Admiral Collingwood

by Max Adams

  There were yet more distractions at home. Sarah was busy introducing the girls to society and travelling with them, outspending Collingwood’s income in the process. He would rather they were learning geometry and astronomy. Sarah, he was convinced, had determined to move from Morpeth and take up residence at Chirton. While he realised the Morpeth house must now seem small and provincial to the lady of a baron, he regretted that she never mentioned his garden. Chirton, he wrote to his brother John:

  is a place I should dislike exceedingly as a residence. I could never bring my mind to be at home there. Yet it has conveniences that Morpeth has not, and is more like a gentleman’s house. Had I been fortunate in prizes I would have bought a suitable residence, but as it is I fancy I must make Chirton my home, in a neighbourhood very disagreeable and in the smoke of the coal engines and every kind of filth.35

  He was still making applications, all in vain, to have his title descend to the girls, while the Herald’s Court were recommending (for a suitably outrageous fee) an augmentation to his arms which gave him a wry smile when he thought of it:

  I think there are to be more lions added to it, and for an additional crest a young lady in the character of victory gathering branches of palm upon the sea, so like the nymphs of Newbiggen gathering kelp, that I dare say I shall be able to pass it off as a compliment to them.36

  For the whole of 1806 Collingwood kept up his blockade of Cadiz, under constant pressure to reduce the strength of his squadron for pressing operations elsewhere, and risking allowing the enemy’s fleet of ten or so ships of the line to escape. His meagre forces were now hopelessly overstretched, and he himself was stationed too far from the focus of new developments. One of these was at the head of the Adriatic. Trieste and Venice were now both under French control after the defeat of Austria at Austerlitz. Collingwood received orders to blockade the two ports, so he sent Unité, a 40-gun heavy frigate, with a small detachment of lighter ships: they were all he could spare.

  Of even greater concern were developments at Constantinople, where the French Ambassador, Sebastiani, had succeeded in persuading the Sublime Porte to end her alliance with Britain and threaten the Russians with closing the Bosphorus to her shipping. Russia for her part had seized the Ionian Islands and occupied Bucharest. Their failure at Austerlitz had made the Tsar more sensitive to France’s Mediterranean ambitions, and he also believed Britain would attempt to annex Sicily. It was a heady and complicated mix of relationships that required extreme subtlety and foresight to manage. It was further stirred by an ill-timed British imposition of a total naval blockade against northern France and the Low Countries. Shortly afterwards Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena and triumphantly, from Berlin, issued a decree banning all trade between Britain and the Continent: his so-called Continental System. This was the final attempt to strangle Britain that Collingwood had foreseen years before.

  Now, in the late autumn of 1806, Collingwood saw that he must pre-empt developments in Turkey to prevent its becoming a full ally of the French, leaving Egypt and the Middle East open to Napoleon’s domination once more. So he sent as large a force as he could spare, three ships of the line under Rear-Admiral Louis, to patrol the Dardanelles and remind the Porte of Britain’s naval strength (and friendship). Collingwood was concerned that the British government might not approve of his actions, and was fully prepared to be recalled or superseded. But the new First Lord, Grenville, was rather relieved than angry:

  The detaching of the squadron under Sir Thomas Louis had in a great measure anticipated the wishes of the King’s government, and the promptitude and judgement with which that step had been taken could not but be highly satisfactory to His Majesty.37

  Grenville insisted, in fact, that another two ships of the line be sent to the Dardanelles to reinforce the squadron. Against Collingwood’s better judgement he ordered Sir John Duckworth to take command. Duckworth’s success against the French after Trafalgar had made him a popular choice, but he did not possess the political skills required in such a sensitive situation. What was more, he was known to be indiscreet, and there was something of the Sidney Smith about him: a dash approaching recklessness. However detailed Collingwood’s orders might be (and, as usual, they were minute and very clear), he was relying on Duckworth’s unproven ability to adapt to circumstances as they arose, and on close liaison with the British minister at the Porte, Charles Arbuthnot. Collingwood should have gone himself, but he did not, at least not until it was nearly too late. He remained at sea off Cadiz, having not let go an anchor in fifteen months (and proud that there was not a sick man in the ship), admitting to his father-in-law that if he ever did return home, he would be unfit for anything but the quiet society of his close family. In truth, he was in conflict with himself. Much as he dreamed of a return to his family, he was quick to resent any suggestion that he might leave his post; even more so to the idea that he was politicking. There is also a hint of paranoia:

  MY DEAR SISTER, – It is so long since I heard from you that I think you must have been deceived by the current report which I have heard was circulated with great industry in England ‘that I was coming home.’ I have not yet thought of such a thing, but I suppose it originated with those who wished to succeed to my command. I came here, not of my own solicitation, or to answer my own private purposes, but because I was ordered as a proper person to conduct the service, and I have such a contempt for anything like chicanery that I will certainly disappoint the authors …

  It is not that I delight in war, am ambitious of high office, or insensible to the comforts of a peaceful, quiet home, and the enjoyments of domestic life, but that I consider the war such that every man capable of serving is bound to render his best services.38

  On New Year’s Day 1807 Collingwood wrote to John Blackett hoping that he might live long ‘uninvaded by the sounds of war’. He asked him to tell the girls that Bounce was very well and very fat:

  Yet he seems not to be content, and sighs so piteously these long evenings, that I am obliged to sing him to sleep, and have sent them the song.

  Sigh no more, Bouncey, sigh no more,

  Dogs were deceivers never;

  Though ne’er you put one foot on shore,

  True to your master ever.

  Then sigh not so, but let us go,

  Where dinner’s daily ready,

  Converting all the sounds of woe

  To heigh phiddy diddy.39

  The song reveals more than Collingwood’s affection for his old companion; it is a clever parody on Balthasar’s song in Much Ado about Nothing.40 Whatever else Collingwood may have lost in the way of comforts at Trafalgar (and finally Sarah had sent him some knives and forks, at least), he had managed to keep his Shakespeare – and his humour. As he had done before on long Mediterranean commands, Collingwood encouraged his men to put on entertainments, to relieve the boredom both for themselves and the officers of the fleet. One such event led to an embarrassing misunderstanding involving Ocean’s resident drag act:

  We have an exceedingly good company of comedians, some dancers that might exhibit at an opera, and probably have done so at Sadlers Wells, and a band consisting of twelve very fine performers. Every Thursday night is a play night, and they act as well as your Newcastle company. A Moorish officer, who was sent to me by the Governor of the province of Tetuan, was carried to the play. The astonishment which this man expressed at the assembly of people, and their order, was itself a comedy.

  When the music began, he was enchanted; but during the acting, he was so transported with delight, that he could not keep his seat. His admiration of the ‘ladies’ was quite ridiculous; and he is gone to the Prince fully convinced that we carry players to sea for the entertainment of the sailors; for though he could not find the ladies after the entertainment, he is not convinced that they are not put up in some snug place till the next play night.41

  As far as the war was concerned, Collingwood was feeling far from flippant. He saw no end to Napoleon’
s wickedness or ambition:

  Emperor of the French was well, Emperor ‘of the West’, or perhaps ‘of Europe’ he thinks will be better, what a wretched life must so much ambition cause him.42

  To Lord Radstock, at the beginning of 1807, he offered this opinion:

  Wherever Buonaparte reigns, there is the domination of power, which is felt or dreaded by all. His rule is repugnant to the interests and welfare of the people; and whenever his tide of greatness be at the full, his ebb will be more rapid than his rise. I cannot help thinking that epoch is not distant. In that event, the world may hope for peace for a few years, until ease and wealth make them licentious and insolent, and then our grand-children may begin the battle again.43

  With history in mind, Collingwood was convinced Napoleon would attempt another invasion of Egypt. He prepared an amphibious force to be ready at Malta to sail at a day’s notice. But bad news now arrived of the fate of Duckworth’s expedition to the Dardanelles:

  The attempt at Constantinople has not succeeded at all; and yet, as far as depended on me, we were well prepared. Sir John Duckworth, you will have heard, passed the Dardanelles, and burned the ships which lay above them. The squadron stopped at Prince’s Island; the winds, the currents, and every thing, being unfavourable for their getting up to the town. The ten days they were there were spent in an attempt, by negotiation, to prevent the war, and detach the Turks from the French.

  On our part it was faithful; on theirs, it was an expedient to gain time, until their defences were completed, and their fleet secured in the Bosphorus. When they had fully accomplished this, they dropped all further intercourse, and the squadron returned.44

  Collingwood was privately angry with Duckworth; not for the failure of the expedition, because Collingwood knew himself how much such things depended on luck and fate, but for leaking his orders beforehand so that the French, and therefore the Turks, were forewarned of them. He had also overstepped his orders, taking upon himself a negotiating role which Collingwood had forbidden him. But Collingwood did not censure Duckworth except in a letter to his sister, always his most favoured confidante in service matters. In the same letter he referred to an extraordinary episode in which his brother Wilfred had been presented with a posthumous paternity suit. Collingwood’s view was that he should not have paid a penny to the woman:

  I believe I am not mistaken about the young woman at Deptford, and my brother was of the same opinion, but was under circumstances which made that necessary for him to do what I do not feel at all necessary to continue. The woman had this child exactly nine months after my brother left London – so far she was in luck. But long before he left London he had been in a state of health that having children was quite [out] of [the] question and those circumstances I found fully stated to her in letters. But he was more convenient to her than another and Sykes was at hand, who dealt out to her with a liberal hand much more than my brother could afford. When she pleaded the debts she had incurred I gave her money to clear her of the world, with which she seemed so satisfied that I never heard any more of her and never considered it other than as ending an imposition …

  I could not but laugh at the idea of bringing the girl to Ommany’s house to examine her as to her parentage, poor thing. There are many wiser than her who would be puzzled to know who their fathers were.45

  The reference to Ommany is interesting. He was Collingwood’s prize agent and ‘man of business’. The same name was chosen by Patrick O’Brian for Jack Aubrey’s agent.46

  The Constantinople affair was not the only disaster that year. The expedition to Egypt, which Collingwood had encouraged and which was initially successful, became enmeshed in Egyptian politics: ‘Our troops went on adventures where they certainly had no business and they suffered most severely.’47 The Ministry of all the Talents fell, to be followed by the Portland administration, who ordered the evacuation of the expedition. Across the Atlantic, in an ominous portent of things to come, the captain of the 50-gun fourth-rate Leopard, seeking the recovery of deserters, attacked the American frigate Chesapeake off the coast of Virginia.48 And Russia signed the Treaty of Tilsit with France which ended any hope of her remaining an ally of the British. One result was a new Northern Alliance: in the Baltic tension rose to the point where Copenhagen was shelled by a British force aiming to prevent the Danish fleet from being handed over to the French. Only Portugal was left as an ally, and relations with her court, pressurised as it was by France, were neutral at best. But here Bonaparte was about to make his big mistake. In 1807 his armies invaded Portugal and set in train the long and bloody series of events that would culminate at Waterloo eight years later.

  Amidst this explosively tense political scene, and under a climate of ‘to the death’ international economic warfare, the year 1807 is remembered more for the abolition, by Britain and much of the United States, of the slave trade. It is ironic that this outbreak of humanity was fostered by the revolutionary ideals of the enlightenment; in France these had led to revolution, terror, the abolition of slavery and its restitution by Bonaparte. In the more ‘democratic’ West, it had led to political entrenchment and the triumph of mercantile interests. In England habeas corpus had been suspended and the government spied on its own people. And yet, those same interests which sanctioned the press gang, hanging for theft and the Riot Act, had finally concluded that slavery was immoral. Even in the navy a reflection of this progressive humanity began to appear. By 1806 the Admiralty was instructing commanders not to flog ‘without sufficient cause, nor ever with greater severity than the offence shall really deserve’;49 and ‘starting’, the practice of boatswains and their mates caning seamen arbitrarily, was also to be outlawed.50 Collingwood, an instinctive humanitarian as much as he was a canny manager of men, had played a part in this social shift in attitudes. He had proved, and famously, that men did not need to be beaten into a state of humiliation in order to keep their ships’ decks clean or fire their guns with speed and accuracy.

  Collingwood’s influence in the navy had increased after Trafalgar, not just because of his seniority, but also because of the sheer numbers of men who served under his ultimate command – perhaps as many as thirty thousand in his last years. His fleet, dissipated as it was with squadrons off Cadiz, at Malta, in the Adriatic and elsewhere, numbered close to eighty ships – perhaps the largest and most difficult fleet a naval commander ever had to manage.51 Collingwood’s views on discipline among both officers and men were only too well known, and if they caused resentment here and there, no one was in any doubt of the outcome if they incurred the Commander-in-Chief’s displeasure.

  In the late summer of 1807 Collingwood at last left the Cadiz blockade. With Viscount Castlereagh as new Minister for War and the Colonies, and his bitter rival Canning as Foreign Secretary, a more proactive Mediterranean policy began to be shaped, with the aim of taking the war to Napoleon. Collingwood was ordered to sail east via Malta, and take matters at the Sublime Porte into his own hands. His talents had been too long wasted on blockade.

  By August Ocean was off the Dardanelles, and Collingwood had written a detailed appraisal of the situation to Lord Mulgrave, the Duke of Portland’s new First Lord.52 He had already, again on his own initiative, countermanded the Admiralty’s evacuation of Egypt. The army there was now secure, and its continued presence at Alexandria would, Collingwood believed, effectively concentrate the minds of the Turkish government. A blockade of Constantinople was pointless. The city was supplied by overland caravan, and the only effect of the blockade would be to increase hardship among the Greek islands.

  Dealing with the Sublime Porte was a matter of subtlety and patience, to be combined with Collingwood’s own policy of alliance through mutual self-interest. Frustrating as the protocols must have been for a man of Collingwood’s directness, he was perfectly capable of adapting to the strangest ways, as he told Sarah in a letter describing his arrival:

  When we were very near, they put out the flag of truce from all qu
arters, and a Capagi Bashi (a sort of Lord Chamberlain of the Seraglio) came off to me with letters to the Embassador, of a pacific import: and had we only ourselves to treat for, I believe there would be few impediments; but as it is, I am not sanguine.53 I gave him coffee, sherbet, and smoked a pipe with him. The day after, the answer was sent to them by the Dragoman. The ship that carried it anchored in the port, and the Captain was invited to dine with the Capitan Pacha, who is the Lord High Admiral. There were only five at table; the Capitan Pacha, the Pacha of the Dardanelles, my friend the Capagi Bashi, with beards down to their girdles, Captain Otway, and the Dragoman. There were neither plates nor knives and forks but each had a tortoise shell spoon. In the middle of the table was a rich embroidered cushion, on which was a large gold salver, and every dish, to the number of about forty, was brought in singly, and placed upon the salver, when the company helped themselves with their fingers, or, if it was fricasée, with their spoon. One of the dishes was a roasted lamb, stuffed with a pudding of rice: the Capitan Pacha took it by the limbs and tore it to pieces to help his guests; so that you see the art of carving has not arrived at any great perfection in Turkey…54

  Shortly afterwards the Russians departed, and it became clear to Collingwood that Turkish policy was now almost completely under the direction of Sebastiani, the French Ambassador. Collingwood’s fear, now that the full extent of the terms of Tilsit had become apparent, was that he was being deliberately distracted in Constantinople from a joint Franco-Russian attempt on Sicily, with a French army to be embarked by Russian ships stationed at Corfu. This was a moment of extreme crisis. Collingwood was never a lover of diplomats, as he later confessed to his sister: