Breaking the Line

by David Donachie

  The journey to Yarmouth to join the fleet assembling under Sir Hyde Parker was nine days of mayhem, but first lieutenants tearing their hair out at the disorder were calmed by an admiral who thrived on chaos. Nelson was all smiles, all advice, with never a cross word to anyone of his own ship’s company, or a bellicose flag signal to one of his captains to mind the order of sailing.

  He sent a despatch to St Vincent from Harwich congratulating the new First Lord and telling him of his imminent arrival at Yarmouth. He received a gratifying answer as he spied Parker’s fleet, thanking him for ‘using the spur’. Sir Hyde Parker got an express despatch at the same time telling him, with the topsails of his reinforcements barely visible, who was to be his second. He was also told to emulate Nelson and get his fleet to sea forthwith.

  Sir Hyde Parker was surprised to learn the identity of his second in command; he had feared he might get Nelson, but had hoped that his own reluctance coupled with the efforts of his friends would prevent it. He was further discomfited by the haste with which Nelson had arrived. The fitting out of his own contingent had been sedate: to Parker matters taken at haste were regretted at leisure – the enemy would not suffer for having to wait a fortnight to be thrashed, but his ships might.

  So it was a pair of very different admirals who met at Parker’s shore accommodation. To those watching the pair, Parker’s senior officers and his secretary, it was hard to believe the contrast. Sir Hyde Parker looked like a warrior chieftain, with his imposing height, bulk and features. If his face and body were portly that was as it should be, because he looked successful. One-armed Horatio Nelson, with his slight frame, despite his stars and decorations, seemed like a boy beside a grown man.

  Nelson expected Parker to be haughty and he was not disappointed. The vain but noble-looking creature he remembered from his Mediterranean service had gone to seed. The care of dress was still there, and so was the determination to strike a noble pose, but both were a cover for the corpulence that came from excessive good living. Parker was a man who fell into a chair and had to heave himself free, likely to be red-faced just making his way from his cabin to the quarterdeck. He was slow, lumbering, and at sixty-two should never have been marrying an eighteen-year-old girl. None of that would have mattered to Nelson if Parker’s mind had been sharp, but it was like the rest of him, cautious of effort, slow of deduction, fearful of disgrace, either personal or professional.

  Each had a memory of the other: Nelson of Parker, third in command to Admiral Hotham, agreeing with his superior that to pursue the French after the action off Genoa was unnecessary, ‘that the fleet had done well enough’. Parker recalled, with equal ease, the tight-lipped Captain Nelson, a man who had stretched what orders he had been given to near destruction, making no secret at all that he disagreed with Hotham’s conclusions.

  ‘I am glad to see you arrived so soon, Lord Nelson,’ said Parker, ‘and you, Captain Hardy.’ Nelson saw that the smile on his face was not reflected in his eyes.

  ‘And I am happy, sir, to serve under such a distinguished commander.’

  ‘Obliged,’ growled Parker, not fooled by that ritual response.

  An uncomfortable silence followed, as Nelson waited for Parker to invite him to sit, prior, he hoped, to a discussion of the forthcoming campaign. Parker had no intention of obliging him, well aware that to do so would only open him up to a torrent of unwanted advice.

  ‘Lady Nelson, is well I trust?’ Parker asked, a remark which was greeted with a tight-lipped nod. ‘Good.’

  ‘May I ask your intentions, sir?’

  Parker was good at mock surprise: He almost looked as if he really believed that no one had told Nelson where they were going. ‘Why, to obey my instructions and take the fleet to the Baltic.’

  ‘I meant once we get there, sir.’

  ‘To make the fools see sense, if they have not already done so. It is my opinion that the Danes will come to that as soon as they see our topsails.’

  ‘And the Russians?’

  Parker blinked. ‘Likewise.’

  Again there was an uncomfortable silence, with Nelson waiting for Parker to elaborate, and Parker willing himself to remain silent. Fifty years of naval service and birth into a formidable family had gifted him with the kind of social skills his junior admiral entirely lacked. He could look his second-in-command straight in the eye and, if necessary, lie to him without a blush – which he would do if he felt it was required. This was his fleet to command, his reputation to enhance, not Nelson’s. The rewards for success, which he did not doubt would be gifted without a shot being fired, would come to him, not to this over-medalled popinjay before him.

  ‘I must ask the condition of your ships?’ said Parker.

  This request was aired with the manner of a man deliberately changing the subject. Parker knew that as a matter of routine the information was already in the hands of his executive officer, Dommet, the Captain of the Fleet, who was standing just behind him looking suspicious.

  ‘Ready for whatever service you require of them, sir,’ Nelson replied.

  ‘Excellent,’ boomed Parker. ‘Then it gives me pleasure to issue to you the first of my orders, for I know it will please your ears. We weigh at the first opportunity, Lord Nelson, which means much work for both of us. I must get myself aboard the flagship.’

  He was smiling broadly, as if the natural end had come to the meeting and all should be happy at the outcome. It was a full twenty seconds before Nelson took the hint and made to depart, tempted to force the issue, but aware that to try to would achieve nothing.

  ‘Well, Hardy,’ he said as they emerged, ‘I am no further forward now than I was when we came ashore.’

  ‘We must replenish our wood, sir, being as we are going north.’

  Hardy’s mind was, as usual, on practical concerns and Nelson wondered if he had deduced anything from that non-conversation. Parker was going to keep his future intentions close to his chest, which Nelson would find frustrating. He had hoped to establish an outline plan before the fleet got to sea. But that was not going to happen, and he would be obliged to meet for any conferences aboard the flagship, HMS London, an uncomfortable prospect for a one-armed man, who required to be lifted from his barge onto the deck, always a risky affair on a heaving sea. Contemplating that, he recalled the reported words of his stepson Josiah, who had apparently said, woundingly, ‘that he hoped his stepfather would fall off and break his neck’.

  The boy had no gratitude to the man who had taught him all he needed to know, and done everything he could to advance his career. Would he be a post captain now if he had not had a connection to Nelson? Probably not, and given his bellicosity Josh would probably have been on the beach. Nelson, however, found time to beg from St Vincent a ship on foreign service for his cantankerous stepson, this to oblige Fanny. Thinking of both Josh and his mother made it impossible for him to smile at the crowd that had gathered to cheer him as he made his way to the quayside, where Giddings waited by the steps that led to his barge.

  ‘All’s a fair old bustle, your honour,’ said Giddings, jerking his head to the outer roads, to the mass of ships surrounded by boats and water hoys.

  That earned him the usual frown from Hardy, who hated to see a seaman address an officer unbidden. But Hardy had reconciled himself over the years to the fact that Horatio Nelson was a lamentable failure in the article of proper discipline.

  Nelson saw the remark differently and paused at the top of the steps. He had known Giddings for so long and served with him in so many situations that he could almost read his mind. His coxswain, a proper ferret when it came to finding out things that were none of his business, had words to say. In deference to the presence of Captain Hardy, Giddings spoke softly, as usual his words emerging from the side of his mouth, ‘Admiral Hideaway is getting it in the neck from all quarters, your honour, so the word be.’

  ‘Really,’ remarked Nelson, as Hardy’s eyes rolled in disgust at hearing their commander in chief re
duced to a lower-deck tag.

  ‘That young filly he wed was set to have a ball,’ Giddings continued softly, ‘but an express came from El Vincento tellin’ him it were time to sling his hook. Get to sea, was the gist, or I might be finding someone with a bit more fire. Now you knows as well as I do, your honour, that there be one person you don’t take issue with and that be El Vincento, and with ’im being First Lord that be double strife. So there’s no more of all here sitting on their arses taking a pipe. Ball cancelled, invitations gone out and Lady Parker’s tears notwithstanding, with Hideaway yelling orders like billy-o till you came ashore.’

  Nelson did not ask how Giddings knew all this, he just accepted it. When it came to finding out the true state of affairs in a fleet it was better to ask a seaman than an officer. At sea Giddings and his like could overhear a conversation through six inches of solid planking and, for a quid of tobacco, elicit information ashore that would never be vouchsafed to any admiral.

  ‘So, Giddings, when are we to actually weigh our anchors?’

  ‘On the morrow, your honour,’ Giddings replied with certainty. ‘Had that from Hideaway’s own barge crew. The neck of the Baltic Sea is where we’re headed, though it’s reckoned that the Danes won’t fight, so it’ll be bang a few guns, then good dinners all round and a barony at least for our valiant leader when we raise home again.’

  Giddings’ voice dropped even lower as he confided the next scrap of information. ‘Weren’t expecting you, your honour, nor anyone else for weeks yet, and he is afeart that you’ll be after giving him the old eclipse. Swore fit for the lower deck when he made out your flag.’

  Nelson nearly laughed at the expression on Hardy’s face, which was one compounded of disapproval and wonder. He was tempted to ask Giddings, as he was rowed out to his ship, what Parker’s plans were if the Danes elected to fight, but that would be going too far.

  The barge had pulled up alongside the St George and, since his flagship was still rigged for the open sea there was no gangplank for him to ascend. Nelson was hauled aboard in a chair lashed to a whip from the yardarm.

  ‘All captains, Mr Hardy, if you please.’

  There was much to do before the fleet sailed. Nelson wrote to Davidson asking him to add a codicil to his will leaving Emma the sable pelisse and the diamond studded Chelenk he had received from the Sultan. Otherwise the arrangements he had made for her welfare and that of the child should remain as of his last will and testament; proper distribution to family etc.; enough to provide for Fanny, bury me at Burnham Thorpe and take good care of Emma and Horatia. There was a letter for Fanny as well to say that Josiah would probably get a frigate.

  He wrote to Troubridge to report that he thought Sir Hyde Parker a trifle tardy, and to tell his old friend, now taken by St Vincent on to the Board of Admiralty, that he had only the sketchiest notion of what they were about. He knew there were diplomatic moves in progress but he was sure that diplomacy without an application of force would achieve nothing. Rumour had it that the new government had offered the Danes twenty sail-of-the-line as a force to protect them against the Russians should they decide to break their alliance. Nelson was left to wonder, and ask Troubridge, where ships and men were to come from when Britannia could barely fulfil the commitments she already had.

  His secretary had a mass of official papers for Nelson to read through and sign; impresses for everything the fleet needed to remain at sea, prepared by his captains and needing to be passed on by him to the man who bore the final responsibility, Sir Hyde Parker. Then, sitting beneath a portrait of Emma, which Hardy had kindly had framed for him in Portsmouth, he wrote to his lover. Thinking of her and his new-born daughter, all his cares about the expedition to the north faded. Be it against Danes, Swedes or Russians there would be a fight, and he was resolved to win. He would bring back the laurels of victory to lay at the feet of the two dearest creatures in his life.

  This letter was entrusted to that other Parker, known to all as Merry Ed, who had, these last few days, taken much ribbing regarding the libidinous nature of his elevated and elderly namesake. Captain Edward Parker was the soul of discretion where Nelson’s business was concerned, a man the admiral wanted by his side, and a sloop of war was left behind so that he could rejoin him once the fleet was at sea.

  Guns banged, flags flew and the band that Nelson had brought aboard at Portsmouth played a brave tune as the fleet weighed, sailing into a real peasouper of a fog that persisted for much of the voyage. When it was not foggy it was overcast and grey on a sea that seemed designed to depress the spirits.

  That expanse of the cold North Sea was covered with no sense of haste, all ships relying on the Master of the Fleet, who was no great shakes at navigation, and an admiral who had an overly developed fear of running aground. Parker was for ever heaving to and casting the lead to ensure he had enough water under the keel of his capital ships, turning away from dangers that no one but he could perceive.

  In a voyage of two hundred miles, to miss the Skagerrak, his intended landfall, by sixty miles, regardless of conditions was, to Nelson, near criminal. Not that he got any chance to tell Parker: the commander-in-chief issued no invitations to come aboard the flagship and discuss forthcoming operations until they were anchored off the entrance to the Baltic.

  The condition of the fleet was not one to raise Nelson’s ambitions even when they had anchored and all the stragglers had joined. Fifty-two vessels were strung out over miles of sea, consisting of line-of-battle ships of every size and displacement, 100-gun first rates, 74’s and old 64’s. They had frigates, bomb ketches, even a converted East Indiaman, not one of which was in prime order. It was a fleet required to cover too many eventualities: a siege and bombardment of the Danish capital of Copenhagen, or a fight in open sea with either Russia, Sweden, Denmark or all three combined.

  It was the last prospect that troubled Nelson, the thought that he would be required to take part in an action against the combined fleets of three lesser powers under a commander like Sir Hyde Parker. Nelson’s view was that Parker should ignore Denmark and bypass its capital. Likewise the Swedes: intelligence insisted that they were unprepared. The Russians, by far the greatest threat in terms of ship numbers, were ready for action but ice-bound still in the ports of Revel and Kronstadt, which they would leave as soon as the ice melted. Nelson wanted to be off those bases at that moment: let the enemy come out and find a superior British fleet waiting to engage. He had no doubt that, with proper application, the Russians could be beaten. Then Parker could turn back and take on the Danes and the Swedes, who, with the defeat of their principal ally, would most likely make peace.

  Another worry was the quality of the men he led. Fresh from the damp and freezing English winter, the crews had sailed north into falling temperatures that had every man on board subject to a hacking cough and bouts of shivering. The bulk of these were not the men of 1793, volunteers who were seamen by trade. The long war, the commissioning of too many ships, mutiny, death and desertion had culled the best. The ships Nelson commanded still had their sailors, but in the main they were crewed by those who had been press-ganged, many illegally, or petty criminals and debtors offered up as voluntary contingents by the various boroughs and shires responding to a government order to provide a quota of men. There were volunteers, but few robust souls opted for a life in the Navy if they could make their way elsewhere in the world.

  In the leeward squadron, his own section of the fleet, Nelson had instituted training, explaining to his captains the dual nature of a beast that would keep the men from boredom and by heating their bodies improve their health. It would also encourage them by increasing competence to perform better in the forthcoming fight. Some had sailed with him before, a couple of Nile captains who knew his methods and required no pressure, but most had not and he was obliged to bear down on them to see his orders obeyed.

  Drills were instituted, in gunnery, boarding, sail and rope work, and over the days, in conference after con
ference, the men who were strangers to Nelson, captains and lieutenants, were exposed to what Nile captains called the Nelson touch. Tom Foley, captain of HMS Elephant, an old friend from Nelson’s first days at sea, watched him operate with amused detachment, and observed sceptical faces slowly lose their look of doubt.

  Before his officers, at dinner or pacing the great cabin, talking incessantly, was a man who could paint a picture of the forthcoming battles, even though he had never seen the approaches to Copenhagen or clapped eyes on the Russian fleet. Using charts and his one good arm he told each of his juniors just how the Danes must deploy, how the Russians would sail, their probable strength in both guns and men, and his own plans to confound them.

  Well aware that he would have to sell his ideas to Parker, he advanced his own opinion that the way to beat the Russians was by manoeuvre.

  ‘Always lay a Frenchman close and you will beat him, but with a Russian it must be different. For, gentlemen, they have spent six months bound by ice. They can rehearse gunnery drill at anchor, and they can practise boarding, but a man has to be at sea to have full competence with his sail drill. Therefore I will attack the head of their line as they emerge and test both their cannon and their seamanship.’

  Again and again, the gathered officers heard him utter his watchword: ‘Waste not a moment.’

  Nelson might convince them, and raise them collectively to the pitch of enthusiasm, but it was less easy to carry his superior officer, because he was not invited at any stage to advise him. Over the next few days all Parker did was to move anchorage to take the fleet marginally nearer to the enemy. Nelson suspected he had sent away a frigate carrying an envoy to negotiate. To his mind that was a waste of precious time. He preferred to fight the Russians, but if Sir Hyde was determined to subdue Denmark first, the sight of open gunports, with the muzzles of their cannon threatening their capital city and no friendly fleet prepared to come to their aid, would bring them round.