by Jan Needle
Nelson was also told that the French had now formally thrown their lot in with the rebels of the Thirteen Colonies, so with a ship to fight them in, he would undoubtedly win prizes and amass great riches. After his experience with the ‘shining orb,’ Horatio was not surprised. He was basking in a ‘light from heaven.’ It was his destiny.
To some, thought Hastie over weeks of lucid conversation up at Admiral’s Mountain, it might have seemed that interest had always been a greater part of destiny than lights from heaven, especially when in April 1777 the acting lieutenant had returned from a convoy to Gibraltar to be ordered by their lordships to attend the Admiralty for examination to confirm him in the rank. At eighteen he was officially too young – but the officer heading the examiners was none other than his uncle the Comptroller.
*
In their journal, Tim quoted Nelson thus:
He professed not to know me, nor I him. But within short order, and despite one or two of them commenting on my rather Norfolk way of talking, they recognized my ability, and I was passed with colours flying. The Comptroller then admitted our connection, but said he had been forced to keep his mouth shut for fear they might have favoured me unfairly. A ship had been already selected for me, the frigate Lowestoffe. My God, I thought – look out you French! I do it for my mother’s memory…
*
Before the Lowestoffe could set sail, there was the small matter of manning her, and readying her for the task. A 32-gun fifth rater with lines copied from a captured Frenchman and rigged with a lateen mizzen, she was being modified in Sheerness dockyard for service on the Jamaica station, with William Locker as her captain.
Locker was a popular man with crews, some of whom called him Gammy Bill due to an injury received during an action in the Seven Years War. He was forty six, ‘and a very cheery soul.’
Popular and cheery notwithstanding, Captain Locker still needed to resort to the press gang, and the new Lieutenant Nelson was installed in an inn to supervise it. Sheerness was full of seamen, watermen and fishermen – legitimate targets all – but it still took up a lot of time. So much so, that he was struck down by a recurrence of the disease he’d picked up in eastern waters.
Sheerness was a very stinky place that summer, and lo and behold I ended up laid out on the taproom floor, twitching and stuttering like a baby. I was picked up like a baby, too, by one of my older midshipmen, who was indeed a sort of ma to me, though rather large and lumbering. When I came back to my senses I was on board of Lowestoffe once more. And babbling, I’m told.
Any other captain, you may depend upon it, would have taken the opportunity to have rid himself of this deadweight immediately, but Locker, to my everlasting gratitude, would not hear of it. He told me he could see much good in me, and suggested a Caribbean cruise as a rest cure. He had a sense of humour of the finest.
One thing that did upset Horatio, was that he had to give up his London sessions with the painter John Rigaud, who was many hours into a full-length portrait of the rising star. Hastie exhorted Sarah not to see this as another example of sheer self-regard, though.
‘Even at that tender age I think he had realized that one must gain public notice by whatever means available. I am sure that by now, golden orb or no golden orb, this sickly young specimen was determined he would stay alive, and make his mark on everything, and win. He tells me that even then he was intending to be an admiral, invoking, as always, his dear mother’s name. He needed her, dear girl, and needs her yet. I think he will be searching for his mother till the day he goes to join her in their heaven.’
The other thing that Nelson had a desperate craving for was action. He had known every vagary of climate and weather in his sea-life so far, but apart from the stopping of Hyder Ali’s ketches on the India station, had never breathed the smoke and fire of actual conflict.
As the Lowestoffe plugged westward to the Caribbean, he became Locker’s confidant and student, and had his lust for fighting honed. Gammy Bill did not share Nelson’s raw hatred for the French, despite the crippling of his leg, but he had fought them muzzle-to muzzle, hand-to-hand, and had many insights to pass on.
‘He told me you must always lay Johnny Crapeau close. He taught me that you must board him, always, and you’ll win. He was the bravest, bravest man, and our friendship cannot die but with his death.’
It was not a Frenchman, however, that Nelson first had the chance of ‘laying close.’ Cruising the Caribbean with Locker he snatched the opportunity for a little glory when they raised a merchantman wallowing in gigantic, broken seas. She was thought to be a privateer, who along with French ships flagged as Americans, infested these waters.
It was filthy weather, early in November, and they came up with her only after a long and hard pursuit in a full gale. Locker required that she be boarded, and the Lowestoffe’s first lieutenant (Nelson was the second) was the man to do it, with a cutter and strong crew.
I do not wish to traduce him, but for whatever reason that officer did not do the job. I was told afterwards that he took the cutter out and they were beaten back by the violence of the seas, but later some said he did not go at all, he had forgot his sword and went below to find it. He was away so long the captain grew impatient and bellowed out ‘Have I no officer on this ship who can board the prize?’ The sailing master ran for the gangway then, but I got there first and told him ‘Now it’s my turn – if I fail you’ll get yours later!’ It was very bold in me, but Captain Locker did not mind. In fact he thanked me afterward, with sincere congratulations.
The row to the American was a hard and wet one, which may easy have proved fatal. The seas were so wild, in fact, that when I drew close enough to board, the cutter was lifted on a roller which washed her o’er the weather rail, clean across the well between the masts, and off the other side.
My years of small boat work then came in rather handy – we did not even break an oar. Once clear over her, we turned on ourselves and struggled back against the gale until we grappled her main chains. She was so waterlogged we thought that she might go down under us, but we got back in the end, mission accomplished.
He smiled at Hastie, from his feather bed.
‘I hope you do not think I’m boasting, Tim,’ he said. ‘It is my disposition, that it all. Difficulties and dangers merely seem to increase my desire to match them, I cannot help myself. Not bad in me, is it?’
‘Cariad,’ Tim wrote, ‘how could I reply? Dear Horatio thinks, it is his watchword, that he cannot tell a lie, in whatever circumstance. But then, I am certain that he does not see the fair exposition of his adventures, however prone to raising eyebrows, as anything other than unvarnished laying out of facts. In this he may be right, who knows? Certain it is that he does not see that luck might play a part in his successes, however small that part may be.
‘He is hot-headed, though, and surely not even he himself could argue with me there? Indeed, he is at his most thoughtless for safety after periods – however short – he sees as being boring. After he had secured this prize, half seas under and at risk of foundering, he and his boat’s crew checked her papers, found her to be a privateer from the Thirteen Colonies, and sailed her into Port Royal. She was, although he cannot even recall her name, Nelson’s first command.’
Locker, although he had temporarily thus lost his second officer, did not forget the service he had done, and the skill and courage he had employed achieving it. Shortly afterwards he gave him another captured schooner, in which Nelson escorted his captain around the northern coast and isles of Hispaniola.
‘This first command on paper, cariad, was given the sweet title Little Lucy, which Horatio told me was the name of Captain Locker’s wife, and daughter also. Little happened, though, to fire up our man to proper satisfaction.
‘But in the wider world, great movements were afoot. War had been declared with France once more, and she had thrown in her lot with the fighters in the colonies. Back in Jamaica, Rear Admiral Sir Peter Parker had been appoi
nted to command the station, a bitter, angry man with a thirst to avenge a past humiliation by those rebels at the port of Charleston.
‘He knew Nelson already, by repute, as a man with a similar need to bloody Frenchmen’s noses, and doubtless considered preferring him would be considered by their lordships as a fitting tribute to the memory of his uncle the Comptroller, who died the same summer.
‘So Captain Locker lost him in a transfer to Parker’s flagship, the Bristol, where he was promoted immediately to be her first lieutenant. But Cuthbert Collingwood reaped benefit as well, by taking Nelson’s place on Lowestoffe. His rise was not to be as fast as his friend’s however – as always. It wasn’t long before Parker made Horatio commander of the armed brig Badger. Not long, either, until he proved his mettle saving lives and fighting a most dreadful fire.’
Chapter Eleven
Nelson took command of the Badger from Captain Michael Everett on the first of January, and spent almost four weeks preparing her for sea. She was being refitted in Port Royal, during which time she was derigged, careened and caulked. By January 13 ‘the people had got up the fore and main topgallant masts,’ and next day fifteen barrels of beef were loaded, along with twelve firkins of butter, both of which quantities were found to be short. That, Hastie told Sarah, was sadly not abnormal.
Three days after that, the Badger was anchored in the fairway to take on stores (including three hundred and eighty gallons of rum), before setting sail nine days later to cruise the southern shores of Jamaica to protect against American privateers. She saw no action, but on February 24 anchored at Princess Creek and took on board 244 pounds of fresh beef.
The guns were tested while they lay there, one of them being faulty, and on March 3 they moored at Port Royal and armaments were hoisted out, along with rigging, sails, and the water casks. Then the Badger was careened once more, the sides were scraped and paid with pitch, and the boot tops treated with tallow and white lead.
‘Nelson, in his bed of pain and some years later, could still remember clearly, cariad, that despite the speed and pressure to achieve all this work in two short days, he was sorely bitten by the tedium of a fighting ship without a fight. In half a week or less he found it necessary to pass the time in two dozen lashes for a man for drunken disobedience, then twenty tons of water must be taken on, damaged masts repaired, then the rigging overhauled. At last, on March the twenty second, the Badger raised a sail, gave chase, and stopped a Spanish vessel bound for Havana with a four-pounder shot.’
After that, things looked up for the bored young commander, with several minor skirmishes against small trading vessels involving the firing of many pounds of iron to ‘bring them to,’ and some hard-weather damage to keep his sailors busy. But when they redocked in Port Royal on the third of April, the most exciting discovery was that both sails and rigging were in very poor condition, and much of it must be condemned.
‘My life was one long round of bad reports,’ Nelson told Tim. ‘Carpenter, rigger, bosun, master – they all had faces long as fiddles. Nothing more to do than make repairs and bring in more provisions. This time we managed three hundred and twenty gallons of rum. And only five times that much water!’
When excitement came at last it brought tragedy as well, Hastie told Sarah. But also, he added, another indicator of Nelson’s unusual worth, for when the journal was set down.
It was on April the second, when the Badger had escorted a convoy from Anotta Bay and Port Antonio, and dropped her own anchor in Montego Bay. At half past two that afternoon four ships of the London Fleet arrived, escorted by HMS Glasgow, and some three hours later smoke and flames were seen pouring from the navy ship, amid loud screams and yelling.
Nelson immediately launched two of the Badger’s boats – him in command – and joined two others from the London Fleet racing to help with men and water buckets.
‘It was a hard, hot fight,’ Nelson told Hastie, ‘and by half past seven flames had burnt up through the quarter deck and were flying up the rigging. Many men were got into the boats, but I deemed it necessary to go on board her, despite the melted pitch that fell like red-hot rain. The guns were shotted, the powder must ignite. And then no ship in the bay but would not be under fire.’
As more boats came over to help pick up the men still thrashing at the surface – and save them from the sharks – Nelson bellowed orders for all powder to be thrown overboard, and for the guns to be cocked up and pointed at the sky.
Because of his actions, no Badger men were lost, except one by natural causes, and the Glasgow crew and officers ended up on board of other vessels.
Some four or five hours later she was cut free from her anchor and drifted out to sea, where she burned like a beacon until midnight, when she blew up and sank. Nelson told Captain Locker in a letter that the fire was caused by a steward with an unguarded lantern trying to steal rum from the hold.
Nelson went next to St Ann’s, where he transferred 20 muskets, 18 boxes of powder and ball, 52 balls of 4lb round shot, several half barrels of powder, 12 long pikes, slow-match, paper cartridges and powder horns into the Achilles transport, in addition to more than 70 officers and men. Several Glasgow people were suffering from burns, and a day or so later one William Scott, seaman departed this life.
But after that it was ‘back to tedium,’ Nelson told Tim, listlessly. And Hastie, in his own musings, decided that this might be the key to Nelson’s character. Life at sea was boring, for men as well as masters, and to alleviate it, the young officer went headlong into any venture that he could, however dangerous or foolhardy.
‘And he takes his people with him, more or less on equal terms,’ wrote Tim to Sarah. ‘If they die, so does he, if he dies so do they. They love him for it, cariad. They love him.’
Even, it would seem, men whose corns he trod on in his upward flight. When Nelson returned to Jamaica on June 20, 1779, it was to learn he had been promoted post captain nine days earlier. His new ship was to be the Hinchinbrook – also still at sea – and Collingwood was to have the Badger. Promotion, yes, for both of them, although for the older Cuthbert, promotion of the usual, rather crushing kind.
But Cuthbert was not crushed, most genuinely. He did not begrudge his friend one morsel or a jot.
‘Then, as now, they loved him, cariad. They love him very, very dearly.’
Chapter Twelve
One stroke that Nelson was prepared to acknowledge as fine and simple luck, breathing in the good fresh air of Admiral’s Mountain so long aferwards, was the alliance his mortal enemies had finally made with the rebels of the Colonies. Another was that on June 16, five days after he was promoted post, Spain had also joined the war.
Before the Hinchinbrook had got back to Jamaica so that he might join her, Admiral Parker had decided he was the man to make sure Port Royal’s fortifications were sufficient for whatever invasion force might come. And the prospect of real war filled Nelson’s head with dreams.
‘I got my rank,’ he mused to Hastie, ‘by a shot killing a post captain. And I sincerely hope I shall go out of the world the same way.’ His only fear of dying was to do it without glory.
Despite that he’d be shorebound, Nelson had no doubt at all about the importance of his new appointment. With two enemies in the question, both seafaring nations, it was imperative to fortify Jamaica correctly. There was a great deal to be done.
Fort Charles, with a hundred guns, was ‘the most important battery in the whole Island,’ and there were other emplacements at Kingston and Spanish Town to be considered. He was teamed up with Captain Edward Despard, an Irish soldier originally from French stock, who had acknowledged brilliance in building fortifications.
‘It was a meeting heaven-sent,’ Hastie wrote. ‘The two became like brothers almost, and later shared a tent on the expedition to the Spanish Main. They worked together as to the manner born.’
Despard, who had two brothers fighting in America against the rebels, designed and engineered the sea defences
with slave labour donated by Hercules Ross, a Scottish sugar planter who also ‘lent’ Admiral Parker both privateers and crews to supplement the navy’s ships.
‘I was the keystone though,’ said Nelson. ‘Admiral and General of defences, the island’s most vital post.’
Ensconced on shore, he also joined the island’s top society. There were dinners and soirées with the most important people at Admiral’s Pen, and much mingling with the wealthiest of the sugar men and their entourages. He had good friends like Collingwood, however, to save him from ‘creoling,’ which, according to a letter sent to Sarah, drove many young officers ‘somewhat mad.’
‘The sugar men have money to spend like water,’ Tim wrote, ‘and it works like this. Army and navy officers are the protectors of their wealth, and the rich men pay for that favour in ways that risk the utmost decadence. Coal black whores in clothes to make a bishop blush, rum ad libitum, cigars smuggled in from Spanish Cuba, and a populace with the morals of a drunken cat in Toxteth. Officers who take too wildly to creoling and the drink, it is held, must surely fall when the annual dying season comes. Their health is broken down.’
The newest threat driving lesser men to drink and strumpets was the intelligence that France was about to attack Jamaica with a mightily superior force, Ross’s privateers notwithstanding. It was reported that the Comte d’Estaing was heading for the sugar island.
‘One hundred and twenty five ships, thirty of them of the line, with twenty five thousand soldiers, fully trained,’ said Hastie. ‘To say we are outnumbered is a jest. Horatio tells me most of the island men are nothing but a rabble, but he seems not put down by it.
‘Indeed, when poor Captain Locker had to be sent back to England sick, Nelson jested: “I leave you to judge what stand we shall make, sir. But I think you must not be surprised to hear I am learning to speak French!” He says he knows no fear, and by God he means it.’
