Nelson: The Essential Hero (17 page)

Although Nelson and Stuart had got on well enough during the campaign, it was to Nelson’s great chagrin that he learned later from Stuart’s despatch that the General had taken all the credit for himself. ‘One hundred and ten days’, he wrote, ‘I have been actually engaged, at sea and on shore, against the enemy; three actions against ships, two against Bastia in my ship, four boat actions, and two villages taken, and twelve sail of vessels burnt. I do not know that any one has done more. I have had the comfort to be always applauded by my Commander-in-Chief, but never to be rewarded. . . .’ A further piece of news that filled him with great sadness was to hear of the death of Lieutenant James Moutray of the
Victory
, the only son of the lady whom he had admired so much all those years ago in Antigua. Mrs Moutray whom he had adored more than any other woman he had ever met . . . He had the ship’s carpenter cut a stone to the young man’s memory and had it placed in the church at San Fiorenza.

Nelson knew that Lord Hood, whose health had been failing, was almost certain to return home and he had every hope of accompanying him - ‘I think if he can with propriety take me I shall be one of the ships.’ He was soon to learn, however, that although the
Agamemnon
was well overdue for a major refit there was no chance of depleting the fleet any further at the moment: particularly since the French had already got at least thirteen ships-of-the-line ready for sea at Toulon. A visit to Genoa impressed him with the magnificence of that city, ‘superior in many respects to Naples’, and it was from here that he wrote to Fanny that Lord Hood was definitely leaving but, as for himself, ‘I stand no chance of seeing you at present.’ He hankered after Burnham, and then added a small fatherly postscript: ‘Josiah is very well 5 feet high he says he is 5 feet 1 inch.’

Hood was succeeded by a man whom everyone liked but no one admired, the old and easy-going Admiral Hotham. He was no fit successor to the fierce and ever-zealous Hood, particularly at that moment in Mediterranean affairs. Meanwhile the endless blockade of Toulon carried on, the winter gales hurling off the land as the storm-battered ships furled their ragged canvas before them, or set all their patched sails once again when the weather grew temporarily fair. The sea and the wind, the monotony of the blockade, ate into the men as well as the ships. Well was it said of old-time sailors that every finger was a marlinespike and every hair a bunch of spun-yam. They were, as Conrad was to write of a later generation, ‘. . . a good crowd. As good a crowd as ever fisted with wild cries the beating canvas of a heavy foresail; or tossing aloft, invisible in the night, gave back yell for yell to a westerly gale.’ ‘The gale moderates’, Nelson wrote to William Suckling from Leghorn in October, ‘and I am just going to get under weigh again.’ He had lost fifty of his best men since leaving Calvi, had been into the Bay of Hyeres, looked carefully into Toulon and seen how many ships were being assembled to sweep the British from the sea - ‘Twenty-two sail of ships in the inner Harbour.’ He had reported to Sir Gilbert Elliot, now Viceroy of Corsica, on the extent of the French preparations, and had made some suggestions as to the defence of Ajaccio (Napoleon’s birthplace) in the event of an enemy attack. Yet, despite all that had happened to him in recent months, he could still say: ‘I don’t know that I ever had such good health as since I have been in Italy, not one day’s illness.’ By the end of November the
Agamernnon
was at last able to get into Leghorn for long enough to undergo a proper refit and to let the sailors ashore for the first time in many weeks, to enjoy those pleasures of the land -women and drink.

Nelson, except for a short period at Palermo when he was under the spell of Emma Hamilton, excessive adulation, and a luxurious court life, seems always to have been a very temperate man. He liked a glass or two of wine, as did most others, but he was never by nature a drinker. On the other hand, as his early history has shown, he always had an eye for a pretty girl, and it was hardly surprising that after the hardships and exigencies of the recent campaign he should fail to live a life of monastic seclusion while aboard
Agamemnon
secure in port. Most officers had their affairs ashore, many kept a mistress, and Nelson was no exception. James Harrison, whose biography has so often been condemned on the score of partiality or inaccuracy, nevertheless often comes out with anecdotes about Nelson which have all the ring of veracity - more particularly since much of his information came from Lady Hamilton. And no one was more likely to have known about Nelson’s love-life than she. At a later date, after they had become lovers, on hearing that he was bound for Leghorn she was strictly to forbid him to go ashore there; thus clearly indicating she knew he had had a previous affair with some woman in that port. Harrison hints at his nature in as clear a way as the oblique references of the time would permit about a national hero:

. . . though by no means ever an unprincipled seducer of the wives and daughters of his friends, he was always well known to maintain rather more partiality for the fair sex than is quite consistent with the highest degree of Christian purity. Such improper indulgences, with some slight addition to that other vicious habit of British seamen, the occasional use of a few thoughtlessly profane expletives, form the only dark specks ever yet discovered in the bright blaze of his moral character.

So Nelson, like most sailors, was given to swearing on occasions! He was also, parson’s son or not, sometimes guilty of adultery - even before Lady Hamilton came into his life. Captain Thomas Fremantle, one of ‘the band of brothers’, who was with him in Leghorn commanding the frigate
Inconstant
, has a few brief references to this phase in Nelson’s life.

December 1794. Wed. 3. Dined at Nelson’s and his Dolly. Called on old Udney [the British Consul], went to the opera with him. He introduced me to a very handsome Greek woman.

August 1795. A convoy arrived from Genoa. Dined with Nelson. Dolly aboard who has a sort of abscess in her side, he makes himself ridiculous with that woman.

August. Sat. 28. Dined with Nelson and his Dolly.

September. Sun. 27. Dined with Nelson and Dolly. Very bad dinner indeed.

Leghorn at that time was well known as a very free and easy city for both officers and men, something which was to result in many of them landing up in the British hospital that had recently been opened in Ajaccio. It is worth remarking on this score that the condom was well enough known in the eighteenth century, and in 1783 a Mary Perkins of Half Moon Street in London advertised that she ‘had lately had several large orders [for condoms] from France, Spain, Italy, and other foreign places’. Venereal disease was rife in the eighteenth century, and sailors and soldiers with the irregularity of their sex-lives were inevitably more prone to it than most. At one time in his life Nelson suffered from a ‘fleshy excrescence’ between his upper lip and jawbone ‘which when he shaved, gave him uncommon pain’. The doctors at Haslar Hospital, Portsmouth, diagnosed a venereal infection and proposed to give him mercurial treatment, to which he agreed. A distinguished French dentist who was present disagreed with their diagnosis and removed the growth with a scalpel, after which it would seem that he had no further trouble. But the fact that Nelson accepted the Haslar diagnosis is significant in itself.

The
Agamemnon
had completed her refit by mid-January and was back at sea, once more guarding the northern approaches to Corsica. The weather was as bad as any he had ever known. ‘We have had three gales of wind in thirteen days. Neither sails, ships or men can stand it.’ But he was as happy with his ship as ever, writing to Fanny : ‘We have had nothing but gales of wind and a heavy sea, so much so that one of the ships lost all her masts last night. In
Agamemnon
we mind nothing. She is the finest ship I ever sailed in and was she a 74 nothing should induce me to leave her whilst the war lasted.’ The war, which he had at times optimistically believed would be over swiftly, was only just beginning. The new year, and those that were to follow it, was to bring him into a steadily increasing sphere of action where the thunder of the guns would far outweigh the hazards of winter off Corsica.

In March
1795 Rear-Admiral Pierre Martin was ordered to take his fleet out of Toulon and clear the way for an invasion of Corsica and the re-establishment of French control in that island. Martin had only been made Lieutenant in 1792 and, such was the shortage of naval officers in revolutionary France, he had been promoted to Captain within a year, and then to Rear-Admiral. He had, as he knew well, no real experience of handling a fleet at sea; many of his ships were not fit for battle; while out of his ships’ companies of 12,000 men something like 7,500 had never been to sea before. This was hardly the material with which to drive the British from the Mediterranean. Even if many of the latter’s ships were in need of refitting, they were well-tried and proven from their long experience off Corsica and the coast of France. Their officers and men had been constantly at sea, were finely disciplined, and completely attuned to their environment.

On 8 March, hearing that the French had left Toulon on a course for Corsica, Hotham led out fourteen British ships-of-the-line together with one Neapolitan to intercept the seventeen French vessels. The wind was light and variable and, although British frigates were quite soon in touch with the enemy, the prospect of an immediate fleet action seemed remote. If the French had their problems with untrained and inexperienced officers and men, the British vessels were, in Nelson’s view, about ‘half-manned’. However, he wrote cheerfully to Fanny on 10 March : ‘I shall commence a letter at this moment to assure you, although I flatter myself that no assurance is necessary, of my constant love and affection. We are just in sight of the French fleet and a signal out for a general chase.’ Next day he added to the letter : ‘Did not get sight of the French fleet this morning.

I suppose they stood to the westward all night. The Admiral has just-got information that the French ... on the 8th off Cape Corse took the
Berwick
of 74 guns.’ The
Berwick
had been dismasted and was struggling along under jury rig when the French came up with her. On 12 March Nelson concluded this letter on an exuberant note : ‘The French are now within 4 miles of
Agamemnon
and
Princess Royal.
Our fleet 10 miles from us, we standing towards our fleet, the enemy attempting to cut us off.’ For years Nelson had hoped and waited for a fleet action, and now it seemed as if he was about to see one. But the erratic winds and the uninspired conduct of Admiral Hotham, who failed to follow home a dispirited enemy, were to frustrate his hopes. From the very beginning the inadequacies of the French were manifest. The
Mercure
lost her main topmast in a squall and had to stand away for Golfe Juan, while the
Qa-ira
and the
Victoire
collided, the former losing her topmasts and falling off to leeward between the two fleets. Nelson in
Agamemnon
, who was outdistancing the rest of the fleet, saw his chance and took it. Although the
Qa-ira
was an 84-gun ship, ‘absolutely large enough to take the
Agamemnon
in her hold’, Nelson made straight for the crippled giant which was being supported by a frigate despatched to take her in tow.

The
Agamemnon
now took on the grim face of action, the marine drummer beating to quarters to the rousing tune of ‘Hearts of Oak’. Everywhere men were busy at their tasks, the wooden bulkheads being unshipped between the officers’ quarters and the captain's furniture and private gear being sent down below. Meanwhile extra hammocks were brought up to join those which ran all round the upper deck, some being lashed over the dead-eyes and lanyards of the standing rigging. Far aloft, the sails were being doused with water, while everywhere fire buckets were being ranged in their allotted places, and wet sand sprinkled on the deck to lessen fire-risk and give the seamen a surer footing. The guns’ crews were all at their stations, flint-locks ready, slow-matches burning, the lashings cast off the guns, and the ports opened. Powder-monkeys scurried to and fro bringing up the cartridges for the first broadside, while high above them all nets were spread from main to mizzen masts to catch men falling from aloft as well as topmasts and other gear crashing on to the deck. The carpenter and his men were standing by below with their wooden plugs and tools to deal with underwater damage, while in the blood-red cockpit the surgeon, Mr Roxburgh, and the surgeon's mates waited with instruments, water, rum, tourniquets, and bandages for the first casualties. If time permitted, as it did now, the officers changed into clean linen, fresh breeches, and silk stockings, to obviate the risk of infection from dirty clothes being driven into a wound. The men, for their part, stripped to the waist; their black silk handkerchiefs which were normally worn loosely knotted round their necks were now bound tightly around their heads over their ears. The concussion of the guns in the confined space below decks could deafen a man for life. The hatches leading from the gun-deck to the orlop-deck below were guarded by marines or midshipmen with pistols, who would permit no one to pass except the powder-boys and authorised messengers. That formidable figure representative of discipline, the master-at-arms, made his rounds: it would be his duty, once action commenced, to keep a tally of losses, of guns out of action, and of the general fighting capacity of the ship. It took a little over five minutes for a ship-of-the-line to come down from cruising trim to a state of instant readiness. When all was prepared the First Lieutenant made a complete tour of the ship, to encourage the men, and to issue final orders to all officers and senior ratings.

The French were now running as fast as they could for the security of their shore with the British in pursuit. Captain Fremantle in the frigate
Inconstant
was the first to come up with the crippled
Qa-ira.
Two French ships-of-the-line, the
Jean Bart
and the
Sans Culotte
, were dropping back to afford protection, while one of their own frigates had passed her tow and was struggling to get the
Qa-ira
underway. The
Inconstant
, coming under heavy fire, was forced to retire leaving the field clear for
Agamemnon
. The wind being southwest and squally, Nelson decided to lay his ship across the enemy’s stern. Although this meant that the
Agamemnon
was subjected to a heavy and accurate fire from the enemy’s stern guns, the way in which he manoeuvred his ship meant that the larger Frenchman could never bring her broadside to bear. The action, which began at about 10 a.m. on the thirteenth, was in effect almost over by 1 p.m., by which time the
Qa-ira
was ‘a perfect wreck’.
Agamemnon
, veering back and forth under her stem, poured broadside after broadside into her. As Nelson wrote later to William Suckling: ‘Could I have been supported, I would have had the
Qa-ira
on the 13th.’