Nelson (102 page)

Despite this Nelson seems almost not to have cared, and was resigned to taking his ship home for an overdue refit. All he immediately asked of Jervis was justice. On 21 December he wrote to the new commander-in-chief to report the
Agamemnon
‘as fit for sea as a rotten ship can be’, and to beg that if Jervis was minded to reply to the charges made by the Austrians he trusted he would be given an opportunity to explain his conduct first.
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At home the Reverend Edmund Nelson sensed the mood of his son as he read the latest of the regular epistles that reached him from the Mediterranean. On the fourth day of a new year the old man pulled out some paper to reply:

God has blessed me so infinitely, even beyond hope, by length of days to see my posterity in possession of what is more durable than riches or honours, a good name. A virtuous disposition, moral conduct, and pure religion must be the supporters of public fame, and they will fight in its defence against its known foes – envy, calumny and dirty slander.
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It was Sir John Jervis who made the crucial difference.

Sir John had earned his knighthood the hard way, taking a French seventy-four towards the end of the American war. He was a hard man who feared little. His discipline was sometimes savage, his rule somewhat tyrannical, and his broadsides blistering, whether delivered with the cannon or the pen. Outspoken, arrogant and acerbic, Jervis was a man of many and strong prejudices, intolerant of anything that smelt of indolence or inefficiency.

He was brutally frank with officers who did not measure up. Take James of the
Raven
, seeking promotion, for example: ‘I cannot help expressing my astonishment at your presumption in thinking of the rank of post-captain, which you have no possible claim to, Captain Waller who has ten times your merit, knowledge and ability having been named by me to the Admiralty as the person I desire might be distinguished.’
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Or Bowen of the
Transfer
: ‘Sir, I give you credit for the best intentions, but the history of your loss of men by a miserable Swede does no credit to your judgement. I am, sir . . .’
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Or Captain Aylmer, who had succeeded Miller in command of a warship: ‘Sir, Had Captain Miller continued in the command . . . the defects which the carpenter . . . has most disgracefully given . . . had never been heard of . . .’
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Historians have made much of Jervis, understandably but not always fairly. The old admiral himself was suspicious of the myths that encrusted him like barnacles, and occasionally protested. When one admirer dared to describe the captains of the Mediterranean as his ‘school’, the old sea dog reportedly scoffed, ‘No, that is too much.

They would have been as great anywhere. It was
with
such men that I formed a school!’ Perhaps he recognised that much had already been done with those men, and in truth a good deal has been written of Jervis in ignorance of the achievements of Lord Hood. Nelson famously said that ‘of all the fleets I ever saw, I never saw one in point of officers and men equal to Sir John Jervis’s’, but few admit Nelson had applied similar words to the same fleet before Jervis ever reached the Mediterranean.
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In fact Jervis was much like Hood. Both were self-confident, domineering, straight-talking, dogmatic even when wrong-headed, and utterly devoted to the service. Like Hood, Jervis had his fleet practising manoeuvres and improving their skills, and relished battle. Like him he knew the needs of the common sailors, and tried to keep them healthy. In one respect Jervis was a more impressive admiral than Hood, however. He was better at identifying talented officers, rewarding them by word and deed, and maintaining their effort and morale. He rescued both Fremantle and Nelson from a deep disillusionment that had brought them to the brink of quitting the Mediterranean. ‘You can have no conception how much the fleet are improved in every respect . . .,’ Fremantle told his brother after Jervis took command. ‘Before every man went his own way, and all was confusion.’
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To Nelson the great contrast was not between Jervis and Hood, but between Jervis and his immediate predecessors, Hotham and Parker. Under the new commander-in-chief there would be no malingering in St Fiorenzo or Leghorn. Immediately he tightened the cordon around Toulon, detailing an inshore squadron under Troubridge to shut the port down, and his fleet kept to the sea in all weathers, completing much of their caulking and repairs as they sailed. The gains from Sir John’s vigour were not without cost, and years later that brilliant maverick Lord Cochrane flagellated Jervis in and out of Parliament for running down the health of seamen and keeping them afloat in crazy, unserviceable ships. When the old admiral eventually became first lord of the Admiralty, he aroused even greater controversy by ill-timed reforms. He meant well, but brought with him the baggage of an experienced and unreconstructed Whig warrior, obsessed with economical reform, to his administration of the navy. His determination to slay such dragons as extravagance, waste, corruption and inefficiency commended him to the taxpayer, but less to the fleets suffering from dangerous economies and disrepair.
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A just assessment of Jervis must await a dispassionate and thorough biographer, but one achievement certainly rebounds to his credit. It was Jervis more than anyone else who restored Nelson’s faith and fighting spirit in 1796. Reading Jervis’s letters through those years, some of them written on elegant letter-headed notepaper, one often gets a softer impression of an admiral whose toughness earned him the sobriquet ‘Old Oak’. He was ruthless with backsliders and mutineers, but embraced effective officers with an almost fatherly affection. He approached them with little of the abrasive aloofness that had marked Hood, and often showed astonishing generosity, kindness, sympathy and good humour. Those officers repaid him with their loyalty, none more so than Nelson. The captain of the
Agamemnon
had never felt more valued than under Jervis, and his confidence and achievements flowered.

The first of Jervis’s letters to reach Nelson found him disconsolate, embittered and peevish, rather like a slighted prima donna. He was still unwell, visibly according to Lady Elliot, and felt besmirched by the allied generals and abandoned by superiors. The failure of his campaign, the Austrian accusations, the disinterest of his commanders-in-chief, the platitudinous replies from the Admiralty and the withholding of the distinguishing pendant had all soured him.
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Jervis changed all that. In January he demonstrated his regard by offering Nelson the command of a larger ship, suggesting that the
Zealous
would probably suit him more than the larger
St George
because it was a seventy-four more suited to active duties. The
Agamemnon
was due for recall, and by offering a transfer Jervis was clearly signalling his wish to retain Nelson’s services. Nelson found the admiral’s letter ‘most flattering’ but refused to be cheered. He wrote to his brother William that he was ‘sorry’ to note Jervis’s interest because in his ‘present mind’ he was determined to return to England with the
Agamemnon
.
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After refitting and reprovisioning at Leghorn, Nelson joined the fleet at St Fiorenzo on 19 January. His men scrambled to the rigging and thronged the bulwark to cheer the new commander-in-chief’s flag flying above the
Victory
, and Nelson went aboard to report. He had spent hours with Hood in the cabin of the great three-decker, but the man who greeted him now could not have looked less like the cadaverous Irish peer. Jervis had turned sixty. His toadlike figure consisted of a stocky body and expanding paunch propped up on thick, tree-trunk legs. The face was formidable. Sir John’s jaw was set, his thin
mouth firm, and the eyes flanking the sharp nose big and determined. Yet the severity of that formidable mien could quickly evaporate. Young Betsy Wynne, who once visited him with a bevy of ladies, found ‘nothing stiff or formal about him’, and was amused when the old admiral ‘desired we should pay the tribute’ due by every female ‘entering his cabin, which was to kiss him’. On such occasions a warm geniality crackling within Jervis broke his crusty exterior, and the craggy features flickered benignly. Nelson probably saw that look now.
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From every quarter Jervis was receiving golden opinions of Captain Nelson. John Trevor, for example, considered ‘that worthy and excellent officer’ not only deserving of promotion (‘I hope soon to call [him] by another title’) but also ‘a more active and cordial cooperation between His Majesty’s fleet and the allies’. The admiral knew that his own success depended upon encouraging such spirits. When the two met, he asked Nelson a few questions about the riviera campaign, liked the answers, and directly invited him to stay with the fleet. It was a request to warm the heart of any ambitious officer, but Nelson demurred. He needed a rest, he explained, and would go home with the
Agamemnon
. That said, as a senior captain Nelson was close to receiving his flag, and he added that in such a case he would be privileged to return to Sir John’s fleet as a rear admiral. Nelson was still set on seeing England, but Jervis had already moved him. The next day he wrote to Fanny that if he was promoted before his ship was recalled, ‘my fair character makes me stand forward to remain abroad’. The pessimism was lifting.
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Within twenty-four hours came more tangible evidence of Jervis’s faith. Far from listening to Genoese and Austrian complaints, the admiral sent Nelson back to the Gulf of Genoa. As he would reassure Trevor, he knew Nelson’s ‘zeal, activity and enterprise’ could not ‘be surpassed’, and regretted his present inability ‘to give him the command of a squadron equal to his merit’. Nonetheless, even the renewal of the riviera command, with all its burdens, had some captains in the fleet grumbling about the plums that constantly went Nelson’s way, and the captain of the
Agamemnon
felt obliged to return ‘a pretty strong answer’. On 22 January he left for his station, rounding up two prize corn ships en route. He found two frigates already off the coast, the
Meleager
and
Blanche
under Captains Cockburn and Sawyer, and directed them to patrol, keeping a weather eye open at the same time for any French attempt to ship troops to Italy. They made five
prizes in as many weeks, one a French tartan with one hundred and fifty soldiers taken by the
Blanche
on 13 February.
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By then Nelson had met Jervis again, when he escorted a merchantman from Genoa to Leghorn. Again the
Agamemnons
cheered their commander-in-chief, and again Jervis welcomed Nelson aboard the flagship. Sir John was bound for Toulon to tighten his grip on the main French battle fleet and ordered Nelson to go in advance. They also discussed the possibility of the French offering battle in terms that convinced Nelson he had found another kindred spirit, very different from Hotham or Parker. Almost ecstatically he wrote to Fanny that if the French got out ‘they will now lose the
whole
of them [their ships], for we have a man of business at our head’.
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In Toulon, Nelson found thirteen sail of the line and five frigates ready for sea, and word had it that sailors were being recruited and Marseilles full of transports for soldiers. It all augured action, an amphibious descent somewhere, perhaps in Italy or Corsica, and that meant the possibility of another battle at sea. When Sir John brought the fleet up on 23 February, Nelson made his report and abandoned all resistance to the commander-in-chief’s solicitations. ‘You must have a larger ship,’ Jervis said, ‘for we cannot spare you either as admiral or captain.’ Nelson always found praise, real or pretended, irresistible. With acute disappointment Fanny read that her dream of the country cottage was fading again. Jervis ‘seems at present to consider me as an assistant more than a subordinate,’ Nelson informed her. He talked about staying at sea.
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Jervis rejuvenated Nelson by addressing every one of his concerns. In April he began reinforcing the riviera squadron with the
Diadem
sixty-four and
Peterel
sloop, and Nelson was given to understand that transports for troops would be sought if amphibious operations appeared necessary. For the first time Nelson felt the work appreciated. ‘We may rely on every support and effectual assistance’ from the commander-in-chief, he told Drake. ‘We have only to propose, and if possible it will be done.’ On 15 April, Jervis did what Hotham had been implored but declined to do: he brought the fleet to Vado, and cruised off the coast for several days. Several months before the diversion would have been of great utility, but the French, not the Austrians, now controlled the bay, and Jervis and Nelson were forced to watch an enemy grain convoy pass mischievously by them, impregnable in the shallows. Still, it symbolised a new vitality. The Austrians, who had advanced as far as Voltri, received a much-needed fillip, and
Nelson used the visit to spread rumours that the British intended to land five thousand soldiers to attack the communications of the French army. His hope that the French would weaken their front by sending detachments to the coast was overambitious, but Nelson assured Jervis that ‘the opportune appearance of the squadron had created a good deal of sensation amongst the French in Genoa’.
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Equally telling, Jervis tackled the corrosive issue of Nelson’s promotion. ‘No words can express the sense I entertain of every part of your conduct,’ he told his irritable subordinate. ‘A distinguishing pendant you shall most certainly wear, and now I am in possession of your further wishes, I will write to Lord Spencer upon the subject of them. In short, there is nothing within my grasp that I shall not be proud to confer on you.’ Thus, on 8 April, Nelson proudly raised a swallow-tailed, red, broad pendant on the main topmast of the
Agamemnon
to the cheers of the ship’s company. It advertised his status as an acting commodore with ships to command, and gave him an additional ten shillings a day in pay and larger shares in prize money. Strictly, a commodore was a temporal post rather than a permanent rank, a title conveyed upon a senior captain commanding a squadron of ships. Nelson’s pendant could be hauled down if his squadron or responsibilities were withdrawn, and he also had to wait until 11 August for Spencer to confirm his advancement. Nevertheless, at last he felt reassured that he was making progress in his profession.
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