The Life of Nelson, Volume 1

The Admiralty, who had sent Keith out knowing that St. Vincent, after three arduous years, meant soon to retire, could not of course acquiesce in Nelson's thus overriding the man they had chosen to be his commander-in-chief. "Their Lordships do not, from any information now before them, see sufficient reason to justify your having disobeyed the orders you had received from your Commanding Officer, or having left Minorca exposed to the risk of being attacked, without having any naval force to protect it." To this measured rebuke was added some common-sense counsel upon the pernicious practice of jeopardizing the personnel of a fleet, the peculiar trained force so vitally necessary, and so hard to replace, in petty operations on shore. "Although in operations on the sea-coast, it may frequently be highly expedient to land a part of the seamen of the squadron, to co-operate with and to assist the army, when the situation will admit of their being immediately re-embarked, if the squadron should be called away to act elsewhere [as Keith had called it], or if information of the approach of an enemy's fleet should be received,—yet their Lordships by no means approve of the seamen being landed to form a part of an army to be employed in operations at a distance from the coast, where, if they should have the misfortune to be defeated, they might be prevented from returning to the ships, and the squadron be thereby rendered so defective, as to be no longer capable of performing the services required of it; and I have their Lordships' commands to signify their directions to your Lordship not to employ the seamen in like manner in future."

It was evident that the Admiralty did not fully share Nelson's attachment to the royal house of Naples, nor consider the service of the King of the Two Sicilies the same as that of the King of Great Britain. Earl Spencer's private letter, while careful of Nelson's feelings, left no room to doubt that he was entirely at one with his colleagues in their official opinion. Nelson winced and chafed under the double rebuke, but he was not in a condition to see clearly any beams in his own eye. "I observe with great pain that their Lordships see no cause which could justify my disobeying the orders of my commanding officer, Lord Keith;" but the motives he again alleges are but the repetition of those already quoted. He fails wholly to realize that convictions which would justify a man in going to a martyr's fate may be wholly inadequate to sap the fundamental military obligation of obedience. "My conduct is measured by the Admiralty, by the narrow rule of law, when I think it should have been done by that of common sense. I restored a faithful ally by breach of orders; Lord Keith lost a fleet by obedience against his own sense. Yet as one is censured the other must be approved. Such things are." As a matter of fact, as before said, it was by departing from St. Vincent's orders that Keith lost the French fleet. Nor did Nelson's mind work clearly on the subject. Thwarted and fretted as he continually was by the too common, almost universal, weakness, which deters men from a bold initiative, from assuming responsibility, from embracing opportunity, he could not draw the line between that and an independence of action which would convert unity of command into anarchy. "Much as I approve of strict obedience to orders, yet to say that an officer is never, for any object, to alter his orders, is what I cannot comprehend." But what rational man ever said such a thing? "I find few think as I do,—but to obey orders is all perfection! What would my superiors direct, did they know what is passing under my nose? To serve my King and to destroy the French I consider as the great order of all, from which little ones spring, and if one of these little ones militate against it, I go back to obey the great order." There is so much that is sound in these words, and yet so much confusion might arise in applying them, that scarcely any stronger evidence could be given that each case must rest on its own merits; and that no general rule can supplant the one general principle of obedience, by which alone unity and concentration of effort, the great goal of all military movement, can be obtained.

During this period of agitation and excitement, Nelson's health did not show the favorable symptoms that usually attended a call to exertion. Much may be attributed to a Mediterranean summer, especially after the many seasons he had passed in that sea; but it can readily be believed that such exceptional responsibilities as he had just assumed could not but tell, even upon his resolute and fearless temper. "I am really sorry," wrote Troubridge to him, from the siege of St. Elmo, "to see your Lordship so low-spirited, all will go well;" and a few days later, "Your Lordship must endeavour to fret as little as possible—we shall succeed. His Majesty's arrival will relieve your Lordship; and if he punishes the guilty, the people will be happy." The day after he had refused to obey Keith's order, he wrote to him, "I am truly so very unwell that I have not the power of writing so much as I could wish;" and the next day, to the Admiralty, he makes the same excuse, adding, "I am writing in a fever, and barely possible to keep out of bed." "My dear friend," he tells Locker, "I am so ill that I can scarcely sit up; yet I will not let the courier go off without assuring you that all your kindnesses to me are fresh in my memory.... May God Almighty grant you, my revered friend, that health and happiness which has never yet been attained by your affectionate, grateful friend, Nelson." It cannot but be surmised that he did not feel that profound conviction of right, which had sustained him on previous occasions. The disquiet indicated resembles rather that attending the uncertainties of the Nile campaign. As Colonel Stewart noticed, two years later, "With him mind and health invariably sympathized."

END OF VOL. I

1

The precise date of Nelson's entering the Navy, which would be that of his being rated upon the books of the "Raisonnable," is not stated. Accepting the times during which he was borne upon the books of different ships, as given by Sir Harris Nicolas (Letters and Despatches of Lord Nelson, vol. i. p. 4, note), and with them calculating back from October 15, 1773, the day mentioned by Nelson himself as that on which he was paid off from the "Carcass" (Nicolas, p. 5), the date of entry upon the books of the "Raisonnable" would be November 27, 1770; unless, which is unlikely, there were any lost days. The news of the Port Egmont business reached England in October, 1770. Clarke and M'Arthur (Life of Nelson, vol. i. p. 14, note) infer January 1, 1771, for his entry upon the "Raisonnable's" books; but this would not allow the times which Nicolas gives with minute exactness. For his actually joining the "Raisonnable" they give, loosely, the spring of 1771,—March or April. This is very possible, as rating back, for the sake of gaining constructive time needed to qualify for promotion, was tolerated by the practice of the day.

2

Clarke and M'Arthur, vol. i. p. 31.

3

Collingwood was nearly fifty when he got his flag. Howe was forty-five, St. Vincent fifty-three, Saumarez forty-four, Exmouth (Pellew) forty-eight.

4

This appears certain from his letters of July 28 and August 12, which explicitly mention that ship's absence.

5

The Caribbean was formerly thus styled in contradistinction to the South Sea, the Pacific, which was so called because its first discoverers saw it to the south from the Isthmus.

6

Cornwallis was an officer of marked gallantry and conduct, who distinguished himself on several occasions, as captain, during the War of 1778, and as admiral during the wars of the French Revolution. He was brother to Lord Cornwallis, who surrendered at Yorktown, in 1781.

7

That is, stopped.

8

Nicolas, vol. v. p. 356.

9

Thus Collingwood, rarely other than sober and restrained in his language, wrote to Hughes: "It is from the idea that the greatness and superiority of the British navy very much depends upon preserving inviolate the Act of Navigation, excluding foreigners from access to the colonies, that I am induced to make this representation to you." Nicolas, vol. i. p. 172.

10

Nelson's letters are contradictory on this point. In a letter to Locker of March 3, 1786, he says, "Before the first vessel was tried I had seized four others;" whereas in the formal and detailed narrative drawn up—without date, but later than the letter to Locker—he says the first vessel was tried and condemned May 17, the other four seized May 23. (Nicolas, vol. i. pp. 177, 178.) The author has followed the latter, because from the particularity of dates it seems to have been compiled from memoranda, that of Locker written from memory,—both nearly a year after the events.

11

This word is used by Nelson, apparently, as equivalent to "season,"—the cruising period in the West Indies. "The admiral wishes to remain another station," he writes elsewhere.

12

Lady Nelson's tombstone in Littleham Churchyard, Exmouth, reads that she died May 6, 1831, "aged 73." She would then have been born before May 6, 1758. Nicolas (vol. i. p. 217) says that she died May 4, 1831, aged 68, but does not mention his authority.

13

Prior to May, 1785, the only stops of the "Boreas" at Nevis were January 6-8, February 1-4, and March 11-15. (Boreas's Log in Nicolas's Letters and Despatches of Lord Nelson, vol. vii. Addenda, pp. viii, ix.)

14

The author is satisfied, from casual expressions in Nelson's letters to Lady Hamilton, that his famous two years' confinement to the ship, 1803-1805, and, to a less extent, the similar seclusion practised in the Baltic and the Downs, proceeded, in large part at least, from a romantic and chivalrous resolve to leave no room for doubt, in the mind of Lady Hamilton or of the world, that he was entirely faithful to her.

15

The author has italicized these words because they accurately express the just penalty that military law would have required of Nelson, had he not shown adequate grounds for his disobedience. They measure, therefore, the responsibility he shouldered, and the reward he deserved.

16

Sir Harris Nicolas (Nelson's Despatches and Letters, vol. i. p. 217) gives March 12 as the day of the wedding, upon the ground of a letter of Lady Nelson's. Her mention of the date is, however, rather casual; and March 11 is given in the parish register of the church in Nevis.

17

The same symptom will be noted in the anxious pursuit of Villeneuve to the West Indies in 1805, where he grew better, although for some months he had had in his hands the Admiralty's permission to return home on account of his health.

18

Turin was capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which embraced the island of that name and the Province of Piedmont.

19

This statement, which apparently depends upon a memoir supplied many years later by the first lieutenant of the "Boreas," is not strictly accurate, for Nelson himself, in a letter written shortly after her arrival in the West Indies, mentions that several of her ship's company had been carried off by fever (Nicolas, vol. i. p. 111); but it can doubtless be accepted as evidence of an unusually healthy condition.

20

The italics are the author's.

21

The italics are Nelson's.

22

Written at the siege of Calvi.

23

Author's italics.

24

Golfe Jouan; on the coast of France between Toulon and Nice.

25

In the year 1793 the French frigate "Modeste" had been forcibly taken from the harbor of Genoa by an English squadron.

26

The "Berwick," seventy-four, had been left in San Fiorenzo for repairs. Putting to sea at this time, she fell in with the French fleet, and was taken.

27

The port side, or, as it was called in Nelson's day, the larboard side, is the left, looking from the stem to the bow of a ship.

28

Nelson to the Duke of Clarence, March 15, 1795. (Nicolas.)

29

Corsica.

30

There were twenty-three present on July 13, 1795.

31

The words in brackets were erased in the rough draft, but are here inserted, because they emphasize the underlying thought, that the second was to have real command, not wait nor look for signals, nor yet fear them.

32

Correspondance de Napoléon, August 30, 1795. The letter was from Bonaparte's hand, though signed by the Committee of Public Safety.

33

The fleet passed once, August 14, in sight of Vado Bay. Nelson went on board, and tried to induce Hotham to go in and meet De Vins. He refused, saying he must go to Leghorn, but would return, and water the fleet in Vado; but he never came.

34

A year later, when all his transactions with Genoa as an independent republic were concluded, Nelson received from the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, through the Admiralty, the following strong and comprehensive endorsement of his political conduct:—

"I esteem it an act of justice due to that officer, to inform your lordships that His Majesty has been graciously pleased entirely to approve of the conduct of Commodore Nelson in all his transactions with the Republic of Genoa. I have the honour to be, &c, &c. GRENVILLE."

The First Lord of the Admiralty about the same time expressed "the great satisfaction derived here from the very spirited, and at the same time dignified and temperate manner, in which your conduct has been marked both at Leghorn and Genoa."

35

This indicates no opinion as to the fortune of the military operations in England, a landing once effected. It has, however, seemed to the author singular that men fail to consider that Napoleon would not have hesitated to abandon an army in England, as he did in Egypt and in Russia. A few hours' fog or calm, and a quick-pulling boat, would have landed himself again in France; while the loss of 150,000 men, if it came to that, would have been cheaply bought with the damage such an organized force could have done London and the dockyards, not to speak of the moral effect.

36

Naval Chronicle, vol. xxi. p. 60.

37

An account of this disaster, said to be that of an eye-witness, is to be found in Colburn's United Service Journal, 1846, part i.

38

This motto was subsequently adopted by Nelson, when arms were assigned to him as a Knight of the Bath, in May, 1797.

39

That is, apparently, from detached service, and ordered to the main fleet.

40

On the northwest coast of Spain, at the entrance of the Bay of Biscay, and therefore right in the track of vessels from the Channel to the Straits of Gibraltar.

41

It is evident that this must have involved a compliment personal to Nelson.

42

See Plate, Figure 1.

43

See Plate, Figure 2.

44

Captured.

45

That is, the weather division,—the eighteen ships.

46

That is, was left in.

47

Shrouds are large ropes which support the masts.

48

See Plate, Figure 3.

49

The italics are the author's.

50

In his letter to Nelson this is thirteen, but evidently a slip. His log of the action says forty-three.

51

Both papers are headed: "A few remarks relative to myself in the Captain," etc. It is unfortunate that Nicolas, in giving these two papers, puts first the one which, from internal indications, is (in the author's judgment) the later in date.

52

Author's italics.

53

Hailed to stop firing because the "San Nicolas" had surrendered.

54

See ante, page 89.

55

That is, at sea, the main fleet being still in the Tagus.

56

Cut, or let go, the cables,—leaving the anchor in haste, instead of raising it from the bottom.

57

The British seamen.

58

The night conflict with the Spanish launches.

59

The British admiral in command of the fleet which fought at Camperdown.

60

The author is indebted to the present Lord De Saumarez for a copy of the opinion of Sir James Saumarez, written on board the "Vanguard" at this meeting:—

"The French fleet having left Malta six days ago, had their destination been the Island of Sicily there is reason to presume we should have obtained information of it yesterday off Syracuse, or the day before in coming through the Pharo of Messina—under all circumstances I think it most conducive to the good of His Majesty's service to make the best of our way for Alexandria, as the only means of saving our possessions in India, should the French armament be destined for that country.

"Vanguard, at sea, 22d June 1798. JAMES SAUMAREZ."

61

Clarke and M'Arthur's Life of Nelson, vol. ii. p. 100.

62

That is, counting from May 19, when Bonaparte left Toulon, to June 7, when Troubridge's squadron joined, and pursuit began.

63

Nelson to Lord Howe.

64

G. Lathom Browne's Life of Nelson, p. 198.

65

An interesting example of the illuminating effect of a sound maxim upon different phases of a man's life and actions, and one illustrative of the many-sidedness of this motto of Nelson's, occurs later in his career, and not long before his death. When the frigates "Phoebe" and "Amazon" were ordered to cruise before Toulon in October, 1804, "Lord Nelson gave Captains Capel and Parker several injunctions, in case they should get an opportunity of attacking two of the French frigates, which now got under way more frequently. The principal one was, that they should not each single out and attack an opponent, but 'that both should endeavour together to take one frigate; if successful, chase the other; but if you do not take the second, still you have won a victory, and your country will gain a frigate.'" (Phillimore's Last of Nelson's Captains, p. 122.) When summarized, this again is—Victory first; afterwards the results, as circumstances may permit.

66

Author's italics.

67

Author's italics.

68

"Rank" doubtless is meant by this singularly ill-chosen word.

69

As General Sherman justly asked, "What reward adequate to the service, could the United States have given Grant for the Vicksburg campaign?"

70

Colburn's United Service Magazine, 1847, part ii. p. 52.

71

Afterwards Mrs. Trench, the mother of Archbishop Trench.

72

Beckford's Memoirs, London, 1859, vol. ii. p. 326.

73

Compare an equally strong assertion, Nicolas's Despatches, vol. vi. p. 99.

74

St. Vincent at this time had not met her, at least as Lady Hamilton, but they exchanged occasional letters.

75

Pettigrew, vol. i. p. 220.

76

Lord Minto was at this time ambassador to Vienna. Rushout and Rooke were men well known on the Continent. Both are mentioned with some particularity in the Memoirs of Pryse Lockhart Gordon, another continental rambler.

77

The Paget Papers, London, 1896, p. 185.

78

The Paget Papers, London, 1896, p. 219.

79

Clarke and M'Arthur, vol. ii. p. 355.

80

Palermo possessed a strategic advantage over Syracuse, in that, with westerly winds, it was to windward, especially as regards Naples; and it was also nearer the narrowest part of the passage between Sicily and Africa, the highway to the Levant and Egypt. With easterly winds, the enemy of course could not proceed thither; and at this time there was no enemy's force in the Mediterranean, so that westward movements had not to be apprehended. All dangers must come from the westward. These considerations were doubtless present to Nelson; but the author has not found any mention of them by him at this period.

81

That is, in person.

The date of Troubridge's marching against Capua is similarly brought into doubt by these letters. The author believes it to have been July 13 or 14, from another official letter to Keith of the 13th. (Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 404.) "Captains Troubridge and Hallowell … march against Capua to-morrow morning." The odd Sea-Time of that day, by which July 13 began at noon, July 12, of Civil Time, also causes confusion; writers using them indiscriminatingly. The capitulation of St. Elmo was certainly signed on July 12. (Clarke and M'Arthur, vol. ii. p. 294.)

82

The commandant of St. Elmo signed on the 3d Messidor, June 21. Ruffo, with the Russian and Turkish representatives, had already signed. The paper was then sent to Foote, who signed and returned to Ruffo on the 23d of June. The "Foudroyant" came in sight on the afternoon of the 24th.

83

All italics in the quotations from this despatch are the author's.

84

Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 511. Author's italics.

85

Nicolas, vol. iii p. 406.

86

Mr. Pryse Lockhart Gordon, who was in Palermo in January, 1799, tells the following anecdote of Lady Hamilton. He had been dining at the ambassador's, and after dinner a Turkish officer was introduced. In the course of the evening he boasted that he had put to death with his own sword a number of French prisoners. "'Look, there is their blood remaining on it!' The speech being translated, her Ladyship's eye beamed with delight, and she said, 'Oh, let me see the sword that did the glorious deed!' It was presented to her; she took it into her fair hands, covered with rings, and, looking at the encrusted Jacobin blood, kissed it, and handed it to the hero of the Nile. Had I not been an eye-witness to this disgraceful act, I would not have ventured to relate it." (Gordon's Memoirs, vol. i. p, 210.) The author, also, would not have ventured to adduce it, without first satisfying himself, by inquiry, as to the probable credibility of Mr. Gordon, and likewise testing his narrative. It bears marks of the inaccuracy in details to which memory is subject, but the indications of general correctness are satisfactory.

87

Nelson to Acton, November 18, 1799. (Nicolas.)

88

Much confusion has been introduced into the times, when Keith's several orders were received by Nelson, by the fact that the original of this private letter to Earl Spencer is dated the 19th (Nicolas, vol. vii. p. clxxxv); while the secretary, copying it into the letter-book, wrote July 13th. (Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 408.) Nicolas considered the former correct, probably because it came last into his hands. The author considers the 13th correct, because the official letter to Keith bears that date, and reads, "I have to acknowledge the receipt of your Lordship's letter of June 27." (Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 408.)

89

Nicolas, vol. v. p. 160.