared to intercept the convoy, seizing any merchant ships without the necessary passes, Castiglione retreated and agreed to ensure the supplies were solely discharged to Genoese officials who would keep them out of the hands of the French.7

  A procedure decided, Nelson and his associates sent to Hotham, who found himself beseeched by Trevor and Drake to back ‘the temporary resolution which that spirited officer [Nelson] had taken upon him’, and publicly affirm the new policy. Hotham was sick and waiting to go home. There were times when his hands shook so desperately he could hardly hold a pen. But to give him his due the admiral agreed without the slightest prevarication, and even reiterated Nelson’s orders to the fleet captains under his own authority.8

  That train set on its way, Nelson took Drake to Vado to confer with the Austrian commander-in-chief in his camp at the bottom of the bay. When they arrived after a voyage of calms on 20 July, Nelson was distinctly unimpressed by the anchorage. There was a fort on a commanding promontory, which the Agamemnon saluted with seventeen guns, but the bay itself was merely a bend in the coastline; ‘if it had not been called a bay, I should not have named it one,’ Nelson said. However, the next day Nelson and Drake locked themselves in long, earnest discussions with Baron De Vins and Britain’s men from Turin, John Trevor and Thomas Jackson, who had themselves just arrived. The general had been thrown into an ill humour by the arrival of the Genoese victuallers in Oneglia four days before, and did not look like a conqueror. He was old and diseased, but spoke confidently. Starved of provisions the enemy would be driven back to Nice. The Austrian army might winter in Provence, and Nelson’s ships anchor in Villefranche. In fact, so important did De Vins consider the work at sea that he was already commissioning Sardinian privateers to attack the enemy coasters. Captain Nelson assured the Austrians of his full support and established a system by which the army could signal any of his ships offshore, but no doubt he also explained the difficulties of chasing small provision ships through coastal shallows. At this point Trevor had a powerful contribution to make. Foreseeing the problem, he had already applied to Admiral Hotham for the assistance of a flotilla of small boats from Naples. Though Trev
or did not know it, his request was then going before the Neapolitan government; the response was positive, and in August two galliots and eight feluccas were being fitted out to serve under Nelson’s command.9

  Applying the strategy, even after Hotham’s approval of Nelson’s plans, was more complicated. Nelson’s force increased to thirteen or so ships, and he dispersed them widely, some cruising between La Spezia in the east and Oneglia in the west, and others doing escort or dispatch duty. Nelson commanded from Vado Bay, and relied a great deal on information from Genoa, where Drake and Joseph Brame, the local British consul, had spies watching French ships like hawks, and noting when cargoes were loaded in the harbour and vessels prepared for sea. Nevertheless, as the British cruisers began to strike there was an immediate howl of protest. When Nelson returned to Genoa to drop Drake and Trevor, an angry, hooting crowd gathered on the waterfront. Neither that, nor the bewildering shades of complicity that emerged as cases went to court, intimidated the captain of the Agamemnon, who stood his ground. He held his captains accountable for their conduct, but understood they had to make decisions quickly, and when in doubt preferred to seize rather than risk supplies reaching the enemy. It was ‘better’, he said, that the British ‘should pay for twenty cargoes [taken wrongly] and finish the war, than the war be continued into another campaign’.10