Nelson

by John Sugden

  This was most obvious in the syndicates he founded with the officers and men of other ships. The first, in which the Agamemnon agreed to pool prize money with Wolseley’s Lowestoffe, was made in 1794. Such a deal depended upon each party accounting fairly to the other, and accepting that all would do their best to increase the pot. Typically, while Nelson was happy sharing his winnings with Wolseley (‘you will see I have not forgot my friends’), he felt guilty dipping into the money made by partners (‘at Fiorenza I shall be a drawback on you – they will not let me share, I dare say’). But the arrangement worked fairly well, and Nelson revived it in the summer of 1795, when the Agamemnon, Cockburn’s Meleager and Plampin’s Ariadne formed a syndicate. The officers and men of George Hope’s Romulus voted to enter the arrangement on 18 August, and though they made no prizes themselves, were fully entitled to share in those of their partners.12

  In the spring of 1797 Sir Horatio Nelson was less complacent about money than ever before. On the one hand his resources had grown and multiplied his balances with Marsh and Creed many fold. At last he was actually earning more than he was spending, and was accumulating money. His balances now hovered between £2,240 and £2,570 in credit, but they would have been annihilated by the purchase of a respectable property with a piece of land. He talked about another £5,000 that might be had as his share in a score of prizes taken by the fleet as a whole, but Fanny preferred to count birds in the hand. She urged him to apply for a crown pension as diplomats did. Nelson dutifully assembled testimonials and lists of his services for the purpose, but the idea of approaching anyone for money remained distasteful. It reminded him of those grovelling letters he had written to Uncle William.

  Then against the background of these reveries came exciting news. At the end of February the British fleet was in the Tagus recuperating from its exertions off Cape St Vincent, but it rippled with excitement at word that Spain was expecting the viceroy of Mexico with ships from Havana and Vera Cruz. They contained Spanish-American silver that gossip placed at £6 million. If that convoy was intercepted Spain would receive a severe blow, and the captors would make fortunes beyond their wildest dreams.

  2

  Sir John Jervis decided to detach a squadron to sweep the approaches to Spain between Portugal and Africa. The mission was laden with prospect. The convoy from Spanish America stirred folk memories of Drake and his Devon lads, but if the Spanish fleet came out to protect it there might also be a serious battle. Furthermore, Jervis heard of another convoy, on its way to Cadiz from the Bay of Biscay, and his detached force was ideally placed to scoop it into the bag.

  He gave the job to Nelson, a choice that also titillated. At home Alexander Davison, Nelson’s old Canadian friend, was tipped off by Maurice Nelson and wrote to offer his services as prize agent. It was a boon Nelson was unable to confer, for the fleet had its standing agents. The captains with Jervis also sensed battle and loot. As Saumarez of the Orion, who was detailed to accompany Nelson, told his brother, ‘Be not surprised if, with our desperate commodore, you hear of our taking the whole Spanish fleet should we fall in with them.’ The name of Nelson had now become synonymous with decisive action.13

  Nelson was still in Martin’s Irresistible, its gaudy ‘bright yellow sides’ conspicuous as it weighed anchor on 6 March with a mixture of ships of the line, frigates and smaller warships – the Orion, Leander, La Minerve, Southampton, Andromache, Romulus, Bonne Citoyenne and Raven. The Caroline and Seahorse joined soon after. His orders were to cruise for fourteen days between Cape St Vincent and Cape Spartel in Tangier, but not a single prize came their way. On 24 March the Captain and Colossus found them, and Nelson arranged to return to his old ship, sending the Irresistible and Orion back to the fleet.14

  On the afternoon of 1 April there was a ceremony that gave Nelson some satisfaction all the same. Jervis arrived with the fleet, steering towards Cadiz, which he intended to blockade. Nelson’s barge struck across to the Ville de Paris, the commander-in-chief’s new flagship, and returned within the hour with a blue bundle. It was Nelson’s flag as a rear admiral of the fleet, arrived from England, and he ran it up without delay while the ship shuddered to a salute of seventeen guns.

  The commander-in-chief reviewed the situation. His first instinct was to press on to Cadiz, leaving Nelson to continue sweeping with the Captain, Culloden, Zealous and La Minerve, but he had no sooner sent the rear admiral on his way than he had second thoughts. Perhaps he worried about dividing his forces before the main Spanish fleet in Cadiz. Anyway, Nelson was recalled to the fleet as it stationed itself outside the enemy stronghold. On 10 April the commander-in-chief gave his most distinguished officer a new job. With the Captain, Orion, Zealous, Culloden, Irresistible, Colossus and Romulus he would form ‘the inshore squadron’ at Cadiz, plugging the port up close while the rest of the battle fleet stood in support further out. In effect, it was Nelson who would be responsible for preventing ships coming out of the port and intercepting the enemy fleet if it offered battle. It was he who officially notified the foreign consuls in Cadiz, as well as the British captains, that the place was officially under blockade.15

  Many an officer would have wallowed in the privilege, and simply got on with it, but there was nothing inert about Sir Horatio’s mind. On the evening of 11 April two old friends sat drinking and talking in the cabin of a British ship of the line riding outside Cadiz. They were men of a similar age and stamp, and had shared adventures on the old Seahorse. Admiral Horatio Nelson and Captain Thomas Troubridge were both men of some schooling, had shipped aboard merchant vessels as well as His Majesty’s ships, and established reputations as bold, skilful and fiercely patriotic officers. After seeing Troubridge blockade Toulon with an inshore squadron, Jervis was sure he was fit to command the fleets of England. It had also been Nelson and Troubridge who had handled most of the fighting in the battle of Cape St Vincent.

  Between these two men – the ruggedly handsome, robust and excitable Troubridge and the light, spindly and reserved Nelson – there was developing a bond of uncommon strength. They both loved action as much as they hated the Jacobins, and were strong-minded but emotional, capable of explosive reactions. Nelson’s temperament had an almost feminine quality, with his tearful farewells, constant consideration of friends and brooding sensitivity to slights, but of all his soul mates, the bluff Troubridge was perhaps the closest. That evening, as so often, they struck sparks off one another as they talked.

  Soon a remarkable plan was forming. Nothing had been seen of the viceroy of Mexico and his treasure ships, but they were believed to have put into Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canaries to avoid the risk of running for Spain in the teeth of British cruisers. More than a century before, in 1657, a naval force under Admiral Robert Blake, Cromwell’s famous ‘general-at-sea’, had successfully attacked a Spanish plate fleet in Santa Cruz. Well then, if Blake could do it, then why not Nelson and Troubridge?

  The discussions were far-reaching, and the next day Nelson penned a detailed proposal to Jervis. He had become one of the commander-in-chief’s greatest confidants, and Collingwood described him as ‘a precious limb from his [Jervis’s] body’. It was Nelson, not Jervis’s three senior admirals, who got the detached responsibilities. There was never any doubt that Jervis commanded, but when Nelson proposed his lordship always listened. Usually he agreed, and it was sometimes Nelson who shaped the activities of the British Mediterranean fleet.16

  In his letter of 12 April the rear admiral enthusiastically put his case for an attack on Santa Cruz with a confidence that it would be adopted. At times he found himself telling Jervis what to say to the military minds he must convince to cooperate. ‘All the risk and responsibility must rest with you,’ he told the commander-in-chief. ‘A fair representation should also be made by you of the great national advantages that would arise to our country, and of the ruin that our success would occasion to Spain. Your opinion besides should be stated of the superior advantages a fortnight thus employed wo
uld be of to the army, to what [little] they could [otherwise] do in Portugal, and that of the six or seven millions sterling, the army should have one half. If this sum were thrown into circulation into England, what might be done? It would ensure an honourable peace, with innumerable other blessings.’ Reading this the uninformed could be forgiven for taking Nelson to be the superior officer.17

  Six or seven million pounds! It would certainly have dealt a financial blow to Spain, and been appreciated in war-weary Britain, but there can be no doubt that the fortune in prize money provided the principal motivation. The war was thought to be flickering to a close, in months if not weeks. The Austrians and French shortly agreed a preliminary peace at Leoben on 18 April, and there was little longterm strategic value to be gained from seizing Santa Cruz at this late stage. In truth Nelson’s plan was largely a grab for money.

  As Nelson saw it, there were two ways of doing the business. An attempt might be made to cut the ships out of the anchorage, but that operation needed an offshore wind, and when such winds blew they were often squally and uncertain. The other method he reckoned surer. Indeed, it ‘could not fail of success, would immortalise the undertakers, ruin Spain, and has every prospect of raising our country to a higher pitch of wealth than she ever yet attained.’ Troops might be landed to seize the commanding heights and sever the town’s water supply, which passed through wooden troughs outside. Santa Cruz had never been regularly invested, Nelson believed, and had no fortifications comparable with those they had subdued in Corsica. If the sort of generous terms prepared for Porto Ferraio, Leghorn and Capraia were put to the Spaniards, and the rights of civilians protected, there might be no battle at all. The hitch, thought Nelson, was the British army. Soldiers, he believed, ‘have not the same boldness in undertaking a political measure that we have’, but more troops and artillery than the fleet possessed were needed. He suggested that the garrison at Elba, which was then being evacuated, might serve, or that Jervis might persuade Governor Charles O’Hara to draw upon his garrison at Gibraltar.

  This plan neatly dovetailed with a more altruistic proposal Nelson had already laid before his commander-in-chief. For some weeks he had been worrying about De Burgh and Fremantle, still isolated on Porto Ferraio. Final orders had now been given for its withdrawal, but Fremantle’s convoy had a long journey to reach Gibraltar, and was open to attack all the way. Since the middle of March, Nelson had been offering to go back with two or three ships of the line, and cover the convoy’s retreat. ‘My feelings are alive for the safety of our army from Elba,’ he told Jervis. Now the extraction of the Elba garrison with its three thousand seven hundred soldiers bore directly upon the new proposal to attack Santa Cruz.18

  Jervis was also fretting about the Elba convoy. By blockading Cadiz he could keep the Spanish fleet off Fremantle’s back, but that still left the field open to the French in Toulon. On 12 April, only two days after entrusting Nelson with the inshore squadron, he therefore accepted his offer to re-enter the Mediterranean. Nelson was given the Captain, Colossus and Leander ships of the line and told to pick up the Seahorse, Caroline, Southampton and Bonne Citoyenne during his passage. Both admirals were genuinely concerned for the safety of the Elba convoy, but Nelson at least may also have seen its safe return as a necessary step towards Tenerife. His only reservation about making the trip was the possibility of missing a battle if the Spaniards in Cadiz tried to break the British blockade, but colleagues were sure that if there was going to be a fight Nelson would smell it. As Sutton of the Egmont wrote, Nelson had gone to Elba but if there was going to be an action ‘he will, according to his custom, cut in just as the Cadiz fleet is coming out!’19

  Leaving the commander-in-chief to reflect upon his proposal, Nelson made his second foray into a Mediterranean dominated by the enemy. A powerful French squadron was supposed to be lurking off the southern end of Minorca, and Nelson cleared his ships for action upon approaching the area on the 18th, but the sea was empty of hostile sails. The same wind that had swept Nelson eastwards had driven the French off their station. The next day Sir Horatio’s squadron took a Spanish prize, and on the morning of 21 April they ran into Fremantle’s convoy near Corsica. Efficiency exemplified, Fremantle had brought everyone from Elba five days before, moving his seventy transports resolutely forward under the watching guns of the Inconstant and four or five other small warships. The captain and De Burgh were tremendously relieved to meet Nelson’s squadron. As for the admiral, he decided the convoy could not be in ‘better hands’ and left its management to Fremantle. Nelson dispatched news of the junction to Hamilton and Jervis, and concentrated on providing a shield for the transports.20

  Betsy Fremantle thought Nelson ‘better now than ever I saw him’, but behind the tentative but winning smile that lightened his natural reserve the admiral was far from well. He hurt inside, apparently the result of his inflamed hernia, and was contemplating the possibility of going home sick. But he caught up with the Mediterranean news, concluded dolefully from the progress of Bonaparte that ‘there seems no prospect of stopping these extraordinary people’, and found time to praise where praise was due. This time his cause was the agent of transports, Lieutenant William Day, to whom he paid spontaneous and unsolicited tribute:

  I . . . beg leave again to recommend Lieut. Day, agent for transports, to your notice [he told Jervis]. I placed my reliance on his judgement (not to leave a ship [at Elba in 1796] more than was necessary) and I am not deceived. A more zealous active officer, as agent for transports, I never met with. General De Burgh also speak[s] of him in the highest terms, and I hope the Transport Board will keep their promise of recommending those officers in their service [for promotion] who eminently distinguish themselves, which I take upon me to say Lieut. Day has not only done at Bastia but [also] at Porto Ferraio. For his conduct at the former place you was so good on my stating his services to recommend him to the Admiralty, [and] I should not do justice to His Majesty’s service was I not to urge it again.

  The appeal was not made in vain, and through the instrumentality of Jervis, Day became a commander on 27 June following and ultimately a post-captain.21

  There was one Mediterranean acquaintance Nelson might have been expecting to meet at Porto Ferraio, but who now left his life forever: Signora Adelaide Correglia. A few months later Cockburn wrote to express some regret that Sir Horatio had not, after all, reached Elba, ‘though not solely on account of Blue Skin, for [but] I should wish to have heard some news of your little Adelaide and all other Italian friends’. Adelaide, it is true, quit Nelson’s story almost as mysteriously as she had entered it.22

  The previous October, Nelson had sent her a letter and a message via Brame in Genoa, leading her to believe that he would see her again. He was at Porto Ferraio in December and January, though as far as is known he had no contact with his mistress. Probably his payments to her had also finished, and the relationship had run its course. At least as far as Nelson was concerned, but Adelaide may have felt otherwise. In the spring she travelled to Porto Ferraio, where the British still held sway and some of Nelson’s agents had temporary homes, apparently looking for him. Nelson had gone, but she contacted Udny, who wrote to the admiral on 11 April: ‘Pray write me what you mean to do about your friend, whom I find has been here some time in distress,’ he said. ‘I return directly tonight to Florence, but have desired Mr John Udny junior to contrive [to] send her to her mother to Genoa, or to Leghorn, as I am setting out directly for Florence and cannot see her.’23

  If Nelson received Udny’s letter, perhaps on his voyage through the Mediterranean, he may have anticipated settling the matter when he reached Porto Ferraio, but he never got there. He intercepted the displaced British community under Fremantle at sea. Thereafter the record of Adelaide’s affair with Nelson fell silent, and even friends such as Cockburn were left wondering what had happened to her. Probably Nelson never saw her again.

  Did he send her money? Again, no one can say. James Ogle, Udny�
�s prize agent partner who planned visiting Leghorn later in the year, had written to Sir Horatio on 22 March, ‘Be so good as to inform me how much money you wish me to pay for you at Leghorn.’ On 21 July, Nelson also paid Udny for a bill due to one L. Fenzi. It is possible that either or both remarks may have related to Adelaide, but more probably they alluded to outstanding matters of prize or supply.24

  More pressing concerns drew Nelson out of the Mediterranean. The Elba convoy, crowded with soldiers, civilians and stores, had to be taken to safety, and from the master of a Danish ship Nelson encountered on 27 April it appeared that the Spanish fleet had orders to quit Cadiz and fight the British. With another battle in the wind, Nelson knew that Jervis needed every capital ship. Hurrying westward, he reached Gibraltar on 19 May. Only one ship in the convoy, loaded with two hundred men of Dillon’s regiment, went astray, and it later transpired that it had run upon a neutral shore, where it could be reclaimed. As for the others, some disembarked their passengers and cargoes at Gibraltar while others proceeded to Jervis’s fleet. Nelson ordered the Andromache to Malaga to rescue some American vessels trapped by French privateers – a gesture of goodwill to the United States – and was himself back off Cadiz on 24 May.25

  Jervis was ready to meet the thirty-three Spanish ships of the line in Cadiz with only twenty-two, but the last battle had been so demoralising to the ‘Dons’ that even this advantage did not encourage their new commander-in-chief, the able and popular Teniente General Jose de Mazzaredo, to stir. In fact, though Nelson sailed into the fleet expecting action, an ambition no doubt amplified by his receipt of the gold medal for the previous victory, he found that enemies of a different kind were the talk of every table. These enemies came from within.26