Nelson: The Essential Hero (13 page)

A spirit of tumult and disorder . . . has shown itself in acts of riot and insurrection, which required the interposition of a military force in support of the civil magistrate. The industry employed to excite discontent on various pretexts, and in different parts of the kingdom, has appeared to proceed from a design to attempt the destruction of our happy constitution, and the subversion of all order and government; and this design has evidently been pursued in connection and concert with persons in foreign countries. So far neutrality in continental affairs has been maintained, but the French efforts to excite disturbances in other countries ‘and to pursue views of conquest and aggrandizement’ are causing me serious uneasiness.

He went on to say that he must therefore augment the naval and military forces for prevention and internal defence, ‘being persuaded that these exertions are necessary in the present state of affairs, and are best calculated both to maintain internal tranquillity, and to render a firm and temperate conduct effectual for preserving the blessings of peace’.

Among the many ships which were destined to engage in the war that was soon to follow was the 64-gun
Agamemnon
. She was lying at Chatham, where Nelson had started his naval career.

The
enthusiasm with which the French Revolution had originally been greeted in some quarters in Britain did not last long. That an autocratic monarchy distinguished by extravagance and folly should be abolished was one thing, and it was not only men like Charles James Fox who rejoiced in what they saw as a new dawn on the Continent. But the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, coupled with the atrocities unleashed in France, and the threat that they would spread across the Channel and infect those with republican beliefs in England, was quite sufficient to induce a general stiffening of resolve. There was a determination to prevent the export of any more of ‘the French disease’ (slang for the pox). The Paris Convention which ‘promised assistance to all people who wish to recover their liberty’ was not acceptable to Britons. However badly treated many of them were, they did not seek for a foreign helping hand. The subsequent actions of the Convention proved conclusively that ‘every revolution contains in it something of evil’. Men like Nelson would have agreed with a speech made by Edmund Burke some nineteen years earlier: ‘The only liberty I mean, is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them.’

Nelson, who had either been hurriedly summoned to London, or had gone there of his own accord (knowing that in the immediate expansion of the fleet post-captains with fourteen years’ seniority would hardly be neglected), wrote an ecstatic letter to Fanny on 7 January 1793 :

Post nubila Phoebus -
your son will explain the motto - after clouds comes sunshine. The Admiralty so smile on me that really I am as much surprised as when they frowned. Lord Chatham yesterday made many apologies for not having given me a Ship before this time, but that if I chose to take a 64-gun ship to begin with I should be appointed to one as soon as she was ready, and that I should as soon as in his power be removed into a 74.

By 26 January Lord Hood had informed him that he would be appointed to the
Agamemnon
at Chatham. She had been built at Buckler’s Hard in Hampshire on the Beaulieu river, and Nelson joyfully proclaimed her as ‘without exception one of the finest 64s in the Service . . . with the character of sailing most remarkably well’. Fanny did not receive the information with any great enthusiasm, and the news that war would break out at any moment can hardly have cheered her. She was always to show an anxious concern about her husband’s safety that, while loving and natural, was inconsistent with her part as a sailor’s wife. In any case, she had no intention of staying on in the Parsonage alone, and Nelson had to see her set up in lodgings in the market town of Swaffham before hastening to join the
Agamemnon.
A ship! To be aboard a ship again after all those years, when it had looked as if he would be forever landbound, wearing out a weary life in the dull routines of the Parsonage, without even the consolation of raising a family. . . . On 1 February, the French Republic declared war on England and Holland. Six days later Nelson joined the
Agamemnon.

He had been in touch with his old friend Locker, who was now Commodore at Sheerness, and who helped him greatly in getting his crew together. Nelson had already done all that he could to find volunteers in Norfolk and Suffolk : ‘I have sent out a lieutenant, and four mids, to get men at every sea port in Norfolk, and to forward them to Lynn and Yarmouth.’ The ship’s muster book, the record of her complement, soon bore many names from East Anglia and, one volunteer being worth any number of pressed men, Nelson could feel happy not only in his ship but the crew that went with it. It was his turn now to be able to help a Suckling, and he had his cousin, Maurice Suckling, as a lieutenant aboard, while Fanny’s son Josiah, now twelve years old, was in the gun-room. Poor Fanny! She was now left entirely alone except for visits to the Reverend Edmund and other relatives in the area. As for Nelson, his letters are instinct with happiness. 15 March 1793 : ‘If the wind is to the northward of west, we go down the river tomorrow, and are ordered to Spithead with all possible despatch, as we are wanted, Lord Hood writes me word, for immediate service; and hints, we are to go a cruise, and then to join his fleet at Gibraltar . . . therefore I am anxious to get to Spithead. ... I never was in better health. ... I hope you intend a new lease of your life.’ (Mr Herbert, her uncle, had died, and had left provision for Fanny.) He was overjoyed with his ship, his officers and men, and the new phase of his relationship with Lord Hood. ‘Spithead, April 29. We arrived at Spithead last night, and this morning, have got my orders to go to sea until the 4th of May, when I shall be at Portsmouth: Lord Hood will then be at Portsmouth. ... We are all well.’

A rendezvous in the Channel was arranged by Hood for the ships which were to come under his command in the Mediterranean. A convoy from the West Indies had to be escorted safely home, and it was not until June that eleven sail-of-the-line, ‘frigates &c.’, were on their way south. The Spaniards, who had not yet been able to come to any real conclusion about French intentions in the world, were at this time willing to consider the other option - the British. It was for this reason that part of the fleet, which included the
Agamemnon
, was invited to pay a friendly visit to Cadiz: a circumstance which gave Nelson food for thought and room for comment on the ships and the men with whom, once Spain had become France’s ally, England would in due course become embroiled. The Spaniards built good ships, that was something he readily conceded : ‘They have four first-rates in commission at Cadiz, and very fine ships, but shockingly manned. ... I am certain if our six barges crews, who are picked men, had got on board one of their first-rates, they would have taken her. The Dons may make fine ships, they cannot however make men.’

Yes, ‘It isn’t the ships, it’s the men in them’, and no one knew that better than this particular observer, who went on to be disgusted by ‘a bull feast, for which the Spaniards are famous; and from their dexterity in attacking and killing of these animals, the ladies choose their husbands’. One sees the curl of the sensitive mouth, and hears the voice of disapproval from the parson’s son. ‘How women can even sit out, much more applaud, such sights, is astonishing. It even turned us sick, and we could hardly go through it: the dead mangled horses with their entrails torn out, and the bulls covered with blood, were too much.’ It was play-acting - one senses his verdict - and the same English who were revolted by the spectacle would be able to take all and a great deal more, involving the destruction of themselves, their fellows and the enemy, than any Spaniard in a bull-ring. He had his judgement confirmed when, some weeks later, Lord Hood’s ships rendezvoused with 24 Spanish sail-of-the-line who were supposed to be co-operating with them in the Mediterranean. A message was sent over by a Spanish frigate that they would not be able to join the British as they had so many ill on board that they must of necessity put into Cartagena. The captain of the frigate added : ‘It was no wonder they were sickly, for they had been sixty days at sea.’ Nelson found this quite derisory : ‘This speech appeared to us ridiculous; for from the circumstance of having been longer than that time at sea, do we attribute our getting healthy. It has stamped in my mind the extent of their nautical abilities: long may they remain in their present state.’

On 27 June 1793 the
Agamemnon
sailed from Gibraltar as part of Lord Hood’s fleet. It numbered nineteen sail-of-the-line, with Lord Hood wearing his flag in the
Victory.
They escorted a convoy of fifty merchantmen, while on their flanks and scouting ahead of them scudded a number of frigates. The Strait was alive with sails as, taking the inflowing current under their heavy stems, the British entered the Mediterranean. It was to be the centre of Nelson’s life for many years, and the scene of the great triumph that brought him fame. The
Agamemnon
, in which he now enjoyed the life as well as the responsibilities of being her Captain, was to live up to her famous name.

Nelson was happy aboard her in a way he had never been before, and would hardly be again - at least not in the same degree. She was the last ship to be his own and sole command, she sailed well, and he had confidence in both his officers and his crew. Aboard her he probably had, if not as much space, just as much comfort as in the simple Parsonage at Burnham. His cabin was about the size of a small low-ceilinged room, lit through square windows by day, with ever the sight of the sea, hushed and flat, or rising with the wind. At night the soft glow of lanterns would have been reflected from the captain’s table when he entertained. Mostly, though, his life like that of all sea captains was an extremely lonely one : it was this which induced the immense stresses and strains (quite apart from those of command itself) that turned some captains into brutal tyrants and made of others drunken eccentrics. Nelson was lucky in that from a boy under his father’s influence he had learned self-discipline, and had learned also, even in recent years, how to cope with loneliness, silence and monotony. Not that the life aboard a man-of-war could ever have been considered monotonous, for in daylight hours there were exercises to test the crews, and to ensure that manoeuvres were carried out as smartly as the Admiral in charge of the fleet required. And Lord Hood was known as a man who required a great deal. But, quite apart from all this, there was the ever-changing pattern of the ship herself; the relief of one watch for another, the call for ‘All hands!’ if the wind piped up and sail had to be shortened, daily gunnery drills, and never-ending ship maintenance. Meal times and evening breaks after supper, when the sailors would dance to flute and fiddle, rounded off the day. All this was accompanied by the rhythms of wind and sea, the patter of bare feet, the rush and roar of wind-filled canvas as the vessel tacked, the squeal of ropes through blocks and tackles, and the hushing sigh as she settled away on her new course. But the loneliness of command remained absolute.

John Masefield, who knew the sea as few poets have done, having served in windjammers round the Horn, wrote of this in his
Sea Life in Nelson’s Time
(1905):

A captain of a ship at sea is not only a commander, but a judge of the supreme court, and a kind of human parallel to Deity. . . . He has power over his subjects almost to the life. That he could not touch, without the consent of his equals, but he had the power to flog a man senseless, and authority to break some of his officers and send them forward. He had power to loose and to bind, and perhaps no single man has ever held such authority over the fortunes of his subordinates as that held by a sea captain over his company at sea during the Napoleonic wars. He lived alone, like a little god in heaven, shrouded from view by the cabin bulkheads, and guarded always by a red-coated sentry, armed with a drawn sword. If he came on deck the lieutenants at once shifted over to the lee side, out of respect to the great man. No man on board dared to address him, save on some question relating to the duty of the day. No sailor could speak to him with his hat upon his head. One uncovered to one’s captain as to one’s God.

All this was true enough, but Nelson - as there is plenty of evidence to show - was not one of those remote and uncaring ‘gods’ who only show themselves in order to hurl thunderbolts. He cared about his men, because he knew that a sick ship is an inefficient ship. He laid down stringent rules about the ventilation of the below-deck areas; about the supply of wine (when available) as being good for the health; and the issue of lime or lemon juice as a prevention against scurvy. As he cheerfully wrote to the Duke of Clarence that July, while the ships made their way northward towards the French coast: ‘Our fleet continues healthy : we sail in three divisions, led by
Victory
,
Colossus
, and
Agamemnon. .
. .’

Hood’s first objective was to contain, or bring to battle, the large French fleet which was lying in the French harbours of Marseilles and Toulon. The latter, being also the principal Mediterranean dockyard for the French fleet, was the immediate target for investment and it was reported that nearly thirty ships-of-the-line were ready for sea