by Max Adams
Given his devotion to active service, and his reluctance to give it up even in the most extreme circumstances, it is tempting to speculate on what Collingwood’s future might have held had he survived and kept his health. He had been offered a shore post at Plymouth, but it would scarcely have interested a man who had discovered a taste for high diplomacy. Surely, after a spell of recuperation at Chirton, he would have taken his seat in the House of Lords. It was a turbulent time for British politics. The Peninsular War had not, by a long shot, reached the heroic momentum of 1812. From 1811 the King’s illness and increasing senility meant that the entirely unsuitable ‘Prinny’ became Regent. A year later the prime minister, Spencer Perceval, was assassinated by a bankrupt Liverpool broker. Confusion reigned. Collingwood, whose party was avowedly neither Whig nor Tory but ‘Old England’, would have made an obvious choice as a non-partisan First Lord. He would have instituted reforms in ship construction and in seamen’s conditions; above all he would have made an astute naval strategist, with a breadth of experience that only St Vincent, if anyone, could have matched. One can only speculate what influence he might have had on the outbreak – and outcome – of the disastrous war of 1812–14 with the United States of America; it was a war he had himself predicted8 and which, having been so intimately involved with the American struggle for independence, he deplored.
The family, surely, would have moved from Chirton down to London (after Collingwood’s death the estate reverted to John, and Sarah and the girls moved to Tynemouth): both Sarah and her girls loved the social round that Collingwood’s fame and relative wealth had introduced them to. As it was, they became acquainted with many influential and socially active people. Among them were the Nelsons:
Portman Square, London: Letter to Miss Mary Woodman
10th May 1812
Yesterday we dined at Crespigny’s and met Lord and Lady Nelson … Lord Nelson is a most vulgar disagreeable man. The widow Viscountess Nelson has been in town, and we saw a great deal of her. She is a most agreeable woman.9
Had Collingwood lived, like ‘Old Jarvie’ (Sir John Jervis, Earl St Vincent), into his eighties, he would have found himself a favourite at court. William, Duke of Clarence, had served with Nelson in the West Indies, and at one time hoped (to the ministry’s horror) to succeed Collingwood as Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean. He had written many admiring letters to him over the years. After the death of his brother George IV he became King William IV, the Sailor King, in 1830. Nelson’s closest friend, and the ‘other’ hero of Trafalgar, would have been displayed at Windsor to great advantage. Two years after William’s accession, it was Collingwood’s fellow Northumbrian, Earl Grey (First Lord of the Admiralty in 1806), who forced through the Reform Bill of which Collingwood, despite his traditional Tory values, might well have approved, even if his old friend Eldon opposed it.
Collingwood’s death at sea, after an absence of seven years from England, may have played a part in his subsequent treatment by historians. In James’ Naval History he was censured for not anchoring the prizes after Trafalgar, though there is the ample testimony of his own account to show why that was not possible or desirable. No doubt the loss of prize money had some effect on the accounts of those captains, some of them already prejudiced against Collingwood, whom James consulted. James’ history was published a year before Newnham-Collingwood’s memoir, in which those arguments were vehemently countered.10
Considerably more damage was done to Collingwood’s reputation by an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, in which he was described as:
an admirable second in command, but without the fuller genius fitting him to rise to the first rank as commander-in-chief.11
Such an opinion might be dismissed if it had not proved so influential in the creation of the Holmes-Watson myth of the relationship between Nelson and Collingwood, which is unsustainable. Just as Watson is a convenient sidekick, providing an absorbent narrative foil for the genius of his master, so Collingwood fits rather well as Nelson’s dependable but essentially dull second. In taking over command of the fleet just before Trafalgar, Nelson held centre stage in a gesture (wholly self-conscious) designed to admit of no doubt who the main character was. Collingwood, if he resented such treatment, as he might have done before, at the battle of Cape St Vincent, and in the West Indies, gave no hint of it to Nelson, or to his family intimates.
Nelsonian narratives have two features in common. Firstly, they tend (with notable exceptions) to exclude events in which Nelson himself did not play a part. Collingwood’s brilliant though defensive action in August 1805 is rarely aired, even though at the time the Naval Chronicle regarded it as ‘an instance of genius and address that is scarcely to be paralleled in the pages of our naval history’.12 In itself it makes a very good story, but it is easy to see how it confuses the Nelson story, a story which relies heavily on there being only one hero. A second, inevitable feature of Nelsonian history is that it tends to end with his glorious death at Trafalgar and his subsequent state funeral at St Paul’s cathedral. Thus, one of Nelson’s biographers, in following some of the main characters in his tale, described Collingwood as having, after Trafalgar, spent ‘four uneventful years in the Mediterranean’.13 This view of the naval war as effectively ending with Trafalgar is as common and facile as it is mistaken. The naval war continued after Collingwood’s death, even though there were no great fleet actions, and public minds were focused squarely on the land war in the Iberian peninsula. It continued too outside the Mediterranean, especially in the Baltic where Sir James Saumarez played every bit as crucial a role as Collingwood, if on a smaller scale.
It is true that the Mediterranean theatre of those last four years was an exceedingly complicated one. Great credit for unravelling its knots must go the historian Piers Mackesy, who not only understood its multiplicities, but as a result became something of a champion of Collingwood’s role there. It was, oddly, in the same year as the publication of his War in the Mediterranean that Edward Hughes published a collection of Collingwood’s correspondence, which both complemented and enhanced the original memoir of 1828, and with much less interference.
Just two biographies of Collingwood were written in the twentieth century. Geoffrey Murray’s 1936 Life was a popular account of a man whose story by then had largely been swallowed by the Nelson myth. In 1968 Oliver Warner, the distinguished naval historian, published a biography which allowed the work of both Hughes and Mackesy to be integrated into the most authoritative account of the admiral’s life that has so far been written. Given its scope, it is unimprovable. And yet, as the two-hundredth anniversary of the Action approaches, it is still seen as legitimate to portray that battle, and indeed almost the whole of the naval wars against France, as the personal Triumph of Nelson.
That Collingwood played an important role in the events that led to Trafalgar, in the battle itself, its aftermath and the consolidation of British naval supremacy in the years afterwards, cannot seriously be in doubt. But it is still routinely asserted that Nelson ‘won’ the battle of Trafalgar. There were something in the region of twenty thousand men fighting on the British side, of course. Nelson, as commander, devised the strategy with which the British fleet went into battle. It has been shown that this tactic, cutting the line with two perpendicular columns, was an evolution of much that had gone before, particularly Duncan’s brilliant defeat of the Dutch at Camperdown.
It was pointed out at the time that once that strategy had been determined, no act or signal on the part of the Commander-in-Chief would make much difference to the progress of the battle. Few signals were made; fewer were seen. It is unnecessary to comment on the individual bravery and skill of the naval officers and men on both sides, except in one crucial respect. What actually determined the outcome of the battle, in truth a devastating and overwhelming victory regardless of its long-term effects, was gunnery. This may be demonstrated by the relative rates of gunfire on both sides, and the casualty figures. Rates of f
ire are not easy to establish; much of the evidence for them is anecdotal. But it can be said that a rate of three broadsides in five minutes was considered good practice, and it can also be said that some commanders, of whom Collingwood was the outstanding exponent, achieved higher rates than this: perhaps as many as three in three and a half minutes. With their lack of battle experience and live-firing exercises, the Combined Fleet could not manage anything like these rates. One broadside in five minutes might be nearer the mark. Gunnery tactics were also different. English guns aimed at the ships’ sides, a direct attempt to destroy the enemy’s ships, disable their guns, and kill their gunners. French tactics, in particular, were designed to damage masts, spars and rigging by aiming high, particularly using grape and canister shot. After disabling a ship, they expected to board and carry her without having destroyed her in the process.
At Trafalgar these tactics were successful to the extent that many of the British fleet were dismasted and lost all steerage way. But not a single British ship struck her colours. That had more to do with skill and seamanship in the face of the terrible gale that followed, than it did to luck. Nevertheless, the relative casualty figures shown below paint a much truer picture of the battle’s outcome.14 The British fleet’s order is that of attack, following Collingwood’s own list (Appendix 1).
These figures do not shock any less for rereading them. A great deal can be read into them, possibly too much. As Collingwood pointed out at the time, and from his own bitter experience after the Glorious First of June, the skill and bravery of a ship’s officers and men were not necessarily reflected in the casualties they suffered. But the bald facts are clear. The Combined Fleet (which had six more ships than the British) suffered something like six times the overall casualties of the British fleet. Even allowing for the very large numbers of French sailors who drowned or were blown up, the actual battle casualty rates must have been something like three or four to one. It might be too simple to equate this rate with the relative rates of gunfire, also between three and four to one. But essentially, it was superior gunnery that won the battle, as the devisers of the mêlée tactic knew it would. It was not a tactic designed to test the strength and skills of two equal opponents. It was designed to annihilate the enemy. This one action saw more casualties than all the other naval engagements of the Napoleonic Wars put together – but then, not nearly so many as were lost to disease in that period, a much more shocking figure.
Looking down those terrible lists of lives lost, and the fates of the ships, it becomes even more evident just how miraculous it was that not a single British ship was lost. That is a direct reflection of the fact that the captains of the British ships, and of course Collingwood in particular, had been so hardened to a life of blockade, that their consummate skill was equal to a series of gales that were the severest many of them had ever seen. In this context, censuring Collingwood for the loss of the prizes rather misses the point.
The navy’s Mediterranean (and for that matter Baltic and Atlantic) exploits after Trafalgar must give the lie to the often-repeated idea that Trafalgar put an end to French naval ambition. It was the last great naval engagement involving wooden-hulled ships. But between 1805 and the end of the war ten years later, the essence of the conflict at sea changed in response to Napoleon’s altered ambitions. Blockade and intelligence-gathering, coastal operations and small frigate actions became the order of the day. The fleet was always there to back them up, and to intimidate any enemy squadron that might show its face. Trafalgar had achieved a major blow. Perhaps the subtleties and complexities of the naval war in the following years makes the navy’s achievement harder to appreciate, if not less impressive.
By the time of Collingwood’s death his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean was, to the ministry’s relief, losing its crucial importance. The land wars were beginning in earnest. Within a year Napoleon would be so completely absorbed by his rash commitments in Spain and Russia that invasion plans for Sicily, Menorca, Egypt and Turkey were effectively abandoned. Collingwood’s role in bringing about that scenario should not be forgotten.
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Max Adams’ next book, In the Land of Giants, is coming in Autumn 2015.
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Picture Section
About the Wood Engravings
Notes about the 2015 edition
Acknowledgements
Source notes
Appendix 1 – Collingwood’s Trafalgar dispatch
Appendix 2 – Collingwood’s Commissions
Bibliography
Index
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Max Adams
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A charismatic leader, a warrior whose prowess in battle earned him the epithet Whiteblade, an exiled prince who returned to claim his birthright, the inspiration for Tolkein’s Aragorn.
Oswald of Northumbria was the first great English monarch, yet today this legendary figure is all but forgotten. In this panoramic protrait of Dark Age Britain, archaeologist and biographer Max Adams returns the king in the North to his rightful place in history.
I
Queen’s move
Soð bið swiðlost...
and gomol snoterost
Truth is the clearest thing...
and the old man
is the wisest*1
The dark ages are obscure but they were not weird. Magicians there were, to be sure, and miracles. In the flickering firelight of the winter’s hearth, mead songs were sung of dragons and ring-givers, of fell deeds and famine, of portents and vengeful gods. Strange omens in the sky were thought to foretell evil times. But in a world where the fates seemed to govern by whimsy and caprice, belief in sympathetic magic, superstition and making offerings to spirits was not much more irrational than believing in paper money: trust is an expedient currency. There were charms to ward off dwarfs, water-elf disease and swarms of bees; farmers recited spells against cattle thieves and women knew of potions to make men more—or less—virile. Soothsayers, poets, and those who remembered the genealogies of kings were held in high regard. The past was an immense source of wonder and inspiration, of fear and foretelling.
Historians, bards and storytellers alike were tempted to improve on the truth, as they are today. But you can forget pale hands emerging from the depths of lakes offering swords of destiny to passers-by. You can forget holy grails and messianic bloodlines. Bloodlines mattered as political reality, it is true, but they were traced from the ancestral tribal gods of Britain and Germany or the last generals of the Roman Empire, not from the crucified prophet of Nazareth.
One of The Wonders of Britain, from a list written down at the beginning of the ninth century but surely recited to children and kings for hundreds of years before and after, was an ash tree that grew on the banks of the River Wye and which was said to bear apples.1 Such poetic imaginings are easily dismissed by academics as fancy; and yet the distinguished woodland historian Oliver Rackham has recently shown that the famous tree in question must have been a very rare Sorbus domestica, the true service tree, which has leaves like a rowan or ash, and which bears tiny apple- or pear-shaped fruit.2 In 1993 one was found growing on cliffs in the Wye Valley in Wales. Early Medieval Britain was full of such eccentricities—the Severn tidal bore and the hot springs of Bath fascinated just as they do now—but the people who survived the age were, above all, pragmatists and keen observers of their world. Their knowledge of weather and season, wildflower and mammal, shames the modern native. They were consummate carpenters, builders and sailors. The monk Bede, writing in the year 731, knew that the Earth was round, that seasons changed with latitude and that tides swung with the moon’s phases.
Love a
nd romance must have played their part in life, although few men writing during the three hundred years after the end of Roman Britain thought to mention them. For the most part life was about getting by, about small victories and the stresses of fretting through the long nights of winter, about successful harvests and healthy children.
The vast majority of people in the Early Medieval British Isles, as across Europe, are invisible to us. We know farmers and craftsmen existed: we have their tools and the remains of their fields. Sometimes their houses can be located and reconstructed; rather more often we find their graves. Very, very rarely we hear their names. Sometimes they encountered seafarers and travellers from strange lands who brought tales of exotic beasts and holy places. The countryside was busy with people, nearly all of them to be found working outside in their fields or woods, or fixing something in their yards; ploughing, milking, weeding, felling, threshing and mending according to the season. We have their languages: the inflexions, word-lore and rhymes of Early English, Old Welsh, Gaelic and Latin tell us much about their mental worlds. We can guess at numbers: somewhere between two and four million people living in a land which now holds fifteen to thirty times that many. Their history is recorded in our surnames and in the names of villages and hamlets. With care, their landscapes can be reconstructed and at least partly understood. The hills, rivers, coasts, some of the woods and many of their roads and boundaries can still be walked, or traced on maps. And through pale dank sea-frets of late autumn King Oswald’s Holy Island of Lindisfarne still looms mysteriously across the tidal sands of Northumberland’s wave-torn coast.
Oswald Iding ruled Northumbria for eight years, from ad 634 to 642. In that time he was recognised as overlord of almost all the other kingdoms of Britain: of Wessex, Mercia, Lindsey and East Anglia, of the Britons of Rheged, Strathclyde, Powys and Gwynedd, the Scots of Dál Riata and the Picts of the far North. A famed warrior, the ‘Whiteblade’ or ‘Blessed arm’ of legend, he won and lost his kingdom in battle. He was the first English king to die a Christian martyr. He is the embodiment of a romantic hero: the righteous exiled prince whose destiny is to return triumphant to reclaim his kingdom. More than that, he is almost the first Englishman (the other candidate is his Uncle Edwin) of whom a biography might be written.
