At that moment Napoleon felt certain of his impending mastery of the world. Austria had made her submission, and he was about to complete Ins triumph by crowning himself King of Italy in Milan with the crown of Charlemagne. Fie could afford to treat the clumsy intrigues of England with contempt. Believing that he had wrested the naval initiative from her, he dictated on April nth a fresh plan to complete her ruin. Since Villeneuve had now been at large for two months, Ganteaume was to relinquish his voyage to the West Indies unless he could escape before May 10th. Instead he was to remain in Brest and tie down Cornwallis, while Villeneuve, returning round the north of Scotland, was first to cover the sailing of Marmont's invasion transports from the Texel and then appear off Boulogne with twenty-two ships of the line. Two days later, intoxicated by reports in English newspapers of Missiessy's capture of St. Lucia and Dominica, Napoleon ordered the two battleships still lying in Rochefort to sail at once under Rear-Admiral Magon with more ambitious instruction for Villeneuve. After awaiting Ganteaume's arrival for thirty-five days, during which time it was to complete the conquest of the British West Indies, the Combined Fleet was to make direct for the Bay of Biscay, release Gourdon from Ferrol and Ganteaume from Brest, and in July enter the Channel from the west with nearly sixty battleships.
While the Emperor was making his final dispositions and Villeneuve was sailing westwards on the first stage of his mission, Pitt
1 Bertrand, 118.
2 Napoleon, Correspondence, X, 315, 317.
was struggling to fill Melville's place. Sidmouth and his kinsmen in the Cabinet were trying by threats of resignation to secure the appointment of the Earl of Buckinghamshire, the former War Secretary who had made such a sorry mess of arming the Volunteers. But the Admiralty's work was too crucial at that moment to be entrusted to a figurehead. Eleven months before, when Melville had taken office, all but eighteen of the eighty-one battleships in commission had been in need of repair or overhaul.1 And though, with his genial, bustling turn for facilitating business, Melville had begun to repair their deficiencies, contracting for new ships in private and even foreign yards and patching up every discarded hull for service, his reforms had still to mature. In the crucial spring of 1805, with Spain aligned against her as well as France and Holland, England had still only eighty-three capital ships in commission, many of them in grave need of repair. After allowing for the blockades, the protection of convoys and the reinforcements sent after Missiessy to the West Indies, there was only a bare minimum to hold the Western Approaches. And with so many merchantmen delayed in distant waters the shortage of men was as grave.2
Pitt's second Administration had so far proved disastrous. His hold on office seemed weaker even than the Doctor's. He was now carrying on his shoulders the whole burden of Government, and his health—never robust—was showing signs of cracking under the strain. " It is inconceivable," wrote the Russian Ambassador, " how one man can suffice for such a weight of business and fatigue and . . . keep straight in his head so many tangled and diverse matters; how he can unravel and grasp them with such rare judgment and lucidity."
Yet never for one moment did the Prime Minister contemplate surrender. For two weeks while he re-gathered strength he temporised over Melville's successor. Then on April 21st, against the wishes of the King and the majority of his Cabinet, he installed his own nominee at the Admiralty. His choice was the great administrator who as Comptroller of the Navy had helped to restore the Service during and after the calamities of the American War.
1 Collingwood, 98-100; Barham, III, 40-5, 47. Even the best ships had been rendered half unserviceable by a false economy. "It was part of Lord St. Vincent's economy," wrote Collingwood from the Bay of Biscay in November, 1804, "to employ convicts to fit out the ships instead of the men and officers who were to sail in them." Collingwood, 98. Nelson declared that, with all his personal regard for Lord St. Vincent, he was sorry to see how he had been led astray by ignorant people; " there is scarcely a thing he has done since he has been at the Admiralty that I have not heard him reprobate before he came to the Board."—Nicolas, VI, 32.
2 Corbett, 29, 43; Connvallis-West, 475-6; Barham, III, 81-2.
Admiral Sir Charles Middleton knew more about the patching of discarded ships in an emergency than any man living. He was now seventy-eight. But he was hale and hearty, an active farmer in the vale of Kent and in possession of all his faculties. For the past two years he had been giving confidential advice on naval matters to his kinsman, Melville, and Pitt. To Society and the City the appointment seemed " a patch"1 and, in view of the recipient's age, slightly ridiculous. But though the Prince of Wales and the Whigs, giving out that the old man was eighty-two, made great sport of it, Wilberforce and the powerful Evangelical group in Parliament approved. They knew nothing of Middleton's technical abilities, but they liked his Sabbatarianism and his distaste for swearing. In the last days of April the greatest naval administrator since Samuel Pepys took office under the title of Lord Barham.2
It was none too soon. On April, 25th, important news reached the Admiralty. It had been brought by Lord Mark Kerr, who from his station at Gibraltar had seen Villeneuve pass through the Straits on the 8th. Having despatched a sloop to find Nelson, this enterprising officer had sailed to warn the blockading squadrons off Ferrol and Brest. While battling with headwinds in the Bay he had encountered a Guernsey lugger and ordered her into Plymouth with dispatches for the Admiralty.
The new First Lord received them with characteristic calm. It had been known for some time that Villencuve had been embarking troops, and it was supposed that he was trying to join Missiessy in the West Indies. It was notorious that it was impossible to seal up Toulon so closely as to bar the way both to the Straits and the Sicilian Channel. The important thing, in view of the impending Anglo-Russian offensive, was that Nelson should maintain control of the central Mediterranean. This he had apparently done so successfully that the Toulon fleet had abandoned that sea altogether and gone- buccaneering in the Atlantic. It would, of course, be necessary to strengthen the West Indian stations, and this Barham did. Sir Alexander Cochrane, who had already gone to the Leeward Islands after Missiessy, was ordered to reinforce Rear-Admiral Dacres's five battleships at Jamaica with his own six. It was assumed that Nelson was pursuing Villeneuve and, in accordance with an old tradition of the Mediterranean Command, would send part of his force to Barbados to replace Cochrane's squadron while joining
1 "Bad is the best, but we must make the best of it." Harrowby to Bathurst, 21st April, 1801;. Bathurst, 46.
Wilberforce, I, 282; H. M. C. Dropmore, VII, 256; H. M. C. Bathurst, 64-8; Colchester, I, 552-9; Barham, III, xxxvii; Pitt and the Great War, 521-2.
Orde with the remainder to shepherd the Secret Expedition past Cadiz.1
But the City could not take the same detached view as Barham. Coming on top of rumours of Missiessy's ravages in the sugar islands, the Admiralty's placid announcement that Villeneuve had followed him there provoked pandemonium. Consols fell to 57, and the Chronicle announced that no one had been able to sleep for days. In Parliament an incautious remark by Lord Castlereagh that he was glad the French had gone to the Caribbean nearly brought down the Government. The Navy, it was felt in that moment of unreasoning panic, had failed the country. "The French can get out when they choose," wrote an indignant society lady, "why should our blockading system continue which so fatigues ships and men?"
On April 27th the Admiralty drafted additional instructions. Every ship that could be got ready was to be hurried to sea and, where necessary, manned with soldiers, while Lord Gardner was to. detach a Flying Squadron under Vice-Admiral Collingwood to bring Cochrane's capital force in the West Indies up to eighteen. After all, nothing had been heard of Nelson—a somewhat erratic young Admiral in Barham's view—and, if his only eye had once more carried him to Egypt, the Government would find itself "in a scrape." Since the latest news from India was more reassuring, it was also decided to divert Sir Eyre Coote's wai
ting troops at Cork to Jamaica.
During the next two days Pitt, burdened with so much business that he had hardly time to eat or sleep, strove to stem the efforts of the Opposition to bring Melville to trial. On the night of April 29th he was on his feet for many hours, standing stiff and gaunt at the Treasury box with his sharp, eager features taut with pain. At two o'clock on the morning of the 30th he came back to Downing Street to find terrible news. The expedition which was to rouse Europe and raise the siege of the country was in deadly peril. For on April 9th, eight days before it sailed, Sir John Orde, surprised by Villeneuve, had abandoned the blockade of Cadiz. For nearly three weeks he had been struggling against adverse winds to join Sir Robert Calder off Ferrol or Lord Gardner off Brest. With Spanish squadrons in Cadiz and Cartagena and the Mediterranean Fleet missing, there was an awful gulf in the convoy's path.
Inevitably Pitt supposed that his plans had been discovered and that Villeneuve had sailed from Toulon, not to raid the West Indies but to destroy the Secret Expedition. In the flickering candlelight he sat down to write to Barham. " On returning from the House I have
1 Corbett, 74-6; Mahan, II, 158; Granville, II, 65. 121
just found these papers; they are of the most pressing importance. I will not go to bed for a few hours, but will be ready to see you as soon as you please, as I think we must not lose a moment in taking measures to set afloat every ship that by any species of extraordinary exertion we can find means to man."1 By midday messengers were galloping to Portsmouth with special orders which the First Lord, working quietly and alone in his room, had drafted to meet the emergency. The convoy was to be stopped if possible and brought back to Cork or Plymouth, Calder was to be reinforced before Ferrol, and every serviceable ship was to be hurried out to strengthen the Western Squadron.
For two things had now become of paramount importance: that the expedition which guaranteed the initiative should be saved and that any enemy design to force the Channel should be forestalled. Already Pitt's spies in Paris had reported that some such plan was .in the wind. The First Lord, therefore, warned Gardner that under no circumstances was he to allow the Western Squadron to fall below eighteen ships of the line and that all other instructions must be treated as conditional on this.
Yet even while he covered the Channel Barham never lost sight of more distant objectives. For the minds of those who controlled British naval warfare were trained by long experience to be many-dimensional. They shunned the eccentric movements into which Napoleon tried to lure them, yet still maintained their strong, delicate, moving web of protective power over the seven seas. Barham was almost the oldest of living Admirals, with a Service experience of more than sixty years. To his cool brain the problem, for all its shifting facets, remained simple. Pie had to preserve at all' times and against all chances the Western Approaches, keep open the trade routes, and defend the country's colonial and naval stations. He never forgot that all three were vital.
On May 4th, reassured by a report from one of Orde's frigates which had seen the Combined Fleet steering west from Cadiz throughout April 11th and 12th, the First Lord began to revert to his original belief—never wholly abandoned—that it had gone to the West Indies. He, therefore, ordered Gardner to send away Colling-wood with the Flying Squadron to Madeira, and thence, if not stopped by later news, to Barbados. Meanwhile, keeping the privacy of his room, avoiding Board attendance and leaving every man to his job while he did his, this admirable administrator, economising in time and effort and securing a punctual discharge of all duties,-pressed on his expedient for dispatching and manning every reserve
1 Barham, III, 81-3; Corbett, 83-5.
or nearly completed ship the country possessed. For, no more than the Prime Minister, could he be forced back on to a permanent defensive.1
Then on May 9th, with the fate of the convoy still uncertain, the Government received a new blow. The provisional Treaty, signed in St. Petersburg on April 11th, arrived with two clauses added by the suspicious Russians by which Britain was to relinquish Malta and her maritime rights to secure a general European settlement. Pitt had already offered to restore her colonial conquests, contribute annual subsidies of more than six millions sterling and provide transports and naval protection for joint operations under a Russian Supreme Commander in southern Italy. But these additional demands were more than he or any other British statesman could concede. For if, in return for a temporary withdrawal from Hanover, Holland, Switzerland and Italy, Napoleon was to be allowed to deprive Britain of her only naval base in the Mediterranean and abrogate her right of blockade, any peace, however favourable, would become a farce. Having secured the "freedom" of the Mediterranean, the aggressor would be able to renew the war under infinitely more favourable circumstances. It wras only England's ability to extend her blockade round southern Europe that had made a Coalition against France possible. No man was ready to go further than Pitt to conciliate and hearten Russia. But there were points on which he could not yield without betraying the cause for which he was fighting.
His only hope of making St. Petersburg reconsider its opinion lay in the army which he had so boldly sent out and which was now either returning to Plymouth or, beyond reach of recall, sailing blindly into danger. The Russians, Gower reported, had been complaining of delays in its departure: perhaps, when they learnt that it had been despatched even before the. provisional treaty had been signed, they would drop their unreasonable distrust and moderate their demands. And now, hard on the St. Petersburg mail, came a still more unnerving blow. On May 14th a letter of the 3rd from the British Minister at Lisbon brought news that Villeneuve had returned to Cadiz ten days after the Malta convoy had left England. Unless it had been stopped by Barham's messenger or Nelson had providentially arrived to save it, the ark which bore the reviving hopes of Europe was by now either in enemy hands or at best sheltering precariously at Lisbon.
Even at this juncture Barham remained calm. To close the gap in Britain's sea-line off southern Spain, he decided momentarily to
1 Corbett, 86-8, 111-14; Mahan, II, 166; Barham, III, 76, 81, 84-6.
strip the very Western Approaches. For if he could force a damaging action on Villeneuve off Cadiz; he would not only recover the initiative but avert the threat of invasion. On May 17th Collingwood, who had fortunately been held up at Plymouth by storms, was therefore ordered to sail with eleven of the line for Ushant and thence, with three more from the Channel Fleet, to rescue the convoy. With its escort he would then have sixteen capital ships including three three-deckers. Should the Combined Fleet refuse battle, it was to be blockaded in Cadiz; if, on the other hand—as Barham still suspected—it had gone to the West Indies, Collingwood was to follow it with twelve battleships, leaving his other six to guard the convoy. Alternatively, if Nelson had already preceded him, he was to send reinforcements after him.
These dispositions reduced the capital force before Brest to fifteen. But as it included nine three-deckers, each considered equivalent to two of the enemy's third rates, and as everything pointed to Villeneuve being either off Cadiz or in the West Indies, the risk was more apparent than real. To minimise it, Lord Gardner, temporarily commanding the Channel Fleet in Cornwallis's absence, was instructed to show himself off Brest during the few hours Colling-wood's ships were with him and so give Ganteaume. the impression that he was blockaded by twenty-nine sail of the line. There would be at least a week's delay before the deception could be discovered, by which time reinforcements would be on their way from England.1
Though Barham did not know it, the danger of a sortie from Brest had already passed. May 20th was the last day on which Ganteaume's revised orders permitted him to break the blockade. Since the beginning of the month he had been waiting in the Goulet: on the 18th the Admiralty heard that he was trying to get to sea. But this, like an earlier attempt in April, came to nothing. For with Gardner on the horizon no escape was possible without a fleet action. Ganteaume therefore retired to harbour to await Villeneuv
e. "Out every morning and in again about a couple of hours," was Midshipman Coleridge's comment on these inexplicable proceedings; " I'm sure we were always ready to give them a bout !"2
Barham's daring dispositions were never carried out. On May 20th Missiessy's five battleships, which both Napoleon and the Admiralty supposed to be still in the West Indies, trailed back to Rochefort. One of Calder's frigates had located them off Finisterre on the 12th, but his main force had been unable to intercept them.
1Corbett, 115, 117-20. 8 Coleridge, 109-10.
Their four months' voyage had achieved nothing except a panic in the City. For a few days after his arrival in the Caribbean at the end of February Missiessy had looked like taking Dominica, but a skilful resistance by Major-General Prevost and the local militia had prevented him from consolidating his gains. On learning of Villeneuve's failure to escape in January, he sailed again for Europe at the end of March, a week before Rear-Admiral Cochrane arrived from England with six sail of the line in pursuit and just as Villeneuve was putting out of Toulon for the second time. Combinations at sea in the face of an enemy with interior lines were proving far more difficult than Napoleon had supposed.
On May 22nd, therefore, Gardner, learning from Calder of Missiessy's return to Rochefort, reduced the Flying Squadron by five sail to secure greater strength in the Bay. Next day Collingwood sailed south with nine battleships. At home the Government was still without news of either the Secret Expedition or the whereabouts of Villeneuve and Nelson. "There is a look of anxiety amongst Ministers," wrote Lady Elizabeth Foster on the 21st, " which gives an idea of alarm." Even Barham admitted his misgivings. So short were men and ships that he feared that by the autumn the blockade of the French and Spanish ports would have to be abandoned.
Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 Page 18
