by John Sugden
When the assault force ran out of ammunition and withdrew, the Thunder’s masts and hull scarred by enemy hits, Miller and Weatherhead covered the retreat in a pinnace and the Theseus launch. Their loss was light, only three men being killed and twenty-one wounded, and Nelson did not seem dissatisfied, but in truth the attack fell far short of its objective. Some damage had been done, but not enough, and far from inducing the Spanish fleet out the attack merely gave it a measure of approbation. National newspapers represented Mazarredo’s men as heroes, successfully repulsing spectacular but largely ineffective British assaults.
Never a man to be easily beaten, Nelson still believed a process of attrition might expel the enemy ships, and planned a third attack for the 8th. He hoped to come from the northwest, but unfavourable winds and a strong swell prevented the bomb and mortar vessels from advancing and the attack was called off. By then it was becoming obvious that no provocation was going to succeed. The Spanish ships kept shuffling about, sometimes advancing before anchoring again and at other times digging deeper into ‘a nook of the harbour’ and filling the approaches with gun launches. They never looked about to fight, but Nelson was out regularly with his guard boats, looking for weaknesses and exchanging occasional fire. One sortie by the Spanish gunboats was repulsed in firing that lasted much of the 9th, and the following day Nelson stood beyond the lighthouse with the Theseus and four small vessels hoping to throw some more shells into the town from the south. He drew fire from the entire enemy flotilla, and inflicted losses of sixteen killed and wounded upon the Spaniards in return but without achieving a significant outcome.64
The situation had stalemated, and though Sir Horatio found his skirmishes more entertaining than paroling prisoners and arranging exchanges, he was frustrated. ‘I hope [the] Ministry will do anything for a peace,’ he wrote in June. No doubt it was with some gratification that he learned he was to be diverted from this sterile work, and that the Tenerife expedition, so pregnant with action and prospect, was at last underway.65
6
‘Who will not fight for dollars?’ Nelson had written. It was not much of an exaggeration, and the golden lure of Tenerife was difficult to deny.66
Admiral Jervis put duty first. Like Nelson, his greatest desire was to destroy the Spanish fleet, ‘for the mines of Peru and Mexico are not to be compared with the glory you and all my companions in arms will derive from an action with the angry Dons’. But Mazarredo was only burrowing deeper, and if Tenerife could be taken without endangering the premier campaign, there was no reason why it should not be considered.67
Nelson had continued to encourage. The very day he met Fremantle’s convoy off Corsica he had reminded his commander-in-chief of Tenerife. ‘What a stroke it would be!’ he said. Again Jervis was pressed to approach O’Hara at Gibraltar for troops.68
The commander-in-chief investigated, and some of the answers were satisfactory. O’Hara was not interested, perhaps still grieving that Nelson had got the vacant red sash of Bath he had wanted for himself, but Tenerife looked promising. In April, Captain Richard Bowen, a thirty-six-year-old Devonian, took the Terpsichore and Dido frigates to Santa Cruz and found two merchantmen there, the San Jose and Principe Fernando. They were not part of the American treasure flota, but rich nevertheless because they both belonged to the Philippines Company and carried luxury merchandise such as coffee, muslin and pepper. Bowen managed to cut the smaller vessel out, and came away with some £30,000 worth of cargo. The British fleet was soon salivating at the thought of what the larger vessel in Santa Cruz might contain. She was from Manilla, and speculation made her ten times more valuable than Bowen’s prize.
The next month two more of Jervis’s frigates were off Tenerife, the Lively and La Minerve. Their senior commander, Benjamin Hallowell, pretended he had come to arrange an exchange of prisoners, but furtively looked round. As far as he could make out the Manilla ship was being unloaded at the waterfront of Santa Cruz, but a fourteen-gun French corvette, La Mutine, lay exposed in the roadstead. On the 29th the British cut her out. The news thrilled Nelson because Lieutenant Thomas Masterman Hardy, who had distinguished himself under his command in December, was instrumental in capturing the French ship. Sir Horatio urged Jervis to promote him, but the commander-in-chief knew a good man when he saw one, and needed no spur. Hardy became commander of La Mutine, the ship he had captured. Nor was Hallowell’s raid without its intelligence value. One officer of the Lively reported that Santa Cruz could be taken with ‘the greatest ease’.69
Slowly the Tenerife expedition took shape. On 6 June, Jervis assured Nelson that as soon as his fleet was reinforced he would detach the rear admiral with two ships of the line, a fifty-gunner and three frigates. It was advisable to make preparations. The strike force turned out to embrace the Theseus, Culloden and Zealous seventy-fours, the fifty-gun Leander, the frigates Seahorse, Emerald and Terpsichore, the Fox cutter and Terror mortar launch supervised by Baines of the Royal Artillery.
Nelson’s captains were from the cream of the fleet. Miller was there, of course, and Fremantle commanding the Seahorse. Bowen of the Terpsichore, regarded by Jervis as a rising star as well as ‘a child of my own’, and Thomas Boulden Thompson of the Leander were both familiar with Santa Cruz, while the captain of the Zealous was Sir Samuel Hood, a gentle giant and cousin of Nelson’s famous mentor. Sir Samuel had served under Nelson off Corsica in 1794, when he was captain of L’Aigle, and the rear admiral had already written warmly of him. ‘The account you give of my relation and namesake is truly delightful,’ replied Admiral Hood. ‘He must be a good fellow, by his being so kindly and partially spoken of by you, and I am confident nothing will ever be more pleasant to him than to act upon any service under your orders and immediate eye. This he has repeatedly said to me.’ The Culloden, of course, belonged to Troubridge, one of the originators of the plan to attack Tenerife. Only recently he had been ill, dangerously ill according to Jervis, but no one was going to keep him from being there.70
On 14 July the advanced squadron of eleven sail was signalled back into the main fleet and Nelson received Jervis’s orders. He was to demand the surrender of the island of Tenerife, including the cargo of the Manilla ship, and such other cargoes as were not intended for the consumption of the islanders. Government property and the forts had also to be surrendered. Drawing on his Mediterranean experience, Nelson had advised the use of carrot as well as stick, and that was the formula deployed here. The carrot was a guarantee that civilians would be secure in person and property, and their civil and religious rights safeguarded if the island surrendered. The stick threatened that ‘a very heavy contribution’ would be levied on the inhabitants if they resisted and every species of vessel seized to pay it.71
Nelson’s orders were to his liking, but perhaps weighing the risks involved he arranged for any prize money due him to be paid to Fanny. Then, when all his squadron but the Leander and Terpsichore were ready, he sailed on the 15th, sliding southwest over a brilliant blue sea before a good wind.72
To Nelson the only deficiency seemed the lack of soldiers. Apparently neither De Burgh nor O’Hara felt able to cooperate, and Nelson had to settle for an extra detachment of marines. He regretted the lack of ‘more red coats’ to dazzle the enemy, but banked on a sudden surprise stroke ‘doing the job . . . the moment the ships come in sight’. After all, he cheered Jervis, ‘under General Troubridge ashore and myself afloat, I am confident of success’.73
As was his custom, Jervis backed his most energetic officer to the hilt, but his farewell note suggested much less confidence. ‘God bless and prosper you,’ said the old admiral. ‘I am sure you will deserve success. To mortals is not given the power of commanding it.’74
XXVI
MORE DARING INTREPIDITY WAS NEVER SHOWN
Who doomed to go in company with pain,
And fear and bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain.
William Wordsworth, Character of the
Happy Warrior
1
CAPTAIN John Waller of the Emerald frigate made an entry in his journal for 17 July 1797. ‘At 10 a.m. the admiral made the signal for all captains to consult on the best plans of operation, and [to] gain all the information possible about the town of Santa Cruz.’1
Aboard the ships steering southwest across the blue ocean, bent upon a hazardous mission to Tenerife, there were few signs of complacency. The men were being drilled in the use of great and small arms, and weapons were inspected and put into prime order. Admiral Nelson had only one good eye, but it was an eye for detail, and preparations were being made for foreseeable contingencies. Orders were given for the manufacture of additional scaling ladders, of platforms and a sledge for the artillery Troubridge planned to haul ashore, and for a supply of iron musket ramrods to replace the standard but fragile wooden issues. Nelson knew that in a busy exchange of musketry broken ramrods would reduce the rate of fire and risk men’s lives.
The attention to detail was revealed in the organisation of the seven hundred and forty seamen chosen to form the landing party. As Miller described it, they were formed into three companies, each with its quota of pikemen, ‘a Master at Arms or Ship’s Corporal, a Boatswain’s mate, and Quarter Master or Gunner’s mate, an Armourer with a cold chisel, a hammer, spikes for guns, and a crow, a carpenter with a short broad axe, a heavy mall, and two iron wedges, a Midshipman or mate and a Lieutenant to command it. I gave each company a small red, white or blue flag . . .’2
Nor was it just the men and junior officers who had to be conditioned for what lay ahead. Every captain needed to know what was expected of him, and it was to that end that they, now reinforced by Bowen of the Terpsichore, were summoned to the Theseus on 17 July for the first of several meetings.
The importance of briefing senior officers seems obvious, but it was by no means a universal or even a common practice, even by great leaders. Napoleon, for example, often exercised such a personal command of the battlefield that subordinates were left ignorant of his intentions and overdependent upon his on-the-spot instructions. The disruption of that personal chain of command in the fog of conflict caused serious problems for the egocentric emperor on the field of Waterloo. Indeed, as armies and fleets grew larger, the ability to coordinate and control grand forces, sometimes sprawled over miles of front and enmeshed in noise, confusion and smoke, became increasingly central to successful leadership. At sea, where communications were harnessed to inefficient flag-signalling systems, the problem was particularly acute. Although improved, the use of numerical flags keyed to signal books remained cumbersome and imprecise. Even when flags could be seen through the gunsmoke, they were incapable of transmitting complicated instructions quickly and they were easily misinterpreted, as the battle of Cape St Vincent had shown.3
Nelson had his own solution to what modern military theorists call problems of ‘command and control’. From the beginning he involved his captains in the command process through a series of informal meetings in which strategy and tactics and ways and means were thoroughly aired. As later described by Berry, during these assemblies the admiral’s practice was to ‘fully develop . . . his own ideas of the different and best modes of attack, and such plans as he proposed to execute upon falling in with the enemy, whatever their position or situation might be, by day or night’. In other words he discussed what might be done in every eventuality. ‘There was no possible position in which they [the enemy] could be found that he did not take into his calculation,’ and for which he did not suggest ‘the most advantageous attack’. Because the captains had been comprehensively briefed, understood Nelson’s intentions, and had examined the different ways of achieving them, ‘signals became almost unnecessary’ and ‘much time was saved’. Each captain was theoretically capable of using his own initiative to achieve the corporate end.4
There was little autocratic about Nelson’s process. He valued and liked his captains, and his style of leadership was open, friendly and informal. People felt at ease with him and able to speak in the meetings. Rather than dispensing definitive decisions from above, Nelson set the parameters of debate and encouraged his officers to contribute their own information and ideas. His assemblies were not so much briefings as forums for the exchange of ideas. They were brainstorming seminars. At a time when the only universal formal officer training in the navy was confined to the seamanship tested in examining lieutenants, Nelson’s conferences were milestones in the development of professional education.
The council of war recorded by Captain Waller was the first of four summoned over a six-day period. During their deliberations every captain volunteered to lead a division in the attack on Tenerife, leaving Thomas Oldfield of the Theseus, and army captain of four years’ standing, to command the marines. Unusually, Nelson decided to forgo personal heroics, and agreed to coordinate the attack from the Theseus, as befitted an admiral, and Troubridge would command ashore. It was as good a team as the navy of 1797 could field.
In their preliminary discussions, Nelson and his captains had only an imperfect picture of the defences of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. They relied heavily upon the information of a seaman of the Emerald and one of Fremantle’s servants, both of whom had known the town many years before. In fact, although it was a respectable settlement, with a population of about seven thousand, compared to Bastia, where several thousand troops manned a formidable sea front commanded by powerful hill forts behind, Santa Cruz was not militarily impressive. It had no more than a skeleton garrison of barely four hundred regulars, and was heavily dependent upon an ill-equipped militia of some eight hundred men that needed time to assemble. Fewer than four hundred gunners and about one hundred and ten French sailors marooned by Hardy’s capture of La Mutine did not raise the armed human resources of Don Antonio Guitierrez, commandant general of the Canaries, to more than seventeen hundred men.
The town and its environs themselves offered little room for manoeuvre, however. A precipitous volcanic rock pushed out of the sea, Tenerife’s shoreline was sheer and the water deep offshore, so that landing places and anchorages were difficult to find. Most of the few beaches were black and broken and slippery underfoot and often guarded by a heavy surf. Santa Cruz, which hugged the shore of an open bay on the northeastern coast of the island, was protected to the rear by craggy mountains rising to a central ridge. Its southwestern flank was reputedly difficult to approach, without anchorages or suitable landings, and the only viable attack was from the front or northeast, where the human defences were at their strongest. The six miles of the town’s sea wall and front bristled with sixteen fortifications, some of them mere gun platforms but others towers and parapets, the whole defended by eighty-four pieces of artillery. Of these strong points the most impressive was the ancient citadel of San Cristobal, with its bell tower, a massive thirty-foot perimeter wall and corner bastions mounting ten guns. Some of these last commanded the principal landing place – a low, stone, round-headed mole that jutted prominently into the sea not far from the town square.5
These defences were far from contemptible, and like all good commanders Nelson knew that his strongest weapon was surprise. A sudden assault, launched against an unwary or startled enemy before they could mobilise, prepare or even think, was a tactic capable of producing astonishing results. The greatest of Nelson’s disciples, Lord Cochrane, would definitively demonstrate the point in 1820, when he successfully stormed the Spanish fortresses at Valdivia in southern Chile, deemed the most impregnable in the Pacific, with only a fraction of the force Nelson brought to Santa Cruz.
Nelson’s plan was to land Troubridge’s force on the northeastern flank of the town, close to a fort known as the Paso Alto. The men would storm the fort, securing it with the heights behind, and thereby allow the ships to anchor in safety below while they turned their attention to the town about a mile away. Taken by surprise and menaced by their own guns at the Paso Alto as well as the ships, the Spaniards in Santa Cruz might be persuad
ed to surrender.
Some of the British ideas, such as the possibility of taking the Paso Alto quietly as well as quickly and sustaining surprise beyond the initial attack, were long shots, but Nelson understood the importance of speed and shock. Speed could give him key ground or positions before the enemy rallied. Speed forced enemies to act without thinking, and produced panic, confusion and error. And speed exploited defences that were geographically dispersed, denying the time needed to concentrate resources and organise resistance. Nelson emphasised it in his final orders to Troubridge on 20 April. ‘The moment you are on shore,’ he wrote to Troubridge, ‘I recommend you to first attack the [Paso Alto] battery . . .’ To allow his executive officer room for individual initiative, he had crossed out the words ‘you are directed’ and replaced them with the softer word ‘recommend’. Once the fort was taken, Troubridge could ‘either’ storm the town from the flank immediately, or – if he thought best – threaten it and send in a summons. In the last case, Nelson again emphasised the need to deny the Spaniards time to organise or to regain their composure. Only thirty minutes should be allowed for the consideration of terms, and they were not to be negotiable unless ‘good cause’ required it.6
At six o’clock in the late afternoon of Thursday 20 July the northern coast of Tenerife could be seen on a cloudy horizon ten to twelve leagues to the southwest. The squadron hove to and for two days busied itself for the attack. The landing would be launched from the frigates, which were able to work closer inshore. Boats, scaling ladders, equipment and hundreds of men were transferred to them from the ships of the line. Nelson’s Theseus sent her quota to the Seahorse, along with Captain Miller and four of the ship’s six lieutenants, Nelson remaining on board with his third and fifth lieutenants. Other men rocked across the choppy sea to the Terpsichore and Emerald.
