The Boys' Nelson

“I think it very probable, even before Spain breaks with us, that they may send a ship or two of the line to see l’Aigle round Cape St Vincent; and that if you attack her in their presence, they may attack you; and giving them possession of the Donegal would be more than either you or I should wish, therefore I am certain it must be very comfortable for you to know my sentiments. From what you hear in Cadiz, you will judge how far you may venture yourself in company with a Spanish squadron; but if you are of opinion that you may trust yourself near them, keeping certainly out of gun-shot, send your boat with a letter to the Spanish commodore, and desire to know whether he means to defend the French ships; and get his answer in writing, and have it as plain as possible. If it be ‘yes, that he will fire at you if you attack the French under his protection,’ then, if you have force enough, make your attack on the whole body, and take them all if you can, for I should consider such an answer as a perfect declaration of war. If you are too weak for such an attack, you must desist; but you certainly are fully authorised to take the ships of Spain whenever you meet them. Should the answer be ambiguous, you must then act as your judgment may direct you, and I am sure that will be very proper. Only recollect, that it would be much better to let the French ships escape, than to run too great a risk of losing the Donegal, yourself, and ship’s company.” To Addington he states that “The Spaniards are now so very uncivil to our ships, that I suppose we shall not be much longer friends.” To John Hookham Frere, Chargé d’Affaires at Madrid, he admits, “We have given up French vessels taken within gun-shot of the Spanish shore, and yet French vessels are permitted to attack our ships from the Spanish shore. Your Excellency may assure the Spanish Government, that in whatever place the Spaniards allow the French to attack us, in that place I shall order the French to be attacked. The old order of 1771, now put in force against us, is infamous; and I trust your Excellency will take proper steps that the present mode of enforcing it be done away. It is gross partiality, and not neutrality.”

There is a pathetic letter dated the 12th December 1803 in which Nelson confides to his old friend Davison some of the perils which he encountered daily. “My crazy fleet,” he writes, “are getting in a very indifferent state, and others will soon follow. The finest ships in the service will soon be destroyed. I know well enough that if I was to go into Malta, I should save the ships during this bad season. But if I am to watch the French, I must be at sea, and if at sea, must have bad weather; and if the ships are not fit to stand bad weather, they are useless.... But my time of service is nearly over. A natural anxiety, of course, must attend my station; but, my dear friend, my eyesight fails me most dreadfully. I firmly believe that, in a very few years, I shall be stone-blind. It is this only, of all my maladies, that makes me unhappy; but God’s will be done.”

Nelson had taken up his station “to the westward of Sicie,” a position enabling him “to prevent the junction of a Spanish fleet from the westward,” and also “to take shelter in a few hours either under the Hières Islands or Cape St Sebastian; and I have hitherto found the advantage of the position. Now Spain, having settled her neutrality”—he is writing on the 12th December to Lord St Vincent—“I am taking my winter’s station under St Sebastian, to avoid the heavy seas in the gulf, and keep frigates off Toulon. From September we have experienced such a series of bad weather that is rarely met with, and I am sorry to say that all the ships which have been from England in the late war severely feel it.... I know no way of watching the enemy but to be at sea, and therefore good ships are necessary.” On the same day he informs a third correspondent that the enemy at Toulon “are perfectly ready to put to sea, and they must soon come out, but who shall [say] where they are bound? My opinion is, certainly out of the Mediterranean.”

“We have had a most terrible winter: it has almost knocked me up,” he tells Elliot within a few days of the close of this anxious year. “I have been very ill, and am now far from recovered, but I hope to hold out till the battle is over, when I must recruit myself for some future exertion.”

An Indomitable Spirit this, the greatest sailor of all time!

CHAPTER XVIII

Twelve weary Months in the Mediterranean

(1804)

“My wish is to make a grand coup.”

Nelson.

A new year had dawned. “The storm is brewing,” Nelson wrote, and he thought Sardinia “one of the objects of its violence.” If that island were captured or ceded to the enemy, “Sicily, Malta, Egypt, &c., &c., is lost, sooner or later.” The Madalena Islands, to the north of Sardinia, not only afforded the ships a safe anchorage but ensured plenty of fresh water and provisions: “Sardinia is the most important post in the Mediterranean. It covers Naples, Sicily, Malta, Egypt, and all the Turkish dominions; it blockades Toulon; the wind which would carry a French fleet to the westward is fair from Sardinia; and Madalena is the most important station in this most important island. I am told that the revenues, after paying the expenses of the island, do not give the king 5000 l. sterling a year. If it is so, I would give him 500,000 l. to cede it, which would give him 25,000 l. a year for ever. This is only my conversation, and not to be noticed—but the king cannot long hold Sardinia.” On the 11th February 1804 he assures “my dear friend” Ball that “we are … on the eve of great events; the sooner they come the better.” Private letters led him to believe that the squadrons at Brest and Ferrol were to form a junction with that at Toulon. Should his surmise prove correct he inferred an invasion of both the Morea and Egypt, a belief fostered by the wily Napoleon by means of a camp under General St Cyr at Taranto, in the heel of Italy.

Nelson communicated his notions to the Grand Vizier. “Your Highness,” he adds, “knows them too well to put any confidence in what they say. Bonaparte’s tongue is that of a serpent oiled. Nothing shall be wanting on my part to frustrate the designs of this common disturber of the human race.”

He pens a little grumble to Dr Moseley in March, complaining that the Mediterranean fleet seems “forgotten by the great folks at home,” but adding with pardonable pride that although the vessels have been at sea a week short of ten months, “not a ship has been refitted or recruited, excepting what has been done at sea. You will readily believe that all this must have shaken me. My sight is getting very bad, but I must not be sick until after the French fleet is taken.” He includes some facts regarding his manifold interests as Commander-in-chief. He always had good mutton for invalids, gave half the allowance of grog instead of all wine in winter, changed the cruising ground so as not to allow “the sameness of prospect to satiate the mind,” obtained onions, “the best thing that can be given to seamen,” by sending a ship for them to Corsica, and always had “plenty of fresh water.” In the stirring days of the first decade of the nineteenth century a British Admiral was in very truth “shepherd of his flock.” He thought for the men and their officers, saw to their creature comforts, even provided amusement for them. Moreover, he had to be a diplomatist, something of a soldier, and a man of resource and reliance. The sailors of England alone made invasion impossible and nullified the superhuman efforts of the greatest soldier of recorded history to subjugate the Island Kingdom. Unpreparedness is peculiarly characteristic of British policy. It will not surprise students to be told at the beginning of 1804 there were ten fewer sail-of-the-line than had been available before the Peace of Amiens. Weight of brain has won more battles than weight of metal, although it is safer and wiser to have a preponderating supply of both. We shall see what a dearth of frigates, which are “the eyes of a fleet,” to use Nelson’s apt expression, meant to the Admiral in the prelude to the Trafalgar campaign. He was already complaining of their absence.

La Touche Tréville was now in command at Toulon. Nelson disliked the man as sincerely as he loathed the nation whom he represented; he could “never trust a Corsican or a Frenchman.” La Touche Tréville had been commodore, it will be remembered, of the Boulogne flotilla when Nelson had made his abortive attacks on it. These were lauded all over France as “glorious contests.” Nelson was what is usually called, by a strange misnomer, “a good hater.” Thus to duty was added a personal rivalry that filled him with an ardent longing to “get even” with his antagonist.

Napoleon had now a sufficient number of small boats at Boulogne and neighbouring ports for the conveyance of his 130,000 troops to England. He had abandoned his original plan and was determined that the Navy proper should play an important part in the perilous project. The Toulon fleet, after releasing the French l’Aigle at Cadiz, was to be joined by five ships off Rochefort under Villeneuve, and then hasten to Boulogne to convoy the flotilla. The rôle of the squadron at Brest was to be passive, although reports were spread far and wide that the ships there were to take an army to Ireland. This was done so that Cornwallis, blockading that port, might not form a junction with the squadron in the Downs for the purpose of opposing the crossing of the vast armament from the northern seaport. If all these combinations were successfully carried out Napoleon would have sixteen sail-of-the-line ready for the master-stroke. Everything depended on whether the English blockading squadrons off Toulon, Cadiz, Rochefort, and in the Downs could be eluded.

On the 8th April Nelson again wrote, “We are on the eve of great events,” and proceeded to tell his correspondent that two sail-of-the-line had “put their heads outside Toulon,” and a little later “they all came out. We have had a gale of wind and calm since; therefore I do not know whether they are returned to port or have kept the sea. I have only to wish to get alongside of them with the present fleet under my command; so highly officered and manned, the event ought not to be doubted.”

“If we go on playing out and in, we shall some day get at them,” he tells Frere.

Monsieur La Touche was merely exercising his ships; the time for the grand coup was not yet come. Nelson’s opinion now was that the Brest fleet and a squadron he does not name, but probably that at Rochefort, were destined for the Mediterranean “either before or after they may have thrown their cargo of troops on shore in Ireland. Egypt and the Morea supposed to be their next object after their English and Irish schemes.” On the 24th May the French made a further excursion, five sail-of-the-line, three frigates, and several smaller vessels came out of the harbour, which was being watched by a small squadron under Rear-Admiral Campbell. Nelson did not believe in showing the whole of his available resources to the enemy. By being out of sight he hoped to entice the enemy to leave their safe anchorage: “My system is the very contrary of blockading.” He was delighted that Campbell did not allow the French to bring him to action with the small resources at his disposal, which is another example of Nelson’s cautious methods. He thanked the admiral by letter, and concluded by saying, “I have no doubt but an opportunity will offer of giving them fair battle.”

Nelson continued to complain of ill health. “A sort of rheumatic fever,” “blood gushing up the left side of my head, and the moment it covers the brain, I am fast asleep,” a “violent pain in my side, and night-sweats”—this is his condition as he diagnosed it to Dr Baird on the 30th May. A week later he is buoyant at the thought of battle: “Some happy day I expect to see his (La Touche Tréville’s) eight sail, which are in the outer road, come out; and if he will get abreast of Porquerolle, I will try what stuff he is made of; therefore you see I have no occasion to be fretful; on the contrary, I am full of hopes, and command a fleet which never gives me an uneasy moment.”

Eight French sail-of-the-line, accompanied by half a dozen frigates, made an excursion on the 14th June, and Campbell was again chased. The latter sailed towards the main fleet, but La Touche Tréville was by no means anxious to try conclusions with his old enemy. After sailing about four leagues, he crept back to safer quarters. The British Admiral afterwards referred to this little excursion as a “caper.” “I was off with five ships-of-the-line,” he adds, “and brought to for his attack, although I did not believe that anything was meant serious, but merely a gasconade.” With this conclusion La Touche Tréville begged to differ. He saw in the “caper” a bold manœuvre and an excellent opportunity for currying favour in the eyes of his exacting chief, who by no means overrated the commander’s abilities. His despatch to Napoleon runs as follows:64

“I have the honour to give you an account of the sortie of the whole of the squadron under my orders. Having been advised that several English privateers were infesting the coast and the Islands of Hyères, I gave orders, three days ago, to the frigates Incorruptible and Siren and the brig Ferret to proceed to the Bay of Hyères. The Easterly wind being against them they anchored under the Castle of Porqueroles. Yesterday morning the enemy became aware of their presence. Towards noon they detached two frigates and another vessel, which entered by the broad passage with the intention of cutting off the retreat of our frigates. As soon as I saw this manœuvre I signalled to the whole squadron to make sail, and this was done. In fourteen minutes all were under sail and I made for the enemy in order to cut him off from the narrow passage and to follow him up if he attempted it. But the English Admiral soon gave up his design, recalled his vessel and his two frigates engaged amongst the Islands and took to flight. I pursued him till nightfall; he was heading for the S.E. At daybreak I had lost sight of him.”

When Nelson heard of this communication he was furious. “You will have seen his letter of how he chased me and how I ran,” he tells his brother, the Rev. W. Nelson. “I keep it; and, by –, if I take him he shall eat it!”

Nelson continued to fear the loss of Sardinia, which “will be great indeed.” In this matter he was wrong, for Napoleon entertained no idea of conquest in that direction. There was every indication, on the other hand, that he might do so, and the Admiral is not to be blamed but praised for his zeal in behalf of the island which meant so much to the fleet under his command. When he heard that Vice-Admiral Ganteaume had hoisted his flag at Brest he was sure that an attempt would be made to reach the Mediterranean. “The French navy is daily increasing, both at Toulon and Brest, whilst ours is as clearly going down-hill,” is Nelson’s summing-up of the situation in the early days of July 1804. He then pours out the vials of his wrath on Addington’s administration because it had not taken sufficiently to heart the old adage, “in times of peace prepare for war”: “We made use of the peace, not to recruit our navy, but to be the cause of its ruin. Nothing but a speedy battle, a complete annihilation of the enemy’s fleets, and a seven years’ peace, can get our fleet in the order it ought to be; therefore I, for one, do not wish to be shackled with allies. I am for assisting Europe to the utmost of my power, but no treaties, which England only keeps.” This was with reference to a suggested treaty with Russia: “Such alliances have never benefited our country.” Europe, he says, is “degenerate.” A month later he refers to his “shattered carcase,” which “requires rest.” Then he bows to Fate, says he submits, and states that all his wishes “now rest that I may meet Monsieur La Touche before October is over.”

La Touche Tréville died on the 18th August 1804. He was buried on Cape Sepet, his successor, Villeneuve, making a funeral oration. Unaware that his enemy was vanquished, we find Nelson writing on the 19th that “Such a liar is below my notice, except to thrash him, which will be done,” if in his power. “I never heard of his acting otherwise than as a poltroon and a liar,” is another of his remarks, which scarcely soften when he heard the “miscreant” was in his coffin: “La Touche has given me the slip—he died of the colic; perhaps Bonaparte’s, for they say he was a rank republican.” With misplaced humour the French press asserted that the Admiral had died of over-exertion due to “walking so often up to the signal-post upon Sepet to watch the British fleet.”

War with Spain, which Nelson had predicted, was formally declared by that Power on the 12th December 1804. Napoleon had already exacted a handsome annual sum from her treasury, a matter overlooked by the British Government for reasons of policy. When he secured the assistance of the Spanish navy, Pitt, who was again in office, refused to be hoodwinked, and warned the traitorous neutrals. As this was unheeded, four frigates, two of which belonged to Nelson’s fleet, were sent to intercept four treasure ships from South America off Cadiz. The two forces came in sight on the 5th October. Although the Spanish vessels were not prepared to fight, an action took place consequent on the commander refusing to surrender. The Spanish Mercedes blew up, and the others were seized as prizes. A declaration of war, prompted by Napoleon, was the result. The ruler of France was playing into his own hands with his usual unscrupulous skill.

The command off Cadiz had now been given to Sir John Orde. Nelson, quite naturally, did not approve this apportioning out of what he regarded as his own preserves. “I almost begin to think,” he says, with reference to Orde, “that he is sent off Cadiz to reap the golden harvest, as Campbell was sent off Cadiz by Cornwallis (by orders from England) to reap my sugar harvest. It’s very odd, two Admiralties to treat me so: surely I have dreamt that I have ‘done the State some service.’ But never mind; I am superior to those who could treat me so. When am I to be relieved?”

Not yet! There was much to do and darker days to be lived through before the Master Mariner could sleep peacefully ashore.

CHAPTER XIX

The Crisis

(1805)

“We know the success of a man’s measures is the criterion by which we judge of the wisdom or folly of his measures. I have done my best.”

Nelson.

Napoleon had now completed further plans. These he fondly hoped would lead to the downfall of British rule in the United Kingdom and the eventual dismemberment of the Empire. His strategy, if somewhat involved, was deeply laid. Instead of concentrating his fleet in European waters, that very essential part of the programme was to be undertaken in the Atlantic. By means of feints and false intelligence it was anticipated that Nelson would again suppose that the East was the destination of the French armament. Again much depended on whether Napoleon’s commanders at Rochefort and Toulon would prove sufficiently clever to elude the blockading squadrons and to carry out the subsequent junction. The former was to make for Martinique, the latter for Cayenne. Having spread ruin and disaster in the British West Indies, they were to unite, release the squadron at Ferrol, and return to Rochefort to threaten Cornwallis, who would thus be precluded from lending assistance elsewhere. Ganteaume at Brest was to play the chief part. He was to make a descent on Ireland while his colleagues were crossing the Atlantic and then cover the invading army from Boulogne.

On the 11th January 1805 Missiessy, in command at Rochefort, made good his escape, and eventually reached the West Indies. A week after his colleague had left port Villeneuve was also at sea. The great war game had begun. “Our frigates saw part of them all day, and were chased by some of the ships,” Nelson informs Sir John Acton. The Admiral received the report of the enemy’s sailing at Madalena at 3 P.M. on the 19th. Three hours later “the whole fleet was at sea,” steering for the south end of Sardinia, “where I could have little fear but that I should meet them; for, from all I have heard from the captains of the frigates, the enemy must be bound round the south end of Sardinia, but whether to Cagliari, Sicily, the Morea, or Egypt, I am most completely in ignorance.” He warns Acton to be on his guard for Sicily and to send information to Naples. On the 21st a French frigate was discerned off the south end of Sardinia, but became lost in the fog, and a little later Nelson heard that one of the French sail-of-the-line had put in at Ajaccio in a distressed condition. On the 27th he was off Palermo. “One of two things must have happened,” he conjectures, “that either the French fleet must have put back crippled, or that they are gone to the eastward, probably to Egypt, therefore I find no difficulty in pursuing the line of conduct I have adopted. If the enemy have put back crippled, I could never overtake them, and therefore I can do no harm in going to the eastward; and if the enemy are gone to the eastward, I am right.” He sent vessels to call at Elba, San Fiorenzo, Malta, Tunis, Pantellaria, Toro and other places to obtain information. He believed that eleven sail-of-the-line and nine smaller vessels were at sea. “I shall only hope to fall in with them.”

On the 11th February Nelson was still in “total ignorance” regarding the whereabouts of the French fleet, but was more than ever confirmed in his opinion that Egypt was its destination. He had set off for the Morea, and then proceeded to Egypt, but the enemy had eluded him. It was not until he arrived off Malta on the 19th that he received authentic information that the Toulon fleet had put back to port “in a very crippled state.” He himself was able to report that the health of his men was excellent, and “although we have experienced a great deal of bad weather, have received no damage, and not a yard or mast sprung or crippled, or scarcely a sail split.” “I have consulted no man,” he had written to Lord Melville on the anniversary of the battle of Cape St Vincent, “therefore the whole blame in forming my judgment must rest with me. I would allow no man to take from me an atom of my glory had I fallen in with the French fleet, nor do I desire any man to partake of any of the responsibility—all is mine, right or wrong.”

Misfortune had dogged Villeneuve almost from the moment he had left Toulon. After encountering a gale in the Gulf of Lyons his ships were in such a pitiful state that there was no alternative but to return. He complained bitterly, and not without reason, to the Minister of Marine about the wretched condition of the fleet at his disposal. The vessels, according to his report, were built of superannuated or bad materials, and lost masts or sails “at every puff of wind.” In addition they were short-handed, the sailors were inexperienced, and the decks were encumbered with troops. Napoleon, who never appreciated the many difficulties of navigation, let alone of naval warfare, entertained the notion that the Navy could be run with practically as much precision as the Army; conditions of weather he almost contemptuously dismissed as of little account. He abruptly tells Villeneuve the plain unvarnished truth, namely that the great evil of the service “is that the men who command it are unused to all the risks of command.” Almost in despair he asks, “What is to be done with admirals who allow their spirits to sink, and determine to hasten home at the first damage they may receive?”

Villeneuve was not a courageous commander. He hated taking risks. It may be that he realised his own personal limitations to some extent; it is certain that he fully appreciated those of his men and of his ships. The only training-place for sailors is the sea, and such excursions as had been made were as nothing compared to the daily encounters with storm, wind and tide which fell to the lot of the blockading squadron below the horizon.

Such obvious facts appealed to that sense of grim humour which is so essentially characteristic of Nelson. He thoroughly enjoyed his adversary’s discomfiture, and poked fun at Napoleon, his men and his methods, on every possible occasion. “Bonaparte,” he writes to Collingwood on the 13th March, “has often made his brags that our fleet would be worn out by keeping the sea; that his was kept in order and increasing by staying in port; but he now finds, I fancy, if Emperors hear truth, that his fleet suffers more in one night than ours in a year.”