Nelson (125 page)

On the other hand much was consumed by running costs. He maintained a wife in England and a mistress in Italy, and himself and one or more young gentlemen on his ships. Something as simple as the hospitality of his cabin table burned holes in purses. One list of the stock delivered to his ship on his behalf included 119 birds, among them chickens, ducks, geese and a turkey, in addition to eight sheep and a calf. He provided wines as well as tea, coffee and sugar, and items as diverse as loaves, macaroons, potatoes, hams, barley, spices, fruit, nuts, cabbages, beans and raisins. Occasionally, too, he came upon irresistible furnishings, such as the glass image of Cleopatra that caught his eye in Italy, and remained signally susceptible to hard-luck stories from seamen and friends. Subscriptions to the Navy Society and Marine Widows’ Fund entered his accounts.
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Prize and head money lubricated his expenses, but amounted to less than many thought. Fellow captains envied Nelson his independent commands, which increased his chances of earning prize money, and he was never inactive. Between 1793 and 1797 he and his cruisers took, destroyed or ran ashore nearly two hundred vessels of all descriptions, some of them detained in disputes with neutral powers. During the first half of 1796 alone his squadron accounted for more than half the prizes taken in the Mediterranean. There were few rich hauls, however, and many captures were released by the courts. ‘If I return not poorer than I set out, I shall be perfectly satisfied, but I believe the contrary,’ Nelson complained. ‘Mine is all honour. So much for the navy!’ Including payments made on the seizure of French property in Corsica, Nelson’s known share of prize receipts up to the spring of 1797 considerably exceeded £3,000, and more was coming in. It made a very handsome bonus, but was no great fortune for someone without the fundamentals of gentle living in place.
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Nelson was interested in money, but it had not been the principal motivation behind his career. While he resented the unjust claims some officers so eagerly pressed for prize money earned by others, he seldom envied deserved winnings and usually rejoiced at the successes of colleagues. ‘I long for
poor
Cockburn and Hallowell to enrich themselves,’ he once said. People found it easy to trust him. As Jervis once told Elliot, during a discussion of the apportioning of prize money, Nelson ‘is a reasonable and disinterested man in money matters, and will come into any proposition you make.’
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This was most obvious in the syndicates he founded with the officers and men of other ships. The first, in which the
Agamemnon
agreed to pool prize money with Wolseley’s
Lowestoffe
, was made in 1794. Such a deal depended upon each party accounting fairly to the other, and accepting that all would do their best to increase the pot. Typically, while Nelson was happy sharing his winnings with Wolseley (‘you will see I have not forgot my friends’), he felt guilty dipping into the money made by partners (‘at Fiorenza I shall be a drawback on you – they will not let me share, I dare say’). But the arrangement worked fairly well, and Nelson revived it in the summer of 1795, when the
Agamemnon
, Cockburn’s
Meleager
and Plampin’s
Ariadne
formed a syndicate. The officers and men of George Hope’s
Romulus
voted to enter the arrangement on 18 August, and though they made no prizes themselves, were fully entitled to share in those of their partners.
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In the spring of 1797 Sir Horatio Nelson was less complacent about money than ever before. On the one hand his resources had grown and multiplied his balances with Marsh and Creed many fold. At last he was actually earning more than he was spending, and was accumulating money. His balances now hovered between £2,240 and £2,570 in credit, but they would have been annihilated by the purchase of a respectable property with a piece of land. He talked about another £5,000 that might be had as his share in a score of prizes taken by the fleet as a whole, but Fanny preferred to count birds in the hand. She urged him to apply for a crown pension as diplomats did. Nelson dutifully assembled testimonials and lists of his services for the purpose, but the idea of approaching anyone for money remained distasteful. It reminded him of those grovelling letters he had written to Uncle William.

Then against the background of these reveries came exciting news. At the end of February the British fleet was in the Tagus recuperating from its exertions off Cape St Vincent, but it rippled with excitement at word that Spain was expecting the viceroy of Mexico with ships from Havana and Vera Cruz. They contained Spanish-American silver that gossip placed at £6 million. If that convoy was intercepted Spain would receive a severe blow, and the captors would make fortunes beyond their wildest dreams.

Sir John Jervis decided to detach a squadron to sweep the approaches to Spain between Portugal and Africa. The mission was laden with
prospect. The convoy from Spanish America stirred folk memories of Drake and his Devon lads, but if the Spanish fleet came out to protect it there might also be a serious battle. Furthermore, Jervis heard of another convoy, on its way to Cadiz from the Bay of Biscay, and his detached force was ideally placed to scoop it into the bag.

He gave the job to Nelson, a choice that also titillated. At home Alexander Davison, Nelson’s old Canadian friend, was tipped off by Maurice Nelson and wrote to offer his services as prize agent. It was a boon Nelson was unable to confer, for the fleet had its standing agents. The captains with Jervis also sensed battle and loot. As Saumarez of the
Orion
, who was detailed to accompany Nelson, told his brother, ‘Be not surprised if, with our desperate commodore, you hear of our taking the whole Spanish fleet should we fall in with them.’ The name of Nelson had now become synonymous with decisive action.
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Nelson was still in Martin’s
Irresistible
, its gaudy ‘bright yellow sides’ conspicuous as it weighed anchor on 6 March with a mixture of ships of the line, frigates and smaller warships – the
Orion
,
Leander
,
La Minerve
,
Southampton
,
Andromache
,
Romulus
,
Bonne Citoyenne
and
Raven
. The
Caroline
and
Seahorse
joined soon after. His orders were to cruise for fourteen days between Cape St Vincent and Cape Spartel in Tangier, but not a single prize came their way. On 24 March the
Captain
and
Colossus
found them, and Nelson arranged to return to his old ship, sending the
Irresistible
and
Orion
back to the fleet.
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On the afternoon of 1 April there was a ceremony that gave Nelson some satisfaction all the same. Jervis arrived with the fleet, steering towards Cadiz, which he intended to blockade. Nelson’s barge struck across to the
Ville de Paris
, the commander-in-chief’s new flagship, and returned within the hour with a blue bundle. It was Nelson’s flag as a rear admiral of the fleet, arrived from England, and he ran it up without delay while the ship shuddered to a salute of seventeen guns.

The commander-in-chief reviewed the situation. His first instinct was to press on to Cadiz, leaving Nelson to continue sweeping with the
Captain
,
Culloden
,
Zealous
and
La Minerve
, but he had no sooner sent the rear admiral on his way than he had second thoughts. Perhaps he worried about dividing his forces before the main Spanish fleet in Cadiz. Anyway, Nelson was recalled to the fleet as it stationed itself outside the enemy stronghold. On 10 April the commander-in-chief gave his most distinguished officer a new job. With the
Captain
,
Orion
,
Zealous
,
Culloden
,
Irresistible
,
Colossus
and
Romulus
he would form
‘the inshore squadron’ at Cadiz, plugging the port up close while the rest of the battle fleet stood in support further out. In effect, it was Nelson who would be responsible for preventing ships coming out of the port and intercepting the enemy fleet if it offered battle. It was he who officially notified the foreign consuls in Cadiz, as well as the British captains, that the place was officially under blockade.
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Many an officer would have wallowed in the privilege, and simply got on with it, but there was nothing inert about Sir Horatio’s mind. On the evening of 11 April two old friends sat drinking and talking in the cabin of a British ship of the line riding outside Cadiz. They were men of a similar age and stamp, and had shared adventures on the old
Seahorse
. Admiral Horatio Nelson and Captain Thomas Troubridge were both men of some schooling, had shipped aboard merchant vessels as well as His Majesty’s ships, and established reputations as bold, skilful and fiercely patriotic officers. After seeing Troubridge blockade Toulon with an inshore squadron, Jervis was sure he was fit to command the fleets of England. It had also been Nelson and Troubridge who had handled most of the fighting in the battle of Cape St Vincent.

Between these two men – the ruggedly handsome, robust and excitable Troubridge and the light, spindly and reserved Nelson – there was developing a bond of uncommon strength. They both loved action as much as they hated the Jacobins, and were strong-minded but emotional, capable of explosive reactions. Nelson’s temperament had an almost feminine quality, with his tearful farewells, constant consideration of friends and brooding sensitivity to slights, but of all his soul mates, the bluff Troubridge was perhaps the closest. That evening, as so often, they struck sparks off one another as they talked.

Soon a remarkable plan was forming. Nothing had been seen of the viceroy of Mexico and his treasure ships, but they were believed to have put into Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canaries to avoid the risk of running for Spain in the teeth of British cruisers. More than a century before, in 1657, a naval force under Admiral Robert Blake, Cromwell’s famous ‘general-at-sea’, had successfully attacked a Spanish plate fleet in Santa Cruz. Well then, if Blake could do it, then why not Nelson and Troubridge?

The discussions were far-reaching, and the next day Nelson penned a detailed proposal to Jervis. He had become one of the commander-in-chief’s greatest confidants, and Collingwood described him as ‘a precious limb from his [Jervis’s] body’. It was Nelson, not Jervis’s three
senior admirals, who got the detached responsibilities. There was never any doubt that Jervis commanded, but when Nelson proposed his lordship always listened. Usually he agreed, and it was sometimes Nelson who shaped the activities of the British Mediterranean fleet.
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In his letter of 12 April the rear admiral enthusiastically put his case for an attack on Santa Cruz with a confidence that it would be adopted. At times he found himself telling Jervis what to say to the military minds he must convince to cooperate. ‘All the risk and responsibility must rest with you,’ he told the commander-in-chief. ‘A fair representation should also be made by you of the great national advantages that would arise to our country, and of the ruin that our success would occasion to Spain. Your opinion besides should be stated of the superior advantages a fortnight thus employed would be of to the army, to what [little] they could [otherwise] do in Portugal, and that of the six or seven millions sterling, the army should have one half. If this sum were thrown into circulation into England, what might be done? It would ensure an honourable peace, with innumerable other blessings.’ Reading this the uninformed could be forgiven for taking Nelson to be the superior officer.
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Six or seven million pounds! It would certainly have dealt a financial blow to Spain, and been appreciated in war-weary Britain, but there can be no doubt that the fortune in prize money provided the principal motivation. The war was thought to be flickering to a close, in months if not weeks. The Austrians and French shortly agreed a preliminary peace at Leoben on 18 April, and there was little longterm strategic value to be gained from seizing Santa Cruz at this late stage. In truth Nelson’s plan was largely a grab for money.

As Nelson saw it, there were two ways of doing the business. An attempt might be made to cut the ships out of the anchorage, but that operation needed an offshore wind, and when such winds blew they were often squally and uncertain. The other method he reckoned surer. Indeed, it ‘could not fail of success, would immortalise the undertakers, ruin Spain, and has every prospect of raising our country to a higher pitch of wealth than she ever yet attained.’ Troops might be landed to seize the commanding heights and sever the town’s water supply, which passed through wooden troughs outside. Santa Cruz had never been regularly invested, Nelson believed, and had no fortifications comparable with those they had subdued in Corsica. If the sort of generous terms prepared for Porto Ferraio, Leghorn and Capraia were put to the Spaniards, and the rights of civilians protected,
there might be no battle at all. The hitch, thought Nelson, was the British army. Soldiers, he believed, ‘have not the same boldness in undertaking a political measure that we have’, but more troops and artillery than the fleet possessed were needed. He suggested that the garrison at Elba, which was then being evacuated, might serve, or that Jervis might persuade Governor Charles O’Hara to draw upon his garrison at Gibraltar.

This plan neatly dovetailed with a more altruistic proposal Nelson had already laid before his commander-in-chief. For some weeks he had been worrying about De Burgh and Fremantle, still isolated on Porto Ferraio. Final orders had now been given for its withdrawal, but Fremantle’s convoy had a long journey to reach Gibraltar, and was open to attack all the way. Since the middle of March, Nelson had been offering to go back with two or three ships of the line, and cover the convoy’s retreat. ‘My feelings are alive for the safety of our army from Elba,’ he told Jervis. Now the extraction of the Elba garrison with its three thousand seven hundred soldiers bore directly upon the new proposal to attack Santa Cruz.
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