Nelson

by John Sugden

  Nelson revisited Loano on the evening of 7 May, attacking after dusk with all but the Diadem of his former contingent. This time he failed. In three-quarters of an hour a red-hot shot fired by the French hissed into the starboard bow of the Blanche, where it smouldered ominously. The wind also fell, exposing the ships to a dangerous fusillade, and the wounded Blanche was cut up about the hull, masts and spars. Nelson prudently abandoned his attempt to extricate a gunboat and three brigs from the harbour, but recovered his injured frigate after one and a half hours of action. Rebuffed, he tried Finale the same night. This time the operation was performed so stealthily that a brace of vessels were brought out without an alarm having been raised, but daylight proved the vessels to be legitimate Genoese traders and Nelson ordered their release.

  Red-hot shot, shoals, vagaries of the wind, enemy guns, collision . . . the risks attending these expeditions were numerous and unpredictable, but whether they involved dangerous battery-baiting descents by the ships or bruising muscle-stretching pulls through darkness in small boats, they built skills and experience. Nelson turned the two galleys taken at Loano into gunboats, and used them to scout ahead. He tended to keep the ships themselves out of sight of land during the day, and to close on picked targets after nightfall, using the intelligence gained by his galleys. Careful planning reduced the inseparable risks. When the boats made their predatory nocturnal incursions they were often tethered in a line, one painter fast to another, to prevent them separating in the darkness, and their oars were muffled.82

  A believer in nothing ventured nothing gained, Nelson scored his most significant success near Oneglia on 31 May. That day he had been pursuing ships breaking for Genoa, and arrived at Torre del l’Arma, a neutral haven protected by a castle over which the colours of the Italian republic still flew. But the ships beneath its guns were French, and one showed a national flag. Again, Nelson approached quietly but steadily and provoked his nervous opponents to fire, giving him the pretext to attack.

  About mid-afternoon Cockburn, whose abilities were ‘conspicuous on every occasion’, led in with the thirty-two-gun Meleager. The Agamemnon and Speedy sloop (Captain Thomas Elphinstone) followed, while the Diadem, Blanche and Peterel remained in the offing to leeward, near enough to send their boats in support. The Meleager anchored opposite the principal battery, but as Cockburn prepared to return enemy fire he was astonished to see Nelson trying to interpose the Agamemnon between the frigate and the guns, as if to draw the greater danger upon himself. There was insufficient water for the manoeuvre and the Agamemnon ran aground, a sitting duck. Concerned, Cockburn had himself rowed to the stranded flagship to offer Nelson his help. The old Agamemnon had a new first lieutenant, a stereotypical dashing blade named Edward Berry, but it was Nelson who provided Cockburn with the defining memory of the attack. The commodore was found sitting calmly at his cabin table, writing letters while his ship lay grounded beneath a dangerous shore battery.

  This time the attack went smoothly, even when the Genoese battery joined the enemy ships in firing upon the British. Nelson replied to the neutrals with words rather than shot. Reserving his fire, he sent a message to the governor of the port, demanding to know why a Genoese tower was bombarding his ships. The French had fired first and broken the laws of neutrality, and it was the duty of the port to deal with the aggressors. It worked. The Genoese commandant apologised, his fire ceased, and Nelson did nothing to endanger the flimsy truce; even when French muskets were thrust from the windows of houses, he suffered the spotted volleys to remain unanswered rather than risk damage to the town.

  In the meantime a party led by Lieutenant Spicer boarded the national ketch Le Génie of three eighteen-pounders and four swivels, and in a brief trade of cutlass blows and pistol shots drove her sixty crewmen over the side. The gunboat Le Numéro Douze with one gun and four swivels, and four transports were also taken. After cutting the ships’ cables their defenders jumped into the water to struggle ashore, leaving the British to carry hawsers to the prizes to tow them out of harbour.

  On this occasion the effort was entirely rewarded, even at the loss of a man killed and three wounded. Le Génie was purchased into the navy, renamed the Venom, and in July complemented Nelson’s scouts in the hands of the worthy Lieutenant Noble. Of the greatest moment, the captured convoy was full of war materiel for the siege of Mantua, including provisions, books and papers as well as guns, ammunition and ordnance stores that amounted to about a quarter of Bonaparte’s siege train. Among the documents were inventories of the French army, details of other convoys and a collection of military treatises and histories intended for the general. After leafing through Vauban’s discourse on siege work and the lives of such illustrious predecessors as Hannibal and Prince Eugene of Savoy, Nelson observed, ‘If Buona Parti is ignorant, the Directory it would appear wish to instruct him. Pray God he may remain ignorant.’83

  Three days later the Blanche’s launch captured a French ship with 152 Austrian prisoners of war on board. Their captors had sold them to the Spaniards for use as mercenaries, and upon being liberated most voluntarily enrolled in British service.

  Nelson’s stroke at Oneglia probably fortified Mantua’s stubborn resistance, and Bonaparte temporarily raised the siege at the end of July. Stalled, he turned south through Tuscany at the orders of the French Directory, the new government in Paris. The Royal Navy could do little to stop him. The commander-in-chief told Drake that ‘even if the line-of-battle ships were placed from headland to headland’ supplies would continue to reach the French by sea, and Nelson was equally pessimistic. His ships were wearing out, the Agamemnon and Meleager were ‘like two tubs floating on the water’, and the allies collapsing like cards. ‘I very much believe that England, who commenced the war with all Europe for her allies, will finish it by having nearly all Europe for her enemies,’ he told Elliot.84

  By the middle of May, Nelson was questioning the utility of Britain’s presence on the riviera, and told Jervis not to ‘hesitate one moment in directing my pendant to be struck’ if he saw no advantage in protracting the command. ‘Do you really think we are of any use here?’ he asked Drake. The minister had been one of Nelson’s greatest admirers since the day they first met, but he too was moving on, having been succeeded as His Majesty’s representative to the Austrian military headquarters. Of one thing he was sure. ‘I shall always be proud of acknowledging the assistance which I have on so many occasions received from your abilities,’ he told Nelson, ‘and of doing justice . . . to the zeal, the great ability and the prudence and skill which you have shown in so conspicuous a manner.’85

  11

  Nelson’s body was protesting again. He was waking in his cot at night, ‘as if a girth was buckled taut over my breast’ and he had ‘to get it loose’. The surgeon’s report augured badly, but Nelson believed the spa waters of Pisa might revive him, and Jervis granted him the necessary leave. The significant fact was that poor health and professional disappointments did not enhance the lure of home, as they had done at the end of 1795. This time there was no mental retreat to Fanny and that quiet Norfolk cottage. Sir John’s support had made the difference.86

  The two men were friends as well as colleagues, and Nelson’s letters grew more familiar, mulling over the old admiral’s problems and encouraging his efforts. Amidst communications stuffed with business are revealing clues. Jervis thanked Nelson for the books he had loaned him (‘a fund of amusement’), asked him to find some ‘elegant’ rich velvet in Genoa for a robe in which Lady Jervis could attend the queen, and made whimsical asides concerning the younger man’s known interest in women. ‘The [Leghorn] factory will find themselves very happy under your protection,’ he promised, we sense with a smile, ‘and all our fine country-women, pent up in Italy, will fly into your embraces.’ This was not the stiff, flint-faced autocrat portrayed in many books.87

  The resuscitation of Nelson’s morale was complete. ‘I cannot bear the thoughts of leaving your command,’ Nelson wrot
e to Sir John early in June. ‘You have placed an unbounded confidence in me, and I own I feel that no exertion of mine has been for a moment wanting to merit so great an honour.’ The Agamemnon was still bound for home. She was unseaworthy and small and the most expendable of Jervis’s ships of the line, fit only for convoy duty to England and an overhaul. Nelson no longer wanted to go with her. He urged his commander-in-chief to find him ‘any thing’ that would keep him in the Mediterranean.88

  Obligingly Jervis cast around. He assured Nelson that he was determined to get him promoted commodore, and if an expected general promotion gave him a flag there would still be a place for him in the Mediterranean fleet. In the meantime a new ship had to be found. On 22 May, Jervis instructed Nelson to exchange ships with Captain Sutton of the Egmont, who was willing to go home. Briefly the matter tottered on a knife edge. Nelson found the Egmont in St Fiorenzo, but Sutton had changed his mind and for several unsettling days it looked as if Nelson would be stuck with his homeward-bound sixty-four. Eventually Captain John Samuel Smith came to the rescue, agreeing to yield his seventy-four-gun Captain and return to England for his health. Nelson was delighted and tactlessly told his wife that he did ‘not feel much regret at not being in England’. After three years of separation Fanny must have read those words with great pain.89

  He was staying, but 11 June was still a day of some sadness. Nelson had loved the Agamemnon. He had met her as an insignificant post-captain, fresh from half-pay, and turned her into the most efficient fighting machine on the Mediterranean. Her officers and men worked with frightening precision in a perfect union of commander, crew and craft. Together they had ridden fearful seas, survived disease and shot, fired thousands of rounds at the enemy and won accolades on all sides. For many on board these had been the times they would remember above all others. Some were proudly calling themselves ‘old Agamemnons’ forty years later.

  The most fervent of the Agamemnons followed their leader into the Captain, but the old warhorse herself went on to new adventures with new commanders. She would endure the humiliation of mutiny, steer to glory off Cape Trafalgar, and end her life in 1809 at the bottom of the estuary of the River Plate. But when Nelson surrendered the ship to Captain Smith that June day in 1796 her finest hour was past.

  Jervis, though, was relieved that Nelson was staying in the Mediterranean, for he counted him the best senior officer in the fleet. As he wrote to Lord Spencer, ‘I beg I may have no more admirals [sent me], unless they are firm men. Your lordship will readily comprehend that persons holding high situations in a fleet who see everything with a jaundiced eye are a perfect nuisance. Fortunately for me, Commodore Nelson and several of the captains of line-of-battle ships and frigates under my command . . . will work to anything.’90

  XXII

  FROM FLAG CAPTAIN TO SHIP-BOY

  ‘And, Sir, the secret of his victories?’

  ‘By his unservicelike, forsaken ways, Sir,

  He made the whole fleet love him, damn his eyes!’

  Robert Graves, 1805

  1

  SAMUEL Taylor Coleridge never met Nelson but knew a great deal about him. For some time he served as secretary to Alexander Ball, one of Nelson’s greatest captains, and the two spoke much of Nelson during long and lovingly recollected discussions. ‘Lord Nelson was an admiral every inch of him,’ recalled Coleridge. ‘He looked at every thing, not merely in its possible relations to the naval service in general, but in its immediate bearings on his own squadron; to his officers, his men, to the particular ships themselves, his affections were as strong and ardent as those of a lover. Hence, though his temper was constitutionally irritable and uneven, yet never was a commander so enthusiastically loved by men of all ranks, from the captain of the fleet to the youngest ship-boy.’1

  As early as 1793, William Hoste had presaged Coleridge’s remarks by telling his family that Nelson was universally beloved by the officers and men of the Agamemnon, and there are grounds for believing that it was not a gross exaggeration. When Nelson transferred to the Captain in June 1796 no fewer than 118 men, with five women and two children belonging to soldiers serving with the marines, went with him, almost a third of the old ship’s company. This despite the fact that the Agamemnon was due to sail for England, and many aboard her must have longed to see the green shores of home. But the men who followed Nelson into his new ship reflected an elite cadre he had carefully nurtured aboard the old sixty-four, and formed a dependable core on the Captain, filling important positions and helping to fashion the new company in the image of the old. There was much work to do with the fresh command. Smith had removed thirty of the Captain’s best men, and though the rest were sufficient in number they were ‘not active’ as a whole and a few were downright lubberly. Within two days in June two had tumbled from aloft, one making a spectacular descent into the sea from a topsail yard. It was the leavening of old Agamemnons that would transform their performance.2

  Before we leave Nelson’s favourite ship, it is worth examining the unusual community over which he had presided for three years and four months to see what it can tell us about his leadership. Sadly, no diaries or journals other than Nelson’s take us beyond the bare operational details recorded in the daily logs of the Agamemnon, and most of the letters written from the ship have been lost. None of the well-written letters sent home by two of her young gentlemen, Bolton and Weatherhead, for example, have survived. Those written by Nelson and Hoste can be deployed, and the little we can glean from them and other sources suggests that in general a healthy chemistry brought the company together. It was industrious, efficient, ready if necessary to pay the ultimate forfeit, but also a relatively caring community, marked by fellow feeling and a happy camaraderie. There appear to have been few bullying lieutenants or sour, aged midshipmen, most of the men respected their officers and the captain exercised a strong but paternal control over his ‘poor brave fellows’.

  The spirit a good and active captain could create aboard a warship during the French wars was best described by Captain Frederick Marryat, the novelist haunted by his years as a midshipman on the Imperieuse under the command of Lord Cochrane. A cantankerous subordinate, Cochrane was idolised by his young gentlemen, much as Nelson before him. As Marryat recalled in later life:

  The cruises of the Imperieuse were periods of continual excitement, from the hour in which she hove up her anchor till she dropped it again in port. The day that passed without a shot being fired in anger was with us a blank day. The boats were hardly secured on the booms than they were cast loose and out again. The yard and stay tackles were for ever hoisting up and lowering down. The expedition with which parties were formed for service; the rapidity of the frigate’s movements, night and day; the hasty sleep, snatched at all hours; the waking up at the report of the guns, which seemed the only keynote to the hearts of those on board; the beautiful precision of our fire, obtained by constant practise; the coolness and courage of our captain, innoculating the whole of the ship’s company; the suddenness of our attacks; the gathering after the combat; the killed lamented; the wounded almost envied; the powder so burnt into our faces that years could not remove it; the proved character of every man and officer on board; the implicit trust and the adoration we felt for our commander; the ludicrous situations which would occur even in the extremest danger and create mirth when death was staring you in the face; the hair-breadth escapes; and the indifference to life shown by all. When memory sweeps along those years of excitement, even now my pulse beats more quickly with the reminiscence.3

  Perhaps Marryat exaggerated, remembering warmer days when he was an impressionable youth, but almost every one of his words would have held good for the Agamemnon. Her spirit could infect the occasional passenger. According to a story later told by a member of Nelson’s family, one of the most noteworthy of these was Cardinal Henry, Duke of York, the younger brother of Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender. Somehow the seventy-year-old man got into difficulties, and at Nelson�
��s invitation spent some time in the ship until he could be returned to Austrian protection. Nelson is said to have reduced him to tears with the loan of £100. Restored to his station and equanimity shortly afterwards, the grateful recipient soon found the Agamemnon at Genoa, and excitedly went aboard. He repaid Nelson’s loan, presented him with a sword and dirk and ran about the ship ‘shaking hands with all the crew’.4

  The men of the lower deck of the Agamemnon are the least know-able to historians, for they left no written records, and while the musters preserve scant details, including some ages and places of origin, they capture next to nothing of the personalities themselves. Most of the men, no doubt, conformed in many respects to the stereotypical British sailor, with his seafaring slang, distinctive trousers, shirts, short jackets and hats, and pride in all things seamanly. But over the years the Agamemnon created a more cosmopolitan blend by recruiting men of different nationalities, including Italians, Corsicans and Austrians who spoke little English. Nelson still managed to weave them into the fabric and maintain a first-rate ship.

  There were floggings, of course, about one hundred and twenty over the entire period of Nelson’s command. Just before leaving for the Captain, Nelson had to flog ‘all the pinnace’s crew for bringing liquor on board’. Judging from the number of oars shipped by most pinnaces, eight men may have suffered on that single occasion. Nevertheless, the punishment rate as a whole was probably no more than average, considering the size of the ship, the duration of the command and the turnover of men, and most of the floggings were light. About three-quarters amounted to the token dozen lashes or less, with desertion and one case of sodomy earning four offenders the severest sentences of thirty-six strokes. A number of men also ‘ran’ successfully, some forty up to November 1794, and Nelson took the common precaution of issuing standing orders that no boat could go ashore without permission.5