Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 (25 page)

knew whither," Ensign Boothby of the Royal Engineers went bowling down to Portsmouth on the outside of the Mail in such ardent spirits and buoyant health that when, " the night being very foggy with misting rain and the lamps not penetrating further into the mist than the rumps of the wheelers," the coach ran into a team of horses standing slantwise across the road and overturned, he bounced happily on to the road without so much as a scratch or a bruise.
¹

With comparable spirit the Prime Minister, regardless of invasion, prepared to launch his little army into the unknown. Before it lay a 2500-mile voyage past ports containing five undefeated enemy fleets of nearly seventy ships of the line. At Christmas, 1804, in the hope of reducing the risk of the enterprise, Pitt had sent Sir John Moore—knighted in November for his services at Shorncliffe—on a secret mission to Ferrol to report whether the naval arsenal there could be surprised and held by a combined operation. But the General, who only narrowly escaped capture while prospecting with a fowling-piece on the cliffs above Betanzos Bay, reported that the scheme—first mooted by naval officers—was utterly unpractical.
²

Pitt did not even await the conclusion of the treaty. To convince Russia of his good faith, instructions to cover the convoy were sent to Cornwallis, Calder, Orde and Nelson on March 27th, 1805, as soon as the draft agreement had been despatched to St. Petersburg. Next day Craig received his embarkation orders. He was to proceed to Malta and, freeing the 8000 troops already there for offensive operations, was to co-operate with a Russian force from Corfu for the liberation of the Neapolitan mainland and the defence of Sicily. If necessary—since its security was essential for England's European plans—he was to garrison the latter island without the consent of its King. He was also, with Nelson's aid, to safeguard Egypt and Sardinia.
³

At the time of the Government's defeat in the Commons the Secret Expedition, as it was called, was waiting at Portsmouth for a change of wind. On board the packed ships expectation ran high, for after many months of inaction the Army was at last to have its chance. On April 17th, a week after Melville's resignation, the wind changed, and next day forty-five transports stood out to sea, escorted by two battleships and carrying seven thousand troops.
⁴

¹
Boothby,
2,
5.

²
Moore, II,
98
-100.

3
"It being of the utmost importance that Sicily should not fall into the hands of the French."—Bunbury,
183.

4
Boothby,
9
-10!

Though the destination of the Secret Expedition had been kept a close secret, Napoleon's spies were known to have been active. For some time disquieting reports had been coming in from the blockading Admirals o
ff the enemy's ports : Ganteaume
had tried to slip out of Brest in the last days of March, troops were being embarked at Toulon, and the French and Spanish squadrons in Ferrol had completed preparations for sea. In fact, the French already knew everything about the convoy except its destination. This in Talleyrand's view was impossible to predict, since no project, however ridiculous, was too absurd for a British Government.
¹
Napoleon, however, was convinced that the expeditions at Portsmouth and Cork were destined for the East and West Indies. His plans to scare Downing Street into dispersing its slender military forces, he believed, had succeeded: England was in a panic and was baring her heart to direct attack. "They are neither militia nor volunteers," he wrote triumphantly, "but their best troops!"
²

At that moment Napoleon felt certain of his impending mastery of the world. Austria had made her submission, and he was about to complete Ins triumph by crowning himself King of Italy in Milan with the crown of Charlemagne. Fie could afford to treat the clumsy intrigues of England with contempt. Believing that he had wrested the naval initiative from her, he dictated on April nth a fresh plan to complete her ruin. Since Villeneuve had now been at large for two months, Ganteaume was to relinquish his voyage to the West Indies unle
ss he could escape before May 10
th. Instead he was to remain in Brest and tie down Cornwallis, while Villeneuve, returning round the north of Scotland, was first to cover the sailing of Marmont's invasion transports from the Texel and then appear off Boulogne with twenty-two ships of the line. Two days later, intoxicated by reports in English newspapers of Missiessy's capture of St. Lucia and Dominica, Napoleon ordered the two battleships still lying in Rochefort to sail at once under Rear-Admiral Magon with more ambitious instruction for Villeneuve. After awaiting Ganteaume's arrival for thirty-five days, during which time it was to complete the conquest of the British West Indies, the Combined Fleet was to make direct for the Bay of Biscay, release Gourdon from Ferrol and Ganteaume from Brest, and in July enter the Channel from the west with nearly sixty battleships.

While the Emperor was making his final dispositions and Villeneuve was sailing westwards on the first stage of his mission, Pitt

¹
Bertrand,
118.

2
Napoleon,
Correspondence,
X,
315, 317.

was struggling to fill Melville's place. Sidmouth and his kinsmen in the Cabinet were trying by threats of resignation to secure the appointment of the Earl of Buckinghamshire, the former War Secretary who had made such a sorry mess of arming the Volunteers. But the Admiralty's work was too crucial at that moment to be entrusted to a figurehead. Eleven months before, when Melville had taken office, all but eighteen of the eighty-one battleships in commission had been in need of repair or overhaul.
¹
And though, with his genial, bustling turn for facilitating business, Melville had begun to repair their deficiencies, contracting for new ships in private and even foreign yards and patching up every discarded hull for service, his reforms had still to mature. In the crucial spring of 1805, with Spain aligned against her as well as France and Holland, England had still only eighty-three capital ships in commission, many of them in grave need of repair. After allowing for the blockades, the protection of convoys and the reinforcements sent after Missiessy to the West Indies, there was only a bare minimum to hold the Western Approaches. And with so many merchantmen delayed in distant waters the shortage of men was as grave.
²

Pitt's second Administration had so far proved disastrous. His hold on office seemed weaker even than the Doctor's. He was now carrying on his shoulders the whole burden of Government, and his health—never robust—was showing signs of cracking under the strain. " It is inconceivable," wrote the Russian Ambassador, " how one man can suffice for such a weight of business and fatigue and . . . keep straight in his head so many tangled and diverse matters; how he can unravel and grasp them with such rare judgment and lucidity."

Yet never for one moment did the Prime Minister contemplate surrender. For two weeks while he re-gathered strength he temporised over Melville's successor. Then on April 21st, against the wishes of the King and the majority of his Cabinet, he installed his own nominee at the Admiralty. His choice was the great administrator who as Comptroller of the Navy had helped to restore the Service during and after the calamities of the American War.

¹
Collingwood,
98-100;
Barha
m, III,
40-5, 47.
Even the best ships had been rendered half unserviceable by a false economy. "It was part of Lord St. Vincent's economy," wrote Collingwood from the Bay of Biscay in November,
1804,
"to employ convicts to fit out the ships instead of the men and officers who were to sail in them." Collingwood,
98.
Nelson declared that, with all his personal regard for Lord St. Vincent, he was sorry to see how he had been led astray by ignorant people; " there is scarcely a thing he has done since he has been at the Admiralty that I have not heard him reprobate before he came to the Board."—Nicolas, VI,
32.

²
Corbett,
29, 43;
Connvallis-West,
475-6;
Barham, III,
81-2.

Admiral
Sir Charles Middleton knew more about the patching of discarded ships in an emergency than any man living. He was now seventy-eight. But he was hale and hearty, an active farmer in the vale of Kent and in possession of all his faculties. For the past two years he had
been
giving confidential advice on naval matters to his kinsman, Melville, and Pitt. To Society and the City the appointment seemed " a patch"
¹
and, in view of the recipient's age, slightly ridiculous. But though the Prince of Wales and the Whigs, giving
out
that the old man was eighty-two, made great sport of it, Wilberforce
and the powerful Evangelical
group in Parliament approved. They knew nothing of Middleton's technical abilities,
but
they liked his
Sabbatarianism and
his distaste for
swearing.
In the last days of April the greatest naval administrator since
Samuel
Pepys took office
under
the title of
Lord Barham.
²

It was none too soon. On April, 25th, important news reached the Admiralty. It had been brought by Lord Mark Kerr, who from his station at Gibraltar had seen Villeneuve pass through the Straits on the 8th. Having despatched a sloop to find Nelson, this enterprising officer had sailed to warn the blockading squadrons off Ferrol and Brest. While battling with headwinds in the Bay he had encountered a Guernsey lugger and ordered her into Plymouth with dispatches for the Admiralty.

The new First Lord received them with characteristic calm. It had been known for some time that Villencuve had been embarking troops, and it was supposed that he was trying to join Missiessy in the West Indies. It was notorious that it was impossible to seal up Toulon so closely as to bar the way both to the Straits and the Sicilian Channel. The important thing, in view of the impending Anglo-Russian offensive, was that Nelson should maintain control of the central Mediterranean. This he had apparently done so successfully that the Toulon fleet had abandoned that sea altogether and gone- buccaneering in the Atlantic. It would, of course, be necessary to strengthen the West Indian stations, and this Barham did. Sir Alexander Cochrane, who had already gone to the Leeward Islands after Missiessy, was ordered to reinforce Rear-Admiral Dacres's five battleships at Jamaica with his own six. It was assumed that Nelson was pursuing Villeneuve and, in accordance with an old tradition of the Mediterranean Command, would send part of his force to Barbados to replace Cochrane's squadron while joining

¹
"Bad is the best, but we must make the b
est of it." H
arrowby to Bathurst,
21st
April,
1801;.
Bathurst,
46.

Wilberforce, I,
282;
H. M. C. Dropmore, VII,
256;
H. M. C. Bathurst,
64-8;
Colchester, I,
552-9;
Barham, III, xxxvii;
Pitt and the Great War,
521-2.

Orde with the remainder to shepherd the Secret Expedition past Cadiz.
¹

But the City could not take the same detached view as Barham. Coming on top of rumours of Missiessy's ravages in the sugar islands, the Admiralty's placid announcement that Villeneuve had followed him there provoked pandemonium. Consols fell to
57,
and the
Chronicle
announced that no one had been able to sleep for days. In Parliament an incautious remark by Lord Castlereagh that he was glad the French had gone to the Caribbean nearly brought down the Government. The Navy, it was felt in that moment of unreasoning panic, had failed the country. "The French can get out when they choose," wrote an indignant society lady, "why should our blockading system continue which so fatigues ships and men?"

On April 27th the Admiralty drafted additional instructions. Every ship that could be got ready was to be hurried to sea and, where necessary, manned with soldiers, while Lord Gardner was to. detach a Flying Squadron under Vice-Admiral Collingwood to bring Cochrane's capital force in the West Indies up to eighteen. After all, nothing had been heard of Nelson—a somewhat erratic young Admiral in Barham's view—and, if his only eye had once more carried him to Egypt, the Government would find itself "in a scrape." Since the latest news from India was more reassuring, it was also decided to divert Sir Eyre Coote's waiting troops at Cork to Jamaica.

During the next two days Pitt, burdened with so much business that he had hardly time to eat or sleep, strove to stem the efforts of the Opposition to bring Melville to trial. On the night of April 29th he was on his feet for many hours, standing stiff and gaunt at the Treasury box with his sharp, eager features taut with pain. At two o'clock on the morning of the 30th he came back to Downing Street to f
ind terrible news. The expeditio
n which was to rouse Europe and raise the siege of the country was in deadly peril. For on April 9th, eight days before it sailed, Sir John Orde, surprised by Villeneuve, had abandoned the blockade of Cadiz. For nearly three weeks he had been struggling against adverse winds to join Sir Robert Calder off Ferrol or Lord Gardner off Brest. With Spanish squadrons in Cadiz and Cartagena and the Mediterranean Fleet missing, there was an awful gulf in the convoy's path.