by John Sugden
37. Account for tableware, 20/3/1784, Western MSS 3676, Wellcome Library, London. My account of the manning of the Boreas depends throughout on its muster (ADM 36/10525) and pay book (ADM 35/242). Consult also Rupert Willoughby, ‘Nelson and the Dents’, and Nelson to Stephens, 14/4/1787, ADM 1/2223.
38. For Jameson, ADM 1/5315, and Power, ADM 107/17: no. 77.
39. Nelson to Stephens, 26/12/1788, D&L, 1, p. 277, and Nelson to the Navy Board, 5/12/1788, Add. MSS 34903.
40. For Robert Parkinson, Stansbury, Nowell and Bishop, see their passing certificates, 4/6/1794, 3/12/1789, 5/12/1786 and 3/9/1788, filed in ADM 6/93, ADM 6/90, ADM 6/89 and ADM 107/11.
There is a serious paper to be written about the ‘young gentlemen’ (‘children’, as Nelson called them) of the Albemarle, Boreas and Agamemnon, with a view to establishing the patronage behind the appointments and the extent to which Nelson’s ‘nursery’ fulfilled his ambition of furnishing capable officers. Because protégés were enlisted under various ratings they are not always easy to identify from musters and pay books. Some were entered on the Boreas muster on the same day as their captain. Of these, Boyle, Talbot and Tatham were probably preferments of Hood; William Standway Parkinson of London was a recommendation of Captain Pole; and Hardy and Andrews came through other Nelson associates. Hardy, along with Robert Mansell, Andrew Baynton and William Oliver, were transferred to other vessels, the first three within a few months of Nelson taking command.
In time Nelson accommodated other hopefuls, some recommended by colleagues or friends, but a few young men without influence who impressed him. To incorporate the influx and ensure fair play, Nelson juggled the ratings of his young gentlemen creatively, remarking that he had to ‘stand friend’ to those with no powerful patrons. Some who failed to make the grade had to be disrated. ‘The poor ones I only disrated with their own consent,’ Nelson said, ‘and the younger[s] rated in their room were bound in honour to make their pay as good as before. [The] Honourable Courtenay Boyle, I have understood, did make Mr [Edmund] Bishop, in whose room he was rated, a present when the ship was paid off’ (Nelson to Navy Office, 5/12/1788, Add. MSS 34903). Bishop was one of the unsuccessful aspirants, although he remained on the Boreas throughout Nelson’s command. Promoted midshipman from able seaman, he eventually stepped down to vacate a position for Boyle. Though Bishop subsequently passed his examination for lieutenant on 3 September 1788 he was never commissioned.
Among others slotted in after the first wave were: William Batty, who started as Lieutenant Wallis’s servant; Robert Parkinson; eighteen-year-old Alexander R. Kerr of Greenwich, who had begun his career with Captain E. J. Smith of the Endymion in 1781, recently been with Captain Charles Cotton on the Alarm, and joined the Boreas as a supernumerary before Nelson’s arrival; twenty-year-old Joshua Beale, who was transferred to Nelson’s ship on 23 April 1784; Maurice William Suckling; William Nowell, sent by the captain of the Scipio; Charles Lock, who soon moved elsewhere; Thomas Stansbury; Stephen Perdrian, recruited in 1785; and William Warden Shirley, the only son of the governor of the Leeward Islands, who was rated captain’s servant on 1 August 1786 at the supposed age of fifteen. In addition to the sources listed in n. 40 above, see Nelson to Stephens, 29/4/1784, ADM 1/2223; Bowyer to Stephens, 5 and 9/5/1784, ADM 1/723; passing certificates in ADM 107/10, p. 231 (Kerr) and 107/17, p. 48 (Suckling); ADM 9/2: no. 312 (Kerr); ADM 9/6: no. 1817 (Suckling); and Marshall, Royal Navy Biography, Supplement I, p. 34.
With respect to subsequent performances, the ‘class’ of the Boreas was far more distinguished than that of the Albermarle. Eleven individuals populated the latter, but apart from Bromwich none made lieutenant. By comparison, the aspirants of the Boreas were under full sail. Two (Boyle and Talbot) became admirals; three (Kerr, Andrews and William Parkinson) post-captains; one, Lock, made commander; and eight (Bromwich, Nowell, Perdrian, Power, Shirley, Stansbury, Suckling and Tatham) became lieutenants. Two, Robert Parkinson and Bishop, passed their lieutenant’s examination but never got their commissions confirmed. Some also acquitted themselves well under fire. Andrews, Suckling and Boyle served under Nelson with some success, and Talbot distinguished himself on several occasions, notably in the destruction of a Turkish squadron in 1807, and the taking of the eighty-gun Rivoli. He died a GCB. Nelson would have been pleased by Kerr’s part in the defeat of the French squadron in the Basque roads in 1809, but not his testimony in extenuation of an incompetent commander-in-chief during the subsequent court martial (John Sugden, ‘Lord Cochrane’, chap. 6). The impressive record of the ‘class’ of the Boreas, as opposed to that of the Albermarle, reflects the greater social standing of its members, as well as any differences in ability.
41. Nelson to William, 19, 29/3/1784, 23/4/1784, Add. MSS 34988; Nelson to Locker, 23/3/1784, D&L, 1, p. 100.
42. Nelson to Stephens, 14/4/1784, ADM 1/2223; Stephens to Nelson, 15/4/1784, Add. MSS 34961.
43. Nelson to Locker, 21/4/1784, D&L, 1, p. 104.
44. Nelson to William, 25/9/1785, Add. MSS 34988.
XII Hurricane Harbour (pp. 249–81)
1. The dockyard commissioner appears once to have occupied the house used in 1784 by the naval commander of the Leeward Islands station. Presumably when Windsor became available the commissioner released his former habitation. It is not exactly clear where Windsor was situated, other than that it occupied a hill near the dockyard. It may have been on the west side of the strait between the outer and inner anchorages at English Harbour, on the rising ground to the rear of the dockyard storehouses. However, I incline to the view that it occupied Mount Prospect on the eastern side of the strait, above old careening wharves that predated the development of the naval dockyard. A drawing made by Walter Tremenheere (NC, 3 [1800], pp. 469–70), showing a house on Mount Prospect flying a flag, may depict Windsor, or another property built on the same site. My description of English Harbour and attempts to resolve the problem of Windsor depend also upon state papers; ADM 140/1173 (a map of 1727); Thomas Jefferys, West Indian Atlas, p. 21; George Louis Le Rouge, Pilote Americain Septentrional; various materials in Vere Langford Oliver, History of the Island of Antigua, especially the letters of Thomas Shirley, 3/11/1781, and John Luffman, 7/10/1786, and the map of 1818, 1, pp. cxxv, cxxx, and facing p. xviii; Political Magazine, 3 (1782), p. 39; engraving of the Boreas in English Harbour, Lily Lambert McCarthy collection, Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth; and John Luffman, Antigua in the West Indies, a map surveyed in 1787–8.
2. Nelson to Locker, 7/6/1784, 24/9/1784, D&L, 1, pp. 109, 110; Nelson to William, 3/5/1785, Add. MSS 34988; Nelson to the Navy Board, 5/12/1788, Add. MSS 34903.
3. Narrative of James Wallis, Add. MSS 34990, published in Geoffrey Rawson, ed., Letters from the Leeward Islands, p. 49. Wallis supplied the narrative to Nelson’s biographers, Clarke and McArthur, but died in Bath in 1808 before the publication of their book.
4. Hughes to Matcham, 24/6/1806, Add. MSS 34990.
5. Hughes to Matcham, 24/6/1806, Add. MSS 34990; McIntosh to Nelson, 7/6/1784, Add. MSS 34961.
6. Court martial of Thomas Johnston, 7/8/1784, ADM 1/5324.
7. Court martial of John Nairns, 17/8/1784, ADM 1/5324.
8. Nelson to Locker, 7/6/1784, D&L, 1, p. 109; Nelson to the governor of St Eustatius, 20/6/1785, Add. MSS 34961.
9. Rawson, Letters from the Leeward Islands, p. 49; Hughes to Nelson, 30/6/1784, Add. MSS 34961; Hughes to Stephens, ADM 1/312.
10. The logs of the Boreas (ADM 51/125, ADM 51/120 [captain’s], ADM 52/2179 [master’s] and NMM: ADM/L/B136 [lieutenants’]) are used throughout this and the succeeding three chapters. See also Nelson to Damas, 24/7/1784, Add. MSS 34961.
11. Johnston court martial, 7/8/1784, ADM 1/5324.
12. Nairns court martial, 17/8/1784, ADM 1/5324.
13. Richard Vesey Hamilton and John Knox Laughton, ed., Above and Under Hatches, pp. 164, 169; court martial of James Wallis, 22,23/9/1784, ADM 1/5324.
14. Nelson to Hughes, 8/9/1784, Add. MSS 34961; Bro
mwich, return of service, 1817, ADM 9/6: no. 1800. Once confirmed, Bromwich served as a lieutenant on several ships, including the Terpsichore, Nonsuch and Barfleur. He benefited from the support of John Holloway, one of Nelson’s officers, and in 1800–1 was his flag lieutenant on the Gladiator in Portsmouth harbour. In 1801 Nelson secured him a post as warden of Portsmouth dockyard through his influence with Earl St Vincent. ‘Always happy that I can be useful to an old friend,’ Nelson wrote (Nelson to Bromwich, 9/8/1801, NMM: TRN/48). Despite the good opinions of significant officers such as Christopher Parker, Nelson and Holloway, Bromwich died a lieutenant in 1829.
15. Nelson to Locker, 24/9/1784, D&L, 1, 110; Nelson to Cornwallis, 25/10/1784, NMM: COR/58.
16. Nelson to Locker, 24/9/1784, 23/11/1784, 16/3/1785, D&L, 110, 112, 127; Nelson to Cornwallis, 25/10/1784, NMM: COR/58.
17. Collingwood to Moutray, 17/2/1807, in G. L. Newnham Collingwood, ed., Correspondence, 2, 7; Nelson to Locker, 23/11/1784, D&L, 1, 112. A scholarly account of Collingwood is still awaited, but the best of several popular biographies is Oliver Warner, Life and Letters of Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood.
18. Nelson to Fanny Nisbet, 13/12/1785, 19/8/1786, Monmouth MSS, E795, and NLTHW, 33; Nelson to Locker, 24/9/1784, D&L, 1, p. 110; A. M. W. Stirling, ed., Pages and Portraits, 1, p. 27; letter of Thomas Luffman, 6/12/1786, Oliver, History of the Island of Antigua, 1, p. cxxx.
19. Nelson to Cornwallis, 25/10/1784, NMM: COR/58.
20. John Charnock, Biographia Navalis, 6, pp. 331–3; Moutray to Stephens, 13/12/1782, ADM 1/2123, and other correspondence of Moutray in ADM 1/2123–2124.
21. Several of Pemble’s letters are filed with the captain’s in-letters in ADM 1/2307, but see also his passing certificate, 7/2/1744, ADM 107/3; the marriage registers for Belford, Berwick-upon-Tweed Record Office; and Gentleman’s Magazine (1784), i, pp. 475–6. Mary’s baptism has not yet been found, but her brief obituary in the Northern Whig for 1 June 1841 indicates that she was born in 1750 or 1751. Mary died at the Archdeaconry House at Kells, County Meath, in Ireland on 19 May 1841 in her ninety-first year, and thus appears to have been twenty-seven or twenty-eight years younger than her husband, John Moutray (1723–85).
22. Marriage registers of Berwick-upon-Tweed, 1771, Berwick-upon-Tweed Record Office, which describes Mary as ‘of this parish’; Augustus J. C. Hare, Life and Letters, 1, p. 234; Christina Colvin, ed., Maria Edgeworth, p. 356. I am following Edgeworth’s biographers in presuming her references were to our Mary Moutray and not the younger namesake of Favour Royal, County Tyrone. Mary was misidentified in John Armstrong Moutray, ‘Notes on the Name of Moutray’, and errors continue to be made about her in Nelson literature. Eric Bodger of Formby, Liverpool, never published his pioneering research on the subject, but his files in the Nelson Museum, Monmouth, remain the essential starting point. See also Tom Pocock, ‘Captain Nelson and Mrs Moutray’ and ‘“My Dear Sweet Friend”’.
Fortuitously three portraits of Mary Moutray survived until recent times. A chalk and wash half-length profile, made by John Downman in 1781, was formerly in the collection of Sir Henry Ponsonby and recently published by Tom Pocock (Pocock, ‘Captain Nelson and Mrs Moutray’ and ‘“My Dear Sweet Friend”’). Sadly the other two portraits, one showing Mary when young and the other in her later years, have been lost. Some time before 1942 a Miss Colston of Ranelagh, Dublin, donated them with related papers and relics to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, apparently in the belief that the family line had been extinguished and another safe haven was needed. In 1942 a separate branch of the Moutray family attempted to repossess the portraits, but the Museum declined to part with them, and only allowed copies to be made. Twenty-six years later Eric Bodger, researching a book on Mary Moutray, acquired coloured photographs of both portraits from the Museum. ‘The better portrait shows her in her later years,’ he wrote, ‘and the expression is one of great humour and intelligence; it is evident that, as a girl, she would be [have been] lovely rather than beautiful’ (Bodger to Kathleen Moutray, 14/5/1968, and Moutray to Bodger, 23/1/1968, Monmouth MSS, Bodger file). Unfortunately, since 1968 the Museum appears to have lost the Colston–Moutray deposit, including the portraits, and my several efforts over a six-month period to induce a sustained search have been unsuccessful. The National Gallery of Ireland has assured me that the portraits are not in its custody, and I continue to believe that they are somewhere in the National Museum.
23. Collingwood, Correspondence, 1, pp. 11–12, and 2, p. 278; and Pigot to Collingwood, 21/7/1783, Add. MSS 14272.
24. Nelson to Locker, 24/9/1784, D&L, 1, p. 110; Nelson to William, 16/3/1785, 3/5/1785, Add. MSS 34988. Dorothea, the only daughter of John F. Scrivener of Suffolk, eventually married Dr J. Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury, who may have been a better catch than William Nelson.
25. Collingwood, Correspondence, 1, p. 13. These portraits were first reproduced in Oliver Warner, Portrait of Lord Nelson. Comparing the logs of the Boreas and Mediator (ADM 51/589) it is possible to suggest when these interesting experiments were made. The two ships were both in English Harbour on 3–5 December 1784 and 7–11 March 1785. It was most likely on the latter occasion, just before Mary left Antigua, that the incident happened, though Nelson was also at English Harbour on occasions when Collingwood was at nearby St John’s: 24 December 1784–3 January 1785 and 5–9 February 1785.
26. Nelson to William, 24/10/1784, Add. MSS 34988.
27. Hughes to Stephens, 23/9/1784, ADM 1/312. Basic manuscript sources for this chapter are filed in CO 152/64, ADM 1/312, ADM 1/2223, Add. MSS 34961 (Nelson letter book), and Add. MSS 14272 (Collingwood papers). Useful published sources are D&L, vol. 1, and Rawson, Letters from the Leeward Islands.
28. Certificate, 23/4/1785, Western MSS 3668. Wellcome Library, London. For personnel see the Boreas muster and pay book: ADM 36/10525 and ADM 35/242. Oliver was discharged to the Union on 1 May 1785 and Stansbury to the Whitby on 22 June following.
29. Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, Empire Divided, p. 246.
30. Brian S. Kirby, ‘Nelson and American Merchantmen’, p. 139.
31. Collingwood to Hughes, 21/8/1784, Add. MSS 14272.
32. Nelson to Locker, 5/3/1786, D&L, 1, p. 156; Hughes to his officers, 12/11/1784, Add. MSS 14272. For this controversy see also Nelson’s account of his proceedings, 1786, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
33. Nelson to William, 20/2/1785, Add. MSS 34988. Nelson’s map (PRO: MPI 1/95) shows his frigate’s anchorage as Boreas Cove.
34. Nelson to Hughes, 8/9/1784, Add. MSS 34961.
35. Collingwood to Martin, 1784, Add. MSS 14272; Collingwood to Shirley, 16/12/1784, Add. MSS 14272. Collingwood’s interpretation of these two early cases was flatly contradicted by the customs house at St John’s. ‘I know of no breach of the laws of trade committed by the masters of these vessels,’ Samuel Martin, the collector of customs, informed Collingwood on 14 February 1785.
36. Burton to Shirley, 17/12/1784, CO 152/64.
37. Martin to Collingwood, 27/12/1784 and Shirley to Collingwood, 20/12/1784, Add. MSS 14272; Shirley to Hughes, 18/12/1784, CO 152/64.
38. Hughes to the fleet, 30/12/1784, CO 152/64.
39. Council minutes, St Kitts, 7, 8/1/1785, CO 241/18; Kirby, ‘Nelson and American Merchantmen’, p. 141; statement of June 1785, D&L, 1, p. 136; account of the proceedings of Captain Nelson, 1786, William L. Clements Library.
40. Nelson to Hughes, 9/1/1785, Add. MSS 34961.
41. Collingwood to Hughes, 13/1/1785, Add. MSS 14272.
42. Nelson to Locker, 15/1/1785, D&L, 1, p. 113.
43. Hughes to captains, 29/12/1784; Hughes to Moutray, 29/12/1784, ADM 1/312.
44. DNB, 10, pp. 186–7.
45. Collingwood to Hughes, 13/1/1785, Add. MSS 14272.
46. Nelson to Hughes, 9/1/1785, Add. MSS 34961.
47. Nelson to Sandys and Nelson to Moutray, 6/2/1785, Add. MSS 34961; Moutray to Nelson, 6/2/1785, ADM 1/312.
48. This
follows the Boreas log.
49. Nelson to Locker, 5/3/1786, D&L, 1, p. 156.
50. Nelson to Stephens, 17/2/1785, ADM 1/2223; Nelson to Hughes, 12/2/1785, Add. MSS 34961.
51. Moutray to Hughes, 8/2/1785, ADM 1/312; Nelson to William, 24/10/1784, Add. MSS 34988.
52. Hughes to Nelson, 14/2/1785, Add. MSS 34961.
53. Nelson to Hughes, 15/2/1785 and February 1785, Add. MSS 34961; Hughes to Stephens, 14/2/1785, ADM 1/312.
54. A photocopy of the Admiralty’s ‘instructions for John Moutray, Esq.,’ is in Monmouth MSS, Bodger file.
55. Collingwood to his sister, 2/1/1785, E. Hughes, ed., Private Correspondence, p. 16.
56. Nelson to William, 20/2/1785, Add. MSS 34988.
57. Nelson to William, 16/3/1785, Add. MSS 34988.
58. Collingwood, Correspondence, 1, p. 13.
59. Nelson to Locker, 16/3/1785, D&L, 1, p. 127.
60. Nelson to William, 3/5/1785, Add. MSS 34988.
61. Nelson to Collingwood, 28/9/1785, D&L, 1, p. 143; Moutray’s correspondence with the Admiralty in ADM 1/2124.
62. Nelson to Fanny, 17/4/1786, Monmouth MSS, E750; marriage settlement, 21/8/1771, Monmouth MSS, Bodger file; will of John Moutray, 16/8/1779, PRO: PROB 11/136, no. 611. The properties concerned were Roxobie, Manor Place, Bowlies farm, Redcraigs and Weddergrowing in the parish of Dunfermline, Fife.
63. Kate Moutray married De Lacey at Westbourne, Sussex, on 29 February 1806.
64. Nelson to Fanny, 25/12/1795, Monmouth MSS, E880; photocopy of Nelson to Moutray, 22/8/1803, in Monmouth MSS, Bodger file.