Nelson: The Essential Hero (20 page)

Nelson suffered a hard winter in every sense of the term. The weather was cold all over Europe with heavy falls of snow; the King of Naples had made peace with the French; and there were many complications involving Sir Gilbert Elliot as Viceroy and the military commander, General de Burgh, as to the validity of the orders for the withdrawal from Elba. There were seventeen ships on station at Porto Ferraio and Sir John Jervis’s orders were, to Nelson at any rate, quite clear. They and all troops and stores were to be withdrawn, some destined for Gibraltar, and the rest for Lisbon. But it was not until the end of January that Nelson could successfully effect the major part of the evacuation, by which time everyone concerned had received further written and concise orders that ‘cleared their yardarms’. Among other items of minor consideration, Nelson’s friend, Captain Fremantle of the
Inconstant
, had married a Miss Betsy Wynne in Naples. Both the new bride and her sister kept journals, and it is from these that we learn much about the happenings of those days. Lady Emma Hamilton also had played a large part in making the match during a visit by Fremantle to Naples. The seventeen-year-old bride, upon her return to Elba aboard the
Inconstant
with her husband, was to record of their first dinner party that ‘Old Nelson [was] very civil, but does not say much.’ He was thirty-seven. Disease, wounds, and long years at sea must indeed have made him seem ‘old’ to a young woman. His taciturnity was due not to moroseness - he had a lively nature - but to the loneliness of command.

It was
not until the end of January 1797 that Nelson was free to leave Elba. He had long been fretful to be gone, for all the months that, in his view, had been largely wasted in prolonging the weak British sphere of influence in the central Mediterranean had been months when he was quite certain that under Jervis they could have forced an action on the French and Spaniards and resoundingly defeated them. But, as Pitt and his ministers had seen fit to withdraw the fleet from the inland sea, then the sooner they were gone the better. He fretted with anxiety, too, that Jervis, during his absence, would take the fleet out of the Tagus - where the bulk of the ships were secured - and manage to provoke a major action with the French and Spaniards in the Atlantic. Having missed his chance of participating in a real fleet action through the sluggishness of Hotham off Toulon, he was desperate not to miss another. As it turned out, he was only just in time to be present at the engagement that came to be known as the Battle of Cape St Vincent.

The
Minerve
reached Gibraltar on 9 February, where they learned that the bulk of the Spanish fleet from Cartagena had passed through the Strait four days before. Pausing only to water and collect Lieutenants Hardy and Culverhouse, together with the other members of the prize crew who had been returned from the
Santa Sabina
, Nelson weighed anchor and set off westward for the Atlantic. It looked very much as if what he had feared was about to take place -a fleet action in which he would have no share. Two Spanish ships-of-the-line, which had been at anchor in Algeciras Bay keeping an eye upon Gibraltar, immediately gave chase, seeing an easy prey in the lightly armed frigate. The incident which followed has become immortalised because, among the guests whom Nelson had aboard the
Minerve
was Colonel John Drinkwater, who had served throughout the great siege of Gibraltar and had become famous as its historian (his
Siege of Gibraltar
being a best-seller of its time). Drinkwater, gazing astern at the pursuing Spanish ships, asked Nelson if he thought that there was any likelihood of an engagement, to which the latter replied that it was very possible but, looking aloft at his commodore’s broad pendant, ‘Before the Dons get hold of that bit of bunting, I will have a struggle with them, and sooner than give up the Frigate I’ll run her ashore.’

Shortly after this, with true British
sang-froid
, the visitors and several of the officers of the
Minerve
sat down to dine at the Commodore’s table. Colonel Drinkwater was in the process of congratulating Lieutenant Thomas Masterman Hardy, First Lieutenant of the
Minerve
, on his being no longer a prisoner of the Spaniards, and was expecting no doubt to hear some detailed story of the circumstances of his captivity when one of the most alarming cries that can ever be heard at sea rang out - ‘Man overboard!’ The sailor, then as now, had his code and, no matter what the circumstances, if a man had fallen into the sea every effort must be made to rescue him. The sea was always the enemy - far more than those other enemies in men-of-war who moved upon its surface. Very few sailors could swim, for almost no one at that time considered swimming to be a useful or even a healthful exercise. It is doubtful, for instance, if Nelson could swim. Men who fell overboard, or who were blown off ships in action, could usually do little more than ‘dog-paddle’ until they reached a boat or piece of floating wreckage. But there were always these basic codes that governed life at sea, one of which is cynically expressed in an old navy saying: ‘Messmate before shipmate, shipmate before soldier, soldier before dog.’

The dinner party immediately broke up and Colonel Drinkwater commented: The officers of the ship ran on deck; I, with others, ran to the stern-windows to see if anything could be observed of the unfortunate man; we had scarcely reached them before we noticed the lowering of the jolly-boat [a small ship’s boat always kept at the ready], in which was my late neighbour, Hardy, with a party of sailors; and before many seconds had elapsed, the current of the Straits [which runs strongly to the eastward] had carried the jolly-boat far astern of the Frigate, towards the Spanish ships. Of course, the first object was to recover the fallen man, but he was never seen again. Hardy soon made a signal to that effect, and the man was given up as lost. The attention of ever/ person was now turned to the safety of Hardy and his boat’s crew; their situation was extremely perilous, and their danger was every instant increasing, from the fast sailing of the headmost ship of the chase, which by this time had approached nearly within gun-shot of the
Minerve.
The jolly-boat’s crew pulled ‘might and main’ to regain the Frigate, but apparently made little progress against the current of the Straits. At this crisis, Nelson, casting an anxious look at the hazardous situation of Hardy and his companions, exclaimed ‘By God! I’ll not lose Hardy: back the mizen topsail.’ No sooner said than done, the
Minerve'
s progress was retarded,
having the current carry her down towards Hardy
[sic] and his party, who seeing this spirited manoeuvre . . . naturally redoubled their actions to rejoin the Frigate. To the landsmen on board the
Minerve
an action now appeared to be inevitable; and so, it would appear, thought the Enemy, who surprised and confounded by this daring manoeuvre of the Commodore (being ignorant of the accident that led to it), must have construed it into a direct challenge.

The captain of the leading ship, the
Terrible
, almost immediately shortened sail, and his consort followed suit. The only conclusion that can be drawn from their doing so is that the two Spanish ships-of-the-line, seeing the
Minerve
drop back, must have assumed that the frigate was in touch with the main body of the British fleet, and that they were being drawn into a trap. Nelson’s humane foolhardiness has never escaped note - especially since Thomas Hardy went on to become his captain aboard
Victory
and to share in his last triumph. What has often been misconstrued, however, is his action (as described by Drinkwater) of backing the mizzen topsail and ‘having the current carry her down towards Hardy’. Of course, both the ship and the jolly-boat were being impelled eastward, backwards, towards the enemy - for a current has the same effect upon a ship as upon a ship’s boat. What Nelson did by ‘backing’ the topsail was, in landsman’s terms, rather similar to putting on a brake. The
Minerve
was still subject to the same current as Hardy’s open boat, but Nelson had carefully reduced his forward rate of progress so that the oared boat could come up with him. Nelson had no intention whatsoever of coming into action with two heavily armed ships - especially when he wanted to catch up with his own fleet and join Sir John Jervis. Studding-sails, those light-weather sails, which have been compared with ‘wings upon the yardarms’, were now run out and the frigate drew away from her pursuers. With Hardy and his crew safely back aboard, the
Minerve
altered course slightly to the south and lost her pursuers.

The adventures of the night were far from over. The easterly wind that had been blowing brought up its usual companions in the Strait of Gibraltar - humidity, mist, and then fog. The warm air flowing out of the Mediterranean felt the colder touch of the Atlantic, and the frigate moved slowly and stealthily through a thick night - a night in which they gradually became aware of the presence of other ships. Sighs of sails and the creaking of rigging, the discharge of minute guns, the soft wallow and wash as they passed quite close by a large vessel, showed them that they were in the middle of a great fleet. Nobody could be quite certain whether it was the Spanish battle fleet they were passing through, or a large convoy bound for the West Indies. Fortunately for all aboard the little
Minerve
, so thick and dark was the night that no one aboard the other ships could know that it was a British frigate which was gliding through their midst. The
Minerve
was, in fact, passing through the Spanish fleet, which was guarding a valuable convoy of mercury ultimately destined for the Spanish colonies overseas (where it was used in the amalgamation of silver ore). Blown out into the Atlantic by the same Levanter that had lofted Nelson through the Strait, they were waiting for a favourable wind to take them into Cadiz. The major part of this fleet was ultimately intended to join up with the French at Brest and then, combined with the Dutch from the Texel, to form a massive armada that would pave the way for the invasion of England. Despite the failure of a recent attempt on Ireland and another on Wales, it was still felt that, given sufficient naval superiority in the Narrow Seas, the French could land and crush the only power in Europe that still resisted them. The battle that was to follow blew their design to pieces.

On the morning of 13 February, having passed unscathed through the enemy, Nelson came up with Sir John Jervis and the British fleet some twenty-five miles to the west of Cape St Vincent. The southwestern extremity of Portugal, Cape St Vincent is an imposing mass of rock, steep-to on all sides. Of it the Admiralty Pilot says: ‘The western side of the cape is so precipitous and full of caves, that the noise produced by the sea breaking on it may be heard at some distance.’ It is a formidable natural phenomenon, the place where Europe contemplates the long expanses of the Atlantic. It was from nearby Sagres that the great Portuguese prince, Henry the Navigator, in the early fifteenth century had first begun the systematic exploration of Africa and the islands of the Ocean Sea. A place of destiny.

Nelson transferred his broad pendant to the
Captain
, while two of his guests in the
Minerve
, Sir Gilbert Elliot and Colonel John Drinkwater, were put aboard the frigate
Lively
which was destined to carry back the news of the impending action to England. For there could be little doubt now that the first great trial of strength at sea between Britain and her enemies was soon to take place. The Spanish fleet should, in fact, have been in Cadiz harbour watering and provisioning prior to its northerly excursion to the Channel, but having been blown out into the Atlantic by the Levanter, it was now running back under a wind which had just switched to slightly south of west. The British fleet to the north of them numbered fifteen sail-of-the-line, of which the
Britannia
and the
Victory
mounted 100 guns, the
Barfleur
and
Prince George
98, and the
Blenheim
and
Namur
90. These were all three-deckers. There were in addition eight 74s; the
Captain
,
Colossus
,
Culloden, Egmont, Excellent
,
Goliath
,
Irresistible
and
Orion.
There was also a 64, the
Diadem
, four frigates and a sloop - making a grand total of twenty ships, but only fifteen sail-of-the-line.

The fleet through which Nelson had passed on the previous night and which, as he informed Jervis on his arrival, seemed to have gone about and headed in an easterly direction was considerably larger than that of the British. Jervis should, in fact, have had under his command a further seven ships-of-the-line, but Admiral Man - at a time when Jervis was still in the Mediterranean - had taken his squadron home from Gibraltar, against orders and supposing that the Mediterranean was lost and that England would welcome seven ships rather than none at all. For this desertion, except that it was not in the face of the enemy, he might well have been shot - rather than, as happened, merely ordered to haul down his flag. Jervis would almost certainly have been happy to see Man undergo quarterdeck execution - as had happened for much less reason to Admiral Byng in the year before Nelson’s birth.

Jervis was to confront a Spanish fleet of twenty-seven sail-of-the-line, accompanied by ten frigates, under the command of Admiral Don Jose de Cordoba. The Admiral’s flagship, the
Santissima Trinidad
, was the largest warship in the world, being a four-decker mounting 136 guns. Cordoba also had with him six three-deckers of 112 guns and one of 80 guns, the rest being 74s. All were excellent ships, but they were ill-manned and, as Nelson had previously observed, ‘The Dons can make fine ships, they cannot however make men.’ This was a natural enough observation for a partisan of the time, but, as history has often shown, the Spaniards are a very brave race. No, the trouble with the Spanish Navy at that time was that it was officered by noblemen -who, in general, considered the trade of the sea a common one; and it was manned by soldiers and a leavening of fishermen among a mass of conscripted peasants who knew an ox and a plough better than a rope and a gun. In this respect the Spaniards had learned little or nothing about the essence of nautical matters since the failure of the Armada in 1588.