Nelson

by John Sugden

  Pitt, by contrast, was unsullied. He presented himself as an independent patriot, free of faction and self-interest, and neither a Whig nor an outright king’s man. He said he would weigh policies purely according to their value to the country. The king, who hated Fox, supported Pitt, as did Hood, who eventually partnered Sir Cecil Wray in an attempt to oust the Whig leader from his own constituency of Westminster.29

  These simple ideals of independence, patriotism, selfless service and public good over private gain, appealed to young Nelson, particularly as filtered through Hood and his entourage. Hood spoke of unity, an end to ‘party’ and the need for independent men to pack the Commons. ‘I shall ever most carefully and studiously steer clear, as far as I am able, of all suspicion of being a party man . . . whether for or against a minister,’ he declared. He supported Pitt by principle as well as blood. Nelson uncritically reproduced these ideas. He wanted to ‘unkennel’ Fox ‘and all that party’, and prayed for an election, ‘that the people may have an opportunity of sending men that will support their interests, and get rid of a turbulent faction who are striving to ruin their country’.30

  When Nelson reported that ‘Lord Hood’s friends are canvassing’ he should have included himself among them, for he spoke fully and frankly for the admiral at every opportunity. Not even parson William was spared. Nelson hoped ‘sincerely’ that William would vote for Pitt’s man, and pressed upon him a revised opinion of their old benefactors, the Walpoles. Only two years before Nelson had spoken with ‘regret’ at missing ‘Mr Walpole’ when the Albemarle anchored in Yarmouth, and promised to purchase ‘best’ wines for him in far-off countries. And only the previous year Lord Walpole had assisted Nelson’s father to equip the church at Burnham Thorpe with a new oak pulpit. But now parson William learned that the Walpoles were ‘the merest set of ciphers that ever existed – in public affairs I mean. Mr Pitt, depend upon it, will stand against all opposition. An honest man must always in time get the better of a villain.’ Indeed, influenced by the toadies around Hood, Nelson even considered standing for Parliament himself and joining the army of placemen at Pitt’s back. But he could not find a seat. ‘I have done with politics,’ he told his brother on 31 January. ‘Let who will get in, I shall be left out.’31

  It was just as well, for he had no talent for such a duplicitous trade, and once his cold had benefited from the ministrations of Doctor Richard Warren he found better entertainment, first in calling upon Lord Howe at the Admiralty to advertise his availability, and then at the end of January in taking the coach for Bath. He probably stood mournfully beside poor Ann’s grave, but was cheered to see his father in an unusually robust condition and up till ten and after each evening. As for young Kate, she was learning to ride. ‘She is a charming young woman,’ Horatio confessed, ‘and possesses a great share of sense.’ They decided they would all spend the following Christmas in Norfolk, for Nelson had no expectation of getting a ship. He talked about returning to France for the summer before buying a horse and riding to Burnham.32

  In March, Nelson was back in London. He surrendered his room at Salisbury Street and moved to a short passage nearby, between the Strand and St Martin-in-the-Fields. These new lodgings, at the residence of Thomas Harrison at 3 Lancaster Court, next to the Roasting House, were only temporary, and Horatio directed his mail to his uncle in Kentish Town.33

  By whatever means, on the 18th he received important news. His visit to the Admiralty had yielded dividends, despite the lowly position he occupied on the captains’ list and the limited number of ships being commissioned in peacetime. He was appointed to the Boreas, another twenty-eight-gun nine-pounder frigate, already manned and fitting for sea at Woolwich. She had been built in Hull nine years before and was destined for an ignominious end as a Sheerness slop ship, but in 1784 she came as a blessing, rescuing Nelson from an impecunious existence on half-pay. The duties were likely to be dull. As they dribbled in, his orders directed him first to Spithead and then to Plymouth, where he would embark a detachment of marines and proceed to the Leeward Islands in the West Indies.34

  But at least he would be employed.

  5

  Captain Nelson reacted tartly to William’s suggestion that some ‘interest’ had got him the appointment. ‘You ask by what interest did I get a ship?’ he answered. ‘I answer, having served with credit was my recommendation. So Lord Howe, first lord of the Admiralty, told me. Anything in reason that I can ask, I am sure of obtaining from his justice.’35

  In fact, Hood had almost certainly been his referee. Such is the inference of Howe’s words to Hood in July 1787, when Nelson was judged a disappointment. ‘I am sorry Capt. Nelson, whom we wished well to, has been so wanting in his endeavours,’ remarked the first lord regretfully. Moreover, Hood’s influence is indicated by the return Nelson made on the favour. He found places on the Boreas for several of Hood’s friends. The admiral was embroiled in politics, with more than the usual number of supporters to reward, and a supply of naval appointments was useful. A few months after being appointed to the frigate ‘my dear Nelson’ received a letter from Hood soliciting a place for George Goodchild, ‘the adopted son of my friend, Sir Cecil Wray’, one of his political partners. For some reason Goodchild did not, in the end, join the ‘young gentlemen’ of the Boreas, but others preferred by Hood did. There are grounds for believing at least three of the ship’s youngsters, the thirteen-year-old Honourable Courtenay Boyle, John Talbot and William Tatham, were Hood protégés, and there were probably more.36

  Nelson was still unwell. A few days after receiving word of his appointment he went down with his old malarial fevers, sickening like clockwork every other day. He did not manage to assume command of the Boreas from his predecessor, Thomas Wells, until 24 March.

  There was much to occupy the ailing young captain, some of it trivial but necessary. He had his cabin and table to furnish, and spent £10 on dishes, plates, cutlery, glasses, decanters and a tureen alone. Turning to the big issues, he found the ship being well victualled and most of the required one hundred and eighty men in their places, although some were so unfit that Nelson sent them to hospital. Both lieutenants were already appointed. James Wallis, the first lieutenant, had held a commission for five years, but Nelson’s second was young Digby Dent from Hampshire, an untried son of Admiral Sir Digby Dent. On paper Dent had as much naval experience as his captain, for his father had put him on the books of the Dolphin when he was only six years old and transferred him from ship to ship as he moved commands. How much of this sea time was real was anybody’s guess, but in 1780 Dent junior went to the Hannibal under another captain. He passed his lieutenant’s examination the following year, but his commission was not confirmed until he reached the stipulated minimum age of twenty and joined the Boreas. Despite the racing start Dent did not prosper, and sixteen more years would give him nothing more impressive to command than a cutter.37

  Nelson often saw the best in people, but his master, James Jameson, left something to be desired. An experienced, middle-aged, gout-ridden Scot, he was reasonably efficient but prone to drinking, and four years before had been dismissed from the Camilla for drunkenness and neglect of duty. However, neither his post nor those of the other warrant officers were in Nelson’s gift, and it was only among the lower ranks that the captain made room for protégés of his own. He asked Locker and other friends whether he could serve them, but requests soon flooded in right and left, swamping his official entitlement to two master’s mates, four midshipmen and eight captain’s servants – the traditional ratings into which young gentlemen were slotted. His two master’s mates were really lieutenants in waiting. Henry Power, an Irishman from Youghal, County Cork, was three and a half years older than Nelson, and had been acting lieutenant on previous ships. He spent only six months of 1784 with Nelson. The other master’s mate was the unfortunate Joseph Bromwich, late of the Albermarle, who was still trying to get his lieutenant’s commission confirmed.38

  The other y
oung officers pressed upon him had to be rated midshipmen, captain’s servants, able seamen or even surgeon’s servants. Nelson justified their excessive number by describing his ship as a ‘nursery’ for good officers, but more than anything else he was satisfying friends and potential patrons, old and new. The dependants of ‘Lord Howe, Lord Gower, Lord Hood, Sir Peter Parker, Sir John Jervis, Earl Cork, Lord Courtenay Hood, William Cornwallis, Captain Pole and [Captain] Douglas’ mixed aboard the Boreas with favourites of his own.39

  Among those Horatio personally added to the haul were old Albemarle adherents, Bromwich and Charles Hardy, new acquaintances such as George Andrews, Elizabeth’s brother, who caught up with the ship in the West Indies, and a cousin, Maurice William Suckling. Suckling had spent a few months on the Monkey cutter the previous year, tossing about the North Sea, but now got a rating as surgeon’s servant at the age of fourteen.

  If the quarterdeck of the Boreas resembled a boys’ academy that is what, in effect, it partly was. Several of the pupils were relatively inexperienced, and some graduates of other establishments. Robert Parkinson, a twenty-one-year-old volunteer from London, had come from the Polyphemus. Sixteen-year-old Thomas Stansbury of Holmer, Hereford, sometime able seaman, had been in the Atlas and Speedy. For William Nowell, who remained with Nelson only five months, and Edmund Bishop, who came from the Concorde, the Boreas was their fifth ship.40

  Although many months had passed since the Albemarle had been paid off, Nelson also received a few requests from old lower-deck ratings wishing to serve with him again. Some found a berth aboard, including Frank Lepee, who shipped as able seaman. Once it became known that the Boreas was bound for the Leeward Islands, rather than the East Indies or Jamaica, the frigate was also ‘lumbered’ with passengers. To his chagrin Horatio discovered that Lady Jane Hughes and her family were among them. She was the wife of Rear Admiral Sir Richard Hughes, who commanded in the Leeward Islands – the same man with whom Nelson had acrimoniously fenced in Portsmouth two years before.

  Lady Hughes joined the ship at St Helens on the Isle of Wight on about 17 April, with her daughter Rose Mary, her son Richard, a servant and three other boys intent on joining Sir Richard or his retinue. At first Horatio viewed Lady Hughes an ‘inconvenience and expense’ as well as ‘a fine talkative lady’, but there was an even more unwelcome guest. Leaving a curate to manage his affairs at Little Brandon, Parson William Nelson finally decided to fulfil his ambition to go to sea, despite the advice and wishes of his brother. William was not known for his ability to tolerate hardship, and Horatio doubted he would enjoy the navy. But the man persisted, and for the sake of family accord Nelson relented, hoping his brother would sample life as a naval chaplain and hurry back to England within a few months. Among other things, he worried about his father and his sister Kate living at Burnham Thorpe without William close by, especially if they had to winter in ‘that lonesome place’.41

  Nelson visited Locker, promising to look into the state of some land he had in Dominica, and then sailed for the Nore on 11 April. A pilot ran the frigate aground in water so shallow that men were able to wade all around her at low tide, but Nelson got her to an anchorage near the Nore light at six in the evening. More trouble awaited him in the Downs, which he reached in two days after delays caused by gales and snow. On 14 April he fell into a dispute with the master of a Dutch East Indiaman. The master refused to release sixteen Britons from his service, insisting they owed him money. Nelson felt a responsibility for distressed nationals and doubted the master’s story. He blockaded the recalcitrant ship, preventing boats coming from or going to her, and refusing to allow her to move until the men and their chests of belongings were liberated. The master complained to the Admiralty, and the board thought their man was acting too strongly. Nelson was ordered to remove his restraints, but to obtain a statement of any belongings still being withheld from the British seamen to facilitate a more diplomatic protest. But the captain of the Boreas had already got the desired result, and he triumphantly reported to superiors that the matter had been ‘amicably’ settled.42

  No doubt Nelson was glad to get away from the Downs on the 15th, and reach Portsmouth by way of Spithead and St Helens. There another adventure awaited him on 20 April, as he was riding about the town. He narrated his hair-raising escape to Locker the following day:

  And yesterday . . . I was riding a blackguard horse that ran away with me at Common, carried me round all the works into Portsmouth, by the London gates, through the town out at the gate that leads to Common, where there was a wagon in the road – which is so very narrow that a horse could barely pass. To save my legs, and perhaps my life, I was obliged to throw myself from the horse, which I did with great agility, but unluckily upon hard stones, which has hurt my back and my leg, but done no other mischief. It was a thousand to one that I had not been killed. To crown all, a young girl was riding with me. Her horse ran away with mine, but most fortunately a gallant young man seized her horse’s bridle a moment before I dismounted, and saved her from the destruction which she could not have avoided.43

  We are left to ponder the identity of the ‘young girl’ in Nelson’s company on the occasion, but the most likely candidate was Rose Mary Hughes, the daughter of Lady Hughes, who had joined the Boreas three days before. ‘Rosy’ was then searching for a suitor, but if Nelson was gallant enough to show her the town, he remained solidly unattracted. ‘God help the poor man,’ he wrote more than a year later when he heard that Rosy had at last ensnared a major of the 67th Regiment of Foot. ‘Has he taken leave of his senses? Oh, what a taste! The mother will be in a few years the handsomest of the two.’44

  Rosy was a poor substitute for Mary Simpson and Bess Andrews, but after quitting Portsmouth and picking up a detachment of marines at Plymouth, the Boreas slipped elegantly out of the sound on 21 May. Soon she was dipping through the deep and rolling swells of the Atlantic, bound for new islands, new exploits and new romances.

  XII

  HURRICANE HARBOUR

  Thither shall youthful heroes climb,

  The Nelsons of an aftertime,

  And round that sacred altar swear

  Such glory and such graves to share.

  John Wilson Croker, Songs of Trafalgar

  1

  ANTIGUA, the largest of the British Leeward Islands, sweltered in latitude seventeen degrees. A mere 108 square miles, it was set in bright blue Caribbean seas that swept over coral reefs onto pale sandy beaches, penetrated secluded coves or lashed themselves into a milky foam against craggy promontories. The island’s central valleys were dotted with sugar plantations maintained by thirty-five thousand black and mulatto slaves, a system of which Nelson was largely ignorant and wholly uncritical. The countryside was sprinkled with cane-producing windmills, but the only significant extended settlement was St John’s in the northwest, a town of eighteen hundred houses and huts with spacious but unpaved streets sprouting scrub and prickly pear.

  In August 1784, however, His Majesty’s frigate Boreas lay in English Harbour on the south coast, a couple of interlocking anchorages hidden from the sea and sheltered by green, lofty hills. There, in a broiling sun trap, even the winters were warm. In the summers, secured from the northeast trades that gave relief elsewhere, the air became uncomfortably hot and the water itself stagnant and fetid. There was only one spring and storage tanks were needed to conserve fresh water. English Harbour was nevertheless naturally strong. Ships entered through a thin strait flanked by Fort Berkeley and the Horse-shoe battery and steered a few points to larboard to pass northwards through the outer anchorage and into a second channel, graced by a small sixty-year-old dockyard on the left. Once inside the inner anchorage, another turn to larboard enabled them to be warped into a secure berth. More than a haven difficult for enemies to breach, English Harbour was also a bolt hole safe from the cyclones that stormed over these seas between August and October. That, more than anything else, was why Captain Nelson was shut in the place, waiting for t
he hurricanes to blow themselves out.

  A peacetime commission was a dull blessing at any time, but English Harbour had few attractions. The dockyard consisted of little more than a few wooden warehouses and workshops, with a ‘neat’ house for the naval commander of the station made from a storehouse near the wharf. At the head of the three-quarter-mile harbour, situated furthest north in the inner anchorage, was a hospital and powder magazine, while across the narrows from the dockyard rose Mount Prospect with a house flying a flag upon its summit. Positioned to escape the worst of the dockyard clamour and to gain the cooler air above, the residence was named ‘Windsor’ and housed John Moutray, the resident dockyard commissioner, and his wife Mary.1

  Nelson spent much of his time on board the Boreas. His cabin occupied the full width of the aftermost part of the upper deck, with gun ports at the sides, and a row of stern windows through which the brilliant tropical light could relieve the gloom. The quarters were divided into a day cabin, a dining area to which Nelson’s servants brought food from the ship’s galley and a place where his cot was slung from the beams. A gallery at the stern supplied a convenience. On the voyage out chivalry had probably banished Captain Nelson to one of the officers’ cabins in the gun room below, while Lady Hughes and her daughter used his own quarters, but now the suite was again at his disposal. Frugally furnished and dimly lit, it provided sanctuary, with a red-coated marine standing guard outside his door with a musket and bayonet. Thus protected, Nelson read, reflected and wrote between his duties on deck and the occasional business ashore.