Nelson: Britannia's God of War

by Andrew Lambert

  As far back as 1871, Commander Fisher had demonstrated a sound grasp of the Trafalgar memorandum and how it would be applied to steam ships. Fisher knew Mahan’s works, chose 21 October 1904 as the ideal day to take up the office of First Sea Lord, and cited Nelson as the example for new measures wherever possible. The fact that his first Commander in Chief had been Sir William Parker also gave him a living link with Nelson.19 At the heart of Fisher’s naval reforms lay the new cadet college at Dartmouth, a striking building replacing the old wooden hulks that had been the entry point for officer cadets for half a century. The college was consciously laid out as a shrine to two gods, Nelson and the King. The opening of Dartmouth prompted a sudden rush to donate suitable Nelsonian artefacts and pictures to the college,20 reinforcing the buildings’ quasi-religious atmosphere.

  In one vital respect, however, Fisher completely misunderstood Nelson. Seeking an admiral to emulate the hero in the next war he chose a mild-mannered, self-effacing technocrat: ‘Sir John Jellicoe. Phenomenally young and junior. He will be Nelson at Cape St Vincent until he becomes “Boss” at Trafalgar when Armageddon comes along in 1915 or thereabouts – not sooner!’21 It must surely have been obvious to Fisher that Jellicoe was quite unlike Nelson: he was closer to Lord Howe in his approach to the service, and afflicted by a level of uncertainty, doubt and caution quite alien to his supposed model. Nonetheless, Fisher made the Nelson–Jellicoe connection again in 1911 when reporting to the new First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Spencer Churchill, and reminded him of the point in July 1914.22 Only great men like Fisher can make such big mistakes.

  On his retirement in 1910, Fisher was created a baron: like Nelson he had risen on his own merit. Despite their differences of character and areas of expertise, Nelson and Fisher were the two admirals of genius to serve the Royal Navy between the eighteenth century and the twentieth. In 1913 Fisher was annoyed to hear that the statue of a general was about to be moved into Trafalgar Square, to make a space for his old friend King Edward VII outside the Athenaeum:

  When Nelson looks round London, he only sees one naval officer, Sir John Franklin, and he died from ice, not war! Where are Hawke of Quiberon, Rodney, Cornwallis, Howe, Benbow, and all of Nelson’s Captains? Was this country made by sailors or soldiers? If monuments [are] any guide, then the sea had no victories for us!23

  The nineteenth century had produced no naval heroes worthy of a statue in Trafalgar Square. It remained to be seen whether the twentieth would do so.

  *

  In 1914 the Royal Navy went to war with more ships, men and guns than the enemy. Buoyed up by an almost sublime self-confidence the British accepted risks, made mistakes, and in almost all cases escaped punishment. The public expected a second Trafalgar, entirely unaware of the very different situation pertaining in 1914. In Nelson’s day the British had to pin the French fleets in harbour, to secure their ocean communications. In 1914 they had only to wait and watch: if the Germans wanted to go anywhere other than the Baltic, they would have to come right past the main British base at Scapa Flow. Britain, as the historians had demonstrated, could cripple Germany by staying at home. Furthermore, Nelson could take risks because he never commanded the main British fleet, but the second or, in 1801, the third fleet: if he lost it would not be fatal. In 1914–18, by contrast, the defeat of the Grand Fleet would have meant the end of the war for Britain, and her allies: Jellicoe, as Churchill pointed out, was the one man who could have lost the war in an afternoon. This was an awesome responsibility to place on any man, let alone a constitutional worrier who was overly concerned by technical flaws. Furthermore, Jellicoe did not have a ‘Band of Brothers’ to work with: he had a collection of solid fellows who would do as they were told, but who lacked the wit and the confidence to function in the fast-moving and complex situations the war would throw up. Unlike Nelson, these men had grown up in a peacetime navy of neatness, drill and good order. Without experience of war to fall back on, they needed clear instructions, and solid routines.

  As a result, the one great naval battle of the war – Jutland, 31 May 1916 – saw Jellicoe hammer the High Seas Fleet. Rather than risk his own fleet late on a gloomy afternoon, however, he was satisfied that he had driven the enemy away from their ports, and planned to complete the task the next morning. This was sound, judicious and avoided unnecessary risk; but it also gave the Germans an opportunity to scuttle home, and the next morning Jellicoe found the enemy had gone. Jellicoe’s counterpart, David Beatty, had by contrast been more aggressive in commanding his Battlecruiser fleet, pushing home his attacks, but Beatty lacked the calm professional detachment that Jellicoe used to keep control. He sacrificed advantages in numbers and firepower in a thoughtless quest for action, which cost him two of his ships and the lives of over two thousand sailors. Beatty was striving, misguidedly, to emulate Nelson: his failed attempt reflected a comprehensive misunderstanding. Though Beatty looked the part, and took big decisions with confidence, he lacked the reflective mind and professional dedication that informed Nelson’s judgements.

  The Great War at sea was won by sound, reliable officers, men who might have found Sir William Cornwallis and Earl St Vincent more suitable models than Nelson. For more than four years they blockaded Germany, and at the end Germany collapsed.

  However, the lack of a great sea battle left many dissatisfied with the Navy’s performance. There was little sacrifice to set against the massive cost of victory on land. Without a smashing battle victory, a second Trafalgar, the whole myth of Nelson and the Navy seemed to be diminished. Rather than celebrating their victory over everything that the Germans had thrown at them during the war, the Royal Navy’s officers fell into a nasty, futile feud over who was responsible for not winning at Jutland. Jellicoe, who made no mistakes and took no risks, was contrasted with Beatty, who had done both. Beatty started the argument, but Jellicoe’s quiet dignity and professionalism won more support than Beatty’s blatant rewriting of the battle.

  Fisher’s Lord Nelson served throughout the war with her sister, the Agamemnon. Both ships took part in the ill-fated Dardanelles offensive, where Lord Nelson was slightly damaged. Later Lord Kitchener used her as his headquarters. For much of her career she was a flagship; she finally went for scrap in 1920, long rendered obsolete by the Dreadnoughts. By then the Victory was in a parlous condition, her time afloat over. Fortunately the Admiralty was prepared to sacrifice a dry-dock to give her a permanent home. In January 1922 the old ship made her last voyage. An eminent committee of admirals and experts raised money and oversaw the restoration. They wanted to reconstruct the actual ship, and devoted their efforts to tearing away the things that had been inspired by Trafalgar: the stronger bow and stern that would have reduced casualties had she, or her type, ever repeated the bow-on attack. In this way the physical aspect of the story was preserved, to be seen by millions, and would inspire fresh generations to worship at the shrine of the hero. This was an age of literal, accurate reconstructions, putting the pursuit of detail above understanding. The men of 1922 should not be condemned, for without them there would be no ship. But they left it a bare shell: hull, rig, guns and a few trifles to support the plaque on the quarter-deck marking the spot where he fell.

  In 1928, the reconstruction complete, she received royal approval from another sailor King, George V. The temple of Nelson worship was now easily accessible to the public, which had not been the case while she lay out in the harbour. Millions could go on board and gain direct access to Nelson’s story. Nelson had been reinvigorated as a national, naval deity, but only time would tell if the ‘war to end all wars’ was the end of strife. If it was then the antiquarian reconstruction of Victory would serve as a suitable epitaph for an age; if not, the Navy and the nation would need rather more of Nelson than a memory.

  In the same year that the Victory began her restoration, the Royal Navy faced up to a very different threat. The cost of the First World War left Britain indebted to the United States, and soon the relationship
between the old imperial power and the new naval colossus was deteriorating. For the past two decades Britain’s alliance with Imperial Japan had been the basis of her Far Eastern security, and Japan had adopted the Royal Navy as the model for its own fleet. Proving adept pupils, the Japanese annihilated the Russian navy in 1904–5, to considerable American alarm. Tension between the US and Japan was exacerbated by arguments with over China during the First World War, and the result was a naval arms race in the Pacific. Unwilling to be left behind as the size of battleships continued to escalate, Britain prepared to build her own monster ships. The Americans then used their economic power to call an arms-limitation conference at Washington, which ended the Anglo-Japanese alliance, cut the size of all major fleets, limited the number and size of future warships, and called a ten-year holiday in battleship construction. The Americans had got what they wanted.

  Naval arms limitation penalised Britain, which depended on the Navy for security, prosperity and communications, to a far greater extent than continental powers like the USA, Germany or France. Even Japan, as an East Asian power, was less affected. As no limitations were placed on armies and air forces, the treaty greatly reduced the relative effectiveness of naval power. The Washington Treaty had been necessary, but it created as many problems as it solved, and left Britain unable to rebuild the Royal Navy to the strength necessary in the 1930s.

  The treaty did at least have one positive short-term consequence. The sudden end of battleship construction left the Americans and Japanese with new ships fitted with sixteen-inch guns: Britain, with no new ships nearing completion, secured the right to build two of this type. This was a priceless opportunity to make a statement about Britain, and reassure the Dominions and the Empire that sea communications were still secure. Consequently the lead ship was named HMS Nelson, her sister the Rodney. When she entered service on Trafalgar Day 1927 she was the most powerful ship afloat. Nelson served as the fleet flagship until 1941. It was appropriate that Nelson’s name should adorn the mightiest vessel afloat, representing what was still the pre-eminent naval power. Nelson was the ultimate expression of Britain’s desire for peace, using the power of her name and her artillery to deter aggression. Throughout her peacetime service the ship carried one of the hero’s less famous coats, a tangible connection with glory.

  A less benign celebration of Nelson occurred at the Royal Naval College at Greenwich in June 1933: a grand right-wing pageant staged by its Admiral President, Sir Barry Domvile, and scripted by the deeply unpleasant historian Arthur Bryant.24 The attempt to appropriate Nelson as a fascist hero would be amusing if it were not so appaling – fortunately a sense of the ridiculous prevented the British taking such posturing seriously. Domvile, once the navy’s most promising young captain, spent the Second World War locked up as a threat to national security; Bryant, who had run with the appeasers and facist apologists, was more nimble, and took thirty pieces of silver to write Churchillian history.25

  An altogether less dangerous approach to the cult of the hero was taking shape across the road in the buildings of the old Royal Hospital School. The school was about to move, and the buildings would be transformed into the National Maritime Museum, under the direction of Geoffrey Callender, lately Professor of Naval History at the Royal Naval College, and editor of the critical edition of Southey. The new museum would be based around the Painted Hall collection begun by Edward Hawke Locker, and the Navy’s own museum, both of which had been in the Naval College buildings. This gave Callender the lion’s share of the great Nelson relics: the coat, swords, the best pictures and numerous other items. With the support of shipping magnate Sir James Caird he was able to extend the collection into new areas, but he never forgot the central place of Nelson to any institution devoted to the history of Britain and the sea. The purchase of important manuscript collections and the creation of a research culture soon made Greenwich the prime destination for Nelson scholars. The restored Victory, meanwhile, had its own museum in Portsmouth dockyard, and over time this developed into The Royal Naval Museum, another important collection of Nelson artefacts, archives and ephemera.

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  At the outbreak of the second World War the Navy found itself once more under the political direction of Winston Churchill. His record of interfering, overruling and making mistakes in 1914–15 must have made the signal ‘Winston’s Back’ seem more warning than encouragement to many senior officers. However, this time his finest qualities would be in evidence. In the darkest period of the war, from the fall of France in May 1940 to the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Churchill’s belief in ultimate victory, his confidence in the Navy, and his constant references to Nelson imbued his leadership and his speeches with a conviction that no one else in British public life could match. Churchill called Nelson to aid the war effort with far more skill than had been the case a generation earlier. It was perhaps fortunate that his popular book The History of the English Speaking Peoples had reached Trafalgar in early September 1939,26 leaving the subject fresh in his mind. The connection was recalled when he spent a day with the Home Fleet a week later, on board the flagship, HMS Nelson; and in February 1940 he observed, ‘The warrior heroes of the past may look down, as Nelson’s monument looks down upon us now, without any feeling that the island race has lost its daring or that the examples which they set in bygone centuries have faded.’27 Churchill’s admiration of Nelson was evident everywhere, from the bust of the hero that featured in his study at Chartwell to the naming of the Admiralty cat. The feline Nelson, a fine black creature who was often stretched out across Churchill’s bed as he dictated and discussed the war, had to be evacuated to Chequers when he became frightened by the anti-aircraft guns.

  It was not just Churchill who made better use of Nelson in the Second World War. The over-centralised, stiff tactical instructions the Royal Navy had used during the First World War were neither in the tradition set by Nelson, nor particularly successful. The approach taken during the Second World War was closer to that of Nelson: officers were enjoined to seek close-range engagement, where the outcome would be decisive, at lower fighting ranges than rival fleets. The 1939 Fighting Instructions opened with a truly Nelsonic injunction:

  Captains, whenever they find themselves without specific directions during an action or are faced with unforeseen circumstances which render previous orders inapplicable, must act as their judgement dictates to further their admiral’s wishes. Care should be taken when framing instructions that these are not of too rigid a nature.28

  It was under this system that the navy recovered the initiative, élan and aggression that had made Nelson’s fleets so effective.

  On taking over as Prime Minister in May 1940, Churchill faced the gravest crisis since 1805: France was about to surrender, Italy had joined the war and Japan was increasingly hostile. Throughout August, as invasion threatened, Nelson’s heroic example was never far from Churchill’s thoughts. He used Nelson’s line about the want of frigates as the basis for his plea to Roosevelt to supply old destroyers, and told the House of Commons that the government was acting on good precepts in attacking enemy invasion harbours. ‘As in Nelson’s day, the maxim holds, “our First line of Defence is the enemy’s ports.”’ Churchill compared the crisis to ‘when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon’s Grand Army at Boulogne’.29 When the crisis passed his dining club bought him one of Nelson’s gold snuff boxes, with subscriptions from over sixty people, including Lloyd George, J. M. Keynes, Air Marshal Lord Trenchard, Admiral Lord Chatfield, Edwin Lutyens and H. G. Wells. This distinguished list of donors clearly considered that Churchill had earned the right to be linked with the original owner.30Later in the war, of course, Churchill would go further and establish himself as a modern equivalent to Nelson, the subject of an equally powerful legend. Only a man so immersed in the naval and military history of Britain would have found inspiration in the past at such times, and only one who shared Nelson’s strong streak of personal vanity would possess
the self-belief to stand out against the prevailing gloom.

  Churchill’s idolisation of Nelson found sustenance in his repeated viewings at Chequers of Alexander Korda’s Lady Hamilton, produced in 1941. Although Churchill could not resist observing to the director that he had erred in having Big Ben chime fifty years before it was completed, Lady Hamilton became his favourite film, and he never tired of hearing Laurence Olivier deliver the portentous line: ‘You can’t make peace with dictators’ – not surprisingly, since he had written it himself! Though Vivien Leigh’s Emma was too thin, and Olivier’s Nelson had an accent quite unlike his thin nasal Norfolk drawl, this Nelson undoubtedly stood for Britain – the Britain of the Blitz, defying the tyrant. Like the original he had a dry humour, but unlike the hero of 1805 he was fashionably understated and reserved, his upper lip inappropriately stiff.31 Churchill’s staff came to find the film a little wearing, and the senior officers who received Churchill’s Nelsonian missives after he had viewed it cannot have found advice such as ‘No Captain can do very wrong …’ particularly welcome.32