by John Sugden
A white man named Cairns, who lived with the Indians, came aboard the ships to explain that it was absolutely necessary for Polson to speak to them directly. By this time the commander-in-chief was becoming increasingly dependent on Nelson, and flattering him by using his name as a camp password. Ever willing to share the burdens of command, Nelson offered to accompany Polson, and that afternoon the two officers went ashore to meet the Governor and some of his headmen at Cairns’s house. The Indians wanted presents before committing warriors to the expedition, but as Polson had given Lawrie his remaining store of gifts, he had to wait at Tebuppy for the superintendent-general to come up. Two more days elapsed, but on 12 March Lawrie arrived and the Governor informed. Once the gifts had been distributed the following day, however, the Indians scattered for provisions, and it was not until 16 March that they reassembled for departure. Nelson and Polson were fuming, sure that Lawrie had entirely misled Dalling about the readiness of the Indians to join the campaign.
The journey to the San Juan resumed on 17 March. It was a bizarre sight, and History has seldom spoken of the strange composition of the first fleet commanded by its greatest admiral. Nelson led the way south in a dilapidated frigate, followed by seven transports and tenders, some shallow Black River craft and a flotilla of dugout pangas, pitpans, dories and canoes manned by Indian and black warriors. The Mosquito Indians were a ferocious sight. Almost naked, some of their lithe, bronzed bodies were tattooed or painted, their ears, noses and lips pierced for ornaments, and the arms they had received from the British supplemented by bows and arrows, spears and perhaps blowguns. Some of their weapons may well have been tipped with poison.
As the ships passed along the low, flat coastline Nelson was also being taxed by his local pilots, whose inefficiency reached a nadir at seven in the morning of the 18th when the ships ran upon ‘a hidden reef’. Horatio signalled them to anchor and successfully refloated every vessel, but part of the Hinchinbroke’s false keel and copper sheathing had been ripped off. Complicating matters, one of Nelson’s carpenters had fallen out of a boat and drowned at Tebuppy, and repairs had to proceed short-handed. But, undeterred, Nelson brought the force to Pearl Key Lagoon, where several small islets guarded a large lagoon rich in shellfish and turtles, and Admiral Dick Richards and the last Indian contingent were to meet them.
For Nelson every step of the wretched voyage had brought its own frustrations and Pearl Key Lagoon ran to form. On the 20th, while Lawrie was mustering the Admiral’s men, the masters of the transports brought Nelson the unwelcome news that they had only two days’ worth of fresh water left. There was no water at Pearl Key, so the next day Nelson left Lawrie to complete his business ashore while he sailed on to Monkey Point. Again he found himself misled. Despite assurances that the ships could water at Monkey Point, the landing parties returned empty handed, and Nelson had to ration his remaining supplies. He crowded on all sail for the mouth of the San Juan on 22 March, and the ships, with some of the Black River and Indian craft, finally reached their destination in two days. Here there was water, here the troops and military stores were to be put ashore and here Nelson’s greatest responsibilities came to an end.
The vexations of the Mosquito coast were over but they had cost the expedition dear. It had left Jamaica late in the first place, and now a whole month had been wasted waiting for people and boats and negotiating with Indians and blacks, work that was supposed to have been done already. The results themselves were also disappointing, for nothing like Lawrie’s paper army of auxiliaries ever appeared. According to Robert Hodgson, admittedly a prejudiced opponent of Lawrie, only 12 whites, 60 black slaves and 220 ‘Mosquito Men’ eventually joined the campaign. Nelson himself complained that the few men General Tempest supplied soon defected. Weeks of effort had eventually given Polson a number of black and Indian allies, who would prove themselves adept scouts and boatmen, but they were far too few for the job in hand.
The rains, which everyone had thought it essential to avoid, were looming ominously, and the time left for the British to ascend the San Juan, capture its fort and reach the healthier climes of Lake Nicaragua was very short indeed.
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Apart from sitting at anchor in the mouth of the San Juan, guarding the supply line, Captain Nelson’s job was done. The men had reached the river in reasonable shape and the rest was now up to Polson.
The difficulties of the army soon became obvious, however. The San Juan estuary was uninviting. Its harbour, where Nelson drew up the ships, seemed ‘very fine’, but it was graced by no more than a shabby collection of deserted wooden shanties collectively known as Greytown, and accessed a drab low-lying shoreline covered in grass, scrub and mangrove swamp. Beyond, through a strong current of shallow, muddy water spilling into the sea, the river had to be entered by tricky channels threading between sandy islands and shoals. Polson sent his chief engineer to erect a battery and rough defences at a suitable place for a base. Lieutenant Edward Marcus Despard of the 79th was one of the strengths of the expedition. A delicately featured, slim Irishman in his late twenties, he discharged this and all other duties with exceptional ability and determination.14
On 26 March, Polson began the onerous job of landing men, provisions and stores. For two days the Chichito, supplied by Lawrie, the Royal George and Lord Germain, and the Black River and Indian boats ploughed back and forth to one of the islands in the mouth of the river. They were too few for the work and inevitably made their trips overloaded. Some capsized, stores were lost or damaged and one man drowned.
Nelson decided to intervene. He was already chafing at the thought of remaining on his frigate while the serious action moved upriver, and knew Polson’s problems would only increase. The published atlas said that the river had many ‘cataracts’, but little else was known about it, and even its length was uncertain. A hundred miles of difficult water were thought to connect the estuary to Lake Nicaragua. At the moment it was still the dry season, and the water would be broken into runs or narrow channels, but that would make the transportation of heavy stores and siege guns a hazardous toil. The enemy fortifications were also mysterious. According to Lawrie, San Carlos, the fort at the entrance to Lake Nicaragua, was garrisoned by only a handful of men with about twenty-five pieces of artillery, but then Lawrie had revealed himself a dismal prophet. Another castle, Fort San Juan, was some thirty miles below the lake. A stone structure erected the previous century to halt privateers and buccaneers, it was likely to be a formidable obstacle. Bearing all this in mind, Nelson concluded that Polson needed all the help he could get. He put the Hinchinbroke’s cutter and pinnace at the colonel’s disposal, with thirty-four seamen and thirteen marines, and offered to command them himself. Furthermore, he would conduct the entire convoy upstream. Gratefully, Polson accepted.
Invigorated, but still with insufficient boats to move the whole of his force at once, Polson split the men and stores into two divisions. Nelson would take the first and largest, including Polson and most of the regulars, as the advance, while Major MacDonald would bring the second division upstream as soon as boats became available. Some of Polson’s boats would be sent back at the first opportunity, and Lawrie was expected to arrive with others from Pearl Key Lagoon.
As the first division was poised to begin its journey, Polson received a new inducement. A boat arrived from Jamaica with a letter from Dalling, dated 17 March, eleven days earlier. It informed Polson that reinforcements of three hundred regulars and as many volunteers were being shipped from Kingston under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Kemble of the 60th (Royal American) Regiment. A forty-year-old, Kemble had earlier applied to command the expedition, but only after Polson and Nelson had been appointed. Now he would be assuming overall command, Dalling said. If anything was calculated to galvanise Polson into greater action, it was the knowledge that he had to capture San Juan fort before Kemble appeared and got the credit for the operation.15
The morning the letter arrived the first divis
ion of Polson’s force headed upriver. A little above its mouth, Nelson found the San Juan perhaps half a mile wide, sliding between low grass-covered banks and around sandy shoals and islands. Caymans basked along some of its muddy margins and manatees browsed peacefully on the plants they found in the adjoining creeks. The water was shallow, and every mile upstream was hard won, with the Indians and blacks proving their worth as boatmen at every twist and turn. Nelson had repeatedly to order the men to stow their oars and plunge into the water to help haul and push the vessels on when they grounded. The heavier boats, such as the Lord Germain and the Chichito, were constantly beaching in the rear, and Nelson’s solution was to move the cutter, pinnace and Indian boats forward so that they could be unloaded and sent back to relieve the burdens of the larger craft lagging behind. In three days the men fought the river in heat, humidity and mosquitoes, making barely six miles a day. On 31 March the soldiers were allowed a day of rest in one of their nightly encampments on shore, but for Nelson’s men the battle with the boats continued.
Once Nelson got past the mouth of the Colorado River on 1 April he found deeper water and mended his pace. The jungle closed in on lofty banks, looking black and threatening beneath huge trees that shot up to reach the light and wove their crowns into an unbroken canopy. The persistent heat and humidity gave the forest a high metabolism, and many of its creatures completed their life-cycles quickly, generating a swift turnover and astonishing diversity. Large butterflies, moths and dragonflies flitted in the still moist air, and iridescent hummingbirds hovered busily before brilliant flowers. But for Nelson and his men there were rapids, falls, currents and countercurrents to absorb their attention, and the extremes between the exhausting daytime heat on the river and the falling temperatures that enveloped the makeshift camps at night to endure.
Working arduously side by side, Nelson and the Indians developed a considerable mutual respect. On his part, Horatio was impressed by the durability of the natives, and their skill in weaving the boats around grassy islands and through tumbling rapids. On theirs, the Indians saw a young man of no great strength or size struggling with them in the van without any of the common European arrogance. In this relationship Nelson trod surely in the footsteps of Drake.
An unconfirmed story published by the biographer James Harrison after the admiral’s death relates to the Indians’ regard for Nelson. Its provenance is unknown, but perhaps it came from members of Nelson’s family, who supplied Harrison with some of his information. The story tells how Nelson was accustomed to slinging his hammock between trees in the overnight camps. On one such occasion he was rudely awakened from sleep by a lizard that crawled across his face. Jumping up in alarm, Nelson cast off his blanket, only to see a venomous snake, probably a coral snake or pit viper, fall from its folds and slide into the undergrowth. The watching Indians were astonished. They believed that people possessed individual guardian spirits, and convinced themselves that Nelson’s must be potent indeed to have protected him from the snake. Their confidence in the young officer consequently increased.16
Whether this incident happened or not – the ethnographic data at least is reliable – it is certain that the Indians liked Nelson. They would shortly desert the expedition, and among several grievances count their unsatisfactory relations with the British officers. Polson had warned his men of the dangers of alienating valuable auxiliaries. The blacks, he said, had ‘to be treated with the utmost humanity’, and the Indians were not to be deprived of ‘their private plunder’ in case ‘a general defection’ proved ‘fatal to the enterprise’. Indeed, ‘the necessity of keeping such people in good humour’ was so ‘obvious’ that ‘inconsistencies and even absurdities’ had to be tolerated. In an effort to preserve interracial harmony Polson had ordered his men to avoid fraternising with the Indians, but however well intentioned the order it may have simply suggested an aloof contempt. Certainly the Indians later complained of ‘Polson’s severity’ but admitted themselves ‘very fond of Captain Nelson’ and a number of other leaders.17
Setting off before daylight the boats were now moving ten miles a day and the Spaniards were not far ahead. Polson ordered his men to make as little noise as possible, even in camp, and kept his boats closer together. On 5 April the British passed an island with the ruins of an old Spanish fortification on it, and the next day they camped at the foot of rapids which the Indians said were only six miles below an enemy lookout post. Polson forbade any more fires to be kindled, and, rather than blundering forward to disturb the Spaniards, he detached Lieutenant (Acting Captain) James Mounsey of the 79th, Despard and some thirty men to go ahead with the Indian ‘spies’ to reconnoitre.
While waiting for Mounsey, Polson learned that he could at least ascend the rapids without alerting the Spaniards, and on 8 April ordered the men to march up the north bank of the river to the top of the rapids while the Indians took complete charge of the boats. Nelson went with the soldiers on this occasion, hiking through a forest humming with insects and alive with movement. Wild pigs rooted in the wooded glades, ducks and pigeons started noisily and large lizards scuttled for cover. In the green treetops brilliant parrots flitted and squawked, while monkeys clambered about, some discernible only by the distant crashing of branches and others setting up furious vocal battles that rang through miles of dark forest. At the head of the rapids Nelson and Polson were not only reunited with the triumphant Indian boatmen, but also met Mounsey’s party.
The Spanish lookout post was on an island ahead, about seventy-five yards from the north bank of the river. Only three sentries were seen on night duty, but they appeared to be regular soldiers and alert. Later the British discovered that the river was fordable near the upper end of the island, but at the time no one knew it. Some of Mounsey’s Indians had stolen forward to test the depth of the water but withdrew when it began to lap about their waists only a short distance from the river’s edge.
Nonetheless, Despard had a plan. To prevent the Spaniards carrying news of the approaching British upriver to Fort San Juan it was imperative to seal off the lookout post before making an attack. On the south side of the island the water looked deep enough for light boats to steal by in the night. Despard suggested sending a force around the post that way, cutting off the Spanish retreat and making a surprise attack on the island from behind at daylight. Another party could offer covering fire from the north bank of the river. Nelson immediately offered to command the boats and make the main attack, while Mounsey was entrusted with the land party. That night Nelson led his small force forward. He had two boats from the Hinchinbroke, two Indian pitpans, forty soldiers (including Despard) and some Indians and sailors. Ahead lay the first hand-to-hand action of his life.
As usual, it was the Indians who went ahead, sneaking past the island in the darkness without being seen. Nelson had more trouble. One of his boats grounded and had to be left behind, and as dawn broke on 9 April the others were still below the lookout post. Nelson continued to row forward, hoping the poor light might still shield him as he passed, but he was spotted. The island of Bartola was five or six miles below Fort San Juan and about a quarter of a mile wide and twice as long. Manned by fifteen Spanish regulars, it had a semicircular battery mounting four swivel guns, all pointing downstream. As soon as they saw the British boats pulling fast towards them, the Spaniards fell to those guns and opened fire.18
Mounsey’s men opened their covering fire but shot still spattered around Nelson’s boats. One man was hit in the abdomen and was fortunate that the ball spent itself working through his cartouche box; another had three of his fingers shattered. As the keel of Nelson’s boat drove ashore, Horatio jumped out, sword in hand. According to his official biographers his feet sank so deeply into the mud that he left his shoes behind and stormed the redoubt in his stockings. Shoeless or not, he won a speedy victory. After a token resistance the defenders ran to their boats and fled, straight into the hands of the waiting Indians, and all but one were rounded up as captives.
The only fatality suffered by either side was one of Mounsey’s soldiers, bitten beneath his left eye by a snake hanging from a tree as he marched through the forest. The wretched fellow’s body swelled up, his skin turned a deep yellow and the injured eye ‘entirely dissolved’. Within hours he was dead.19
From the prisoners Nelson learned that Fort San Juan was only five or so miles upstream. When Polson arrived, and decided to make Bartola a base for the final advance, Horatio offered to make a personal reconnaissance of the fort ahead. After dark the same day he set off in a pitpan with Despard and one of the prisoners. It was dangerous work, paddling several miles against a strong current in an unknown river strewn with snags and shoals, while around them gathered an eerie blackness intensified inshore by looming trees. But on the morning of 10 April they suddenly passed around a sharp right-hand bend to see the fort straight before them.
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It stood on the summit of a steep green hill, situated on a spur of land jutting from the south bank of the river, and appeared to measure about sixty-five by thirty-one yards. A hundred feet below the fort the water frothed white and wild, and the newly whitewashed walls themselves were strong, four feet thick and fourteen feet high. There were regular bastions at each corner and a flag flew above a fifty-foot keep. A small barrack and a picket linked the northwestern and southeastern bastions and an imperfect ditch enclosed the whole. Using a glass, Nelson noticed the detached redoubts too, some on an eminence that commanded the south of the fort, and another near a few huts on the river at the foot of the hill. The garrison drew its water there, for it had no well. Round about the hill the timber had been cleared to give the fort a field of vision, but the place looked calm against the brooding jungle beyond. To all appearances there was no sign of alarm.
