The Boys' Nelson

CHAPTER II

A Hero in the Making

(1773–1783)

“True honour, I hope, predominates in my mind far above riches”

We are fortunate in having an account of Nelson’s early career at sea penned by himself, otherwise the material at our disposal would be extremely scanty. The story of the next few years is therefore told in his own words. What it lacks in picturesqueness is made up for in authenticity:

“On our arrival in England,” he says, “and paid off, 15 October [1773], I found that a squadron was fitting out for the East Indies; and nothing less than such a distant voyage could in the least satisfy my desire of maritime knowledge: and I was placed in the Seahorse of 20 guns, with Captain Farmer, and watched in the foretop; from whence in time I was placed on the quarter-deck: having, in the time I was in this ship, visited almost every part of the East Indies, from Bengal to Bussorah. Ill-health induced Sir Edward Hughes, who had always shown me the greatest kindness, to send me to England in the Dolphin of 20 guns, with Captain James Pigot, whose kindness at that time saved my life. This ship was paid off at Woolwich on 24 September, 1776. On the 26th I received an order from Sir James Douglas, who commanded at Portsmouth, to act as lieutenant of the Worcester, 64, Captain Mark Robinson, who was ordered to Gibraltar with a convoy.6 In this ship I was at sea with convoys till 2 April, 1777, and in very bad weather. But although my age might have been a sufficient cause for not entrusting me with the charge of a watch, yet Captain Robinson used to say, ‘he felt as easy when I was upon deck, as any officer in the ship.’

“On [the 9th] April, 1777, I passed my examination as a lieutenant; and received my commission the next day, as second lieutenant of the Lowestoffe frigate of 32 guns, Captain (now Lieutenant-Governor of Greenwich Hospital) William Locker. In this ship I went to Jamaica; but even a frigate was not sufficiently active for my mind, and I got into a schooner, tender to the Lowestoffe. In this vessel I made myself a complete pilot for all the passages through the (Keys) Islands situated on the north side [of] Hispaniola. Whilst in this frigate, an event happened which presaged my character; and, as it conveys no dishonour to the officer alluded to, I shall relate it.

“Blowing a gale of wind, and very heavy sea, the frigate captured an American letter of marque.7 The first lieutenant was ordered to board her, which he did not, owing to the very high sea. On his return on board, the captain said, ‘Have I no officer in the ship who can board the prize?’ On which the master ran to the gangway, to get into the boat; when I stopped him, saying, ‘It is my turn now; and if I come back, it is yours.’ This little incident has often occurred to my mind; and I know it is my disposition, that difficulties and dangers do but increase my desire of attempting them.

“Sir Peter Parker, soon after his arrival at Jamaica, 1778, took me into his own flag-ship, the Bristol, as third lieutenant; from which I rose by succession to be first. Nothing particular happened whilst I was in this ship, which was actively employed off Cape François, being the commencement of the French war.”

A few words with reference to the hostilities mentioned are needed as explanation. The war between Great Britain and her colonists in North America, which culminated in the birth of a new World-Power, now known as the United States, had broken out in 1775, although the seeds of dissension had been sown much earlier. This unfortunate and disastrous quarrel had also embroiled “the mother of nations” in a strife with France and Spain, whose help the New Englanders secured in 1778 and 1779 respectively. In 1780 Holland became involved. The foolishness of not having sufficiently watched the doings of a potential enemy now became apparent. For several years “resolute Choiseul, the abrupt proud man” of Carlyle, had bent his energies on increasing the French navy, and when the Brest fleet of thirty-two sail-of-the-line, under Count D’Orvilliers, met the British fleet of thirty sail, under Vice-Admiral the Hon. A. Keppel, off Ushant on the 27th July 1778, the action was indecisive. In American waters Lord Howe hove in sight of the fleet under D’Estaing, the French commander having better ships and heavier metal, but while Howe was manœuvring to attack the enemy a storm parted the would-be contestants. Both suffered considerable damage by wind and not by shot as had been anticipated. Shortly afterwards Admiral Byron took over Howe’s command and endeavoured to come up with D’Estaing’s ships. Unfortunately the Frenchman had sailed to the West Indies, which “in this protracted contest,” to use the words of Admiral Mahan, was to be “the chief scene of naval hostilities....” “The West Indies is the Station for honour,” said Nelson sometime later. Froude, the historian, predicted that “If ever the naval exploits of this country are done into an epic poem—and since the Iliad there has been no subject better fitted for such treatment or better deserving it—the West Indies will be the scene of the most brilliant cantos.” We shall have occasion to refer to this great strategic point many times in these pages, especially in the great game of hide-and-seek between Napoleon’s captains and Nelson immediately preceding the Trafalgar campaign.8 The year 1778 was not a brilliant one in British naval annals, although it closed by Hotham and Barrington attacking D’Estaing off St Lucia and preventing him from landing more than half the troops intended for the subjugation of that island. As a consequence the force under Chevalier de Michaud surrendered, and St Lucia was won.

“On 8 December, 1778,” Nelson continues, “I was appointed commander of the Badger brig; and was first sent to protect the Mosquito shore, and the Bay of Honduras, from the depredations of the American privateers. Whilst on this service, I gained so much the affections of the settlers, that they unanimously voted me their thanks, and expressed their regret on my leaving them; entrusting to me to describe to Sir Peter Parker and Sir John Dalling their situation, should a war with Spain break out. Whilst I commanded this brig, H.M.S. Glasgow, Captain Thomas Lloyd, came into Montego Bay, Jamaica, where the Badger was laying: in two hours afterwards she took fire by a cask of rum; and Captain Lloyd will tell you, that it was owing to my exertions, joined to his, that her whole crew were rescued from the flames.”

This stirring incident merits a more detailed description than the bare facts which Nelson chose to set forth. The crew was in a panic when he and his men set foot on the deck of the doomed vessel, and by almost superhuman exertions managed to throw all the gunpowder in the magazine overboard before the flames reached it. He also ordered that the loaded cannon should be directed upward, so that when they exploded, owing to the intense heat, no damage would result. Thus early in his career did Nelson show that he was not at a loss when the unusual and unexpected happened. In a letter to Captain Locker, who was ill, the young officer describes the fate of the Glasgow as “a most shocking sight; and had it happened half an hour later, in all probability a great many people would have been lost.” He also notes that the company of the derelict were falling ill very fast owing to the constant tropical rains to which the men were exposed, there being no room for them on the Badger.

“On 11 June, 1779,” Nelson continues, “I was made post into the Hinchinbrook. When, being at sea, and Count d’Estaing arriving at Hispaniola (Haïti) with a very large fleet and army from Martinique, an attack on Jamaica was expected. In this critical state, I was by both admiral and general entrusted with the command of the batteries at Port Royal; and I need not say, as the defence of this place was the key to the port of the whole naval force, the town of Kingston, and Spanish Town, it was the most important post in the whole island.”

D’Estaing’s fleet consisted of twenty-two sail-of-the-line, excluding transports and privateers which had attached themselves to him, and it was commonly reported that he had no fewer than 20,000 troops on board. Nelson, as noted above, was now Post-Captain, and although he had no occasion to prove his ability as a commander of land batteries, he seems to have taken kindly to the situation. In a letter to his friend Captain Parker, dated the 12th August 1779, he states that “Jamaica is turned upside down since you left it,” and furnishes particulars of the measures made for the defence of the island. “You must not be surprised to hear of my learning to speak French,” he remarks as a humorous aside.

To help to achieve the downfall of the wily d’Estaing was not to fall to Nelson’s lot. That worthy hastened to Savannah, which was attacked by troops under General Lincoln and himself. They were routed by the British lines, whereupon d’Estaing sailed away.

Great Britain was now at war with Spain, which had thrown in her lot with France, and was soon to feel the effects of the Armed Neutrality, consisting of Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and Prussia. They resented England’s right to search neutral ships, with the result that the latter Power could not retain her supremacy at sea, a cause of Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown and the consequent loss of the American Colonies. In January 1780 it was resolved to make an attempt to take the important post of Fort San Juan, on the river of that name. This would materially aid the British to secure the city of Granada, on Lake Nicaragua, and to sever the communications of the enemy between their northern and southern dominions. The idea originated with Dalling, Governor of Jamaica, to whom history has scarcely done justice. The naval force was entrusted to Nelson, the command of the troops to Captain John Polson.

The soldiers at the disposal of the intrepid adventurers were a mere handful, scarcely 500 in all, but perhaps that fact added the necessary spice of danger. Nelson left his ship, and “carried troops in boats one hundred miles up a river, which none but Spaniards since the time of the buccaneers had ever ascended,” to use his own words. He “boarded” an outpost of the enemy, situated on an island in the river; “made batteries, and afterwards fought them, and was a principal cause of our success.” When the miniature expedition arrived at Fort San Juan the rainy season had commenced, bringing malaria in its train. Nelson was all for making an immediate attack, but Polson ruled the slower, and perhaps surer, method of erecting batteries and so forth, in which Nelson lent a willing hand. “I want words to express the obligations I owe to Captain Nelson,” Polson told Governor Dalling. “He was the first on every service, whether by day or night. There was not a gun fired but was pointed by him, or by Captain Despard, Chief Engineer.” Fever played havoc with the men; of the 200 sailors of the Hinchinbrook, no fewer than “eighty-seven took to their beds in one night; and of the two hundred, one hundred and forty-five were buried in mine and Captain Collingwood’s9 time: and I believe very few, not more than ten, survived of that ship’s crew; a proof how necessary expedition is in those climates.” Nelson’s own health was undermined by dysentery. A few hours before the Spanish flag gave place to the Union Jack he left the region of the fort in order to join the Janus (44 guns), of which he had been given command. The ship being stationed at Jamaica, he was taken to Port Royal in a sloop. Here he met with a good and tender-hearted friend in Lady Parker, the wife of Sir Peter Parker, Commander-in-Chief at Jamaica, but he gained so little in strength that he was compelled to ask leave of absence and leave the West Indies for England. Had he stayed it is improbable that he could have rendered useful service while in such a low condition. The expedition eventually ended in failure. He sailed on the 4th September 1780 in the Lion, commanded by Captain the Hon. William Cornwallis, a younger son of Earl Cornwallis, who acted the part of nurse to the patient’s entire satisfaction, and cemented a friendship which lasted until Nelson’s death.

Having to resign the Janus probably caused Nelson more torture than his physical suffering, for he was intensely ambitious. It is stated that when he arrived in England he would not proceed to Bath to drink the waters until he had been conveyed to the Admiralty to beg for another vessel. “This they readily promised me,” he observed in a humorous way, “thinking it not possible for me to live.” At Bath he stayed with Mr Spry, an apothecary, who resided at 2 Pierrepont Street; his medical adviser was Dr Woodward.

On the 23rd January 1781 Nelson was able to inform Captain Locker that he was “now upon the mending hand,” although he had been “obliged to be carried to and from bed, with the most excruciating tortures.” Some three weeks later further progress was reported; “My health, thank God, is very near perfectly restored; and I have the perfect use of all my limbs, except my left arm, which I can hardly tell what is the matter with it. From the shoulder to my fingers’ ends are as if half dead; but the surgeon and doctors give me hopes it will all go off. I most sincerely wish to be employed, and hope it will not be long.”

Again the flicker of ambition is evident, always a good sign in a patient. “I never was so well in health that I can remember,” he writes on the 5th March. On Monday of the following week he began his return journey to London. Unfortunately his progress was intermittent. He had “good” days and “bad” days. Two months later we find Nelson telling his beloved brother William that he has entirely lost the use of his left arm and nearly of his left leg and thigh. However, the surgeon who was attending him gave him hopes of recovery, “when I will certainly come into Norfolk, and spend my time there till I am employed.”

At this period Nelson did not have to eat out his heart in chagrin and disappointment owing to neglect as some of our modern naval officers have had to do. In August 1781, when his health had improved, he was given command of the Albemarle, a frigate of 28 guns, and on the 23rd of that month he hoisted his pennant at Woolwich. The appearance of the little vessel pleased him considerably, his officers and men even more so, as his letters abundantly testify. “My quarter-deck is filled, much to my satisfaction, with very genteel young men and seamen”; “I have an exceeding good ship’s company. Not a man or officer in her I would wish to change”; “I am perfectly satisfied with both officers and ship’s company. All my marines are likewise old standers,” are some of his remarks to correspondents. We must not imagine that Nelson necessarily had a pattern-ship and a pattern-crew because of the kind things he said of them. His recent recovery from serious illness has doubtless to be taken into consideration. We all see the world and its inhabitants through rose-coloured glasses after an enforced absence from the ordinary duties and modes of life. A natural sweetness of disposition may also partly account for his optimism. In later years Samuel Rogers, the Banker-poet, recorded in his entertaining “Table Talk” that “Lord Nelson was a remarkably kind-hearted man. I have seen him spin a teetotum with his one hand, a whole evening, for the amusement of some children.”

The young captain’s first voyage in the Albemarle was not unattended by adventures. His reference to his experiences in the Autobiography is slightly tinged with a semi-humorous cynicism one can readily forgive, although it contrasts oddly with the remarks just quoted. “In August, 1781,” he writes, “I was commissioned for the Albemarle; and, it would almost be supposed, to try my constitution, was kept the whole winter in the North Sea.” He cruised to Elsinore, where he found a number of vessels waiting for convoy to Portsmouth and Plymouth. “We have not had any success;” he complains, “indeed, there is nothing you can meet, but what is in force: the Dutch have not a single merchantman at sea. One privateer was in our fleet, but it was not possible to lay hold of him. I chased him an hour, and came fast up with him, but was obliged to return to the fleet. I find since, it was the noted Fall, the pirate.... What fools the Dutch must have been not to have taken us into the Texel. Two hundred and sixty sail the convoy consisted of.”

On another occasion the British ships in the Downs mistook Nelson and his motley collection for a Dutch fleet. Many of the sail-of-the-line prepared for action and would have chased their friends had not Nelson sent a cutter to inform the officers of their ludicrous error. In the early days of 1782 the Albemarle was ordered to Portsmouth to take in eight months’ provisions, “and I have no doubt was meant to go to the East Indies with Sir Richard Bickerton,10 which I should have liked exceedingly, but alas, how short-sighted are the best of us.” The young captain then goes on to tell his brother William of the fate which overtook him. During a fierce gale an East India store ship collided with the Albermarle. “We have lost our foremast, and bowsprit, mainyard, larboard cathead, and quarter gallery, the ship’s [figure] head, and stove in two places on the larboard side—all done in five minutes. What a change! but yet we ought to be thankful we did not founder. We have been employed since in getting jury-masts, yards, and bowsprit, and stopping the holes in our sides. What is to become of us now, I know not. She must go into dock, and I fear must be paid off, she has received so much damage.”

A letter to the same correspondent, dated the 8th February 1782, reveals something of Nelson’s philosophy of life. “We all rise by deaths,” he asserts. “I got my rank by a shot killing a post-captain, and I most sincerely hope I shall, when I go, go out of [the] world the same way; then we go all in the line of our profession—a parson praying, a captain fighting.” He had his wish gratified, as we all know. There was something more than a suspicion of the Stoic in Nelson, for while it cannot be said that he was unaffected by passion, he certainly displayed praiseworthy indifference to creature comforts when at sea. That he grumbled to the authorities proves nothing to the contrary. It was usually with reference to half-unseaworthy ships, which added to the trials and troubles of his men and oftentimes precluded him from doing himself justice where the enemy was concerned. His letters prove conclusively that he had the utmost faith in God, whom he regarded as a powerful Ally.

Shortly afterwards Nelson sailed with a convoy to Newfoundland and Quebec. The experience was anything but pleasant, and when he returned to the latter place in the middle of September he was “knocked up with scurvy,” the old-time sailor’s curse, owing to a diet of salt beef for eight weeks. “In the end,” he says, “our cruise has been an unsuccessful one; we have taken, seen, and destroyed more enemies than is seldom done in the same space of time, but not one arrived in port. But, however, I do not repine at our loss: we have in other things been very fortunate, for on 14 August we fell in with, in Boston Bay, four sail-of-the-line,11 and the Iris, French man-of-war, part of M. Vaudreuil’s squadron, who gave us a pretty dance for between nine or ten hours; but we beat all except the frigate, and though we brought to for her, after we were out of sight of the line-of-battle ships, she tacked and stood from us. Our escape I think wonderful: they were, upon the clearing up of a fog, within shot of us, and chased us the whole time about one point from the wind....” Nelson managed to avoid the enemy by “running them amongst the shoals of St George’s Bank,” a manœuvre which caused the larger ships to stop pursuit. When he prepared for action the commander of the frigate, deeming discretion the better part of valour, wisely decided to rejoin his comrades.