Nelson: The Essential Hero (6 page)

The first known extant letter from Nelson follows upon this important event, and is addressed to his brother William, at Christ’s Church College, Cambridge :

My father arrived in town on Friday evening in tolerable good health; my sister and brother are both well, and desire their love to you. I suppose you have not heard of my arrival in England yet, but we arrived on Thursday week. ... I passed my Degree as Master of Arts on the 9th instant [that is, passed the Lieutenant’s examination], and received my commission on the following day for a fine Frigate of 32 guns. So I am now left in the world to shift for myself, which I hope I shall do, so as to bring credit to myself and friends.

His manner is formal, his mood elated, but it would be some years before the acquired diction and style of the age would mellow into the ‘personal’ Nelson, one whose emotions leaped out from the thicket of convention.

He was lucky in his ship, the
Lowestoffe
, for his captain was William Locker, who had served under Admiral Hawke in the last war and had been wounded in an action with a French privateer, as a result of which he walked with a limp. He was in every sense a very fine example of a sea-officer, who had not let the Navy or anything else deprive him of a sense of humour and love of learning. Nelson was to come to regard him as a father, while he himself was treated like a son. But first of all, before his ‘fine Frigate’ took to the sea, spread her sails and headed west for the Caribbean, Nelson had to learn the other side of the coin that was entailed by the privilege of being a lieutenant.

One side is easily exemplified by the portrait for which he sat to the Swiss-born Royal Academician John Francis Rigaud, a competent craftsman of his time, who made his living out of just such ‘delineations’ of aspiring officers and middle-class civilians. Nowadays the camera would have captured Nelson’s likeness on passing out from Dartmouth, perhaps, and the portrait have been mounted in a silver frame in some family home for parents to point at proudly and say, ‘That is my son.’ The Rigaud portrait was commissioned by Nelson, undoubtedly with a view to giving it to his father. But it was not completed before he sailed for the West Indies, and in the end, with the rank changed to that of a captain, was given by Nelson to Captain Locker in 1781. The obverse of the coin, which probably was partly responsible for Nelson’s being unable to complete the sittings in 1777, was that the duties of a lieutenant could also entail being in charge of the press-gang. Since the First Lieutenant, who would normally have undertaken this charge, was away on leave it fell to the young Horatio to lead the party which combed the docks, the brothels, and sailors’ taverns to complete the complement. The ill-famed press-gang was made necessary through the lack of volunteers, and an insufficiency of those who had automatically been sent aboard under the terms of the Vagrancy Act. This Act laid down that ‘all disreputable persons’ were liable for impressment into the fleet, as were fishermen, sailors and watermen. A rendezvous for pressed men had been opened near the Tower of London, and it was from here that Nelson and his party sallied forth to comb suitable areas to complete the crew. On such excursions the press-gang went armed only with cudgels and belaying pins, although the officer and senior ratings would usually carry cutlasses - ‘more for their majesty to astonish the enemy’ than for use, though used they would be if there were any real attempt made to rescue their victims.

The composition of the Navy’s lower deck was mongrel. Captain Marryat refers to a ship which was manned by the men of nineteen nations, for anyone taken in these encounters was liable for impressment. John Masefield, who had served under sail and had heard from the old hands authentic tales of the way it was in their fathers’ days, wrote in 1905:

‘Tailors, little tradesmen, street loafers, all were fair game. They were taken to the boats and shipped aboard, and cracked across the heads with a cudgel if they protested.’ Imprisoned below under the guard of marine sentries, they were examined in due course by the surgeon and the senior officer aboard, and only those who could prove that they were entitled to exemption - apprentices, for instance, or merchant seamen who were already signed aboard a ship - were spared from impressment. The rest were entered on the muster book; names, physical descriptions, and such identifying marks as tattoos being duly recorded, so that, in the event of any of them deserting, their records were lodged with the ship and their particulars could be sent to the Admiralty. It was on one of these cold wet nights along the Thames foreshore that Nelson, while out on a duty that can only have seemed demoralising to anyone of his nature, was suddenly taken ill. Most probably it was a recurring bout of his malaria, though one may suspect that some psychosomatic cause was at the root of it. He had to be carried back to the rendezvous by a strong young midshipman named Bromwich, who later rose to lieutenant and served under Nelson for a number of years.

The French, more intelligent than their ancient enemies, although they did resort to such rough-and-ready methods for manning their ships when times were hard, generally tried to attract suitable men to the marine in a practical way. Fishermen and merchant-seamen were given training aboard naval vessels and a bonus for such services in time of peace. The fact that during the Napoleonic Wars the quality of their seamen, and indeed of their officers, was generally speaking lower than that of the British was largely due to the effects of the Revolution, which had decimated the ranks of the officer class. It was also caused by the absurd idea that
liberte
,
egalite, fraternite
could prevail aboard any ship at sea - let alone a man-of-war - and to the fact that the best gunners were recruited for the army to serve Napoleon’s ambitions in the sphere in which he was supreme, the land.

In July 1777, after another sparkling passage of the North Atlantic, although this time in a frigate on convoy-duty with eighteen merchantmen to protect, Nelson renewed his acquaintance with the Caribbean on the Jamaica station. ‘Always lay a Frenchman close, and you will beat him’ was one of Captain Locker’s laconic injunctions to his young officer (one he would never forget), and it was probably with this in mind that Nelson’s ‘active’ nature prompted him to seek something more adventurous than a frigate on station duty. He was given command of a schooner, the
Little Lucy,
a tender to the
Lowestoffe
and named after Locker’s first-born child. He had earned this early command. On the
Lowestoffe
’s second cruise out of Port Royal in November she came up with an American privateer. The weather was bad, a heavy sea running, and when the time came to board the prize the First Lieutenant, whose prerogative it was to lead the boarding party, was an unconscionably long time below putting on his sword. The ship’s boat lying alongside was in danger of filling and the irate Locker bawled down: ‘Have I no officer who can board the prize ?’ The Master of the
Lowestoffe
was making his way to the gangway when Nelson turned him back with the words, ‘It is my turn now.’ The boat reached the American vessel which was lying half waterlogged, having practically driven herself under in her efforts to escape. Nelson and his men - like many a lifeboat’s crew in later years - had the harrowing experience of going in on a roller, clean over the deck, and out on the other side. Finally they got aboard and the prize was taken, but in the thick weather and spindrift-seas they lost contact with the
Lowestoffe.
Yet, despite everything, the young lieutenant managed to get his prize safe back to port. In ‘Daddy’ Locker’s eyes his protege had proved himself worthy of the trust that was now to put him in charge of the
Little Lucy.

His first command. . . . He, who would order great fleets in action, when cumulus clouds of sails covered the horizon, now knew the instant joy of having beneath his feet a schooner whose every rope and pitch-line of deck, tarred lanyard, wooden dead-eye, and square foot of sail came within his immediate vision and control. How well he remembered it! ‘In this vessel I made myself a complete pilot for all the passages through the Islands situated on the north side of Hispaniola.’ The words ring back to Drake. Though centuries separated the two men there was something very similar about them. Both were the sons of clergymen, both first learned the trade of the sea in small boats on the east coast, and saw in their country’s enemy an almost personal foe whom they detested. Drake in his staunch Protestantism had seen Philip II as anti-Christ, and Nelson was to regard Napoleon as the embodiment of evil in the shape of revolutionary, atheist France.

In 1778 Sir Peter Parker arrived in Jamaica as Commander-in-Chief. Nelson was warmly recommended to him by Captain Locker, with the result that Sir Peter took Nelson into his flagship
Bristol
as Third Lieutenant. Within the year he had risen to be First Lieutenant, and on 8 December 1778 he was promoted to be Commander of the brig
Badger.
War with France had begun, the West Indies station was already an active one in view of the American Revolution, and Nelson’s rise - though rapid - was somewhat predictable, particularly in view of the fact that not only Captain Locker, but also the new Commander-in-Chief and his formidable wife Lady Parker, had all taken to Horatio. Influence counted, but it is clear that there was a great deal more to it than that. His last promotion in this year occurred after Maurice Suckling had died - leaving a will in which all his nephews were to inherit five hundred pounds, and his nieces one thousand. The rich and childless Comptroller had been a kind promoter of the young Nelson; had indeed launched him in no mean way on a career in which he was to repay his uncle a thousandfold. But his influence died with him, and it was to Admiral Parker’s credit that he promoted Nelson entirely on his own judgement.

Nelson’s first job in command was to ‘protect the Mosquito shore and the Bay of Honduras, from the depredations of the American privateers’. One letter from this period of his life tells us more about the young man, his enthusiasm, his affection for friends and his dedication to his calling than a ream of words. Captain Locker had fallen ill, as did most who spent much time in the West Indies, where everything from yellow fever to malaria, manchineel poisoning and the pox had played havoc with European man ever since Columbus had first stumbled upon this outwardly smiling sea. ‘A bloody war and a sickly season’ had long been the toast amongst those who aspired to promotion among the offshore islands of the New World.

Nelson’s letter to Locker was dated aboard the
Badger
30 April 1779:

I hope with all my heart you are much better than when I left you, and that you will not be obliged to go home on account of your health. I wish sincerely it was in my power in some measure to show some small return for the many favours I have received, but I am sure you do not think me ungrateful. If you come on the North Side [of Jamaica], and I hear of it, I will come in. I know you will be pleased with this little earnest of success, but we have had a great deal of plague with her. [He had captured the 80-ton
La Prudente.]
Two days before we could find the French papers, at last found them in an old shoe. There is a polacre [a three-masted merchantman without topmasts] coming this way; I hope we shall fall in her way. I wish I could give a good character of Mr Capper; he is a drunkard; I need say no more. We shall part whenever we can get Mate of a Merchant ship. George Cruger behaves very well. If you have heard from Mrs Locker, I sincerely hope she and all the family are in good health; and that you and they may continue so, and enjoy every blessing of this life.

Some years later, a fellow captain, envious of the charm (though it was a great deal more than that) with which Nelson seemed able to captivate his senior officers, wrote to him : ‘You did just as you pleased in Lord Hood’s time, the same in Admiral Hotham’s, and now again with Sir John Jervis; it makes no difference to you who is Commander-in-chief’. So now, with Captain Locker returned sick to England, with Maurice Suckling dead, Nelson continued to advance as steadily as if both these old friends and protectors had been there to help him.

Sir Peter Parker and his lady took to Nelson as if he were their own son, and Lady Parker’s regard (like that of many other admirals’ wives over the centuries) meant almost more than her husband’s on the station he commanded. On 11 June 1779, Nelson was appointed to the frigate
Hinchinbrooke
of 32 guns. He was now a post-captain, that is to say rated capable of being in charge of a ship of over 20 guns. The frigate’s previous captain had been killed by a random shot. Nelson was, in the phrase, ‘made’. That is to say, no junior officer could be passed over him, and he had only to stay alive and commit no grave misdemeanour, and nothing could prevent him in due course from rising to flag rank. ‘I got my rank’, he wrote, ‘by a shot killing a Post-Captain, and I most sincerely hope I shall, when I go, go out of the World the same way.’ He was still under twenty-one.

At the same time as promoting Nelson to the
Hinchinbrooke
Admiral Parker also moved Lieutenant Cuthbert Collingwood, who had followed in Nelson’s footsteps in the
Lowestoffe
, into the command of the
Badger.
Two lifelong friends went up the ladder together, both chosen for their commands by the same man, and both to share in the glory of Trafalgar, when together they led into action the two columns of the British fleet. Collingwood was ultimately to die worn out by the exigencies of the Mediterranean command, which had so nearly crippled his chief, and Admiral Parker, aged eighty-two, was to be present as chief mourner at Nelson’s funeral. The destinies of the three men were strangely linked.

The
summer of 1779 saw the arrival in Hispaniola of the French admiral, Count d’Estaing, and it was naturally assumed that an attack on Jamaica was in the offing. Since he had with him 22 ships-of-the-line, as well as many transports (said to be carrying 20,000 troops) there was great alarm in the colony, especially when it was estimated that they could raise no more than 7,000 troops for their defence. Nelson was busily involved in all this activity. He had been appointed to take charge of the principal battery of Port Royal, which defended Kingston and Spanish Town and was therefore the key to the island. D’Estaing, however, was not destined for Jamaica but Savannah, where he met with failure and returned to France. Nelson had gained some experience in the positioning and handling of shore-batteries, but otherwise had profited little from this brief period ashore, and was correspondingly relieved when his ship, which had been away on cruise, arrived back at Port Royal. He was off at once, eager to enjoy his first major command, and hopeful of prize money. He was not to be disappointed in this, for the
Hinchinbrooke
took several small prizes, netting Nelson about £800. (Collingwood in Nelson’s old position aboard the
Lowestoffe
did even better, for his ship managed to capture a number of Spanish treasure ships lying in the Bay of Honduras.) The whole of this period of Nelson’s life, even the places involved, although two centuries later, still has an Elizabethan ring about it. His next major task was to be one that would have appealed to Drake.