Nelson (127 page)

Nelson was viewed as a strong commander, ready to punish genuine transgressions, but just and generally capable of being moved by the misfortunes of simpler men. Two seamen of the
Swiftsure
freshly illustrated this trait. They were in irons, accused of feigning insanity to obtain their discharge. On the reports of a physician and officers Jervis pronounced them guilty, but Nelson disagreed. ‘The sight of the two poor men in irons . . . has affected me more than I can express,’ he wrote to the commander-in-chief. ‘If Mr [Dr] Weir would look at them I should be glad. The youth may, I hope, be saved, as he has intervals of sense. His countenance is most interesting. If any mode can be devised for sending him home, I will with pleasure pay fifty pounds to place him in some proper place for his recovery. The other, I fear, is too old.’ Jervis could not be persuaded but Nelson stuck to his guns. ‘Depend on it,’ he said, ‘God Almighty’ had ‘afflicted them with the most dreadful of all diseases’. In the end the commander-in-chief relented to the extent of shifting the unfortunates to other ships, but he kept them under observation.
³⁴

Nelson sympathised with the complaints of men neglected or betrayed by those to whom they had rightly looked for protection, but he had no time for the downright treasonable, and supported his commander’s uncompromising efforts to prevent them from contaminating the fleet. The risk of going into action, probably against the odds, with fifth columnists in the ranks was not one he felt his companies deserved. He stood foursquare with Jervis in his severe handling of one very troubled ship, the
St George
.

Two men of the
St George
had been condemned to death, apparently for sodomy, but the ship’s company refused to allow them to be executed. There was talk of seizing the ship and taking it to Spithead, and officers feared that the malcontents were generating discontent in other companies. Jervis moved rapidly. Four ringleaders were arrested. They were tried on 7 and 8 July and hanged by their own comrades at nine o’clock the following morning – a Sunday. Two boatloads of men from every ship in the fleet were on hand to watch the executions. It was too much for Vice Admiral Sir Charles Thompson, who complained that the Sabbath had been profaned, but Jervis was adamant. He pointed out that few ships were immune to signs of disaffection, and the
Theseus
,
Captain
,
Britannia
,
Diadem
and
Egmont
all contained vulnerable elements. It was necessary to remove the guilty men as soon as possible. Nelson, who had addressed the company of the
Theseus
, thought his men ‘a very quiet set’, but was not complacent.
Newly restored to the command of the inshore squadron upon his return from the Mediterranean, he ordered boats to witness the miserable fates of the mutineers, and consoled a commander-in-chief smarting under criticism. The hangings were entirely appropriate, he told Jervis’s flag captain, and ‘had it been Christmas Day, instead of Sunday, I would have executed them. We know not what might have been hatched by a Sunday’s grog;
now
your discipline is safe.’
³⁵

Fortunately, Sir Horatio faced few such incidents. In July he had to endorse Captain Thomas Waller’s request for the trial of a boatswain and seaman of the
Emerald
for ‘very mutinous and seditious words’. Events overtook the rear admiral, and he had nothing to do with their hearing in August, but would certainly have approved of the execution of the boatswain, who had hinted at seizing the ship and taking it into a foreign port. Legitimate grievances were one thing, treachery another. In a war of survival, Nelson had no doubt that only the ultimate penalty fitted a wilful betrayal of the security of the realm.
³⁶

Among the team that turned the
Theseus
around were valued followers whose welfare Nelson continued to husband. If the war ended and ships were decommissioned, as everyone expected, what would become of those young officers still short of the sea time necessary to try for lieutenant, or to others making those vital but slippery steps from lieutenant to post-captain?

Some of Nelson’s old
Agamemnons
were already flying on their own as commanders and captains, and a number had been promoted to continue their journeys in other ships. Thomas Eager from Dingle in Ireland had joined the
Agamemnon
as a twenty-one-year-old able seaman in 1793 and been raised to midshipman. Following Nelson into the
Captain
, he was discharged to the
Belette
in October 1796 and would eventually make lieutenant. Nelson also served Charles David Williams, who had boarded the
San Nicolas
, by finding him a place on the
Ville de Paris
flagship in May 1797, and he too got a commission. Among these young men making their way in the world, many continued to look upon their years with Nelson as formative. Long afterwards Withers reported his progress to his old commander as if his approbation was still necessary.
³⁷

Compton and Summers were still with Sir Horatio in the early summer of 1797, but he was working assiduously on turning Josiah
Nisbet, Weatherhead, Bolton and Hoste into lieutenants. Jervis promised the young men commissions, but only when they had completed the necessary six years at sea. That was unfortunate, for neither Nisbet nor Hoste had reached the mandatory age required for a lieutenancy, and none it seems possessed sufficient sea time. Nelson decided that ‘a little cheating’ was required. Ages would have to be falsified and naval service invented.
³⁸

Obviously his stepson had special claims upon him. Officially, Josiah was far too young for a commission – he was merely seventeen and lieutenants were supposed to be over twenty – and he had only four years’ sea time. Moreover, while he had filled out physically and might pass for an older boy, Josiah remained diffident and immature, and had no obvious talent for command. There may already have been signs of the unreliability that would later worry Nelson. Three years on a detractor would accuse him of framing ‘a story the most infamous and false that ever disgraced the mouth of man’. But back in 1797 Berry, who briefly commanded a sloop before going home in the spring, wanted to borrow the boy for a spell to broaden his experience, while Nelson talked about persuading old West Indian associates to certify that he had served on their ships. Despite his tender age, Josiah was confirmed as a lieutenant in May and there is no doubt that Nelson had prevailed upon Jervis to swallow his principles and favour the boy, and that his record was embellished. Josiah’s ‘passing certificate’ is missing, but from a statement he made in 1817 it seems that Nelson certified that his stepson had served two years aboard the
Boreas
between 1785 and 1787. In fact, Nisbet was then with his mother, and rightly so since he was only five, six and seven years old.
³⁹

To help the others Nelson loosed his brother Maurice upon the ships’ books stored at the Navy Office in a search for additional sea time. A certain William Bolton had once served on the
Ardent
, Maurice discovered, and whether he was Nelson’s protégé or not, his service was commandeered. Thus armed, young Bolton of the
Theseus
passed his examination for lieutenant in June 1797, and was taken aboard Jervis’s flagship to prove himself a ‘steady young man’. He was twenty, and had received the king’s commission at the earliest regular age.
⁴⁰

Weatherhead and Hoste were more intractable cases, though Nelson hoped that their patron, Thomas Coke, might usefully pull some strings on their behalf. Weatherhead had been rated acting fifth lieutenant of the
Captain
on 2 April, but technically needed two more years of
service for confirmation. Hoste’s problem was different. It turned out that he had been on the books of the
Europa
as a child, but while his service record was fuller, he was more manifestly underage. Nelson resigned himself to leaving the boy with the fleet under the protection and guidance of the commander-in-chief. His efforts for Hoste were particularly public spirited. The Reverend Dixon Hoste had failed to reimburse Nelson the money he had spent upon the boy, but Sir Horatio’s patronage never failed. In the end William would repay Nelson in his own way, and become one of the finest frigate captains in naval history.
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The shield Nelson threw around loyal followers contrasted with the increasing ferocity of the war, for while his Tenerife plan simmered the admiral perpetrated one of the most ruthless acts of his career – the bombardment of Cadiz. Inherently, he was neither an inconsiderate man nor even a warmonger. ‘I pray to God to give us a speedy and honourable peace,’ he wrote to the Duke of Clarence in June. He felt so ill in any case that he doubted he could ‘fag much longer.’ However, four years of conflict and the successful savagery of the French armies had also hardened him, and his lifelong distaste for England’s Gallic neighbours was turning into hatred. When it came to thwarting their progress, even in a war with their more gentlemanly allies, the Spaniards, he was increasingly open to arguments of expediency. In the words of his favourite playwright, he began to ‘disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage’.
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Back in command of the inshore squadron, Sir Horatio anchored his five ships of the line some four miles out, sometimes with their sterns or heads towards the Spaniards, and sometimes presenting their broadsides. From above the whole formation resembled a drawn bow with the
Theseus
at its centre nearest the harbour mouth. He posted a guard frigate further inshore, ready to warn him of any untoward movement on the part of the Spaniards, and maintained a flotilla of launches and boats to row guard. Supplied by the fleet, and some fitted with guns, these boats gathered for orders or pulled back and forth like water beetles, especially at night when enemy counterattacks were most likely. They exchanged muffled and regularly changing passwords, some recalling such illustrious naval heroes as ‘Drake’, ‘Blake’ and ‘Anson’. Five miles or so to the rear of the inshore squadron rode
the rest of the British fleet, with the big
Ville de Paris
at its head. Admiral Jervis fired a salvo of terse letters to his young rear admiral, sometimes twice a day, and remained in effective control of the blockade throughout.
⁴³

Nelson virtually closed down the port, although as usual fishermen were given licence to ply their trade within prescribed limits. Others who ventured too far out were snapped up, two apparently by the
Orion
, under Captain Sir James Saumarez. During Nelson’s absence in the Mediterranean it had been Saumarez who commanded the inshore squadron at Cadiz, but Sir James bore no resentment at being reduced to second-in-command. Later the two would have their differences, but at this time they exchanged compliments, and Nelson openly lauded his junior’s judgement. ‘All you do is right,’ Nelson told him, ‘and can hardly want my sanction.’
⁴⁴

From the
Theseus
, Admiral Nelson focused his good eye upon the defences. As his telescope panned downwards from the impressive steeples and domes of Cadiz, and swept over the waterfront houses to the mall behind the long city wall with its parapet bastions, he could see the ladies of the town out walking. Cadiz occupied a spit or peninsula of land that struck northwest, enclosing an inner and outer harbour, both of which had been breached by Drake during his famous raid of 1587. Mazarredo’s fleet, with the admiral’s flag fluttering defiantly above the
Concepción
, was anchored behind a line drawn on a map between the fortifications of Cadiz, at the end of the spit, and St Mary’s on the mainland. With twenty-six sail of the line, the Spaniards outnumbered their British counterparts, but had good reasons to avoid battle. Their ships were in a poor condition and manned by soldiers rather than seamen.
⁴⁵

The possibility of storming Cadiz went briefly through British minds. Nelson’s action-hungry mind had always driven him towards land operations, of course, and his history was full of direct attacks or ideas and plans for direct attacks on difficult fortifications. San Juan, Marseilles, Tunis, Bastia, Calvi, San Remo, Vado, Leghorn, Porto Ferraio and Capraia . . . they all suggested his clear view that the navy’s role went beyond activities at sea. But the plan to attack Cadiz did not originate with its aggressive admiral but in London. It was sent to Jervis in a secret memorandum endorsed by Lord Spencer.

Far from being cautious, the Admiralty apparently favoured a plan to storm Cadiz to destroy or capture the shipping, dockyards and arsenal, and in April Jervis was told ‘that under the present circumstances of
the war, spirited and vigorous measures, involving some degree of risk, are so far preferable to a system of caution and reserve, as to justify’ his serious consideration. The assault was proposed, not ordered, but on the supposition that Jervis might try it he was given a written order to General Stuart, who commanded the British army in Portugal. Stuart was to supply Jervis with the troops and artillery Nelson had withdrawn from Elba, and personally to superintend their use at Cadiz. Furthermore, Jervis was also furnished with an order to O’Hara for a further one thousand soldiers from Gibraltar. Seldom had government seemed so enthusiastic.
⁴⁶

On this occasion it seems to have been the admirals on the spot who gave the operation the thumbs down. The commander-in-chief considered attacking St Mary’s to gain control of the harbour mouth, while Nelson contemplated an even bolder assault. ‘I long to be at them,’ he wrote after reading a report that half the guns on the line wall of Cadiz were unmounted. But the place was simply too powerful. According to the British consul at nearby Faro in Portugal, there were four thousands soldiers in Cadiz. Apart from St Mary’s, the castle of St Sebastian on the point of the spit and a few mortars near the back of the town and elsewhere, the line wall towards the bay alone bristled with seventy-eight guns. An attack was not feasible. In June, Nelson was commandeering four additional howitzers and field pieces, five hundred shells, ‘cases of fixed ammunition’, artillery men, ‘a devil cart’, scaling ladders and a bomb ketch, but the idea of a direct assault on the Spanish fortifications was wilting if not already dead. It is possible that the materiel was then merely being sought for a naval bombardment and the proposed expedition to Tenerife.
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