Nelson: Britannia's God of War (14 page)

Admiral Sir John Jervis took command of the Mediterranean fleet in early 1796. He was a hard-bitten veteran, with an awesome reputation for upholding discipline. He was also a shrewd judge of men and methods with a passion for sound organisation. With his political patron Lord Shelburne unlikely to return to the front rank of political life, he would have to rely on merit to make his career.
¹
A man of unbending principle, Jervis would defend his convictions against his King, the Prime Minister and the Admiralty with equal determination. Little wonder he was the last choice for the Mediterranean. Having secured a fortune in prize money during his recent West Indian command, and survived an attack on his handling of local prize courts, further brushes with avarice, never far from an eighteenth-century naval career, could be studiously avoided. His ruthless campaign against peculation and fraud created the Victorian naval morality that considered profit vulgar. However, this was not the morality of his own age.

Jervis was not enamoured of the chaos he inherited from Hotham: the majority of his senior officers, legacies from Hood’s regime, struck him as irresolute and inadequate. His views hardened when Rear Admiral Robert Man made a serious error of judgement, which in a rare moment of generosity Jervis attributed to a nervous breakdown.
He considered few admirals on the list fit for their rank, preferring to use his chosen captains, citing Nelson as the example.
²
The tendency for officers to go home alleging ‘health’ or private business, a tendency that the absentee Lord Hood could hardly condemn, struck him as amateurish weakness. His insistence on a proper medical report and attempts to close ‘unofficial’ channels of communication with the Admiralty forced every commissioned officer to chose between hard service and half-pay.
³
Nor were the seamen exempt from his iron will. In return for improved food and conditions Jervis demanded absolute obedience. He replaced officers who allowed their men to be ‘incessantly drunk’ and who generally relaxed discipline.
⁴
After he had replaced the captain of the
Marlborough
,
no officer would dare contend that he could not discipline his crew, or hesitate to hang the mutinous. Nelson shared his abhorrence of drunkenness, both in the service and in his family, where young Suckling Nelson was hurrying his way to the grave by the bottleful.
⁵

Within weeks Nelson, ever attuned to the mood of the day, realised that this was not a man he could ask for leave. Instead he expressed a desire to stay in the theatre after the next promotion, when he would become a junior admiral. Claiming he would not regret the loss of a lucrative marine colonelcy impressed the new admiral as much as his obvious talent and dedication. Nelson’s views of other officers began to follow Jervis’s dicta, notably on the feeble conduct of Hotham, whom Jervis termed a ‘crapule’. These opinions were, in turn, largely based on discussions with Nelson.

Seeking resolute professional commanders for his detached ships and squadrons, Jervis condemned the great bulk of those on the list. He urged Lord Spencer to hasten the promotion of Nelson, whom he had elevated to Commodore
pro
tem
,
and lamented the lowly situation of Captain Troubridge. Later he demanded the removal of Rear Admiral Waldegrave.
⁶
Throughout this period Nelson continued to garner praise, and established his claim to command the detached squadron in 1798. Before then, he would also have occasion to demonstrate his unique tactical acumen under the stern gaze of ‘Old Jarvie’, who affected to be the hardest man in the service.

Beneath his grim public persona, however, Jervis hid a sensitive soul. Off duty, he liked nothing better than playing practical jokes on junior officers and gossiping with other men’s wives, although that was as far as he thought such things should go. That others were less
resolute was a matter to be regretted and countered. In 1796 he had to send several lieutenants home, their venereal complaints too far advanced for shipboard treatment, ruined by the dissolute habits of Leghorn. Whether this was the reason he asked Emma Hamilton to keep Nelson away from the local belles of Naples is not clear, but the value of keeping the fleet permanently at sea, away from such temptation, was clear.

Four years as Commander in Chief Mediterranean was a terrible burden to place on any man, particularly one as dedicated and courageous as Jervis. Under his leadership the easy-going fleet that Hood had created, and which only he could lead, was reformed. New ships and men, drilled into professional fighting machines by constant exercise, transformed his small fleet into the most effective fighting force on the planet. Jervis’s fleet would set the world an example of ‘skill, discipline, and subordination’ – it had never lacked the first quality, but the two latter were entirely absent when he arrived.
⁷
Even before he had the chance to prove his point, he knew the Spanish would be ‘cut to pieces’ by his fleet making ‘its way through them in every direction’.
⁸
When the chance for glory came he was heavily outnumbered. But he not only won the battle, but also, having destroyed the enemy’s will to fight, imposed a crippling close blockade, a very public humiliation for the proud Spanish admirals to endure.

These were the methods of a new age, the age of total war. With the mass armies of revolutionary France rampaging across Europe, only a revitalised fleet could resist the threat of a pan-European fleet – French, Dutch, Spanish and more. This ‘Mediterranean Fleet’ discipline was the terror of the service, and its salvation. Nelson was at one with him, and was accordingly sent to restore order on that ‘abomination’, the newly arrived
Theseus
.
⁹
Nelson admired Jervis’s concern to impose sound, thoughtful administration, to preserve the health and welfare of his men, select and reward the dedicated professional officers, and keep his ships efficient and prepared for long cruises at any moment. The system Jervis developed – basing his fleet at isolated anchorages, far from the temptations of port and the endless excuses for delay to be found in dockyards – would be vital between 1803 and 1805. The fact that they saw eye to eye on this point removed any lingering doubts Jervis may have harboured about Nelson’s fitness for a fleet command.
¹⁰
The point would be proved during the brief Baltic command of 1801, when Nelson would employ the same administrative
and organisational style as Jervis: even his standing orders were largely based on those Jervis had issued, copies of which he kept as a handy reference.
¹¹

The two men possessed a complementarity that is perhaps unique in naval history. Jervis moulded fleets, reorganised strategy, overhauled administration and imposed his will on the enemy at the highest level. His root-and-branch reform of the Navy broke the back of an eighteenth-century attitude that tolerated abuses, corruption and incompetence as an inevitable consequence of the political and economic system.
¹²
Yet for all his solid professional merit, strategic grasp and understanding, Jervis lacked the intuitive, creative spark that could transcend the routine, the insight and judgement to unhinge the enemy, the
coup
d
’
oeil
to spot the flaw in their dispositions and the absolute self-confidence to disobey a direct order. He found the qualities that he lacked in Nelson, qualities brought to fruition by Hood’s tutelage, and he had the courage to stand by this troubled genius when things went wrong either in battle or on shore. Moreover, he understood the type of role that Nelson was well-equipped to take, and also that he would have been ill-suited to the drudgery of the Grand Fleet’s close blockade of Brest: the very success of the blockade, meaning that the enemy would never come out while he was there, would have gnawed at his soul. Instead Jervis sent Nelson’s friend and saviour William Cornwallis to take up that thankless task: here was a man who would not be defeated by storm, or any number of Frenchmen.
¹³
It was on Cornwallis that Jervis anchored the strategy of the war.

*

The Mediterranean campaign of 1796 began with some cause for optimism: the Fleet now possessed a secure insular base on Corsica, a new Commander in Chief, and the usual protestations of commitment from Austria and various Italian allies. Unfortunately the British government was too busy with other, more pressing demands to accord the theatre the priority it demanded. British resources were over-stretched, while those of the various allies were failing. Corsica, which could have been a source of real strength, was largely neglected. As Home Secretary the Duke of Portland was responsible for the island, but he was only concerned to reduce expense. The strategic advantages obvious to Nelson, Jervis and Elliot were the key to an effective Mediterranean policy. Yet Elliot was always short of money and
troops. Rather than exploiting his island as the base for offensive strokes, he had to concede the initiative to the enemy.
¹⁴
The scale of the war was too great for his tiny force to act alone on the mainland, and the Austrians were no longer on the coast.

Nelson had not enjoyed the brief period when Vice Admiral Sir Hyde Parker held the command: Parker ‘did not treat me very well … and I should be sorry to put it in his power again’, he observed later that season.
¹⁵
His third year in the Mediterranean began with reflections on the subjects that would dominate the following twelve months. Personally, as he told Fanny, he was anxious to go home, and his worn-out ship was only fit to escort the next convoy. Yet he remained intellectually committed to the war, anticipating that the French must attack to plunder the ‘gold mine’ that was Italy, and he expected them to come by the coast road with transport shipping. Blocking such operations had been his mission in 1795. The only way he could reconcile these conflicting concerns for home and glory was to hope for an early peace.
¹⁶

His future was settled by his first meeting with Jervis. He had declined a written offer of a larger, better-paid ship but he was not prepared for the personal touch of a man he had met but once, and then briefly many years before. Jervis understood the man, and won his loyalty by making him feel special:

Nelson hedged a little, promising to stay if his flag came before
Agamemnon
went home, declaring that he would be proud to hoist it under Jervis’s command.

The object of this letter was to persuade Fanny that his decision to remain on station was inevitable, reflecting merit, possibilities and rewards rather than his own desire. Jervis had won his heart. Nelson would not abandon anyone who was prepared to invest so much charm, flattery and genuine esteem in retaining his services. Subconsciously he hoped that retailing Jervis’s compliments would satisfy Fanny and enable him to remain on station until the peace. Desperate for glory, and fancying the chances improved by the new
admiral, he concluded, ‘my health was never better than at the moment of writing’.
¹⁷

Jervis, too, was satisfied to have confirmed what he had heard of this remarkable officer and secured his services for the foreseeable future. He informed the First Lord that he would send Nelson back to the Gulf of Genoa ‘where he has so eminently distinguished himself’.
¹⁸
He was anxious that Spencer should recognise the name when the time came to ask for something more. This was significant as Spencer had just refused Nelson’s request for a commodore’s pendant, arguing that there were already too many flag officers in the theatre.
¹⁹
Spencer had missed the point: there were indeed many flags, but few of them belonged to admirals capable of independent command.

Fresh detached service occasioned a little jealousy on the part of fellow captains, but Nelson, confident he had earned the compliment, gave them a straight answer. The mission remained unaltered, blocking any small-scale seaborne movements.
²⁰
He continued to be impressed by Jervis, who refused to go ashore at Leghorn, where his predecessor had lingered too long and where, as Nelson knew, many an officer was indulging his vices. He was a ‘man of business’ who would make short work of the French fleet. Having read the King’s speech at the opening of Parliament on 27 October Nelson could see little hope of a just peace – France had not been beaten enough to concede.
²¹

From the outset, Jervis treated Nelson as a trusted confidant, a close colleague and a fellow flag officer. He sent him to report on the condition of the French fleet at Toulon: there were five new ships of the line, so Jervis could spare none to go home. To reconcile Fanny to this new delay, Nelson retailed further flattery. ‘Sir John from his manner I plainly see does not wish me to leave this station. He seems at present to consider me as an assistant more than a subordinate, for I am acting without orders.’ He also reported Jervis’s response to a query about Nelson’s promotion prospects: ‘You must have a larger ship for we cannot spare you either as admiral or Captain.’ The older man had won the heart of his brightest subordinate by treating him as an equal, by concurring in his own estimate of his worth.
²²
Until his flag arrived Nelson was anxious to have a commodore’s pendant as symbol of his authority over his squadron, a higher rank to help his discussions with the Austrians and a record of his achievements.