by John Keegan
Vanguard at once undertook repairs, using some of its own spare spars and others sent from Alexander and Orion to replace its lost lower, top and topgallant masts. After four days it was ready to sail. Next day, 24 May, a Marseilles vessel was encountered. It told that Napoleon’s fleet—which had been outside the track of the storm—had left Toulon on 19 May but gave no indication as to its destination.
Nelson therefore decided to retrace his course rather than press on into the uncertainties of the wider Mediterranean. He had lost touch with his three accompanying frigates during the great gale. He had not yet made contact with the squadron St. Vincent had allotted him. His judgement was that prudence demanded a return to his starting point, where he could concentrate his forces, gather in his frigates and gain fresh intelligence of the enemy’s movements. By 3 June he was back off Toulon, where on 5 June the brig Mutine appeared, bearing news that Troubridge’s squadron of ten men-of-war would soon join. The Mutine was commanded by Thomas Hardy, of “Kiss me, Hardy” at Trafalgar, already a favourite of Nelson. His information brought reassurance. On 7 June, Troubridge appeared. Nelson’s command now numbered thirteen 74s and a 50, quite enough to defeat the French if they could be found. To find the French, however, Nelson needed frigates. Where had the frigates gone?
Terpsichore, Emerald and Bonne Citoyenne had been scattered by the storm that dismasted Vanguard. Bonne Citoyenne had sent down her topgallant masts and ridden out the storm; she was a weatherly little ship, much admired for her sailing qualities. Terpsichore had also struck her topgallants and eventually her topmasts also, after three of her foremast shrouds had broken. She was alone for two days, 20–21 May, during the height of the storm but found Bonne Citoyenne again in the afternoon of the 22nd. Both were then well south of Toulon. Emerald had been driven even farther south, but also east, so far away from her two sister frigates that early in the morning of 21 May she caught a glimpse of Vanguard off Corsica in her dismasted state. She was not in a position to render assistance, and the two ships lost each other in the tumult.
Emerald’s captain, Thomas Waller, then decided, as the weather abated, to head towards the coast of Spain, in the hope of picking up prizes, desirable in themselves, but also to gather information from them. Without luck; although he intercepted two merchantmen, he got no news of either Nelson’s or Bonaparte’s whereabouts. On 31 May, however, he fell in with another British frigate, Alcmene, commanded by Captain George Hope, which St. Vincent had sent after Nelson on 12 May. It was in company with Terpsichore and Bonne Citoyenne, which it had met two days earlier. They had told Captain Hope of the great storm but had, of course, no news of Nelson. Captain Waller went aboard Alcmene, told Hope of his sighting of the dismasted Vanguard and thus set in train a sequence of events which was to deprive Nelson of his scouting group for the next two and a half months.
Nelson had left instructions for his frigates to obey in the event of their separation from the flagship. That was a common and sensible eighteenth-century precaution designed, in the absence of anything but spoken or visual communication, to allow contact to be re-established by designating a rendezvous. His instructions laid down that, if lost, they were to cruise on a line west to east and back again, due south of Toulon to within 60 to 90 miles of Cap St. Sebastian near Barcelona. When, “not having heard from me for ten days, to return to Gibraltar.” The scheme should have worked. Hope in Alcmene began to work the patrol line on 23 May, sailing back and forth on latitude 42 degrees 20 minutes north as instructed. He continued to do so after Terpsichore and Bonne Citoyenne joined. Had he kept on until 3 June, only one day more than the stipulated span, he would have been found by Nelson, who himself arrived on station that day.
On 31 May, however, Hope had detached Terpsichore and Bonne Citoyenne to search for Nelson between Sardinia and North Africa. On 2 June he met Mutine and was told by Hardy that Troubridge, with ten men-of-war, was close behind him, also looking for Nelson. There were now four separate British forces in the western Mediterranean, all looking for Bonaparte but also for each other: Nelson approaching his designated patrol line, Alcmene and Mutine on it, Terpsichore and Bonne Citoyenne heading for Sardinia, Troubridge south of all of them but heading north and anxious to make touch. If Hope had kept Alcmene and Bonne Citoyenne in company and stayed on station with Mutine, he would inevitably have met Nelson, and Troubridge later, thus forming a junction of heavy ships and scouts which, with the merest addition of luck, would have intercepted the slow-sailing French in the central Mediterranean within the month at most. The destruction of the French fleet, and with it a major portion of the best of the French army, would have followed, Bonaparte would have been a beaten man and none of his most famous victories, Marengo and Austerlitz foremost, would have been won. The First Coalition might have been revived, the Revolution contained, the French Empire never founded, the future of Europe changed altogether.
As it was, Hope decided on another course. Emerald’s report of the extent of damage suffered by Vanguard was decisive in forming his mind. He concluded that its severity would require the flagship to enter dockyard for repairs. The only available were at Naples and Gibraltar. To look for Nelson at Gibraltar required a retrogression, which would add in both space and time to Bonaparte’s head start; in any case, Hope had been told by Hardy when he had left in the Mutine that Nelson had not returned to Gibraltar. He also decided against seeking out Troubridge, a bad mistake, since Troubridge shortly found Nelson himself, and had he been able to bring Hope’s frigates with him, would thereby have added enormously to the fleet’s powers of reconnaissance. Hope instead made the calamitous decision to mount a search for the French by himself. Having already detached Bonne Citoyenne and Emerald to Sardinia, he sent Terpsichore to search the north Italian ports while sailing Alcmene round Majorca and Minorca, then to Sardinia and eventually towards Naples, picking up his detached consorts on the way. The pattern of search would have been justifiable had either Nelson or the French armada been standing still. Nelson, however, was cruising on the patrol line while the French were heading steadily east and south, opening up irrecoverable searoom with every day that passed. Had Nelson known of Hope’s movements and orders, his anguish at “want of frigates” would have been even more acute than it was.
Nelson, back on his rendezvous line off Toulon, now at least had the consolation of picking up the ships that were to constitute his fighting force, first Mutine, then Troubridge’s ten 74s, on the afternoon of 7 June. Then the weather again intervened. A calm fell, so that it was not until 10 June that Orion and Alexander, of his original three, which had been detached to chase merchantmen in hope of news, rejoined and the fleet was fully assembled. Nelson, with thirteen 74s, the 50-gun Leander and the nimble Mutine could now turn in pursuit of the enemy. Where to head?
Troubridge had brought orders from St. Vincent which recapitulated the strategic situation. Nelson was requested and required to proceed “in quest of the Armament preparing by the enemy at Toulon and Genoa, the object whereof appears to be, either an attack on Naples and Sicily, the conveyance of an army to some part of the coast of Spain, for the purpose of marching towards Portugal or to pass through the Straits [of Gibraltar] with the view to proceeding to Ireland.” However, in additional instructions, he was also authorised to pursue the French fleet “to any part of the Mediterranean, Adriatic, Morea [southern Greece], Archipelago [Greek islands] or even into the Black Sea, should its destination be to any of those parts.” He was to supply himself from the ports of “the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the King of the Two Sicilies [Naples], the Ottoman Territory, Malta and ci-devant [former] Venetian Dominions now belonging to the Emperor of Germany [Austria].” He might also expect help from the Bey of Tunis, the Bashaw of Tripoli (modern Libya) and the Dey of Algiers, three nominal but effectively independent possessions of the Ottoman empire.7
Portugal? Ireland? Naples? Sicily? No mention of Egypt. The only inference Nelson could make, as he assembled his fleet, was that Bona
parte must be assembling his also, which meant bringing together the Toulon and the Genoa elements. He concluded that Toulon would go to Genoa, rather than vice versa, and decided accordingly to search the north Italian coast; implicitly, he thereby discarded the notion of Portugal and Ireland as destinations and thought more of Naples and Sicily. He began, having cleared the northern point of Corsica, by looking in Telamon Bay (Golfo di Talamone), south of Elba, thought by him a suitable mustering place for the Toulon and Genoa convoys. Mutine, having explored the bay and run between the offshore islands of Montecristo and Giglio, reported no sight of the enemy; at this stage Nelson still believed that “not all the French troops had left Genoa on the 6th.”8 Next day, 13 June, he went to look for himself, sailing the whole fleet between Elba and the islands of Pianosa and Montecristo, a laborious detour. Had his frigates been with him one could have been sent to do the work, while Nelson pressed forward. Mutine was not fast enough to perform detached duty and keep up with the fleet. He might have used one of the 74s as a scout, but that would have diminished his fighting power; he had told St. Vincent, before leaving Gibraltar, that he intended to keep “the large Ships complete, to fight, I hope, larger ones.”
On 14 June the clouds lifted a little. Near Civitavecchia he spoke a Tunisian warship, which told him it had spoken a Greek on 10 June which had “on the 4th, passed through the French Fleet, of about 200 Sail, as he thought, off the N.W. end of Sicily, steering to the Eastward.”9 It is not clear if that meant it was moving along the north coast of Sicily or had passed Trapani and was off the south coast. If the former, it was just possible it might be making for Naples; if the latter, it had some other objective; but in either case it might land troops on Sicily, eminently worth occupying in itself. In any case, Bonaparte’s Armament had been nearly three hundred miles ahead of him ten days earlier and, even allowing for its sluggardly rate of advance, might have made another three hundred miles since. The cloud of unknowing, even if it had lifted a little, still concealed most of the future.
In the circumstances, Nelson decided to go to Naples. There were good reasons for doing so. The long-serving British ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, in post for thirty-four years, had important sources of information, drawn from diplomatic, political and commercial contacts all over the central Mediterranean. The kingdom of Naples, or the Two Sicilies, as it was known, was well disposed towards Britain, and in fear of France, whose armies were just over the border in the Papal States. It might lend Nelson’s fleet supplies and assistance. Its Prime Minister, General Sir John Acton, a cosmopolitan man of affairs, held the title of a British baronet and had some loyalty to his ancestors’ country. Nelson hoped for both intelligence and material support.
Arrived at the Ponza islands off Naples on 15 June Nelson sent Troubridge ashore in the Mutine. He landed on the morning of the 17th. Thomas Troubridge was a trusted subordinate, a colleague of twenty-five years and a no-nonsense fighting-ship captain. St. Vincent thought him “the greatest man in that walk the English Navy has ever produced.” A veteran of the Glorious First of June and the Cape St. Vincent battles, his attitude to command was straightforward. “Whenever I see a fellow look as if he was thinking,” he gave as his opinion after the widespread outbreaks of indiscipline in 1797, “I say that’s mutiny.” Taken to see Hamilton and Acton, he came straight to the point. Hamilton recorded, “We did more business in half an hour than should have been done in a week in the official way here . . . Now being informed of the position and strength of the enemy” and having extracted an order from Acton authorising the governors of every Neapolitan port to supply “the King’s ships with all sorts of provisions,” Troubridge “brightened up and seemed perfectly happy.” Putting Acton’s order in his pocket, he departed for the fleet offshore, which he reached on 18 June.
Fighting is one thing. Intelligence is another. Each requires different qualities, not often found in the same person. The Royal Navy was to rediscover that, on a similar occasion, on 31 May 1916, when a seaman officer asked the wrong question of the intelligence staff on the morning of the Battle of Jutland. The fault then was superciliousness; he disdained to explain why he asked the question he did, not deigning to take the cryptologists into his confidence. Troubridge was not supercilious. He, Hamilton and Acton seem to have got on like a house on fire. His fault was bluntness. He wanted supplies for the ships, almost a naval officer’s first thought. He wanted the freshest news available of the enemy’s whereabouts. Acton’s order ensured the first. Hamilton’s hard information—that the French were going to Malta—supplied the second. No wonder Troubridge departed wreathed in smiles.
What he should have extracted from Hamilton, and might have done had he not stuck so directly to the point as he saw it to be, was softer news. It might have emerged in speculative or even general conversation, clearly not Troubridge’s strong point. The news was the indication that the French Armament was bound farther afield than Sicily or Malta. On 28 May Acton, whose first language was French (he had been born at Besançon), had told Hamilton that the French ambassador at Naples had told him “that the grand expedition from Toulon . . . was really destined for Egypt.” Hamilton appears to have suspected that he might be dealing with disinformation. As a result, although he minuted Acton’s report to the Foreign Office in London, he did not pass its content on to Troubridge nor put it in writing to Nelson.10
WHAT LONDON KNEW
London may indeed have been better informed than Nelson was. The Foreign Office, the Admiralty and the War Office all collected intelligence, from professional agents, consular officials, well-disposed or garrulous travellers and foreign newspapers, among other sources. As early as 24 April Lord Spencer, the Foreign Secretary, had noted the destination of “the Toulon ships” as “Portugal—Naples—Egypt.” Two days later “61’78’71” (the designation of an agent) “believes,” he wrote, “the object to be Egypt incredible as it seems.” Henry Dundas, Secretary of War and a member of the board of the East India Company, was meanwhile telling the Admiralty of news passed by an American recently in France of French plans to invade the Channel Islands, to send an expeditionary force to Ireland (which came about in August), to raise revolution in Naples and Poland (both blows against Austria), but also of a “strange scheme respecting Egypt,” by which 400 French officers were to be sent overland through that country to assist Tipu Sultan against the British in India.
The Admiralty had its own man in the Toulon Armament’s operational zone, Lieutenant William Day, sent to Genoa to sell three Navy Board transports marooned there since the withdrawal from the Mediterranean in 1796. Day’s reports, sent overland via the normal route through Germany to Hamburg and then by sea to London, the transmission time being anything from three to five weeks, first suggested that Spain was the destination. By 1 May, however, when he himself arrived in London, he brought news that indicated the eastern Mediterranean as a possibility. It was that the Armament was embarking 4,000 ten-hooped barrels, without bungholes, the purpose of which was judged to be to buoy warships over shallows. The First Lord deduced that they were needed for the passage through the Dardanelles to the Black Sea. It is indicative of how defective was the Admiralty’s contemporary information that it believed a waterway navigable by modern container ships was not by men-of-war a fraction of their draught.
Other information available in London was, however, better. French newspapers, often acquired within a week or less of publication, were remarkably indiscreet. During late March, April and early May, L’Echo, Le Surveillant and Le Moniteur all printed material which amplified the picture the government was forming of the Toulon Armament’s strength, provisioning and even destination. Le Moniteur, under government control, tried to muddy the water by printing deliberate misinformation but the trend of the news remained unmistakable: a big fleet was preparing for a long-range military operation. Gossip helped to refine the picture. Some of the academics who were to accompany the expedition began to boast, a notorious failing
of clever men leading unimportant lives. De Dolemieu, a mineralogist, wrote to de Luc, Professor of Natural History at Göttingen, that books about Egypt, Persia, India and the Black and Caspian seas were being shipped and that rumour had it the objective was Egypt and the purpose to intercept Britain’s commerce with India. De Luc, unfortunately, was both a member of the household of Queen Charlotte, George III’s wife, and a Foreign Office agent. He passed the word on 7 May.11
The best intelligence received in London came, however, through official channels. It had been assembled by what would become classic spy-novel methods. The consul in Leghorn (Livorno) in northern Italy, Udney, had a well-informed contact in a local British merchant, Jones, who maintained commercial correspondence with other trading houses throughout the Mediterranean. His sources led him to overestimate somewhat the size of the Toulon Armament, but he got its departure date roughly right and its destination and purpose uncannily so. Its intermediate stop was to be Malta, which would be surrendered, and then Alexandria (though perhaps alternatively the Black Sea), with the object of landing troops to march overland to the Persian Gulf or sail down the Red Sea to attack the British East India Company’s possessions in India. Udney’s report, dated 16 April, was passed by the Foreign Office to the Admiralty on 24 May.
For a while London chose to discount the information. There were other dangers nearer home that a great French amphibious expedition threatened, a descent on Portugal, in concert with the Spanish, an offensive against Britain itself, perhaps via Ireland, where rebellion broke out in May. What may have been deliberate French disinformation suggested that the rumours about Egypt were a cover story to conceal the real strategic purpose of the Toulon Armament. On 1 June, the Foreign Secretary wrote to Lord Mornington, Governor General in India, that “Bonaparte has at last embarked at Toulon with the project of attacking Ireland . . . taking or not taking Portugal in his way.”
