Nelson (15 page)

For Midshipman Nelson, the man in the making, some of the sights that now opened before him must have been welcome reminders of the boy he had been not so very long ago. To starboard of the
Carcass
the beautiful Norfolk coast slid by. Cromer lighthouse blinked in the distance on 18 September, and the next day the ship put into Yarmouth. They remained a few days waiting for a suitable wind, repairing the
ship and replenishing stores, and acquaintances of Nelson may have been among the several visitors who travelled from Norwich to come aboard.

There was still no word of Phipps. Lutwidge had orders to proceed to the Nore in the event of a separation, but he feared that Phipps had drowned and wrote to the Admiralty notifying them of his return. On the 23rd the
Carcass
was compelled to resume its voyage without any further news of the commodore, but three days later her crew were greatly relieved to find the
Racehorse
in Harwich harbour. The adventure was now thoroughly over, and another week took Lutwidge to Deptford, where he moored his ship alongside a sheer-hulk and left her for a complete overhaul.

The expedition had not reached the North Pole. It did not even convince every party that the Northeast Passage was mythical or at least unnavigable, but it had been a creditable performance nevertheless, and reflected favourably upon all concerned. The camaraderie, forged in peril, was warm and infectious, and when the ships were paid off on 14 October First Lieutenant John Baird was almost mobbed by the men who even wanted to strip off their shirts to lay them at Baird’s feet so that his shoes should not be dirtied as he withdrew to his coach. Sadly, talented though he was, Baird had little ‘interest’ in the service and never reached that elusive captain’s list. Nor did Horace’s friend, Robert Hughes, who transferred to the
Dublin
. He sailed on six other ships before passing his examination for lieutenant in 1780, but evidently died the same year, just after his commission was confirmed.
²⁸

Horatio Nelson had been greatly enriched by the experience, and imbibed lessons in seamanship, resourcefulness and resolution. He had grown in confidence, ability and enthusiasm for new challenges. After all, he had filled a man’s place, asked no favours, and won the respect of picked men. Nelson took away not only the continuing goodwill of Phipps and Lutwidge, but also one of the silver pocket watches inscribed with the words, ‘for strict attention to duty with H.M.S. Racehorse. North Pole Expedition 1772.’ Every time he looked at the watch it told him more than the time. It told him he had met a difficult job head-on and shaped up.
²⁹

On 14 October he received £8. 2s. 2d. in wages, after various deductions totalling 10s. 4d., and the next day rejoined the old
Triumph
moored at Blackstakes. Captain Suckling still commanded, and immediately put his nephew’s name back on the ship’s books with the rating
of captain’s servant. The ship moved to Chatham on 20 October, but now Horace left her for good. On 26 October he was discharged to the
Seahorse
, bound with new shipmates for new climes, and the long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies.
³⁰

Once again, it seems, Captain Suckling had found just the right situation to further his nephew’s progress in the service.

Blake and Rooke, and Vernon near him

Crown’d with glory’s laurel wreath,

Chase despairing thoughts, and cheer him

On to victory or death.

Like a giant from his slumber,

Swift he starts, with freshen’d soul;

‘Yes – among that sainted number

Nelson shall his name enrol!’

H. L. Torre,
Nelson’s Vision

O
NE
thing is certain. For all its rigours, the Arctic voyage had left Horace’s appetite for adventure unscathed. Stimulated by his personal success on the polar expedition, his eyes sparkled when his uncle told him about the two ships fitting out for the East Indies.

The twenty-four-gun
Seahorse
was one of them, a primitive frigate launched in 1748, with a lower deck 112 feet long and a beam or width of thirty-two. Her captain was George Farmer. Farmer’s progress in the service had been steady despite misadventures. A lieutenant the year after Nelson was born, he had stepped up to commander in 1768 and taken the
Swift
sloop to the South Atlantic the following year. The assignment was not a particularly fortunate one, for in 1770 he was wrecked upon the Patagonian coast. Farmer struggled ashore with his crew, and within a month was rescued by another sloop, but in the ensuing June it was he who surrendered Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands to the Spanish and prompted the crisis that gave
Captain Suckling the
Raisonable
. Still, back in England Farmer was exonerated and promoted to post-captain in January 1771, while not yet forty. He was appointed first to the
Launceston
and then to the
Seahorse
.

Farmer was another of Captain Suckling’s friends. Indeed, he had been a midshipman on Suckling’s
Dreadnought
in the West Indies and owed him favours. Moreover, although Farmer’s roots were in Northamptonshire and Ireland, he had spent several years in the impress service in Norfolk, recruiting for the navy, and living at Facolneston, near Wymondham. It was not until the August and September of 1773, when the
Seahorse
was being prepared, that he moved to Sussex. Most probably Farmer and Suckling, both naval officers based in East Anglia, had seen much of each other over the
¹
years.

The
Seahorse
gave Farmer means of patronage, with places available to family and such useful friends as Captain Suckling. His son, George William Farmer, was entered on the ship’s books as captain’s servant. However, though George was seventeen and entirely capable of sailing, he remained at home when the
Seahorse
left England, leaving the books to provide him with an entirely fictional career as a midshipman and able seaman. It was fraud, if fraud of a type common to the service. Someone, perhaps Farmer or officers who authenticated his books, collected the wages the absentee was supposed to be earning, while young George gained years of valuable sea time without ever quitting terra firma. As for Nelson, Captain Farmer was quite willing to oblige Suckling and take him aboard, and the youth was accordingly rated midshipman of the
Seahorse
on 27 October 1773. He was fifteen, but the muster made it eighteen, compounding the misstatements about his age in the books of the
Carcass
.
²

Since there was no knowing how long a ship might remain on a station as remote as the Far East, Captain Suckling searched for another reliable officer who might share with Farmer the job of looking after his nephew. Supervising affairs in the Medway and the Nore had given Suckling new contacts through the office of the Navy Board, the department responsible for governing dockyards, building and maintaining ships and appointing warrant officers such as masters, pursers and surgeons. It was to one of these contacts, Samuel Bentham, the naval architect and brother of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, that the captain now turned. Thus, on 28 October, Bentham addressed a short letter to a certain Mr Kee. He understood that Kee was agent for
Thomas Surridge, who had just been appointed master of the
Seahorse
, and asked him to draw his client’s notice to young Horatio Nelson, destined to join that ship at Spithead. ‘The master is a necessary man for a young lad to be introduced to,’ opined Bentham. It was, it transpired, a fortunate choice, for Surridge was a protector and role model of outstanding ability.
³

Both were needed because the
Seahorse
was not the happiest ship.

Nelson was good at winning friends among peers and seniors alike. He recalled many with affection in later years, and if he encountered meanness of spirit or incompetence in his travels, he seems to have thought them best buried with the past. He spoke well of his chosen profession, for all its faults. Reading the piece of autobiography he produced in 1799, one is struck by a service abundantly supplied with capable, responsible, and well-meaning officers. The original tapestry, it has to be said, was of a richer weave.

His fellow ‘young gentlemen’ presented the usual variety. Most of the midshipmen who worked with him on the
Seahorse
were older than he was. There was James Gardiner, William Sullivan of Greenwich, Richard James and Henry Darracott, both from Plymouth, the West Indian Charles Burt, and George Hicks of Norwich, all entered on the books as eighteen or nineteen years of age. James, Burt and Darracott would eventually become lieutenants, but none reached ‘post’ rank. Richard Lodington of Plymouth, another fellow midshipman, was considerably older at twenty-six.

Thomas Troubridge and Thomas Hoare were also mustered as eighteen-year-old recruits and became special friends. Troubridge was the son of Richard Troubridge of London, and exchanged stories of the merchant service with Horace. Originally rated an able seaman, he replaced Gardiner as a midshipman when the latter quit the ship in March 1774, and remained in the
Seahorse
until 1780, long after Horace had been invalided home. We will encounter him often in these pages. Thomas Hoare, who later took the surname Bertie, served as master’s mate and able seaman before succeeding Horace as midshipman on 14 March 1776. He would eventually get his commission in 1778 and die a full admiral in 1825.
⁴

Horace discovered other kindred spirits on the
Seahorse
’s consort, the fifty-gun
Salisbury
, captained by George Robinson Walters. She flew the broad pendant of Commodore Edward Hughes, an able officer who was being sent to command the small naval squadron in the East Indies. Commodore Hughes ‘always’ showed Nelson ‘the greatest
kindness’, but the youth developed a remarkable rapport with one of his inferior officers, Charles Pole. A Devon lad, Pole was the great grandson of a baronet and one of the rare graduates of the Portsmouth Naval Academy.
⁵

Nelson was fifteen when he stepped on board the
Seahorse
for the first time, and approaching eighteen when malaria forced him home. He spent impressionable years on the ship and it is surprising that biographers have had so little to say about them. Horace enjoyed his East Indian service and often but vainly contemplated a happy return to those waters. He learned a great deal about managing and navigating ships there, enjoyed a feast of new experiences, made valuable friendships and saw hostile action for the first time. However, it was also a time of shadows, closed by serious illness and marred by disturbing social relationships on board. In Captain Farmer, Nelson had his first inadequate commander and met some of the dangers of weak leadership.
⁶

The
Salisbury
and
Seahorse
were bound upon a protracted service. The East Indies was the furthest station maintained by the Royal Navy and those assigned to it could expect to be parted from homes and families for a long period. As usual when sustained hardship was anticipated, the Admiralty made special provision. Once again portable soup was supplied, ready for twice-weekly servings with peas on the haul across the Indian Ocean, and Irving’s equipment for distilling salt water reappeared, this time reinforced by Osbridge’s machine for sweetening water. While the ships waited for fair sailing weather – the longboat of the
Seahorse
was overturned by rough water in Spithead harbour, losing boat hooks, oars and spars – the men were also treated to two months’ pay in advance, distributed by naval commissioner James Gambier on the afternoon of 6 November. Horace found, no doubt ruefully, that his pay totalled £4 11s. 6d., but that deductions for the Chatham Chest and Greenwich Hospital, both in aid of sick, injured or aged seamen, left just £2 5s. 0d. for himself.
⁷

Finally, on the morning of 19 November 1773, the ships put to sea, using small boats to help tow them out of harbour. There was an uncertain start. When Captain Farmer fired a thirteen-gun salute in honour of the commodore’s broad pendant, the wads were blown out of two of the cannons and carried away the
Seahorse
’s lower fore
studding sails. Nevertheless, they were soon underway and making an uneventful voyage towards the Cape of Good Hope.

At Funchal road in Madeira there was a major provisioning stop early in December. Two hundred and nine gallons of the
Seahorse
’s beer were found to have gone ‘calm, sour and stinking’, but they were able to replenish with water, wine and a few provisions before sailing on 11 December. Captain Farmer had kept his people in excellent health. ‘I think it worthy [of] remarking that the ship’s company has been remarkably healthy since we sailed,’ Surridge wrote in his log for 13 January, ‘and this day when we crossed the Equator there was but three men on the sick list with slight complaints.’
⁸

Mr Surridge, the ship’s master, to whom Nelson had been referred before sailing, was ubiquitous on board. There was only one lieutenant, James Francis Edward Drummond, so Surridge commanded a watch, in addition to handling and navigating the ship and instructing the ‘young gentlemen’ in the mysteries of mathematics and setting a course. He was, as Horace quickly discerned, no common man. A master was a warrant officer, appointed by the Navy Board rather than the Admiralty, and though his position was an important one and he took station with the lieutenants he lacked their status, for they and their superiors held the king’s commission from the Admiralty. Masters were often from the lower middling classes, with clerking or shopkeeping backgrounds, normally short of the social connections of the commissioned officers but possessing the rudiments of education. Occasionally men of remarkable talent emerged from the ranks of the masters. The most famous was the explorer James Cook, whose people were hardy hill farmers, but Thomas Surridge, the mentor of Nelson, almost deserves mentioning in the same breath. Like Cook, Surridge used sheer ability to switch to the commissioned officer ladder, and remarkably he not only made lieutenant but eventually became a vice admiral in 1819.