Hood gave him command of the small 28-gun frigate Boreas newly returned from the West Indies. Arriving in Barbados in the summer of 1784, just after the conclusion of the final peace with France, he fell into the parochial bitchiness of expatriate military duty at peace. He took an instant dislike, for once, to his superior, Admiral Sir Richard Hughes, and to his wife’s ‘eternal clack’, flirted openly with the governor of Antigua’s pretty young wife, Mary Moutray, and admirably led a one-man crusade against local merchants illegally trading with the now independent American colonies. In the latter, at least, he showed integrity and courage.
After thus offending almost everyone he could, clearly bored by serving in this peaceful small-town backwater and treating others as his inferiors, he met Fanny Nisbet, a young widow with a five-year-old son, the daughter of a prominent judge on the island. One of Fanny’s friends had vividly described the young Horatio Nelson in a letter to her:
He came up just before dinner, much heated and was very silent: yet seemed, according to the old adage, to think the more. He declined drinking any wine: but after dinner, when the resident, as usual, gave the three following toasts, the king, the queen and royal family, and Lord Hood, this strange man regularly filled his glass, and observed, that these were always bumper toasts with him: which having drank, he uniformly passed the bottle, and relapsed into his former taciturnity. It was impossible, during this visit, for any of us to make out his real character; there was such a reserve and sternness in his behaviour, with occasional sallies, though very transient, of a superior mind. Being placed by him, I endeavoured to rouse his attention by showing him all the civilities in my power; but I drew out of him little more than yes and no. If you, Fanny, had been there, we think you would have made something of him; for you have been in the habit of attending to these odd sort of people.
Fanny certainly ‘made something of him’; for, the summer of 1785 Nelson was plainly infatuated, declaring that to live in a cottage with her would be like living in a palace with anyone else. She was a petite, dark-haired, nervous young woman, graceful and good-looking, but her shyness and reticence were unfairly to gain her a reputation for coldness. At the time she was housekeeper to her mother’s brother, John Herbert, the wealthy president of the island council, descended from the distinguished Herberts of Powys and Pembroke.
Nelson was soon writing passionate letters to her: ‘As you begin to know something about sailors, have you not often heard that salt water and absence always wash away love? Now I am such a heretic as not to believe that faith: for behold every morning since my arrival [at Antigua], I have had six pails of water at day-light poured upon my head, and instead of finding what the seamen say to be true, I perceive the contrary effect . . .’
He begged Herbert for her hand, but the rich old man counselled delay. Nelson was a highly promising, if rather odd, young man, yet in poor health and someone who had upset the local establishment. It was unsurprising that Herbert thought this impecunious captain something of a comedown for his beloved niece who belonged to the most prominent family on the island (and islanders are nothing if not snobs) and would one day inherit his fortune.
Nelson found himself with the task of escorting Prince William, who had been appointed captain of the frigate Pegasus at the age of twenty-one. William was soon at odds with his ship’s officers and regarded Nelson as his best friend as he careered around the Leeward Islands in search of amusement. As Nelson complained: ‘How vain are human hopes. I was in hopes to have been quiet all this week. Today we dine with Sir Thomas [Shirley], tomorrow the prince has a party, on Wednesday he gives a dinner in St John’s to the regiment, in the evening is a mulatto ball, on Thursday a cock fight, dine at Col Crosbie’s brother’s and a ball, and on Friday somewhere but I forget, on Saturday at Mr Byam’s the president [of Antigua] . . . Some are born for attendants on great men, I rather think that is not my particular province.’
Prince William acted as best man at Nelson’s wedding which was held in considerable style on 11 March 1787. The wedding, held at Herbert’s extensive house, Montpelier, was celebrated with an enormous banquet and ball attended by 200 people.
Nelson, who was suffering from one of his periodic bouts of ill-health, had at this time turned into something of a disciplinarian, flogging three of his men with two dozen lashes for using mutinous language – a very severe punishment. He then sentenced another man to death for desertion, but the sentence was not carried out. On his return to England he had another fourteen crewmen flogged. By the time he had paid off the men on his ship, the Boreas, he had had sixty-one of its 142 crew flogged – a huge proportion for the time. Nelson went on fawning to Prince William in England: ‘I am interested only that Your Royal Highness should be the greatest and best man this country ever produced . . . When I go to town, I shall take care to be presented to His Majesty [the King] and the Prince of Wales, that I may be in the way of answering any question they may think proper to ask me. Nothing is wanting to make you the darling of the English nation, but truth.’ Nelson’s friendship with the Prince, with whom the Admiralty was profoundly dissatisfied, won him no favours. Together with his brothers, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, William was seen to be opposing Pitt’s government more or less openly, much to the irritation of their father, the King.
Nelson constantly badgered his superiors for a ship but obtained none: this was peacetime and few were available. Moreover, he was regarded for the first time with disfavour as an undiplomatic young man who had offended just about every vested interest in the West Indies, associated too closely with Prince William and had risen above his station. He had seen little action, been promoted largely through connection, and apart from a few minor skirmishes and a few acts of seamanship, he was anything but a hero. There were many others with far better claims. No doubt his disciplinarian streak did not go unnoticed: it was regarded with approval by some, disapproval by others. Both Lords Howe and Hood of the Admiralty were pestered with demands for a ship for Nelson, which annoyed them. Angrily Nelson contemplated entering the service of the Tsar of Russia as a mercenary.
Meanwhile he introduced his wife to his father, Edward, who got on famously with his modest, charming and beautiful young bride. Seven-year-old Josiah, her son, went to school in Norfolk. Nelson was to spend another three years in Norfolk, bombarding the Admiralty with demands for a ship – even control of a cockleboat, he remarked caustically. He was a young man in a hurry who had greased his way quickly up the slippery pole and now had attracted the ire of his superiors through his arrogance.
Chapter 33
THE ACTION HERO
There are striking parallels between Nelson’s and Napoleon’s careers. That self-important young man had also married a widow from the West Indies – had also experienced brilliant early success, been disappointed, his career stranded in the doldrums leaving him contemplating serving Russia or Turkey. Napoleon secured his next big break at the age of twenty-six. Nelson had to wait until the beginning of 1793, when he was aged thirty-four, for another chance to prove himself. In his case it was command of a ship – but a fine one, the Agamemnon, a 64-gun ship of the line, the smallest, as war with France inexorably approached. Moreover Nelson had succeeded to modest wealth, having inherited £4,000 from an uncle. Josiah, his stepson, was appointed a midshipman aboard the Agamemnon. He left Fanny in order to captain his new ship to Cadiz and then sailed to the French port of Toulon.
There the people of the city had rebelled against the Revolution and Hood, Nelson’s commander, offered them his protection. Nelson was despatched to seek troops from the court of Naples, which was allied to Britain. Here he made the acquaintance of the boorish King Ferdinand IV and his formidable Queen. The young British captain was received in state, dining with the King who lent him the 4,000 soldiers he sought.
The burly, ugly King’s wife was the real power in the land: Maria Carolina was Austrian, sister of Marie Antoinette of France, and her prime minister was Joh
n Acton, descended from a prominent English family. The British Ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, was a noted collector, and a former member of the fashionable Dilettante Society in London. Nelson was entranced to meet Hamilton’s wife, Emma, a celebrated beauty. Nelson wrote to his wife: ‘She is a young woman of amiable manners who does honour to the station to which she is raised.’ Possibly this is a reference to her humble origins as a blacksmith’s daughter who had mothered an illegitimate child at sixteen and had been mistress to several men of importance, including the painter George Romney, who painted her fresh sensuousness frequently, before she took up with Hamilton, who married her in 1791. It was rare in those days for marriage with a member of the lower orders not to attract social opprobrium; possibly she had succeeded because of her beauty and charm, and the ease with which she fitted into upper-class society. She danced beautifully, spoke Italian and French and became Queen Maria Carolina’s best friend.
Nelson was enchanted, but left after only six days. Returning to Toulon, he was despatched to establish a British naval base on the island of Corsica where he learnt soon afterwards, to his dismay, that Toulon had been regained by the French, thanks to the enterprise of a daring young French artillery officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, although the name would have scarcely registered at the time with the British officer. Nelson was expected to establish an alternative British naval base on Corsica, where Paoli was in open insurrection against the French. Furious with the army, which advised against laying siege to Calvi, Nelson ordered his sailors to disembark and set up guns outside the port of Bastia, which was bombarded and blockaded by sea. Towards the end of May 1794 the town surrendered.
Nelson now repeated the feat with Calvi, but was twice wounded by enemy fire; his right eye was blinded by splinters in the second attack. Some consider his early fearlessness under fire reflected a morbid death wish; in fact Nelson and many other officers considered that exposing oneself to the dangers experienced by the men was an essential part of leadership; if there was any unusual psychological element it is that Nelson, unlike most men, felt entirely calm under fire and possibly even relished the heat of battle, as have so many natural warriors.
Calvi surrendered in August. The army commander, Colonel John Moore, an extremely able officer, claimed later that both ports could have been taken by simple blockade – possibly an excuse for his own caution. Nelson and Hood claimed the credit. The former by his ceaselessly activity and reckless bravery had at last had the chance to demonstrate what a leader of men he could be under fire. Nelson had somewhat redeemed the setback suffered with the loss of Toulon. He travelled in style to Genoa and Leghorn, where he acquired a girlfriend – his ‘dolly’, as one fellow captain put it – although he corresponded eagerly with Fanny: it was by no means uncommon for officers away from their wives for long periods to have dalliances in foreign ports.
In March 1795 near Genoa he had experience of fleet action, pursuing the French two-decker Ça Ira along with fifteen French lesser warships. The Agamemnon, the fastest ship in the fourteen-strong British fleet under the Mediterranean command of Admiral William Hotham, caught up with the Ça Ira, which was already being fired upon by a small British frigate, the Inconstant, and skilfully manoeuvred to stay out of range before coming up to deliver a full broadside, thus disabling the French ship.
Nelson continued to fire upon her until other French ships came to the rescue, while the rest of the British fleet in the meantime hurried up to reinforce Nelson. Soon both the Ça Ira and another French ship struck their colours, some 350 men having been killed or wounded aboard the French ships, compared to just thirteen aboard Nelson’s own.
The impetuous young captain quarrelled with the cautious Hotham and was dismayed when the fearless veteran Hood, with whom he got on much better, was pensioned off, possibly because of his failure to hold Toulon. Hotham was replaced in 1795 by Admiral Sir John Jervis, with whom Nelson immediately got on. Jervis appointed Nelson to command the 74-gun Captain, in which he later joined Jervis at the Battle of Cape St Vincent which scattered the Spanish fleet and in which he performed a decisive role (see page 232). Nelson described the battle amusingly in a letter to Fanny:
There is a saying in the fleet, too flattering for me to omit telling – viz. ‘Nelson’s Patent Bridge for boarding first rates’, alluding to my passing over an enemy’s 80-gun ship . . . Nelson’s recipe for cooking Spaniards was: ‘Take a Spanish first rate and an 80-gun ship and after well battering and basting them for an hour keep throwing in your force balls, and be sure to let these be well seasoned . . . then skip into her quarter gallery window sword in hand and let the rest of your boarders follow as they can . . . then you will only have to take a hop skip and jump from your stepping stone and you will find yourself in the middle of a first rate quarter-deck with all the dons at your feet. Your olla podrida may now be considered as completely dished and fit to set before His Majesty.’
Rear-Admiral Sir William Parker suggested that his own ship, the Prince George, had been responsible for the surrender of the San Josef, but Nelson’s account was the more widely accepted. Nelson was promoted to rear-admiral and made a Knight of the Bath for his heroic part in the battle.
He was at last, at the age of thirty-nine, the popular hero he craved to be. There was no doubt of his courage, dash and naval genius, but he had had to work extremely hard at success, having twice been frustrated by severe illness and once by his own tactlessness. He also met Britain’s growing need for a hero. The thirst for one stemmed from two features of the age: the growing influence of the press, which sought a figure of daring and glamour to excite the reading public; and the need for the government and the Admiralty to bolster its own popularity through a hero’s exploits. Elderly admirals like Howe, and crabby ones like St Vincent, did not fulfil this need. In fearless, handsome young Nelson a figure was at last found which could fit the role: like Robert Clive before him, Nelson was to become a celebrity far exceeding that of film or pop superstars of our own age.
Following Calvi, Genoa and Cape St Vincent, Nelson plunged again headlong into enemy fire – this time with much less justification. After another month of blockade off Cadiz, during which Nelson enthusiastically and unattractively supported Jervis’s draconian actions against mutineers in the fleet, it was learnt that treasure ships from Latin America carrying some £6million worth of bullion were expected to dock at Tenerife. Nelson promptly suggested that the island should be seized.
This was no easy task. The historian, W.H. Fitchett has eloquently described the daunting nature of the island:
Santa Cruz does not offer many facilities for attack from the sea. The shores are so high that a ship is very apt to be becalmed beneath them: they are pierced by sudden valleys, through which, as through so many funnels, the wind drives; so that a ship, becalmed at one moment, may heel over to a furious gust at the next. The beach is a steep slope of loose rocks and water-worn stones, made slippery with seaweed. On this a great sea breaks almost incessantly, and the loose mass grinds and shifts under its stroke. The shore, it may be added, dips so sharply that the water, at a distance of only half a mile, has a sounding of forty-five fathoms. A ship, in a word, can find no anchorage except close under the overwhelming fire of the forts.
On 21 July 1797 Nelson set out with a force of around 1,000 sailors and marines and launched a surprise night attack on the capital, Santa Cruz, under the command of his friend Thomas Troubridge. But a gale arose when they were still a mile from shore and as dawn broke they were compelled to return. On the following day they succeeded in landing and climbed a hill opposite the citadel but again retired without achievement.
On 24 July Nelson himself led the attack – which as a rear-admiral and flag officer broke with precedent and placed his life in danger. But it is easy to see why he was so impatient after previous failures. He later wrote: ‘The honour of our country called for the attack, and that I should command it. I never expected to return, and am thankful.’
With the enemy now alerted and possessed of some 8,000 troops on the island, instead of the few hundred or so the British believed, and in command of a heavily fortified citadel, the enterprise was doomed from the start. The boats containing Nelson and his 600 men missed the pier in the night darkness and most were smashed into splinters by the surge. Nelson commanded one of the two boats that succeeded in finding the pier – only to discover that it lay directly beneath the citadel, which opened up with a withering burst of fire. Grapeshot shattered Nelson’s right arm as he stepped ashore. Josiah, his stepson, improvised a tourniquet and he was rowed out to the Theseus where it was amputated. Meanwhile Captain Samuel Hood cannonaded the town until the island’s governor offered to help evacuate the remainder of the force and to provide supplies to the ships.
Nelson bore his terrible wound and the failure of the expedition bravely, although he feared it would be the end of his career: no one, he believed, would have any use for a left-handed admiral. St Vincent responded with gruff and uncharacteristic generosity: ‘Mortals cannot command success. You and your company have certainly deserved it.’ Josiah was promoted master and commander by St Vincent for his heroic role in the affair.
Nelson was allowed to return home after more than four years at sea and was reunited with his wife and father at Bath. He had changed hugely: with his missing arm, white hair, frail frame and blind eye, he was almost unrecognizable. The face was no longer pampered and immature. While his good eye continued to blaze forth determination and stern impatience, his cheekbones were more prominent and his nose had become the rudder of a thinner, hungrier visage. His mouth was now pursed and tight-lipped in determination and the familiar slight curl of arrogance, even cruelty, of the later portraits had made its appearance, which made him all the more attractive to women.
The War of Wars Page 29