by John Sugden
At three-thirty in the morning another frigate materialised through the gloom. Nelson and Cockburn thought it was the Blanche, which had separated in her battle with the Ceres, but at four-fifteen they heard the newcomer hailing the Santa Sabina in Spanish. Then it flung a broadside into the crippled prize. Instantly, La Minerve cast off the tow line to allow Culverhouse and Hardy to shift for them-selves, and turned upon their fresh adversary. Once again the weary men, their rest already stolen by the previous encounter, rushed to their stations. Once again the fire power and seamanship on Nelson’s frigate told. After a mere thirty minutes the newcomer, the Perla, had had enough. The Spaniards simply wore their ship to turn and ‘run off’.
But now, victorious in three night combats, the British were dogged with bad luck. The Blanche, further seaward, had long realised that what they had taken to be isolated enemy warships were in fact lookouts for a much larger enemy force. In fact they belonged to the principal Spanish fleet under Don Juan de Langara y Huarte, bound for Cartagena. At the beginning of his fight with the Ceres, Captain Preston had noticed two more frigates to leeward, and by the time he had defeated his opponent another ship was also visible. Fumbling to take possession of his prize in squally weather, he eventually gave up as enemy ships gathered right and left. With dawn filtering over the water on the 20th, Preston counted six Spanish ships in the offing, apart from the original pair, and two of them were ships of the line, far too formidable for any frigate to engage. Some of the Spaniards were already turning upon La Minerve, but a dozen miles lay between the two British vessels and Preston was powerless to help. His duty now was to save his ship and run.
Nelson was in deep trouble. La Minerve had started the battle several men short of the full complement of three hundred, suffered fifty-seven killed and wounded defeating the two enemy frigates, and sent another twenty-six to her prize. In continuing bad weather the remaining hands were straining every sinew to repair sails, rigging and spars, and support battered lower masts when daylight revealed the fresh antagonists astern. Of two enemy ships of the line visible, one was the massive three-decked Principe de Asturias of 112 guns. Like Preston, Nelson had no option but to flee. He fired some defiant but futile shots into the advancing three-decker and turned tail.
It was then that an unusual act of heroism aboard the Santa Sabina prize helped save La Minerve. Lieutenants Culverhouse and Hardy, who commanded, were no strangers to derring-do. Culverhouse was a West Country man from Glastonbury, with a home in Bideford. About thirty-six years old, he was one of many able officers without the social connections to achieve steady promotion, and had been a lieutenant for nine years. A former shipmate thought him a ‘very active’ and ‘excellent signal lieutenant, a good sailor, an agreeable messmate, and in every respect a very clever fellow’. He was popular too, ‘full of fun and drollery’ and capable of entertaining all and sundry with ‘humorous songs in the most comic style’. Hardy, a big square-shouldered, large-featured man from Dorset, was a practical, business-like officer. Though under thirty he had been at sea since the age of twelve, like Nelson himself, and knew most there was to know about managing a ship. Both men had followed Cockburn into La Minerve from his previous frigate, the Meleager, and had been earning Nelson’s approval over the last eighteen months. Commanding the Meleager’s boats they had captured the Belvedere in July 1795, and both had won additional laurels during Nelson’s attacks on Loano and Oneglia the following spring.10
Now in charge of the Spanish prize, they decisively intervened to spare their superior officers and old ship from capture. Rather like a female duck feigning injury to draw a predator from her young, the injured Santa Sabina limped away to the northeast, raising the English over the Spanish colours in a provocative gesture of defiance. That insult may have done the trick, for the enemy three-decker and a frigate turned upon the wounded ship. She had no chance, and at about nine-thirty, after her fore and main masts had been brought down, Culverhouse and Hardy surrendered.
But La Minerve made good her escape. Still pursued by a ship of the line and a pair of frigates, Nelson fled past Cartagena and eventually shook off his opponents as dusk fell at around six o’clock. He reached Porto Ferraio in Elba on 26 December, two days ahead of the Blanche and in time to attend a seasonal ball. It was his initial victory over the frigates, rather than the ignominious retreat, that was remembered, and the commodore was received at the festivities to the vigorous strains of ‘Rule, Britannia!’ and ‘See the Conquering Hero’.
2
Nelson fought the midnight action off Spain on the eve of achieving national fame in the battle of Cape St Vincent and within months of his subsequent promotion to the rank of rear admiral. On the other hand he had been at sea since boyhood, and the engagement followed almost four years of continuous war experience in the Mediterranean. It reveals him to us, therefore, as a budding admiral with his apprenticeship thoroughly completed but with his great years ahead.
Almost all the qualities that would distinguish him were already in place, and some shine fiercely from the brush with the Spanish frigates. His zest for action and fame was certainly apparent. Contrary to normal practice Nelson personally wrote the account of the battle for the captain’s log to ensure that the record was both correct and appreciative. In his letters he almost crowed with self-magnification. His action would be ‘in the Gazette,’ he told his father. ‘Take it altogether, I may venture to say, it is the handsomest done thing this war. It was what I know the English like in a Gazette. I feel all the pleasure arising from it which you can conceive.’ No less important, the skirmishes demonstrated that Nelson had already got the measure of his adversaries, and realised that historic opportunities were developing. The disparity between the performances of the Franco-Spanish navies on the one hand and the British on the other was growing and opening a path to decisiveness in battle. Risks that might have been unjustified in the past were becoming viable.11
Perhaps as much as anything, the midnight battle suggested a key to Nelson’s exceptional powers of leadership. His magnetism was a complicated blend. Men followed him because they admired his professional qualities and were proud to share his glories. They felt at ease with his quiet but accessible manner, sensed sympathy and understanding, and were grateful for many boons spontaneously bestowed. Calculated self-interest also played its part, for Nelson was an old-fashioned paternalist. He was no egalitarian, and believed in the hierarchical society, but to him the bonds between those above and below were important. More than anything else loyalty was the glue that held the layers together. Nelson demanded unswerving allegiance from officers and men. But he responded with a fierce loyalty of his own, fighting vigorously for their welfare.
Many – very many – loved him for it. In a difficult and sometimes lonely world, followers were reassured by the thought that their leader was always fighting their corner, appreciating good service and using what favour and influence he had for their benefit. Dozens of devoted officers whose names barely appear in the books about Nelson followed him from ship to ship, men such as Bromwich, Bullen, Hinton, Andrews, Wallis, Weatherhead, Noble, Compton, Spicer and Summers. And ordinary ratings formed extraordinarily powerful attachments to a commander who discharged his duties to them with unusual care.
There was something else that drew Nelson to his men too, something that went beyond empathy, duty and symbiosis, something elemental that charged his relationships to followers with great emotion. He could never have disparaged them as the sweepings of the earth, as Wellington occasionally did his soldiers. To Nelson they were partners in a patriotic and sacred enterprise, and through the sharing of dangers formed with him an elite brotherhood.
No one expressed it more perfectly than Nelson’s favourite writer, William Shakespeare. The sailor’s interest in the bard has long been known, but only recently have we begun to appreciate its great extent. Nelson knew many of the plays well, committed passages to memory, and slipped telling Shakespearean phrases int
o his letters. Henry V was a particular inspiration, and the king’s famous speech on the eve of the battle of Agincourt a favourite crib. In lines Nelson treasured Shakespeare beautifully encapsulated his attitude to the peculiar bonding that was bred in conflict:
‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile
This day shall gentle his condition.’12
The men of the Blanche saw the almost familial interest he had in them when they arrived at Porto Ferraio after their flight from the Spaniards. ‘When we came to an anchor,’ a sailor recalled, ‘Nelson came on board and ordered the captain to beat to quarters [call the men to their stations by a drumbeat], and as we were in a line before our guns, he came round the decks and shook hands with us as he went along . . . telling us he was rejoiced to find that we had escaped.’ A small gesture, but immediately endearing to men who had fought and bled in his service, and knew they had been seen, valued and worried about.
As for the crew of La Minerve, Nelson’s priority was to secure the liberation of those left on the Santa Sabina. On 24 December, en route to Elba, he wrote to the Spanish admirals at Cartagena, pointing out the excellent treatment he was according Don Jacobo Stuart, who was still his reluctant guest. He entreated the Spaniards to offer the like to ‘my brave officers and men, your prisoners’, and requested they be sent to Gibraltar for release in an early exchange. When La Minerve eventually reached Porto Ferraio, Nelson shipped every available Spanish prisoner to Cartagena under a flag of truce to facilitate the freedom of the unfortunate Britons. Even so it was not until February that Culverhouse and Hardy were returned to their own people.13
In the meantime Nelson did his best to secure them just rewards. To lieutenants struggling to reach the crucial rank of ‘post-captain’ Nelson was almost invariably a champion, and we have already seen him press the claims of Culverhouse, Hardy and Noble in his first dispatch about the capture of the Santa Sabina. In a second letter of the 20th, notifying Admiral Jervis of his unfortunate change of fortune, Nelson again insisted on ‘justice to Lieutenants Culverhouse and Hardy’ and paid ‘tribute’ to ‘their management of the prize’.
These dispatches went to the commander-in-chief in the regular way, and it was up to him to decide whether to forward them to the Admiralty without comment or to endorse them with recommendations of his own. Nelson’s relationship with Sir John Jervis was good, however, and the commodore’s opinions were almost always received with enthusiasm. Nevertheless, Nelson slipped a reminder into his next letter four days later, enlarging a general observation about the ‘good men’ lost aboard the Spanish frigate with the remark that Captain Cockburn deserved ‘every favour you are pleased to bestow on him’. As for the lieutenants, ‘I take it for granted the Admiralty will promote Lieutenant Culverhouse, and I hope Lieutenant Noble will also be promoted.’14
As insurance, Nelson had lately developed the habit of addressing letters directly to the Admiralty, over the heads of his commanders-in-chief. In that way he was sure that his activities and opinions were always properly noticed in Whitehall. At the beginning of 1797 he took up the promotion of his officers with Earl Spencer, the first lord of the Admiralty, himself. He would not trouble the board with anything more about the engagement with the Spaniards, he said, ‘but I cannot omit most earnestly recommending Lieut. Culverhouse, first of La Minerve, to your Lordship’s notice. Lieut. James Noble, who left the Captain to serve with me, and who is grievously wounded – I presume to press his repeated wounds and merits on your Lordship’s notice.’ Not long afterwards the commodore was also impressing Spencer with the deserts of Cockburn, ‘than whom a more able, gallant young captain does not serve His Majesty’.15
Though most captains protected their followers to some degree, Nelson was uncommonly generous and indefatigable in his praise and support. To understand why men such as Culverhouse, Hardy and Noble gave their best for Nelson, we must appreciate that theirs was a difficult and competitive service in which many fine officers failed simply because their merits went unsung. In Nelson they recognised an unusually attentive and effective patron.
And so he proved himself now. After spending almost ten years as a lieutenant and suffering considerable neglect, Culverhouse was deeply moved by the ‘handsome manner’ in which Nelson had put his name before the mighty. Suddenly, even greater guardians took notice. Culverhouse was promoted commander on 27 February 1797, and when he had to leave the fleet to attend to illness in his family, his commander-in-chief personally wrote to the first lord on his behalf, begging ‘permission to place him under your lordship’s protection’. Thus assisted, Culverhouse was able to proceed fairly quickly to the rank of post-captain in 1802, though his career tragically ended when he drowned with his wife in Table Bay at the Cape of Good Hope. Noble, who received his promotion to commander the same day as Culverhouse, could easily have been overlooked had it not been for Nelson’s determination to advance him. Lieutenants Gage and Hardy, whom he had also named in dispatches, had to wait longer. Lieutenant Gage was the son of the late military commander-in-chief in North America and governor of Massachusetts, a man of considerable influence. His promotion seemed assured anyway, sooner or later. Nevertheless, when he was advanced to commander on 13 June 1797 it appears to have been largely at the behest of Nelson and Jervis. As for Hardy, by then he had made his promotion certain by capturing a French corvette in May.16
For Cockburn himself, who was already a post-captain and on the road to achieving his flag as an admiral, Nelson could do little except advertise his qualities and put him in the way of suitable commands. Indeed, the captain’s transfer to La Minerve from a smaller frigate had itself partly rested upon Nelson’s recommendation. But to the tributes the commodore had paid Cockburn in his dispatches he added one of those personal gestures that came so easily to Nelson. Without breathing a word to Cockburn, he wrote to London instructing his agents to commission the manufacture of a commemoration gold-hilted sword, which he intended to present to the captain as a mark of esteem. Whatever Nelson’s superiors did or did not do for Cockburn, this was tangible testimony to the regard of one professional for another, a reminder of perils shared and a symbol of brotherhood in arms. Later, when Nelson became an international hero, we can imagine with what pride Cockburn treasured that sword.
If Nelson was fully fledged as a naval commander by 1797, so were the strengths and frailties he would soon show to the world. He exulted in acts of courage, and possessed an almost unbounded self-confidence and formidable sense of purpose. He was astute, persevering and energetic. No less was he vainglorious, petulant, opinionated and inclined to impetuosity and insubordination. Nevertheless, on the long, formative journey Nelson had made to reach this point he had won more friends than enemies. It had been a remarkable odyssey, played against a background of contrasts as great as his own. It had taken him from the Arctic wilderness to the Indian Ocean, and from the green shores of the Americas and pestilential Caribbean islands to the sapphire seas and rocky margins of the Mediterranean. He had ridden many storms, at sea and ashore, rising on the crests of intoxicating triumphs and pitching into depressing troughs. For Nelson life had run at a terrific pace, but it had been a roller coaster rather than a tour de force.
And it had begun deceptively quietly, on the remote, sparsely populated coast of Norfolk, where cold nor’easters occasionally stormed up tidal creeks and estuaries or swept dunes and salt marshes and where simple farmers and fishermen worked to time-honoured seasonal patterns. Predominantly it was a peaceful and predictable place, suited to the household of a God-fearing and gentle country clergyman.
BOOK ONE
THE PRELUDE, 1758–92
II
THE SMALL WORLD OF BURNHAM THORPE
What day more fit the birth to solemnize
Of the greatest hero you can surmise?
’Tis that consecrated to the Prince o
f Hosts
Of whose strong protection each Christian boasts.
That noble Nelson on this day was born
Most clearly showed he would the world adorn,
The warrior of Heaven, hurl’d headlong from the sky.
Anon., On the Birth Day of . . . Admiral Nelson
1
EDMUND Nelson, the father of Horatio, was a country parson, born into a family of modest but gentrified farmers accustomed to slotting sons dislodged from the land or unsuited to its cultivation into the Church. His paternal grandfather and two Nelson uncles lived off the rich Norfolk soil; two of Edmund’s cousins, offspring of the aforementioned uncles, became clergymen, and his father, Edmund Nelson senior, was himself an ecclesiastic, educated at Eton and Cambridge.
Edmund senior enjoyed a number of Norfolk preferments in his day, including the rectory of East Bradenham (where Edmund junior was born on 19 March 1722); the vicarage of Sporle and rectory of Little Palgrave, presented by Eton College in 1729; and the rectory of Hilborough, acquired five years later. For the last he was indebted to his father-in-law, a prosperous baker named John Bland, who had purchased the benefice from the Hare family in 1718. Edmund senior had married Mary Bland in London in 1717, and when her father made him rector of Hilborough he surrendered his position at East Bradenham to live out his remaining years in the small village southeast of King’s Lynn. Having attained the uncommon age of eighty-three, he was laid to rest in 1747, in the fourteenth-century church he had served for more than a dozen years.1
Mary (Bland) Nelson, his wife, lived even longer. Inheriting the patronage of the parish, she remained at Hilborough till her death on 4 July 1789 at the reputed age of ninety-one. Her grandson, Horatio Nelson, would remember her as small and frail, but she was said to have read small print and executed fine needlework into her final years.2
