Nelson: The Essential Hero (23 page)

It was while he was at Gibraltar that a small incident occurred which, while seemingly insignificant in itself, shows that he had learned over the years some of the essentials of diplomacy. Despite the fact that on 11 April he had been compelled to write to the American and Danish Consuls at Cadiz that, in view of the war with Spain, no neutral vessels could be permitted to enter or leave Cadiz, he now came to the rescue of some American merchant ships which were at anchor in the harbour of Malaga. Nelson, who had been so adamant about the application of the Navigation Law against the Americans in the West Indies and who had also certainly regarded these former colonials with dislike, was now appealed to by the American Consul at Malaga to come to his aid. Although the United States and France were at peace, the Consul had been informed that some French privateers which were lying in the port had been instructed by their government to seize the American vessels as soon as they put to sea. Nelson immediately sent a frigate to lie off Malaga, to protect the Americans when they came out, and with orders to escort them to their required destination - whether ports on the Barbary Coast or out of the Strait of Gibraltar. To the Consul he wrote: 'I am sure of fulfilling the wishes of my Sovereign, and I hope of strengthening the harmony which at present so happily subsists between the two nations.’ On 15 May 1797, Fanny wrote to her husband from Bath, mentioning among much else :

You will see by the papers the unhappy situation this country has been from the seamen, wishing for an increase of pay and their dislike for some particular officers. Sir Bickerton [Admiral Sir Richard Bickerton whom Nelson had known in the West Indies] . . . although the sailors have suffered him to return to his ship, still threaten his life. After they had once driven him on shore and allowed him to return he addressed them on the impropriety of their conduct, the great lenity of his Majesty
etc.
(it would have been well had he stopped there) but he said he knew he had a set of rascals to deal with, that expression had made them even more inveterate than ever.

Nelson had long known all about the troubles in the Channel fleet, and he was later (1803) to make a number of recommendations to St Vincent, who was then First Lord, about manning, inducements to join the Navy rather than impressment, and improvements in pay and prize money. But at the moment, with England’s back against the wall, he could have no more tolerance towards indiscipline, let alone the suggestion of mutiny, than St Vincent himself. In July that year, for instance, there was a trial by court-martial of four mutineers aboard the
St George
, in which it was disclosed that they had confederates aboard four other ships (one of them being Nelson’s former
Captain
). They were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged from the yardarm on the following morning, which chanced to be a Sunday. St Vincent’s second-in-command, Vice-Admiral Thompson, ‘presumed to censure the execution on the Sabbath’: as St Vincent reported, ‘I have insisted on his being removed from the fleet immediately.’

Nelson thoroughly approved his commander-in-chief’s implacable resolve that the infection which had attacked the Channel fleet, and which was brought out in ships coming from home, should be eliminated at source. He commented: ‘Had it been Christmas Day, instead of Sunday, I would have executed them.’ But, before this happened, and shortly after his rejoining the fleet off Cadiz, his flag was transferred to the
Theseus
which had been sent out from the Channel fleet because she had been one of the ships in which there had been mutinous conduct. St Vincent had carefully selected Nelson and his captain Ralph Miller because he knew that, though both were disciplinarians, they were humanitarians also, and that Nelson possessed that especial quality which men will invariably follow. It was not a happy appointment for Nelson or for Miller, but Nelson knew well enough how seamen’s rations were underweight and sold by contractors at fraudulent prices, and he had fought before for their inalienable rights to be properly paid for the services that they had rendered. His sympathies were with the sailors — provided always that they knew their limits within the reins of decent and fair authority.

The
Theseus
, he discovered within hours of being aboard her, had left England without proper provisioning - almost destitute indeed of everything from victuals to all the necessaries for the maintenance of a ship. She had never seen any service. He was lucky at this point that, quite apart from an admirable captain in Miller, he had a number of old ‘Agamemnons’ with him who were able to infuse into the broken-spirited crew a sense of what it could be like to live under a good commanding officer in a ‘happy ship’. Nelson was very quick in acquainting St Vincent with the fact that he would soon be calling on the commissariat for the supply of practically everything from clean-casked food to rope, and even nails.

On 24 May Nelson had transferred to the
Theseus
and by 15 June he was able to write in a letter to Fanny :

The
Theseus
was one of the ships concerned in the business at home for which scare her late Captain Aylmer left her fancying her crew intended to carry her into Cadiz and had always a party of marines under arms. I have found a more orderly set of men. A few nights ago a paper was dropped on the quarter-deck. I send you a copy.

Success attend Admiral Nelson God bless Captain Miller we thank them for the officers they have placed over us.

We are happy and comfortable and will shed every drop of blood in our veins to support them, and the name of
Theseus
shall be immortalised as high as
Captain's
SHIP’S COMPANY.

Like so many essentially humane men Nelson was intensely practical : never a sentimentalist. While liberals of his own day (like ours) might bewail in words and print the plight of the sailor or the working man, Nelson
did
something. On 30 June, for instance, on blockading station aboard
Theseus
off Cadiz, he wrote in another letter to Fanny : ‘With your approbation I intend my next winter’s gift at Burnham to be fifty good large blankets with the letter N wove in the centre that they may not be sold. I believe they may be made for about 15 shillings of the very best quality and they will last some person or other for seven years at least, and it will not take off from anything the parish might give.’

Meanwhile the continuous blockade of Cadiz occupied his time. Nelson constantly expected that the Spanish fleet would come out, and that this would coincide with a Levanter which would boost the remainder of their ships from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, thus making a fleet of forty sail-of-the-line; against which St Vincent could oppose no more than twenty. He had no fear of the outcome : ‘We in the advance are, night and day, prepared for battle : our friends in England need not fear the event.’ On 3 July, on instructions from his Commander-in-Chief, who hoped to make Cadiz so unpleasant that the enemy would come out rather than cower within the harbour walls, Nelson conducted a bombardment of the town. Although he was the most junior flag-officer, he was entrusted with half of the sail-of-the-line for the operation. This was a sign of St Vincent’s trust which far outweighs all the arguments that have been raised as to his having slighted Nelson in his report on the recent battle, or having in any way undervalued his brilliant junior.

Nelson, disregarding, as usual, Fanny’s urgent demands that he should not expose himself in positions which were not normally those required of an admiral, was present in a small-boat action. This was something that not even a captain would normally have engaged in, for such missions were those assigned to a lieutenant or, at the most, a commander. Nelson, of course, was never one to disguise his valour and, if the sentence from his autobiography reads like rodomontade, one must at the same time accept it as truth :

It was during this period that perhaps my personal courage was more conspicuous than at any other part of my life. In an attack of the Spanish gun-boats I was boarded in my barge with its common crew of ten men, coxswain, Captain Fremantle and myself, by the commander of the gun-boats; the Spanish barge rowed twenty-six oars, besides officers, thirty men in the whole. This was a service hand to hand with swords, in which my coxswain, John Sykes, now no more, twice saved my life.

An anonymous correspondent who was present during this boat-to-boat affray wrote that:

Don Miguel Tyrason, singled out the Admiral’s barge; in which was John Sykes, as gallant a sailor as ever took slops from a purser, or shared his grog with his mess-mates. . . . Nelson parried a blow which would have saved him from being at the Nile. ... It was a desperate struggle, and once we were nearly carried. John Sykes was close to Nelson on his left hand, and he seemed more concerned for the admiral’s life than for his own : he hardly ever struck a blow but to save his gallant officer.

Sykes, who had stood next to Nelson on the quarter-deck of the
San Josef
, was another East Anglian (from the Fen district of Lincolnshire). He not only saved Nelson’s life twice but, as the account goes, saw a blow descending which would have severed the head of Nelson. In that second of thought which a cool man possesses, Sykes saw that he could not ward the blow with his cutlass. . . . He interposed his own hand! We all saw it - we were witnesses to the gallant deed, and we gave in revenge one cheer and one tremendous rally. Eighteen of the Spaniards were killed, and we boarded and carried her: there being not one man left on board who was not either dead or wounded.

As a result of this action St Vincent made Sykes a warrant gunner. He was dead within a year, killed by the explosion of a cannon. Sykes goes largely unrecorded in the history of his country. But for him, England’s greatest naval genius would never have survived to fight the Battles of the Nile, Copenhagen, or Trafalgar.

Writing
to Fanny on 14 July 1797, Nelson had some good news about prize money, adding laconically : ‘I fancy you will not find it amount to much, £7 or 800. . . .’ He then went on to say: ‘You must not expect to hear very soon from me as I am going on a little cruise.’ This, in fact, was the attack on Tenerife which had been in his mind ever since he had failed to intercept the Spanish squadron that had been reported on its way with the treasure fleet. Nelson may possibly have been familiar with Clarendon’s verdict on the great Robert Blake that ‘He was the first man that declined the old track. . . . He was the first man that brought ships to contemn castles on the shore, which had ever been thought very formidable, but were discovered by him to make a noise only, and to fright those who could rarely be hurt by them.’ Nelson had had experience in Corsica against castles and fortifications, and had come away with a rather poor opinion of them. He had seen that a comparative handful of determined sailors and marines could make short work of such shore defences. He was just modest enough to say that ‘I do not reckon myself equal to Blake’, but he still felt that what Blake had done before him at Santa Cruz he could do again.

He was not confident, however, that such an operation could easily be conducted by ships alone. Nelson knew his Atlantic, and he knew how the north-east trade winds blow home upon the Canary Islands. Ships could sail into the harbour of Santa Cruz but they certainly could not rely upon a wind to blow them out. One of the reasons that Nelson had been so eager to see the withdrawal of the remaining troops of the Elba garrison was that he hoped they could be used in the operation which he proposed to St Vincent should be made against Santa Cruz. General de Burgh, however, whose men had been unemployed ever since they had been evacuated, was unwilling to allow them to take part in an enterprise where, most probably, he saw little purpose or profit for the Army, and only a great deal for the Navy - if there should chance to be a treasure ship lying in the harbour. This was natural enough, and only historians prejudiced in favour of the Navy can see it as otherwise. The object, after all, was not to capture Tenerife or any of the Canary Islands. From a military point of view the whole expedition might only be regarded as something that might possibly give the sailors and their officers some prize money. On a wider aspect, however, it should have been seen that the deprivation of the gold and silver, upon which the unstable Spanish economy relied, would greatly contribute to the weakening of France’s ally and England’s enemy. Neither General de Burgh nor General Charles O’Hara, who was in command of the garrison at Gibraltar, was prepared to see things in this light. Their viewpoint must not be disregarded. After all, it was only fourteen years since the Great Siege of ‘The Rock’ had ended; the memory of it was fresh in everyone’s mind, and Nelson’s admirer, Colonel Drinkwater, had helped to ensure that it was not forgotten. If Gibraltar was yet again to be besieged, it was the duty of the Army to see that it could resist efficiently. Furthermore, if Gibraltar were to fall, there would be little or no chance of a British fleet ever again being able to make its way into the Mediterranean. As was to appear in the following year, this was far more salient than any cutting out of treasure-ships.

Although the idea for the attack on Santa Cruz had originally been discussed between St Vincent and Nelson as early as April, it was not until July that it was finally carried out. Indeed, in view of the Army’s disinclination to be involved, nothing might have come of it at all if the frigates
Lively
and
Minerve
, with Lieutenant Hardy in charge of the boats, had not carried out a neat action at the end of May. They descended on the harbour of Santa Cruz, cut out the French frigate
Mutine
, and made off safely. All this had been achieved in daylight. It seemed to indicate that a larger force, coming in at night with all the advantage of surprise, might achieve considerable success. Even so, nothing would have come of the plan if the bait had not arrived. But when it was heard that a large treasure-ship,
El Principe d* Asturias,
had reached Santa Cruz from Manila and was lying there not daring to risk the homeward passage back to Spain, the scene seemed set.