It is often remarked that Nelson first hoisted his captain's pendant when he had yet to attain the regulation age of twenty-one. This is, however, of no special significance. The Admiralty's rules were so lightly observed that others achieved 'post' rank even younger; Barrington at eighteen, Keppel at nineteen, Howe at twenty, are three examples. A sufficient skill in handling a sailing frigate of 500 tons burthen could be acquired in adolescence. So, too, with leadership, when there was a wide gulf between the educated families from which the officers were drawn and the illiterate rustics who were the men. The Hinchinbroke might have a complement of 200, but in Nelson's day officers were born to command, the seamen to obey - and when this natural law failed, there was always 'the cat'.
It is, however, also true that many who became distinguished admirals were older than Nelson when they first achieved a 'post'. Rodney was twenty-four, St Vincent twenty-six, Hawke twenty-nine, Kempenfelt as much as thirty-nine. And Cuthbert Collingwood, another of Parker's protégés, who was destined to be second-in-command at Trafalgar, though born ten years earlier, and with fighting experience ashore at the battle of Bunker Hill (1775), was not chosen to be first lieutenant of the Bristol, and commander of the Badger, until after Nelson, so that he only achieved his 'post', likewise in the Hinchinbroke, at the age of thirty. (Collingwood was handicapped by an adverse court martial verdict: in 1777 he was censured 'for want of cheerfulness in carrying on the duty of his sloop', HMS Hornet.)
In February 1780, six months after hoisting Nelson's pendant, the Hinchinbroke left Jamaica for Nicaragua. She was required only to escort 500 troops, who were to 'force a passage to the Pacific' across the narrow neck of Spanish territory joining North and South America, and 'bring about that grand object, a communication between sea and sea'. But such was the young Nelson's ardour for action that he insisted on leading the boats that carried the troops up the San Juan river; on being in the forefront of their assault on San Bartolomeo Island; and on staying with them when they laid siege to Fort San Juan. 'He was the first on every service, whether by day or night,' wrote their commander, Captain John Polsen, 'and there was scarcely a gun fired, but was pointed by him.' He was not, however, destined to see the eventual failure of this ill-conceived and ill-equipped expedition: in mid-April Parker recalled him to Port Royal to take command of the larger frigate Janus.
Nelson's pendant flew in her for a very short time. In May he was stricken with 'Yellow Jack', the yellow fever that claimed so many victims in the Caribbean, and to which all but fifty of the Hinchinbroke's crew had succumbed. His recovery was so slow and uncertain that he asked permission to return home. He reached England in the Lion shortly before Christmas, after an absence of nearly three years.
His health restored by six months in Bath and at Burnham Thorpe, Nelson was next appointed, in August 1781, to command the 28-gun frigate Albemarle. He found her well manned, with an excellent master, good lieutenants and a crew largely composed of volunteers: but she suffered from being a converted French merchant ship; she was a poor sailer and a brute to handle; and in the two years that he spent in her Nelson had little but ill-luck. He began with a protracted visit to Elsinore, a bitterly cold anchorage in winter, collecting a Baltic convoy of 260 vessels. When he escorted them through the foulest of North Sea weather to Yarmouth and the 'horrid bad Downs', he added the disappointment of failing to catch a French privateer that attacked his charges to the seasickness that nearly sent him to his cot.
He was next ordered to join Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Hughes's squadron in the East Indies. But his high hopes of action with the redoubtable Suffren, (of whom Napoleon said, 'Had he been alive in my time, he would have been my Nelson': he died in 1788) were dashed in 1782, when a storeship dragged her anchor, fouled the Albemarle, and did so much damage to her that she had to go to Portsmouth for extensive repairs. These being finished, Nelson was detailed to escort an Atlantic convoy to St John's, Newfoundland. The two subsequent months, which he spent cruising between Cape Cod and Boston Bay, brought nothing more exciting than a fortunate escape. When the fog lifted on the morning of 14 August to reveal four French ships-of-the-line within gunshot, he eluded them by skilfully piloting the Albemarle among the shoals of St George's Bank where the larger enemy vessels could not venture.
The scurvy (which was the most serious ailment suffered by all seafarers until, in 1795, the Admiralty recognized the need to include in the sailor's rations items with anti-scorbutic properties, such as lemon juice), then struck Nelson and his ship's company, so that he had to proceed up the St Lawrence to Quebec, where there was a hospital and ample fresh provisions. There, too, he fell in love for the first time, with the sixteen-year-old Mary Simpson, daughter of the Provost-Marshal; and would have deserted his ship and the Service to marry this 'Diana of Quebec' had he not been dissuaded from such folly on the eve of sailing by a new found friend, who was to be a lifelong one, Alexander Davison.
In October the Albemarle escorted a convoy south to Sandy Hook. 'You are come upon a fine station for making prize money,' observed the complacent Commander-in-Chief, Rear-Admiral the Hon. Robert Digby, when they met at New York in the following month. Nelson's answer voiced his very different ambition: 'Yes, sir, but the West Indies is the station of honour.' He said as much to the energetic Rear-Admiral Lord Hood who had brought his squadron north to Sandy Hook after playing a distinguished part in Rodney's defeat of de Grasse at The Saints, off the island of Dominica. This recently created Irish peer had no vacancy in his twelve ships-of-the-line, but he was sufficiently impressed with Nelson's knowledge of tactics, despite his lack of fighting experience, to persuade Digby to allow the Albemarle to join his squadron when he returned to the Caribbean at the end of the year, to counter the Marquis de Vaudreuil's force of similar strength. But the French Admiral gave Nelson no opportunity for winning the distinction for which he craved. On the contrary, when in March 1783 the French landed 150 regular troops on Turk's Island in the Bahamas, his frustrated ambition moved him to take two other frigates under his orders and attempt to dislodge them by a bombardment and landing which were so hastily organized as to justify this criticism by one who took part. It was a 'ridiculous expedition', wrote James Trevenen, 'undertaken by a young man merely from the hope of seeing his name in the papers, ill depicted at first, carried on without a plan afterwards, attempted to be carried into execution rashly . . . and hastily abandoned for the . . . reason that it ought not to have been undertaken at all'.
The War of American Independence was then ended by the Treaty of Versailles, and Hood's squadron ordered home. The Albemarle reached Portsmouth on 26 June, where she was paid off a week later. Never again was Nelson to experience such a disappointing commission: 'I have closed the war without a fortune [from prize money] but . . . true honour, I hope, predominates in my mind far above riches.' He had two consolations. 'The whole ship's company offered, if I could get a ship, to enter for her immediately': in that day and age few captains inspired such devotion among their crews. Secondly, and of greater consequence for his future, Hood's displeasure at the Turk's Island fiasco did not diminish his belief in Nelson's potential. 'His friendship' was akin to 'treating me as if I were his son'. For the moment, however, Hood could do no more than present him to King George III, who was interested to meet an officer described by his third son, Prince William Henry (who had been a midshipman in Hood's flagship), as 'the merest boy of a captain I ever beheld. . . . There was something irresistibly pleasing in his address and conversation; and an enthusiasm, when speaking on professional subjects, that showed he was no common being' - an opinion so far shared by the King that he invited Nelson to Windsor, no mean honour for an officer who had yet to attain his twenty-fifth birthday.
Peace, with the consequent reduction of the greater part of the Fleet to 'ordinary' - hulls laid up in the Medway (Chatham), Fareham Creek (Portsmouth) and the Hamoaze (Plymouth), with yards lowered, top-masts struck, and sails stowed in lofts ashore - meant unemployment
for all but a handful of officers. Nelson was no exception: uncertain of his future, he decided to visit France, intending to stay at St Omer until he had learned the language. But he spent most of his time paying court to Miss Andrews, daughter of an English clergyman and 'the most accomplished woman my eyes ever beheld'. And only uncertainty as to whether he could afford to support a wife deterred him from a proposal, until this romance and his linguistic studies were alike terminated in January 1784 by the news of the dissolution of Parliament. Seized with the idea of standing as a candidate at the general election to be held in March, he hurried back to London (3) - only to be quickly disillusioned. Within a month he 'had done with politics'. 'Let who will get in, I shall be left out,' expressed his disappointment at failing to find a seat. But by the time the electors went to the polls to confirm their faith in a Government led by the twenty-four-year-old William Pitt the Younger, he had been amply consoled: Hood, 'the greatest officer I ever knew', had used his influence with the First Lord, Lord Howe, to obtain for him command of one of the few ships which the Government thought necessary to retain in commission in peace. On 18 March Nelson was appointed to the 28-gun frigate Boreas.
Ordered to the Leeward Islands, so important to Britain for the riches of their sugar plantations, the Boreas reached Barbados towards the end of June, where Nelson found himself the senior captain and second-in-command to the Commander-in-Chief, Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Hughes. They were an ill-matched pair: Nelson's strong sense of duty was out of sympathy with a weak senior who showed little concern for it. When he realized that 'the Admiral and all about him are great ninnies', clashes were inevitable. The most serious was over Hughes' decision to waive the Navigation Acts for United States vessels. These reserved all trade by Britain and her colonies to vessels that were British built and British manned; but the West Indian islanders found every advantage in allowing ships built in, and manned by, Britain's former American colonies, to resume the trade in sugar, rum and molasses which they had carried on before the War of American Independence.
Though ostracized by the merchants and planters who duped Hughes into sanctioning this illegality, Nelson was sufficiently sure that the Admiral was acting against Britain's real interests to send a memorial to the King - after he had parried the objection of the Governor, General Sir Thomas Shirley, that 'old generals were not accustomed to taking advice from young gentlemen', with the unanswerable reply: 'Sir, I am as old as the Prime Minister of England, and think myself as capable of commanding one of His Majesty's ships as that Minister is of governing the State.' Moreover, when the Boreas was away cruising, he turned back every American ship which he sighted, contrary to Hughes's orders. To put the issue as succinctly as Southey does: 'foreigners they had made themselves and as foreigners they were to be treated'. And when he found four of them lying in Nevis Roads, he gave them forty-eight hours warning to leave, or he would seize them.
Hughes considered court martialling Nelson for his disobedience, but was persuaded to ignore the incident, in part by his wife who had taken passage out from England in the Boreas, and believed her husband to be under an obligation to her young captain for his kindness to her - though Nelson thought of her and her entourage only as 'lumber' and 'an incred¬ble expense'. The inhabitants of Nevis were less easily appeased: they persuaded the American ship owners to sue for £40,000 [$96,000] damages - but without success, the Admiralty recognizing the justice of Nelson's action and paying for his defence.
This affair throws considerable light on Nelson's developing character, showing how resolute he could be in pursuing a course he believed to be right, and the moral courage with which he could disobey a senior officer's orders when he believed this to be justified by the likely consequences.
'It is difficult for the non-military mind to realize how great is the moral effort of disobeying a superior, whose order on the one hand covers all responsibility and on the other entails the most serious personal and professional injury; if violated without due cause, the burden of proving rests with the junior. . . . He has to show, not that he meant to do right, but that he actually did right in disobeying in the particular instance. Under no less vigorous exactions can due military subordination be maintained.' (Mahan in his Life of Nelson.)
In this instance Nelson argued: 'I must either disobey my orders or disobey Acts of Parliament. I determined upon the former, trusting to the uprightness of my intentions, and believing that my Country would not allow me to be ruined for protecting her commerce.' He was supported by Collingwood, then in command of the frigate Mediator.
In 1787 Nelson displayed another facet of his potential worth. By the diplomatic skill with which he handled the 'difficult and disagreeable dispute' that developed between the 'volatile', (4) twenty-two-year-old Prince William Henry, now a post-captain and appointed to command HMS Pegasus, and his much wiser, thirty-four-year-old first lieutenant, Isaac Schomberg, Nelson contrived to save the latter from court martial without losing the royal favour. His singular zeal was likewise shown by the energy with which he worked to expose the peculations of government officials in the Leeward Islands, whom he was convinced had defrauded the Crown of more than £2 million [$4.8 million], though he failed to obtain evidence to allow those responsible to be brought to justice.
For relief from such worries, Nelson sought solace ashore, in a form to which more than passing reference must be made because of its eventual repercussions upon his career. The urge to fill the place in his heart that had been left empty by the sudden death of his mother, had grown stronger with the passing years. Having been dissuaded from eloping with Miss Simpson, and having hesitated to propose to Miss Andrews (either of whom, on the evidence of their later lives, would have made him an excellent wife), he now appeased his yearning for a female confidante with a platonic passion for the accomplished Mrs Moutray. She was the respectable young wife of the Resident Commissioner for the Admiralty dockyard on the south coast of Antigua, with whom Nelson was invited to stay when his ship was lying in English Harbour (5) during the hurricane months, notwithstanding his blunt refusal to agree that the Commissioner, being a civilian official, had any authority to issue orders to HM ships. 'Were it not for Mrs Moutray, who is very, very good to me,' he wrote, 'I should almost hang myself at this infernal hole. . . . Her equal I never saw in any country.'
But the 'heavy heart' with which he said farewell when 'my amiable Mrs Moutray' sailed for England on 11 March 1785, was very soon requited. Within the week he met Mrs Frances Nisbet, née Woolward, a doctor's widow of his own age, who had recently returned to her birthplace to keep house for her widower uncle, Mr John Herbert, President of the Council of Nevis. And within the month Nelson was wooing her. He admired her 'personal accomplishments [which] I think equal to any two persons I ever saw, and her mental accomplishments [which] are superior to most people's of either sex'; he detected no disadvantage in her bird-like nervousness, which contrasted sharply with his quicksilver brain and his assertive self-confidence.
After Uncle William Suckling, a Collector of Customs, had promised financial help, they were engaged for eighteen months, for much of which they were parted by the exigencies of the Service. 'Duty is the great business of a sea officer: all private considerations must give way to it, however painful,' he wrote. For some 300 days in each year the Boreas was away cruising, watching over Britain's maritime rights in and around the Leeward Islands; in the words of a contemporary, 'always on the wing, and when it happened that any of the other ships were in company, he [Nelson] was always forming the line, exercising, chasing, etc.'
But these absences from Nevis did nothing to weaken his devotion; he filled them with letters to his, 'Dearest Fanny', that contained phrases as ardent as those of any lover who is not perchance a poet. 'All my happiness is centred with thee. . . . With my heart filled with the purest and most tender affection do I write this. . . . I daily thank God who ordained that I should be attached to you,' is one example. Mrs Nisbet's replies were les
s frequent, and did not evince the same rapture. On 23 April 1786 Nelson was impelled to write: 'I will not begin by scolding you although you really deserve it for sending me such a letter. Had I not known the warmth of your heart . . . I might have judged you had never seen me.' But with another letter he was sufficiently enraptured to reply, on 19 August in the same year: 'What I experience when I read such as I am sure are the pure sentiments of your heart, my poor pen cannot express. . . . My heart yearns to you. . . . It is you, my dearest Fanny, who are everything to me.' In short, and to quote Prince William Henry to Lord Hood, Captain Horatio Nelson and Mrs Fanny Nisbet, 'a pretty sensible woman', were 'head over ears in love'.
Just two years after their first meeting, on 11 March 1787, they were married in her uncle's home, Montpelier House, (6) Nevis, with the Prince as her sponsor. Nor was this exceptional honour the only favourable auspice for their future as man and wife. There was also Nelson's evident affection for his new stepson, the six-year-old Josiah who 'shall ever be considered by me as one of my own'. Moreover, as soon as June the Boreas was ordered home, whither Mrs Nelson followed her husband in a West Indiaman. Their hopes of settling down together suffered an initial setback. Rumours of a fresh war with France kept Nelson on board his ship at Sheerness, victualling and storing her for possible service in Home waters. But autumn proved the rumours false: the Boreas was paid off on 30 November, Nelson being placed on half-pay. He was free to join his wife ashore: as he had written on 19 August 1786:
Nelson the Commander Page 3
