Nelson (10 page)

The Royal Navy both shielded the realm and enabled its politicians to distance themselves from continental wars, ready to profit while more vulnerable European powers with debatable land frontiers were sucked into ruinous conflicts. The British tended to risk their redcoats on the mainland sparingly, to prevent strategic areas, such as the Low Countries across the English Channel, falling under the control of a threatening power; to protect essential sources of supply, such as the naval stores acquired from the Baltic; or perhaps to stem the growth of hostile combinations of power inimical to Britain’s interests. Britain had developed a maritime strategy, subsidising heavyweight allies doing their fighting in Europe, and using the navy to destroy Spanish and French sea power, shipping and colonies.

This blue-water strategy had yielded dividends of which most Englishmen were becoming proud, despite war debts. Its potential had been demonstrated in the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War, conflicts which in Europe pivoted upon the competing territorial ambitions of Prussia and Austria in Silesia. During the general conflagrations that ensued, Britain used European allies to divert France and Spain on land while she shredded their sea-going capacity and colonies elsewhere. Britain emerged from the Seven Years War in 1763 as the most powerful of all maritime and colonial powers. She possessed the largest mercantile marine in the world, more than half a million tons of shipping, and the Royal Navy was able to field one hundred and thirty ships of the line with eighty-five thousand men, a force larger than the fleets of Spain and France combined. In the fighting she had stripped her rivals of Canada, Louisiana (east of the Mississippi), Tobago, Dominica, St Vincent, the Grenadines, Florida and Minorca, and eliminated French competition in India.

An impressive roll of victories had stirred British hearts, bringing the names of such new heroes as Robert Clive and James Wolfe to the fore, but everyone knew that the country’s achievements were
ultimately predicated on sea power. Even as a young child, Horatio Nelson must have understood, however imperfectly, that the navy was not only vital to the country’s power and security but also a service of terrific prestige and popularity. He had probably listened to stories of Admiral Hawke’s famous victory over the French at Quiberon Bay (1759), won when Horace was little more than a year old, and heard the lusty strains of the ubiquitous ‘Hearts of Oak’, celebrating the battle:

Come cheer up, my lads, ’tis to glory we steer,
To add something more to this wonderful year.

The navy was a shield, but it was also a protector and creator of trade and wealth. Britain was still largely an agricultural country, dominated by aristocratic landowners, but her growing middle classes depended upon a thriving overseas trade, and the gathering momentum of her manufactures, racing towards the ‘industrial revolution’, was spearheaded by the export of textiles. The country had won vast overseas possessions, where markets and raw materials were to be had or strategic areas secured, but it was more interested in customers than colonies and in building a trade empire. Though some of Britain’s older markets, such as the Levant and the Iberian peninsula, were declining, Atlantic, West Indian and East Indian trades were creating a new prosperity, and in 1760 Britain’s exports far exceeded the government’s national budget.

And it was almost universally understood that naval power was essential to that rising wealth. Nothing illustrated the acceptance of that premise more graphically than the navigation laws, which were at the heart of the country’s mercantilist system. Those laws attempted to bind the mother country and her colonies into an interlocking, self-sufficient trade system that would shut out commercial rivals and maintain the foundations of naval power. They stipulated what each colony might manufacture and export, and from where it might import other necessaries, and insisted that such trade be carried in ships built in Britain or her dependencies and predominantly navigated by their citizens. Similarly, about half the European goods imported into Britain had to be carried either in the ships of the producing country or in ‘British bottoms’, and all European goods destined for the British colonies had to be shipped through Britain and in British vessels. By protecting ship-building and a pool of experienced seamen, the
maritime laws supported the foundations of naval power and underlined the interdependence of war and trade.

With land frontiers and continental rivals to watch, France and Spain were unable to match the resources Britain willingly channelled into her might at sea, and when Horace joined the Royal Navy it was a vast organisation by the standards of the eighteenth century. Indeed, its most prominent living historian has accounted it ‘by far the largest and most complex of all government services’ and ‘by a large margin the largest industrial organization in the western world’. Apart from the enormous fleet of ships of the line, frigates, sloops, brigs and tenders, the Admiralty office in Whitehall controlled extensive auxiliary services, including dockyards at home – in Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham, Sheerness, Portsmouth and Plymouth – and abroad – at Gibraltar and Minorca in the Mediterranean, Halifax in Canada, and Antigua and Jamaica in the West Indies.
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Nelson had not stepped into a backwater but into a powerful, vibrant, professional fraternity of the utmost importance to his country, and a shaper of its destiny. But there was a long road to travel before he could stamp his own personality and purpose upon it. He had taken his first steps towards becoming a commissioned king’s officer, but from the beginning ‘interest’ was an essential prerequisite for progress. There were no formal entry qualifications for an aspiring officer, but an influential patron, usually a serving captain, was needed to take the hopeful aboard, either as a captain’s servant or midshipman or even a master’s mate or able seaman. These protégés might be selected from promising common sailors already on board, but most were friends or relations of existing naval officers and drawn from the middling or upper classes.

An early start and rapid promotion were essential if maximum benefit was to be derived. In theory, to qualify for a lieutenant’s commission ‘young gentlemen’ had to serve at least six years at sea, two as a midshipman or master’s mate; be twenty or more years old; and pass an examination of nautical competency. Once a lieutenant, the officer’s object was to be made post-captain as soon as possible, for that put him on a captains’ list from which neither interest nor wealth could oust him. Moreover, an officer ascended the captains’ list to admiral or flag rank purely by seniority. The snag was that the process was a protracted one, and only an officer who had been ‘made post’ at a reasonably early age could expect to live long enough to reach the head of the list and achieve his flag. The importance of
interest, therefore, both for entry and a speedy promotion to the captains’ list, was paramount.

Horatio Nelson relied entirely upon his uncle to clear a way for him, and that support was already working. Young men who were not the sons of naval officers were supposed to enter the service at the age of thirteen or above, but Nelson got in at twelve. Furthermore, by rating Horace’s service from 1 January rather than from March or April, when he actually came on board, Captain Suckling had given his nephew two or three months’ additional ‘sea time’ towards the six years he needed to qualify for a lieutenancy. These were, of course, subterfuges, but subterfuges were far from uncommon in the scramble for promotion and position that characterised the life of the young naval officer.
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Nelson’s patron was still an imposing figure. The captain of the
Triumph
was just turning forty-five and in his prime, apart from having what he called ‘gout’ in his right hand. His hair was thinning, but he was handsome and slim, and seven years earlier had struck a dramatic pose sitting to the painter Thomas Bardwell at Woodton Hall, near Norwich, the ancestral home of the Sucklings. Captain Suckling’s mettle had been shown in battle. As captain of the
Dreadnought
he had joined two consorts in an engagement with seven French ships off St Domingo in the West Indies on 21 October 1757. The battle was indecisive, but Suckling acquitted himself gallantly and his ship suffered the greatest British losses. Perhaps even more important from Horace’s point of view, Captain Suckling made friends easily, and many would live to serve his nephew. They included John Rathbone, master’s mate of the
Dreadnought
; Captain Peter Parker, who had served with Suckling in the Mediterranean; and Captain John Jervis, who had benefited from Suckling’s kindness as a boy aboard the
Gloucester
.
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Professionally, Suckling was in a fairly strong position. His name had adorned the captains’ list for fifteen years, and he had prospects of becoming an admiral. As it was, he advanced steadily. On 26 June 1771 he received the additional responsibility of superintending naval affairs in the Medway and the Nore. The job was unexciting, but the Medway and the Nore were principal channels for ships passing along the Thames, and Chatham and Sheerness were dockyards of the first importance. Suckling was soon handling a considerable range of duties,
including naval discipline and the deployment of marine detachments and fourteen or so ships at a time.
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One reason for Suckling’s success was the interest at his disposal, for notwithstanding the views of some historians to the contrary, the captain had powerful friends. His great uncles had included Galfridus Walpole, treasurer of Greenwich Hospital and postmaster general; Horatio, Lord Walpole; and the great Sir Robert Walpole himself. Indeed, it was under the auspices of the latter that Maurice had first gone to sea under Captain Thomas Fox. By the time Sir Robert died in 1745 Maurice had become a lieutenant, and further preferment was to be had at the hands of George Townshend (the son of his great aunt, Dorothy, Viscountess Townshend), who was himself a naval officer. In 1748, at the end of the War of Austrian Succession, when ships were being decommissioned and less favoured officers retired on half-pay, Suckling was appointed lieutenant of the
Gloucester
, bound for the West Indies under Townshend. Later, as post-captain of the
Dreadnought
, he was briefly Townshend’s flag captain in Jamaica, where the latter was a rear admiral.
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Not surprisingly, Suckling’s promotion had been sure and steady. A lieutenant before his twentieth birthday, he became a post-captain on 2 December 1755 at the age of twenty-nine. In 1761 his claims to attention had increased with his marriage to Mary, a sister of the second Lord Walpole and sister-in-law to a daughter of the third Duke of Devonshire. Although Suckling’s wife had died early in the marriage, his connections to such political powerhouses as the Walpoles, Townshends and Devonshires left him with a residue of useful friends and acquaintances.
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Nor was Captain Suckling without property and expectations of more. As his responsibilities in London increased during the 1770s he acquired town houses in the capital – for example, one in Park Street, Mayfair, which he sold in 1776. His principal properties remained in East Anglia, however, at Barsham, Winfarthing, Diss and elsewhere. The captain was also in line to succeed to the Suckling estate of Woodton Hall, a handsome property of three storeys with a wine cellar, built in spacious grounds in 1694. It had descended to Denzil and Hannah Suckling, but their heir, Robert, was what the family ungraciously called a ‘lunatic’ and there were plans to transfer the estate to Captain Suckling, his cousin.
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The trouble was that, for all his success, the captain nursed a worrying void in his life. There was no one close to him to share his
fortunes. Suckling had never known his father, who had died when he was four, and had grown up adored by his mother and older sister. His wife, Mary, died in 1764 after three childless years of marriage, and was buried at Wickmere near Wolterton, leaving only a strand of her fair hair in a locket of pearls and blue enamel as a memento. Then came that cold, bleak, tragic winter of 1767–8 when, as we saw in the previous chapter, Suckling lost his sister and mother almost at a single stroke in Burnham Thorpe. In less than three years the women in his life had been taken from him. Although his younger brother, William, had a family of his own, Maurice had no one. Captain Suckling’s will, written in 1774, proclaimed this vacuum. Among bequests to his brother and a few others, including some of the Walpoles who had shown him ‘continued friendship’, he bestowed extensive bequests upon the progeny of his dead sister. Each of the Nelson nieces received £1,000 and the nephews £500.
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Captain Suckling was more than happy to forward young Horace in the service. There was no one to whom he felt a greater duty and he was constantly alert to opportunities for the boy. He had brought him, with Boyles and a few others, to the
Triumph
but in truth there was relatively little to be learned on a semi-stationary guardship. Plenty of small boat work, assisting ships to moor, running errands and shifting men and stores to and fro, but no real taste of experience under sail. The ship remained moored at Sheerness. It was provisioned, cleaned and refitted. There was a search for a leak, three men got a dozen lashes each, two of them for striking an officer and the third for mutinous remarks, and a man fell overboard and drowned. But this was not going to make his nephew a deep-water seaman.
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Then Captain Suckling learned something interesting. A merchantman belonging to the West India magnate Thomas Hibbert, and his partners Purrier and Horton of London, was bound for Jamaica and the other islands, and its captain was none other than Suckling’s old shipmate John Rathbone. Rathbone had come to Suckling’s
Dreadnought
from the
Sphinx
and been rated master’s mate on 3 June 1757. The two had served in the West Indies together. Now Rathbone offered to take Horace with him and turn him into a sailor, and when he navigated the
Mary Ann
out of the Medway on 25 July 1771 the boy was aboard. Four days later the ship left the Downs, heading west.
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