To Begin the World Over Again

by Matthew Lockwood

  The United Irish Rebellion had been defeated and 30,000 killed in its suppression. Thousands more transported to the Caribbean, Canada, and Britain’s new penal colony in the South Pacific, but with the war with France still raging, with the memory of the Irish Rebellion still fresh, and after decades spent shivering at the prospect of foreign invasion and traitors in their midst, few in Britain had sympathy for Edward Despard. And yet, there was Horatio Nelson testifying on his behalf all the same. Even Nelson’s testimony, however, was not enough to save Despard, and he and his co-defendants were sentenced to death. Nelson did his best to intervene with the government to secure clemency or at least a pension for Catherine Despard, but to no avail. In February 1803, as Nelson prepared to sail for Toulon and the beginning of the campaign that would bring him to Trafalgar, his former comrade in the American War was hanged at Newgate Prison. It was, for sure, a strange circumstance fit for strange times, but just as the growth of Irish separatism and Irish republicanism could in part be traced back to one event, Nelson’s relationship with Despard was a consequence of the American Revolution.

  Horatio Nelson’s naval career began much as it ended, laid low at the very moment when the victory he had spent so much of his sweat and blood to secure was being celebrated. But the circumstances of April 1780 were far removed from the triumphant felicity of October 1805. In 1805, at the moment of his apotheosis at the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson had been surrounded, if the iconography of empire is to be believed, by a bevy of grief-stricken mourners including his surgeon William Beatty and his chaplain Alexander Scott. He breathed his last in his own ship, the renowned HMS Victory, while the fleet he had led so brilliantly achieved the most celebrated naval victory in British history. It was all suitably heroic, at least in the popular imagination, with Nelson only succumbing to his wounds once the decisive victory had been won, slipping away with suitably patriotic sentiments on his lips; “Thank God I have done my duty,” according to Beatty, “God and my country,” according to Scott. Trafalgar was Nelson’s crowning glory, his death at the very hour of success completing his transformation from hero into legend, the death of an icon of the age and the birth of a deity in the pantheon of a resplendent British Empire.

  In 1780 the scene was much the same in outline but very different in detail, more pathetic and mundane than tragic and heroic. It too was an age of imperial crisis and world war, an era of conflict and contestation around the globe that threatened to bring the British Empire to its knees. But in this moment of crisis, indeed at the very moment when the Spanish defenders of El Castillo de la Inmaculada Concepción in Nicaragua finally surrendered and Nelson’s “jack” was at last fluttering over the fort, an emaciated Nelson, forced to abandon his men at the hour of victory, lay shivering in the bottom of an Indian canoe, sweating, emaciated, and disheveled, attended only by his former ship’s purser as he writhed in agony. He had played a pivotal role in the expedition, commanding the military convoy from Jamaica to the mouth of the San Juan River, hauling boats, men, guns, and supplies 60 grueling miles upriver to the Spanish fort and helping to devise and direct the siege that followed. He had done well, well enough to earn the official praise of Colonel Polson, the commander of the expedition, but as he floated down the dense, jungle-clad banks of the San Juan River from his first real command, his first taste of real combat, stricken with malaria and dysentery, the defeated Nelson hardly seemed destined for a glittering career.

  The scene that greeted Nelson at the mouth of river was no more auspicious. Rudimentary defenses had been built, and makeshift huts and hospitals constructed for the soldiers, but everywhere he looked he found sickness and disease. Men lay scattered and sweating in tents and shacks around the harbor, hoping in vain that the sea air would save them from the sweltering sun, the interminable rains, and the malignant air of the surrounding swamps. There were hardly enough men fit enough to hold a watch or bury the dead. Even the surgeons were too ill to minister to their languishing comrades. On the coast, far away from the pestilential swamps and jungles of the interior, the British expedition was equally stricken. Aboard the Hinchinbroke, the ship Nelson had left behind at the start of the expedition, four men had already perished. Over the next two weeks, 90 sailors would sicken and 15 more would succumb to disease. By the end of the year only 30 of the Hinchinbroke’s original 200 would remain, the rest hastily buried in shallow graves on the sandy shore. Nelson’s first victory would be a pyrrhic victory, the gains illusory, the consequences grim.3

  From the coast Nelson was transported back to Jamaica, where he had been promised a new commission as captain of the frigate Janus. The command of such a ship had been the object of Nelson’s ambition since he arrived in the Caribbean three years earlier, but in May 1780 he was in no fit state to take command. Instead he was placed in the care of Cubah Cornwallis. A former slave named for the man who freed her, Captain William Cornwallis, brother of the more famous General Charles Cornwallis and good friend of Nelson, in 1780, Cubah Cornwallis was a fixture of Jamaican society. She was so renowned for her medical skill and herbal remedies that both Cornwallis and Admiral Peter Parker recommended her ministrations over the charnel house that was the British hospital. She would go on to run a successful hospital and hotel in Port Royal, and even treat Prince William Henry, the future William IV. His stories of her attentive care would inspire Queen Adelaide to send Cubah a gown in thanks for saving her husband’s life. But for all her attention and skill, Nelson’s condition did not improve, and so in September he was sent back to England aboard Captain Cornwallis’s HMS Lion to recuperate. He would remain grateful to Cubah Cornwallis, praising her to all who would listen and asking friends and comrades heading for the West Indies to pass along his well wishes.4

  In England, Nelson slowly regained his health, but he chafed at his forced inaction. He had always, would always, hate being on shore, removed from the current of events that swept across the globe. Active service meant excitement, glory, and the possibility of promotion—and besides, in 1781 it was clear that Britain could use every man it had in its global struggle. It had been a year of disasters for the British. In April, news reached Nelson that Commodore George Johnstone had been surprised and defeated at Porto Praya by the French fleet, alerted to the British position by the spy François Henri de la Motte. Johnstone, as yet unaware of de la Motte’s treachery, had blamed the failure on one of his subordinates. He accused Captain Evelyn Sutton of dereliction of duty and placed him under arrest. At a later court-martial Sutton was acquitted of the charges, but like the dispute between Keppel and Palliser, the affair would drag on for years with suit and counter-suit until 1787. Nelson pitied Sutton, and thought Johnstone “a sad villain,” but more importantly, the whole business was a disgrace to the navy, and proof of Britain’s desperate need for able sailors and competent officers. It was a very public debacle. A satire was published lampooning Johnstone, mockingly rhyming that,

  Port Praya’s tar who cannot write,

  swears he’ll make all his Captains fight;

  For Frenchmen cares not a button—

  So he can lay the blame on Sutton.5

  Nelson would have agreed with the need to take the fight to the French, for on the very same day in October 1781 that he reflected on “poor Captain Sutton” and the defeat at Porto Praya, Nelson received news from North America that presaged an even greater disaster. In September, Real-Admiral Thomas Graves had been outmaneuvered by the French admiral the Comte de Grasse, who had at last ventured out from his secure confinement in Providence harbor and slipped passed Graves into the Chesapeake. “What sad news from America,” Nelson confided in a letter to his friend and former Captain William Locker; “I much fear for Lord Cornwallis: if something was not immediately done, America is quite lost.” Nelson’s fears for his friend William’s brother and for the British cause in America were quickly fulfilled. After escaping Graves’ ships, the French fleet converged with the American forces of George Washington and the Fre
nch army under Rochambeau at Yorktown, trapping Cornwallis’s army and dealing a fatal blow to the British effort to subjugate her former colonies. By the time Nelson confided his fears to Locker, Cornwallis had already surrendered.6

  In the popular portrayals of this signal American victory, pride of place has long been given to Washington’s Continentals, Rochambeau’s Frenchmen and the fleet of the Comte de Grasse. But another European power had played a vital role in this most stunning defeat. In the lead-up to the Yorktown campaign, the Franco-American army found itself short of supplies and in desperate need of funds. Charged with raising the needed funds, the Comte de Grasse turned to Francisco Saavedra de Sangronis, a Spanish official in Cuba, for aid. Realizing the import of this mission, Saavedra raised 100,000 pesos from the treasury of Santo Domingo and a further 500,000 from the citizens of Havana. With this money, the Franco-American army purchased the men, arms, and supplies necessary for the successful attack on Cornwallis at Yorktown. Thus, while American arms and French ships had won the fight, the victory had been purchased with Spanish money. As he sat helplessly in England awaiting a chance to take an active role once more, Horatio Nelson was among the few who knew full well the vital role Spain had played in America’s struggle for independence. After all, he had begun his career in the southern theater of the American War, where Spanish and British empires battled for control of the Americas. He was unaware, however, that the very same Spaniard who had provided the crucial funds that helped secure Cornwallis’s defeat only a year earlier had almost been within his grasp.

  Horatio Nelson made his first appearance in the American War in 1777. He was only 18 when he arrived in the Caribbean in July of that year, but in an age when young men went to seas as young as 9, he already possessed significant and wide-ranging naval experience. Horace Nelson, as he was then called, was born at the rectory in Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk in September 1758, the sixth child of the Reverend Edmund Nelson and Catherine Suckling. His mother died when he was just 9 years old, but she left behind the vital contacts that would transform his life. Catherine had been well-connected, the grand-niece of Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister, and perhaps more importantly, the sister of Captain Maurice Suckling, a senior officer in the British navy. It was these family networks that first set Nelson on his path to fame and glory, turning a vicar’s son into a sailor. In January 1771, Captain Suckling used his influence to secure his nephew a place on his own ship, HMS Raisonable, and a quick promotion to midshipman.

  But in 1771 Britain was at peace and Suckling was stuck, assigned to tedious guard-duty at Nore, on the mouth of the Thames Estuary. Connections were important in the eighteenth-century British navy, but they would only take a person so far without talent, experience, and ability. If young Nelson was to gain the experience necessary to rise through the ranks, he would have to look elsewhere. With his nephew’s future prospects in mind, Suckling looked to place Nelson on other ships on more active assignments. Restless, eager to impress, and impatient to take on the responsibilities of command, Nelson, guided by his uncle, leapt at every opportunity to gain experience and distinguish himself. In July 1771 he joined the crew of a West Indian merchant ship, the Mary Ann, twice sailing across the Atlantic on trading ventures that took him to Jamaica and Tobago.

  Back in England in 1773, Nelson learned of an expedition led by Captain Constantine Phipps preparing to set out for the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage, a hoped-for but illusory shortcut to India. Always adventurous, Nelson immediately volunteered to join the expedition, signing on as a midshipman aboard the Carcass, one of the two ships bound for the Arctic. He was joined on the mission by the naturalist Charles Irving and his assistant, the former slave and future abolitionist Olaudah Equiano. The ships sailed north-west to Svalbard, where Phipps became the first European to describe a polar bear in writing, before being driven back by the rapidly approaching sea ice. Ever the bane of wooden ships, the encroaching ice presented a grave risk to the expedition and its members. Nelson, as he would frequently do throughout his career, saw opportunity where others saw danger. When the Carcass became trapped in the grip of sea ice, he not only volunteered to help man the boats that were to be sent out to free the ships, but also “exerted myself” to gain the command of one of the twelve-man boats. Even this temporary, small-scale taste of independent command filled Nelson with pride and helped to kindle his innate desire for action and responsibility.7

  The Arctic expedition was largely a failure, but for Nelson it had been an eye-opening exhilarating experience. For his next venture, he opted to join the HMS Seahorse, assigned to protect and escort British shipping in the East Indies. By the time Nelson and the Seahorse arrived in India, conflict was growing between the East India Company and some of the expansionist native states of the subcontinent. This was Nelson’s first encounter with hostile waters, and in January 1775 he saw combat for the first time when the Seahorse skirmished with two ships belonging to the King of Mysore and future scourge of British India, Haidar Ali. As exciting and important as this experience was, in India a pattern began to emerge that would plague Nelson for the rest of his career. In 1776, he contracted malaria and was forced to return to Britain to convalesce. By the time he arrived home in England the conflict with the American colonies had deepened. As it became clear that the West Indies would become central to the contest, a now healthy Nelson was assigned to HMS Lowestoffe under Captain William Locker and in May 1777 set sail for the Caribbean.8

  In 1777, before the European powers joined the fight, the action in the Caribbean was confined to protecting British commerce and chasing American merchants and privateers. Even so, Nelson and the Lowestoffe were quickly called into action. While navigating through the keys north of Hispaniola in treacherous waters and in heavy seas, the Lowestoffe encountered an American privateer. Drawing aside the American ship, Captain Locker ordered the first lieutenant to board the enemy vessel. The lieutenant refused, citing the tempestuous seas as reason to abandon the attempt. Enraged, Captain Locker cried out, “Have I no Officer in the Ship who can board the prize?” With his usual daring and desperate need to distinguish himself, Nelson thrust himself forward and boarded the prize, quipping to rest of the crew, “It is my turn now; and if I come back it’s yours.” It was Nelson’s first experience of command in battle, his first taste of the American War, and, at least in his own selfaggrandizing mind, “an event . . . which presaged my character.”9

  Without a formal navy to speak of, the American colonies were forced to rely on such privateer vessels to disrupt British trade in the West Indies. By 1778, they were taking an active, aggressive role, raiding British merchant ships and even attacking British colonies. In April 1778, Nelson wrote to his uncle in frustration. Now aboard the HMS Bristol, the flagship of Admiral Peter Parker, commander of the British fleet in the Caribbean, Nelson was stuck in port at Port Royal, Jamaica itching to “give a good Account of some of the Yankeys”. The American privateer Rattlesnake was then living up to its name, striking out to capture the Lady Parker, the tender of the Bristol and doing “a great deal of Mischief round the island.” “The Rebels,” Nelson raged, had sailed down the Mississippi to plunder the British plantations of Jamaica, capturing British slaves to sell to the Spanish in New Orleans. The small British island of Providence was captured by an American privateer working in concert with rebellious elements on the island. The island was recaptured, and the governing council flogged for surrendering so easily, but all the British ships in the harbor had been burnt.10

  Unbeknownst to the British, American privateers were not the only threat lurking in the Caribbean. Since 1775, Spain had been using its colonies in the Caribbean and on the Gulf Coast to influence the war indirectly. In early 1776, sixteen men claiming to be traders arrived in New Orleans. Immediately after the long journey down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, the leader of the party, George Gibson, sought out Oliver Pollock, a local merchant of Irish extraction who had developed close
connections with the Spanish government of Louisiana. Pollock arranged for Gibson to meet with the Governor of Louisiana Luis de Unzaga y Mazaga, ostensibly to discuss commercial matters. In reality, however, the party of “merchants” had been sent from Fort Pitt bearing letters to the Spanish government from Charles Lee, second in command in the Continental Army and commander of American forces in the southern theater of the war with Britain. The letters, approved by civilian officials in Virginia, proposed an alliance between Spain and American forces in the south. In return for much-needed supplies of powder and other provisions, the Americans offered to aid Spanish forces against British encroachments on the Gulf Coast and to capture and hand over Pensacola to the Spanish, even going so far as to promise to launch a campaign against British Florida in the spring of 1777.

  For Unzaga and the Spanish, this was a dangerous but attractive proposal. Since the loss of Florida in 1763 in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, Spain had become increasingly concerned about British encroachments on the Gulf Coast. Possession of Florida placed British forces and British interests squarely in the middle of Spanish colonies in the northern Caribbean. From Florida, Britain could threaten Spanish trade from Louisiana and disrupt the formerly safe passage of Spanish treasure ships from New Spain to Europe. Florida was already proving to be a staging ground for the continual advance of British settlers and merchants along the Gulf Coast, into the interior and even to the Mississippi, threatening to displace Spanish commerce on the internal waterways of North America. Spain had gained Louisiana from the French in 1763, but even that consolation prize brought as many dangers as benefits. The population of Louisiana, and of New Orleans, its capital and largest city, was predominantly French or mixed race, with no natural loyalties to the new Spanish regime. Indeed, as recently as 1768, the previous governor, Alejandro O’Reilly, had been forced to put down a revolt with enough violence to earn the Irishman-turned-Spanish-soldier the sobriquet, “bloody O’Reilly.” With Louisiana increasingly important to Spanish imperial interests, but with control still precarious, British intrusions in the area were most unwelcome. The previous war had also proved that British designs were not limited to the continent, and many in the Spanish government worried that British Florida would be used to launch an invasion of Havana, a repeat of the humiliating capture of that important colonial hub during the Seven Years’ War.11