by John Sugden
He was a hard taskmaster though, with steely words for those such as the captain of the Iris who tried to excuse failure. Nelson’s performance at Naples pleased Hood, however, and he asked the captain what he could do for him. Typically, Nelson’s thoughts were for his followers and Hood promised to serve the Agamemnon’s officers. Bullen and Suckling were taken aboard the flagship and promised promotion. Bullen became a commander before the end of November, while Suckling received his commission as a lieutenant the following March, and got the command of the small St Croix to boot. In August 1794, Hood took Fellows, another of Nelson’s young gentlemen, into the Victory.
Hood also had further orders for Nelson, and the Agamemnon left the fleet on the evening of 9 October. He was bound for Cagliari in Sardinia, where he was to join the squadron of Commodore Robert Linzee of the Alcide. Linzee’s squadron had just failed to uproot the French garrisons in Corsica, and the island remained a good hunting ground for prizes as numerous small ships slipped back and forth with enemy supplies. Skirting the eastern coast of Corsica on the 16th the Agamemnon intercepted a French tartan, L’Aimable, on its way from Bastia to Toulon with sixty-five sick soldiers. He entrusted the prize to the British Colossus, which was making for Leghorn, and spent the next day trying to flush a French privateer from the nearby island of Capraia, a possession of neutral Genoa. Landing one of his officers, Nelson got the permission of the local governor to move against the elusive Frenchman, and sent Hinton in with two rowing boats loaded with armed men. The privateer was nowhere to be seen, but on the 18th Hinton brought out a Genoese vessel from Bastia, laden with French wheat.55
Then, having sent the prize to Cagliari with a skeleton crew, Nelson sailed into his first real sea fight.
5
Two o’clock in the morning, 22 October 1793, off Monte Santo on the east coast of Sardinia. The Agamemnon was steering south on its passage to Cagliari when five sails were seen ahead, standing across their path to the northwest. No one could make them out, either from the quarterdeck or the fighting tops, but Nelson supposed the ships to be Neapolitan or Sardinian. But they were certainly large ships, possibly even sail of the line . . . in the darkness it was possible to take one of them for the Duquesne, an eighty-gun French ship known to be at large.
About thirty minutes passed before the distant ships spotted the Agamemnon approaching. Nelson watched as signal rockets flew above the strangers, and then they tacked across the wind and stood away to the eastwards, in the direction of the open sea. The ships were some three miles away on the windward bow and Nelson turned to pursue.
The Agamemnon may have been a ship of the line, but under sail she sped like a frigate and by four Nelson had come within hailing distance of the nearest of the ships. She was plainly a big frigate, but Nelson was puzzled by her shyness and uncertain of her nationality so he withheld his fire. The men waited anxiously at their stations as the captain had the stranger hailed in French. There was no answer. Instead the frigate made more sail. Nelson opened his lower gun ports, and fired an eighteen-pound shot ahead of her as a signal to come to, but this merely prompted the frigate to run for it. She fired more rockets to signal her consorts to windward and crammed on all sail.
Nelson now ordered all his sails to be set, and chased the enemy ship, trying to keep her within two compass points on the bow to prevent her from gaining any advantages of the wind. At the same time he kept an eye on the other ships which were coming after him on his windward quarter, and wondered what part they might play if there was a serious battle. The frigate had a start on him, and in a fresh breeze the pace reached six or so knots, but by daylight the Agamemnon had got within gunshot again. By five they were at half gun range. The French, who had been signalling to each other all night, now raised their colours in defiance. It was an accepted custom of war that a ship never fired under a false or masked flag, and every officer on Nelson’s quarterdeck knew that there would now be a fight. Puffs of smoke from the frigate’s stern guns opened the exchange.
Now Nelson got a smart, and perhaps surprising, lesson in battle tactics. The enemy ship was the Melpomene of forty guns, ‘one of the finest [frigates] ever built in France’, according to Hood, and she was exceptionally well handled by Captain Gay, an officer with a reputation for intrepidity. Gay resorted to ‘yawing’, periodically bringing his ship’s head round to allow her broadside guns to bear instead of relying solely upon her small stern battery. The tactic posed a considerable threat to the Agamemnon, because it exposed the pursuing British ship’s vulnerable bows to terrific discharges while Nelson was confined to the use of his few forward bow-chaser guns. As Midshipman Hoste noted, ‘our situation was rather unfavourable, as our shot did not at all times hit her’. The Agamemnon was saved from severe damage and casualties by the French custom of firing high to tear away masts, yards, sails and rigging. Her main topmast was ‘shot to pieces’, and her mainmast, mizzenmast and fore yard seriously damaged, but only one man was killed and six wounded, apparently from wreckage crashing down from above.56
Despite the frigate’s attempts to cripple Nelson’s advance, he gradually worked close enough to get in broadsides of his own, and the British gunners fearlessly wreaked their revenge, blasting at the Melpomene’s hull, throwing wooden splinters about and cutting men down. Nelson greatly exaggerated when he claimed to have reduced the frigate to a ‘shattered’ if not a sinking condition, but even young Hoste, who had no superiors to appease, told his father that ‘our last broadside did her infinite damage’.
While firing was continuing Nelson anxiously swept the other enemy ships on his weather quarter with a telescope, and thought he could pick out a ship of the line, two frigates and a brig. Though poor sailers compared with the Melpomene, they were coming up fast, and Nelson doubted whether he could finish the frigate off before they entered the fight. At about seven he summoned his officers and asked them whether they agreed that the biggest vessel on the weather quarter was a line of battle ship. They thought so, though erroneously. In fact, she was the forty-gun frigate La Minerve (Captain Zacharie Allemand), armed with twenty-six eighteens and fourteen nines, while her consorts were two frigates and a fine corvette, the thirty-six-gun La Fortunée, Le Mignonne of thirty-two guns and the twenty-gun La Flêche. The Agamemnon was more than a match for any one of her antagonists, but together they considerably outgunned and outnumbered the British ship, and their manpower was far greater. Nelson’s company had been reduced by the crews he had put on prizes, and only three hundred and fifty men now stood at their quarters. There were probably more on the Melpomene alone.57
As Nelson weighed his chances in a battle with an entire enemy squadron, his troubles multiplied. At about eight or nine the wind fell away. With her masts and sails injured, the Agamemnon was sluggish in the calm and open to attack from the undamaged ships of the French squadron as they responded to the urgent signals of the stricken Melpomene. Gradually the wounded enemy frigate hauled up towards her sister ships, which were soon lowering boats to send her reinforcements and aid. On her part, the head of the bruised Agamemnon paid round to the southward, leaving the enemy ships within a league to the northeast with their sails set. Suddenly, after only about fifteen minutes of stillness, the breeze returned and the sails began to fill. It was time for both sides to assess their situation and decide whether or not to renew the engagement.
At this moment Nelson’s inexperience came to the surface. With none of his usual decisiveness, he summoned his officers to the quarterdeck for their second consultation. Apparently they still believed they were up against at least one ship of the line, the forty-gun La Minerve, an ‘enormous frigate’, looking grotesquely large in the poor light. ‘Do you think we can, by hauling our wind to the northeast after the frigate, close with her before she joins her consorts?’ asked the captain.
‘No, it is impossible’ was the general opinion.
‘From what you see of the state of our ship, is she fit to go into action with such a su
perior force which is against us, without some small refit, and refreshments for our people?’ Nelson wanted to know.
‘She certainly is not,’ the officers replied. Or, at least, that is what Nelson said they said.
He glanced at the Frenchmen, now bearing away northwest by west, and turned to the master. ‘Mr Wilson, wear the ship, and lay her head to the westward. Let some of the best men be employed refitting the rigging, and the carpenters getting crows and capstan bars to prevent our wounded spars from coming down, and to get the wine for the people and some bread, for it might be half-an-hour before we were again in action.’ He had decided to pause for breath – and then to fight again if he had to, even against five opponents.
But neither side wanted to renew the contest. Nelson was so short-handed that it took him till noon to get his rigging, masts and yards in a condition to proceed, and the French made no attempt to interfere. Accordingly, the combatants withdrew. With the carpenters slaving to plug the shot holes, the Agamemnon limped into Cagliari on 24 October. Commodore Linzee was Hood’s brother-in-law. He was there with the Alcide and four other ships, but seemed totally uninterested in Nelson’s plight and refused to loan carpenters, sailmakers and tools to help repair the battered ship, despite the fact that he planned to take his squadron to sea in the morning. Nelson was ready on time, but his people had had to work all night mending sails, replacing top and topgallant masts, splicing rigging, fixing holes and fishing the mainmast.
Nelson was probably stung by Linzee’s reception, and perhaps worried that he would be blamed for failing to secure an inferior vessel. He made a careful note of the advice his officers had given during the fight, as if he expected to be called to account, and put the best gloss on the action he could. But if Hood made no complaint, nor did he look as if he had the time to acknowledge Nelson’s adventure, and Horatio prepared his own account for the newspapers. Never before had he resorted to such blatant self-publicity, but he would soon use the method again, also in the belief that he was being undersold in the official dispatches. Nelson’s version, which went through his brother Maurice to the London papers, totted the opposition up to 170 guns and 1,600 men, as if he had fought all five enemy ships simultaneously, and The Times published a brief but laudatory summation on 13 December. However, it was enough to do the trick. According to those back home this one brief clipping brought him ‘very great credit’. Alerted to the power of the press, Nelson thoughtfully stored the information away. He hoped Hood would report any successes of the Agamemnon in his dispatches, and that they would appear in the London Gazette in the usual way, but if not the news-hungry press seemed happy to publish independent accounts from the Mediterranean.58
In the months that followed Nelson was also gratified to find that his sea fight had been more decisive than at first appeared. Indeed, it led to the capture of the entire French squadron. His opponents had been sailing steadily under top- and foresails from Tunis to Nice when they encountered Nelson, but the Agamemnon inflicted considerable damage upon the Melpomene. In January the following year a French deserter claimed that she lost twenty-four men killed and fifty wounded, and was ‘so much damaged as to be laid up dismantled in St Fiorenzo. She would have struck long before we parted but for the gunner who opposed it, and the colours were [about to be] ordered to be struck by general consent’ when the ships were becalmed and she was reinforced. The skirmish deflected the French squadron to Corsica, where the Melpomene could be repaired. When the British captured the island in 1794 all five ships consequently fell into their hands.59
As he reckoned the pros and cons of his first naval engagement Nelson must also have realised that if the enemy had been more enterprising they might have defeated the Agamemnon. Indeed, it was relief rather than disappointment that dominated his first reflections. As he wrote in his journal after the action closed, ‘How thankful ought I to be, and I hope am, for the mercies of Almighty God manifested to me this day.’60
6
Linzee led his ships out of Cagliari at seven in the morning of 26 October. There were four sail of the line – the flagship Alcide, and the Berwick, Illustrious and Agamemnon – and two frigates. The squadron sailed south, following sealed orders Nelson had brought from Hood, and five days later anchored in the Bay of Tunis on the Barbary coast.
Tunis was a place quite unlike any Nelson had yet seen in the Mediterranean. It was nominally part of the Ottoman empire, but was known – and feared – as a city state thriving on the fruits of piracy. Even the French found it convenient to pay the bey of Tunis protection money. When Linzee sailed in he saw a Spanish squadron and two French warships, the eighty-gun Duquesne and a corvette, sitting smugly at anchor, as well as a large number of French merchantmen sheltering further up near a fort. Tunis was supposed to be a neutral port, open to ships of every nation, but Nelson expected a fight. With his instinct for finding the hottest spot he anchored the Agamemnon between the two French warships, planning to use both his broadsides to engage them simultaneously if firing began.
After a few days Linzee began ‘a damned palaver’ with the bey in his green-domed palace. Nelson, of course, thought it even more frustrating than Hood’s inaction before Toulon earlier in the year, and wanted a speedy and decisive resolution of the matter. The bey, he reasoned, was not going to agree to any attack being made upon the French, but presented with a fait accompli he might be reconciled by a cut of £50,000 in spoils. Besides, there was another reason for acting quickly: prize money. Fearful of being seized, the French merchantmen were feverishly unloading their precious cargoes, worth some £300,000. If the convoy was stripped bare, it might scarcely be worth the taking, while in the last extremity the enemy warships could always evade capture by declaring for the French royalists. Nelson had no difficulty advising Linzee’s council of war that they should seize the convoy forthwith, and then negotiate with the bey from a position of strength. In unguarded comments to Fanny and the Duke of Clarence he was even more bullish, and suggested knocking the bey’s forts down ‘about his ears’ if he objected. Fortunately, Commodore Linzee understood that admirals had to be statesmen as well as fighters, and did not care for such heavy-handedness. The principles of neutrality could not be dishonoured with impunity, and the bey was entirely capable of retaliating against British commerce. Moreover, Linzee had Hood’s express instructions to avoid giving offence. ‘My spirits are low indeed,’ a rebuffed Nelson confided in his journal. ‘Had I been commodore most likely I should have been broke by this time, for certainly I should have taken every Frenchman here without negotiating . . . I believe that the people of England will never blame an officer for taking a French line-of-battle ship.’61
Nelson’s thinking, in this instance, was influenced by financial considerations as well as his customary pugnacity. Those dozens of French merchantmen up the bay represented an enormous amount of prize money. Linzee, Nelson later admitted, ‘lost my fortune’. The commodore was not oblivious to either the political or the pecuniary advantages of seizing the French ships, but tried diplomacy instead. He asked the bey’s permission to attack the French ships, and was refused. In fact, the bey was neither as mercenary nor as foolish as the British supposed, and declined to be bribed or persuaded. Linzee offered him one of the smaller French merchantmen, and described the French as enemies of all mankind, unworthy of neutral protection, but the bey politely pointed out that the English had also once executed their king, and that it was not for him to intervene in disputes between Christian powers. He would be grateful if the British respected the neutrality of his port.62
Stumped, Linzee sent a frigate to Hood for more instructions and got rid of Nelson on a ten-day cruise. The Agamemnon’s sortie was fruitless, and Nelson was merely buffeted by wind, rain and thunderstorms, but he was glad to escape the humiliating tedium of Tunis. The sight of that big French eighty-gunner sitting ripe for the taking was more than he could stand. It was a large battle unit to let loose in the Mediterranean, and impudent, too. Eve
ry morning and evening her men sang the ‘Marseillaise’ with an English flag draped contemptuously over the roundhouse. When Nelson returned to Tunis on 26 November he found the stalemate intact, though the French had hauled their ships up against the shore to make them more difficult to attack. Fortunately, relief was at hand.63
On the 29th the Nemesis frigate came in from Hood, and Nelson was summoned to Linzee’s flagship. The admiral endorsed Linzee’s policy of negotiation, but had some ‘very handsome’ words for Nelson as well as independent work for him to do. Indeed, he was to command a small squadron – his first since that unofficial command in the Leeward Islands many years before. It was a heartwarming compliment, because there were senior captains in the fleet who would have enjoyed a detached command, however modest in scale.64
Nelson’s orders, dated 15 November, were satisfying. Hood had been worrying about the French garrisons in Corsica. They had refused to declare for the royalists, and when Linzee’s squadron had tried to subdue them by force in October he had taken a beating and lost fifty men killed and wounded. The only alternative was to blockade their strongholds, starve them of supplies and force them to surrender. Ashore Corsican partisans were trying to liberate their island from the French, but only a comprehensive naval campaign could effectively shrivel the enemy positions. For this work Nelson was given the Lowestoffe frigate at Tunis and several ships already stationed in the waters between Corsica and Genoa, the Mermaid, Tartar and Topaze frigates and the Scout brig. Nelson’s instructions also mentioned the French squadron he had fought the previous month. It was believed to be at St Fiorenzo in Corsica, but if victuals ran low it might make a run for the mainland, and Nelson was to keep a lookout. Hood cautioned Nelson to give as little offence to neutrals as possible, but clearly reposed confidence in his judgement. With the orders came one of the admiral’s ‘my dear Nelson’ letters, wishing him good fortune. Liberated from Linzee’s uninspiring leadership, Nelson perked up at once. ‘Thank God, Lord Hood . . . has taken me from under his command,’ he said.65
