Nelson (161 page)

6
. Nelson to Troubridge, 20/7/1797, Add. MSS 34902; Christopher C. Lloyd, ed.,
Keith Papers
, 2, p. 91; Buckland,
Miller Papers
, pp. 17–18.

7
. I am following Lanuza Cano,
Ataque
, p. 59, for the strength of the Paso Alto battery.

8
. ‘Remarks on board H.M. Ship
Theseus
’, ADM 1/396. This is Nelson’s record between 14 July and 16 August. A variation, entitled ‘Detail of the Proceedings’, is in Add. MSS, 34906: 200.

9
. Spanish account, Add. MSS 34906: 215; Davis account, NMM: WAL/21B; Buckland,
Miller Papers
, p. 19.

10
. Davis account, NMM: WAL/21A; Buckland,
Miller Papers
, p. 26; Fremantle,
Wynne Diaries
(1935–40), 2, p. 184.

11
. Antonio to Alvarez, 27/7/1797, Add. MSS 34906: 218

12
. Saumarez to Richard Saumarez, 6/3/1797, Sir John Ross,
Saumarez
, 1, p. 177.

13
. Fremantle,
Wynne Diaries
, 2, pp. 184–5; Buckland,
Miller Papers
, pp. 21–2. The German informant is also mentioned in Waller’s journal, ADM 1/396.

14
. Nelson to Hamond, 8/9/1797, NMM: MON/1.

15
. Jervis to O’Hara, 13/2/1797, Add. MSS 31159; Elliot to Jervis, 29/6/1796, NMM: ELL/159.

16
. G. L. Newnham Collingwood, ed.,
Correspondence
, 1, p. 61; Thorp, 24/7/1797, in T. A. Thorp, ‘George Thorp’, pp. 182, 190.

17
. Buckland,
Miller Papers
, p. 23.

18
. Nelson to Jervis, 24/7/1797, Add. MSS 34906.

19
. Lady Nelson’s account, 1806, Monmouth MSS, E676a. This account is reprinted with minor transcription errors in
NLTHW
, p. 374.

20
. Buckland,
Miller Papers
, p, 24; Add. MSS 31176: 117.

21
. The log of the
Leander
(ADM 51/1201) says that the boats drew some fire from the forts as they passed, but whether this preceded the outbreak of fighting at the mole is unclear.

22
. Journal, Add. MSS 34906: 185.

23
. Hoste to his father, 15/8/1797, Nash,
Santa Cruz
, p. v.

24
. Cologan’s account in Oquillas, Benitez and Pulido,
Fuentes Documentales
, p. 87; Guimera,
Nelson at Tenerife
, p. 29.

25
. Lady Nelson’s account, 1806, Monmouth MSS, E676a; Buckland,
Miller Papers
, p. 31.

26
. The story about Maurice Suckling’s sword comes from the earliest sketch of Nelson (
Public Characters
, p. 7), which appears to draw upon family information.

27
. Spanish account, Add. MSS 34906: 215.

28
. Buckland,
Miller Papers
, p. 26.

29
. Buckland,
Miller Papers
, p. 27. Both British and Spanish accounts of the Tenerife affair betray ready exaggeration. Juan Guinther’s claim that 742 invading Britons survived to benefit from the ceasefire on 25 July (Oquillas, Benitez and Pulido,
Fuentes Documentales
, p. 114) would seem to be absurd. Less than that number participated in the attack, and more than three hundred either lost their lives or failed to land. On the other hand Captain Waller’s claim that the British were opposed by seven hundred regulars, three hundred French and six or seven thousand militia was a gross overstatement fed by the inflated claims the Spaniards made to intimidate their opponents during negotiations.

30
. Fanny’s endorsement on McArthur to Fanny, 22/1/1807, Monmouth MSS, E678; Lady Nelson’s account, 1806, Monmouth MSS, E676a.

31
. Hoste to his father, 15/8/1797, Nash,
Santa Cruz
, p. v. A story that Nelson doffed his hat with his left hand to return the salute of his officers is contained in what appears to be a later (and possibly less reliable) insertion into Lady Nelson’s account. I know of no credible source at all for the popular legend that Nelson was first taken to the
Seahorse
, but declined to go aboard for fear of alarming Mrs Fremantle.

32
. Fremantle,
Wynne Diaries
, 2, p. 189; James Stanier Clarke and John McArthur,
Life and Services
, 3, p. 214. For Nelson’s operation see the medical journal of the
Theseus
, ADM 101/123/2; D’Arcy Power, ‘Some Bygone Operations in Surgery’; James Kemble,
Idols and Invalids
, pp. 134–42; H. T. A. Bosanquet, ‘Lord Nelson’; L. P. Lequesne, ‘Nelson’s Wounds’; Jessie Dobson, ‘Lord Nelson’; P. D. Gordon Pugh,
Nelson and His Surgeons
; Beatus Ruettimann, ‘How Nelson Lost his Arm’; and James Watt, ‘Naval Surgery in the Time of Nelson’. For contemporary surgical procedures I have relied upon William Northcote,
Marine Practice of Physic and Surgery
, 1, pp. 179–98, and William Turnbull,
Naval Surgeon
, pp. 303–5, 380–7. I am grateful to Surgeon Vice Admiral Sir James Watt, the foremost authority on historical naval surgery, for sending me his observations on this subject.

33
. Clarence’s account is in Add. MSS 34990: 54.

34
. Nelson’s wound continued to cause him unusual pain but scholars have disagreed about its origin. One of the ligatures proved remarkably tenacious and refused to come away, and before the end of 1797 physicians in London were blaming Eshelby for trapping the median nerve with the bound artery. Some scholars have followed, condemning the operation as a botched job, but this is unfair. As I have said, the inclusion of the nerve in a ligature seems to have been a commonly accepted practice at that time. Sir James Watt has also drawn my attention to the difficulties faced by Eshelby as he tried to secure bleeding arteries deep inside the wound in a poor light. He believes that Eshelby found an artery bleeding higher up the wound, near the median nerve. In applying forceps and ligaturing the artery he accidentally caught up the median nerve, causing postoperative pain that was later sustained by infection. This disappeared when the ligature eventually fell away. Kemble,
Idols and Invalids
, pp. 140–1, also gave infection a role in perpetuating Nelson’s pain, believing that it developed when the obstinate ligature kept the wound open. However, Kemble dismissed the role of the median nerve too readily. He contended that fixing the median nerve to the ligature would not in itself have occasioned pain, a theory he partly based upon his view that Nelson’s pain was not ‘nervous in origin’. Had it been so, Kemble argued, Nelson would have felt ‘phantom’ pains in his amputated limb. In fact, contrary to what Kemble supposed, Nelson
did
report phantom pains in his amputated right hand (William to Nelson, 7/10/1797, Monmouth MSS, E653).

35
. Terms, 25/7/1797, Add. MSS 34906: 181.

36
. Buckland,
Miller Papers
, p. 30; Troubridge to Nelson, 25/7/1797, Add. MSS 34906; Jervis to Mazarredo, 18/8/1797, Add. MSS 31160.

37
. Hoste to his father, 15/8/1797, Nash,
Santa Cruz
, p. v; Oquillas, Benitez and Pulido,
Fuentes Documentales
, p. 84; medical journal of the
Theseus
, ADM 101/123/2.

38
. Details of individual casualties here and elsewhere are drawn from the medical journal of the
Theseus
, ADM 101/123/2, and the
Theseus
muster, ADM 36/12648.

39
. Miller’s return in Buckland,
Miller Papers
, p. 32, gives similar but slightly higher casualties than the official return enclosed in ADM 1/396: no. 151. For the Spanish and French losses see Lanuza Cano,
Ataque
, chap. 17 and p. 607.

40
. Miller to Thompson, 26/7/1797, Add. MSS 46119; Fremantle, ‘Nelson’s First Writing’, p. 207; Wentworth to Lee, Monmouth MSS, E248.

41
. Nelson to Gutierrez, 26/7/1797, Oquillas, Benitez and Pulido,
Fuentes Documentales
, p. 32.

42
. Nash,
Santa Cruz
, p. 17.

43
. Nelson to St Vincent, 27/7/1797, ADM 1/396.

44
. Hoste to his father, 15/8/1797, Nash,
Santa Cruz
, p. v; Harriet Hoste, ed.,
Hoste
, 1, p. 86.

45
. Nelson to St Vincent, 27/7/1797, ADM 1/396.

46
. Nelson to Jervis, 16/8/1797, Add. MSS 34902.

XXVII Useless to my Country (pp. 778–88)

1
. Logs of the
Seahorse
, ADM 51/1190, ADM 52/3416; Elliot to his wife, 27/6/1797, NLS, 11051: 73; De Burgh to Elliot, 21/5/1797, NMM: ELL/148.

2
. Medical journal of the
Seahorse
, ADM 101/120/6; Elliot to his wife, 3/10/1797, NLS. 11051: 122; Anne Fremantle, ed.,
The Wynne Diaries
(1935–40), 2, pp. 188–9; Jervis to Nelson, 23/10/1797, Add. MSS 34939.

3
. Jervis to Nelson, 16/8/1797, Add. MSS 34939.

4
. Jervis to Nepean, 16/8/1797, ADM 1/396; the
Seahorse
muster, ADM 36/13125; G. L. Newnham Collingwood, ed.,
Correspondence
, 1, p. 61. Other officers of the
Seahorse
included Lieutenants Archibald Dickson and Edward Galway and the master, Michael Spratt. An interesting name on the muster was that of a twenty-seven-year-old Londoner John Spurling, master’s mate. He would distinguish himself as a master of the
Imperieuse
under Lord Cochrane in 1806–9.

5
. Jervis to Nisbet, 16/8/1797, ADM 1/2226; Add. MSS 31176: 228; Nelson to Hoste, September 1797,
D&L
, 2, p. 442; Harriet Hoste, ed.,
Hoste
, 1, p. 86.

6
. Nelson to Fanny, 5/8/1797,
NLTHW
, p. 332.

7
. Grenville to Fremantle, 1/9/1797, and Betsy to William Fremantle, 2, 6/9/1797, CBS, D-FR/45/2; Ramsay to Nelson, 26/11/1802, NMM: CRK/10.

8
. Weatherhead to Nelson, 26/10/1797, Add. MSS 34906; Nelson to Weatherhead, 31/10/1797, 27/1/1798,
D&L
, 2, p. 451, and Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth.

9
. The literature of this engagement is discussed in Pedro Ontorio Oquillas, Luis Cola Benitez and Daniel Garcia Pulido, eds,
Fuentes Documentales
, pt vi.

10
. George III to Spencer, 2/9/1797, A. Aspinall, ed.,
Later Correspondence
, 2, p. 619.

11
. Add. MSS 29232: 314.

12
. David White, ‘Heralds and Their Clients’.

13
. Nelson to his father, 1/1/1797, Monmouth MSS, E599; Nelson to Suckling, 30/8/1797, Monmouth MSS, E43.

14
. Some insight into Jervis’s ideas is given by his signal book, 31/1/1796, NMM: CRK/14.

15
. Collingwood to Edward Collingwood, 23/1/1795, Add. MSS 52780.

16
. Nelson to Fanny, 2/8/1796, Add. MSS 34988.

17
. Nelson to his father, 1/1/1797, Monmouth MSS, E599.

18
. Nelson to Charles Long, 7/8/1793, Add. MSS 34902.

19
.
NLTHW
, p. 465.

20
. Russell Grenfell,
Nelson the Sailor
, p. 213.

Published sources are cited by short titles that key to the select bibliography. Abbreviations commonly used are as follows:

A: Manuscripts

Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury

Fremantle papers (D-FR/32/2/3; D-FR/41/6; D-FR/45/2)

Berwick-upon-Tweed Record Office

Parish registers of Berwick-upon-Tweed and Belford

National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

Copies of Collingwood papers (NLS 1811)

Lynedoch papers (NLS 3596)

Minto papers (NLS 9819, 11049–51, 11072, 11083, 11111, 11139, 11193, 11209–14, 11221)

Norfolk Nelson Museum, Great Yarmouth

Ben Burgess Collection

National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

Admiralty Correspondence (ADM/C)

Admiralty Lieutenants’ Logs (ADM/L) A51, A72, B5, B97, B136, B175A, C51, C246, D93, E159, H113, J121, L220, M292, P406, S222–4, T87A, T268, W180

Administration and Law papers (ADL)

Agamemnon
interviews (BGY/W/3)