Nelson (137 page)

Among individuals who have offered help, material and suggestions at different times I should notice several fellow members of the Nelson Society, including Ray and Ann Evans, David Shannon, Derek Hayes, Louis Hodgkin, Victor Sharman, Clive Richards, and Jim Woolward. In Britain I would also like to thank authors Carola Oman, Oliver Warner, Professor Christopher Lloyd, Professor Michael Lewis, Leonard W. Cowie, Tom Pocock, Surgeon Vice Admiral Sir James Watt, Sir Ludovic Kennedy, Brian Vale, and Dr J. C. G. Binfield of Sheffield University, who not only reviewed my early explorations into the naval and political history of Nelson’s day but also first taught me the difference between a dissertation and a book. Many other individuals made contributions, including Derek Barlow, Stephen Brockman, and Lily Lambert McCarthy, whose collection of Nelsoniana now graces the Royal Naval Museum at Portsmouth, and who eight years ago urged me to write ‘the
Nelson
of the decade’. Peter and Dorothy Lowe first took me around the north Norfolk coast and Burnham Thorpe, and their son Julian generously gave of his time in Norwich. For one whose extra-English qualifications are ineffective beyond court shorthand and the rudiments of Swedish, I am greatly indebted to Dr Harold Smyth, Dr Antonelle Bernabo, Isabel Rubio Gomez and Stewart Platts for help with translations. Numerous friends rallied around in North America, including Helen Hornbeck Tanner, Doug Clanin and Art and Shirley Wolfe. The enthusiasm and expertise of Guy St Denis of London, Ontario, proved of great value in clarifying certain episodes of Nelson’s career.

Attempts have been made to locate copyright owners. In addition to acknowledgements made elsewhere, I must thank the Society of Authors
as the literary representatives of the estate of Alfred Noyes; PFD, on behalf of the Estate of Hilaire Belloc, for use of the ‘Ballade of Unsuccessful Men’; and Carcanet Press Ltd for permission to quote from ‘1805’ from the
Complete Poems
of Robert Graves.

All authors need, but rarely get, sympathetic editors and publishers. I had the good fortune to meet Will Sulkin of Jonathan Cape and Pimlico. His vision and understanding have been exceptional, and it was his faith in the project that ultimately turned it into a reality. Throughout long years of toil his support has never wavered. I have also benefited from the valuable observations of Jörg Hensgen and Richard Collins, who read the entire manuscript, and from the assistance of Rosalind Porter. Once again it has been a pleasure to work with Jack Macrae of Henry Holt and Company, New York, who safely piloted two of my previous projects into port. The maps were drawn by Malcolm Ward.

Finally, my debts to two individuals are incalculable. Without the unfailing support and enthusiasm of my partner, Terri Egginton, who has lived cheerfully with the spirit of Nelson, and the advice of my brother, Philip Sugden, whose knowledge of some aspects of the eighteenth century is second to none, the book would have been impossible to complete.

Serious biographical and historical research is a punishing business, especially when the subject is an internationally public figure about whom a mass of documentation survives. In Nelson’s case the mythological dimension is another complication, and it is unreasonable to believe that there will ever be one standard view of the man, no matter how dispassionately the evidence is weighed. The views of scholars will vary according to the information they read and the interests, dispositions and purposes of the student. Since writing about Nelson is rather like wading in deep water, I have tried to avoid being sent one way or another by preconceived notions of what I wanted to find. Instead I have tried to keep an open mind, allowing conclusions to form and evolve in the light of the growing body of material, whether fashionable or not. I hope readers are served that way. But while the opinions expressed are my own, they rest upon findings uncovered only with the help and encouragement of many who have made this a rewarding social as well as an intellectual journey.

John Sugden

Cumbria, 2003

Introduction (pp. 1–13)

1
. John Barrow,
Auto-Biographical Memoir
, p. 285.

2
. Wedgwood to Tyler, 6/12/1805, in William Henry Wyndham-Quin,
Sir Charles Tyler
, p. 154.

3
. Lamb to Hazlitt, 10/11/1805, E. V. Lucas, ed.,
Letters of Charles Lamb
, 1, p. 409; Juliet Barker,
Wordsworth
, pp. 337–8.

4
. Barbara E. Rooke, ed.,
The Friend
, 2, p. 365; Robert Southey,
Life of Nelson
, p. 337.

5
. Details of Nelson monuments are scattered throughout the pages of
ND
, but convenient accounts are given by John Knox Laughton,
Nelson Memorial
, pp. 319–23; Rodney Mace,
Tragalgar Square
; Alison Yarrington,
Commemoration of the Hero
, and ‘Nelson the Citizen Hero’; Flora Fraser, ‘If You Seek His Monument’; and Leo Marriott,
What’s Left of Nelson
, pp. 125–37.

6
. Matthew H. Barker (‘The Old Sailor’),
Life of Nelson
, p. 4; James Harrison,
Life
, 1, p. viii; Fanny Nelson to McArthur, 28/2/1807, Monmouth MSS, E678.

7
. Nelson’s sketch, sent to McArthur in October 1799 and published in volume 3 of
The Naval Chronicle
(1800), was reprinted in
D&L
, 1, p. 1. It is now with other McArthur papers in the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia. The same denial of nepotism was evident in the first biographical notice of Nelson, which appeared in 1798, apparently based upon information from the family. ‘That he has risen to his present eminence without the cooperation of powerful friends is perfectly unnecessary to remark’ (
Public Characters
, p. 8) ungratefully erases several senior officers from Nelson’s early career. See also James Stanier Clarke and John McArthur,
Life and Services
, 1, advertisement, and 2, p. 381. John McArthur, the senior of the authors of
The Life of Admiral Lord Nelson
, had written signal books for Admirals Robert Digby and Lord Hood, and later served as secretary and prize-agent to Hood, Man and Parker in the Mediterranean, in which last capacities he became associated with Nelson.

8
. For the biographer see Warren R. Dawson,
Thomas Joseph Pettigrew
.

9
. Joseph Allen,
Life of Lord Viscount Nelson
, pp. v–vi.

10
. Mark Storey,
Robert Southey
, p. 219.

11
. Southey,
Life of Nelson
, p. 43; Carola Oman in
ND
, 7 (2001), pp. 327–32; and David Eastwood, ‘Patriotism Personified’. These issues may become clearer with the completion of the work of Marianne Czisnik. See her ‘Nelson and the Nile’.

12
. The influence of Nelson upon some of these commanders is well known. For Perry see
David C. Skaggs and Gerald T. Althoff,
A Signal Victory
, p. 115, while Cochrane’s indebtedness is described in his
Autobiography
, 1, pp. 88–9, and John Sugden, ‘Lord Cochrane’, pp. 145–6, 308–10. Cochrane modelled his only fleet encounter off Brazil in 1823 upon Nelson’s tactics at Trafalgar: ch. 5 of Brian Vale,
Independence or Death!

13
. Material on this period can be found in William D. Puleston,
Mahan
; William E. Livezey,
Mahan on Sea Power
; C. G. Reynolds,
Command of the Sea
; and Paul M. Kennedy,
Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery
.

14
. Mahan to Laughton, 14/8/1895, in Andrew Lambert, ed.,
Letters and Papers of Professor Sir John Knox Laughton
, p. 111, and Andrew Lambert,
Foundations of Naval History
. Laughton added some documents to the published stock in his edition of
The Letters and Despatches of Horatio, Viscount Nelson
, and among many secondary contributions produced two short biographies,
Nelson
and
The Nelson Memorial
.

15
. For an overview of the film industry’s handling of Nelson, reflecting changing popular taste, see John Sugden, ‘Nelson and the Film Industry’.

16
. A revised but abridged edition of
Nelson
, published in 1967, embodied further new material. Carola Oman (1897–1978), a pioneer of historical biography, described some of her early literary and scholarly advantages in
An Oxford Childhood
. An overdue entry in the
New Dictionary of National Biography
is scheduled.

17
. Nelson to Churchey, 20/10/1802,
MM
, 28 (1942), p. 319.

18
. The latest biography, Edgar Vincent’s
Nelson, Love and Fame
(2003), which appeared as the present work was being prepared for the press, though not without considerable merits exemplifies the excessive reliance upon familiar published sources, most of which are now more than one and a half centuries old. Though few lives of Nelson advanced the subject academically, a number were well written and informed introductions. Personal favourites are Clennell Wilkinson’s
Nelson
; Russell Grenfell’s
Horatio Nelson
; and Oliver Warner’s
Portrait of Lord Nelson
. No comprehensive review of the literature of Nelson has been published, but some four hundred book-length accounts, fact and fiction, have been published in different languages. There are original works in Danish, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese and Thai (the last by a grandson of the King of Siam). The number of pamphlets, booklets, articles and ephemera runs to many thousands. Annotated lists of some items were provided by Laughton,
Nelson Memorial
; Charles J. Britton,
New Chronicles
; Oliver Warner,
Lord Nelson
; and Leonard W. Cowie,
Lord Nelson
.

19
.
The New York Times
, 25/10/1998. Coleman appreciated the dangers of judging people by the standards of times other than their own, and made an attempt at even-handedness, but the search for mud to throw remains transparent. The approach is far from new: see, for example, George A. Edinger and E. J. C. Neep,
Horatio Nelson
.

20
. For the history and scope of Nelson’s papers see K. F. Lindsay-MacDougall, ‘Nelson Manuscripts’, and P. K. Crimmin, ‘Letters and Documents’. Miss Lindsay-MacDougall was the conscientious workhorse behind G. P. B. Naish’s
Nelson’s Letters to His Wife
, to date the most important supplement to Nicholas Harris Nicolas, ed.,
The Dispatches and Letters of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson
. The 1805 Club has published several discussions of Nelson papers in their yearbook,
TC
, and the lots recently sold at Sotheby’s are described in
Nelson, the Alexander Davison Collection
. A fresh collection of hitherto unpublished Nelson letters in being prepared by Colin White.

21
. Louis J. Jennings, ed.,
Correspondence and Diaries
, 2, pp. 233–4. The authenticity of this famous anecdote has been questioned. On the authority of Henry Graves, who knew Wellington, Robert Rawlinson claimed that the Duke once said that he had only met Nelson on one occasion, as they passed on a staircase in Downing Street:
Notes and Queries
, 2nd series, 9 (1860), p. 141. The provenance of the more famous version seems stronger. Oliver Warner, ‘Admiral Page’s Comments’, p. 377, establishes 12 September 1805 as the only date on which this meeting could have occurred.

I Prologue: Duel at Midnight (pp. 14–27)

1
. Jervis’s instructions, 10/12/1796, Add. MSS 34938.

2
. Jervis to Hamilton, 10/12/1796, in Edward P. Brenton,
John, Earl of St Vincent
, 1, p. 278; Jervis to Elliot, 10/12/1796, NMM: ELL/141.

3
.
La Minerve
muster book, ADM 36/13135.

4
. Basic sources for the voyage are the log books of
La Minerve
(ADM 51/1204 and 52/3223, and NMM: ADM/L/M292) and
Blanche
(ADM 51/1168 and NMM: ADM/L/B97). The dates of events in ships’ logs are sometimes at variance with calendar dates, because the daily entries ran from noon to noon. Usually the entries are sufficiently detailed to allow the correct calendar dates to be determined, and throughout this book I have given these when possible.

5
. Thomas Cochrane [and George Butler Earp],
Autobiography
, 1, p. 88.

6
. The
Santa Sabina
was armed with twenty-eight eighteens and twelve eights, giving her a hitting power of 600 Spanish pounds, equal to about 608 English pounds. The armament of
La Minerve
is uncertain. She was a captured French prize, and, according to the contemporary historian William James (
Naval History
, 1, pp. 54, 291, 365), who is usually particular about such things, she still possessed her French armament of twenty-eight eighteens, twelve eights and two thirty-six pound carronades. If so, she carried forty-two guns with a combined discharge of 672 French pounds equal to over 725 English pounds, and had a 20 per cent advantage over her opponent in firepower. However, it is possible that the British had rearmed
La Minerve
with their own guns in Portsmouth in 1795. Peter Goodwin,
Nelson’s Ships
, p. 141, has her armament as twenty-eight eighteen-pounders, twelve nine-pounders and two eighteen-pound carronades. The total weight of metal would have been 648 English pounds, a more marginal advantage over the
Santa Sabina
. For details of British ships I have generally relied upon J. J. Colledge,
Ships of the Royal Navy
, and D. Lyon,
Sailing Navy List
.

7
. The entry in the captain’s log of
La Minerve
, evidently written by Nelson himself, says that he hailed the Spanish frigate but received no answer. Later he gave a more colourful version (Nelson to William, 13/1/1797, Add. MSS 34988), stating that Stuart replied, ‘This is a Spanish frigate, and you may begin as soon as you please’ By this account Nelson called upon his adversary to surrender several times during the engagement, only to receive the reply, ‘No, sir, not whilst I have the means of fighting left.’