Nelson (25 page)

Back in Jamaica, Nelson witnessed a misfortune of a different kind.
At Port Antonio on 23 May 1779 he picked up a small convoy for Bluefields on the Mosquito coast. Preferring to search for a privateer haunting the region, he discharged the ships at Montego Bay to make a fruitless cruise, and was back in the same place at the end of the month.

At three-thirty on the afternoon of 1 June five ships entered the bay and moored near the
Badger
. Four were London merchantmen and the other was their escort, the twenty-gun
Glasgow
under Captain Thomas Lloyd. About two hours later an alarm was raised on the
Glasgow
. The ship was on fire. A purser’s steward, Richard Brace, had been stealing rum from the after hold and dropped a light into the cask. Soon the flames were out of control and smoke was billowing from the quarterdeck hatchway on the starboard side of the ship, creating what Nelson described as ‘a most shocking sight’.

A terrifying scenario loomed, for Lloyd’s was no ordinary cargo. He had been shipping gunpowder to Jamaica, and if it exploded the
Glasgow
, the other ships sharing the anchorage, and the warehouses and magazines were all threatened with violent destruction. There could have been a panic, but Lloyd kept his head and for part of the time directed operations from the unsafe station of a boom. The court martial, held on the
Bristol
at Port Royal the following month, recognised his efforts to save the ship. Sir Peter Parker happily reported the captain’s acquittal, declaring that he had behaved ‘remarkably’ and been ‘well seconded by his officers and crew’. Only the miserable steward was held culpable, and he was lucky to get no more than one hundred lashes for conduct leading to such calamitous consequences.

Nelson learned of the disaster from Lieutenant Richard Oakley of the
Glasgow
. Oakley was out in a boat pressing sailors when the fire broke out, but seeing the smoke and confusion on board he returned at once. Calling alongside the
Badger
, Oakley demanded as many buckets as could be found, and collecting the first dozen pulled strenuously back to the
Glasgow
. Nelson had his boats manned, commandeered two more from nearby merchantmen and with the rest of the buckets hurried after Oakley to help.

Nelson’s official biographers, Clarke and McArthur, gave their hero the full credit for evacuating the
Glasgow
. In their version Nelson finds the
Glasgow
’s men abandoning the burning ship by jumping into the sea, but turns them back, insisting that the powder first be thrown overboard and all guns be pointed upwards. This story, designed purely to inflate Nelson’s reputation, was a libel on the officers and men of
the unfortunate ship, and erased Lloyd and Oakley from the rescue completely. Nelson himself never made so extravagant an assertion. Though characteristically effusive about his contribution, he allowed that ‘it was owing to my exertions, joined to his [Lloyd’s], that the whole crew were rescued from the flames’. Inasmuch as he provided many of the boats needed to evacuate the one hundred and sixty men there was some justification for this claim.

In reality, Lloyd’s men were desperately fighting the flames before Nelson arrived. Hammocks soaked in water were thrown into the after hold to dampen the fire, and attempts were made to contain it beneath the lower deck before the suffocating smoke and heat between decks drove the men back. Oakley and the gunner both claimed the honour of prompting the removal of the powder, and Lloyd later said that he gave orders that none should leave the ship until every cask had been thrown overboard. Oakley, the gunner and a dozen men broke open the magazine door, and by six o’clock barrels and munitions were being handed up the fore hatchway. Last to be cleared were the filled cartridges. If a major explosion had been averted, however, the ship itself was doomed. At about seven the flames were breaking through the quarterdeck, licking up the mizzen and main rigging and running forward, and the order to abandon ship had to be given.

Nelson’s contemporary statement, hitherto unused by biographers, was given to the court martial in Port Royal and completely destroys the Clarke and McArthur fable:

On the first of June between five and six in the evening I saw the alarm of fire on board the
Glasgow
. Immediately ordered all assistance from the
Badger
, which was immediately sent. I went alongside and saw the ship in a blaze, about one quarter of an hour after the first alarm. After seven o’clock the flames broke through the quarter deck and ascended the main and mizzen rigging, when the boats were ordered by Captain Lloyd to the bows of the ship to receive the men. They were carried from thence on board the
Badger
. Several of the men were much burned, particularly the master [Thomas Cobby] who died the next day. When I went first alongside I heard Captain Lloyd encouraging the men in getting the powder out of the magazine and to throw the powder out of the arm chest on the quarter-deck. Likewise to lay down the guns to prevent their doing any damage to the shipping or the town. The ship was lined entirely from the bowsprit to the quarter [deck] with men drawing water to extinguish the fire with expedition and good order.

On the decks of the
Badger
officers and men of the
Glasgow
huddled in disbelief, but although some had been burned most were safe. The master of a merchant ship then came aboard to protest at the danger to his ship, and it was decided to haul the burning carcass out to sea. Nelson and Lloyd cut the bower anchor cables securing the dying ship, got a hawser aboard her and at about eight-thirty turned her loose before a wind from the land. She drifted away, the flames patterning the dark water and consuming her to the waterline, until about midnight when the ruined shell exploded and then sunk swiftly.

The master of the
Glasgow
died of his injuries at seven the following morning, and nine days later another seaman also died, although whether in consequence of the fire is unknown. Unfortunately, the rainy season broke the day after the tragedy, and sickness spread among the refugees squatting on the open decks of the little
Badger
, unable to find shelter below. Horatio shed his burden as quickly as he could. Some sailors were left at Montego Bay when he put to sea on 2 June, and six days later another seventy were transferred to the
Achilles
victualler at St Ann’s harbour, where Nelson also disembarked over twenty muskets, eighteen cartouche boxes, fifty-two four-pound shot, half a barrel of powder, a dozen boarding pikes and a number of match paper cartridges and powder horns. The remaining passengers were discharged at Port Royal, which Nelson reached with a convoy on 19 June.

Nelson usually felt for unfortunate officers, and wrote a week after the event that Captain Lloyd was still ‘very melancholy indeed’, while poor Oakley, ‘a very good young man’, had lost everything but the clothes he stood in. Though exonerated by court martial and reemployed, Lloyd never prospered. Eventually he retired to Carmarthen in Wales, but Nelson never forgot him, nor failed to express his greatest respect for the unfortunate officer. A little more than four years before his own death off Cape Trafalgar, he wrote to Lloyd that ‘my heart is always warm to you, and your friendship will be the pleasure of my life, let the world either smile or frown upon me’.
¹³

It was a melancholy end to Nelson’s first official command. On 13 June, in the voyage from St Ann’s to Port Royal, he chased a brig that refused to respond to warning shots. A hundred round and grape shot were fired before the quarry submitted, but investigation merely revealed her to be a Jamaican privateer.

However, exciting news awaited Nelson in port: Sir Peter Parker had a frigate for him to command and was promoting him post-captain.
On 20 June, Nelson consigned the
Badger
to the capable hands of his good friend Cuthbert Collingwood, thrilled to have gained that life-changing foothold on the bottom of the captains’ list. He was still only twenty years old, with plenty of time to travel the long road to flag rank.

Before his death Captain Suckling had predicted that the Reverend Edmund Nelson would live to see his son an admiral and now it looked as if the prophecy might be fulfilled.

Officers hungry for promotion and prize money used to toast the Jamaica station with the words, ‘A sickly season and a bloody war!’
¹⁴
Promotion came quickly out there. Partly it was the remoteness, which compelled commanders-in-chief to fill vacancies from available officers, rather than to wait for Admiralty appointments. And partly it was the speed at which such vacancies occurred. Disease took more men than battle and the turnover of officers and men was ferocious. The Jamaica station offered fine opportunities to take prizes and to step into dead men’s shoes – if you survived.

Certainly Nelson was making progress. In 1779 Captain Everitt, formerly commander of the
Badger
, was killed in action. A chain of promotions followed, as gaps were filled, and on 11 June Nelson succeeded Christopher Parker to the captaincy of the
Hinchinbroke
, a French prize that had been converted into a nine-pounder, twenty-eight-gun frigate. The
Hinchinbroke
leaked like an old bucket, and had only been brought into service to meet the increasing demands upon the Jamaica station, but it put Nelson on the captains’ list. The problem was that the ship was still at sea on a trip to Florida, and her new captain had to kick his heels in Jamaica until her return.

In one of his news-packed letters to Locker, Nelson admitted that he was ‘never well in port’, but on this occasion his disappointment was the greater because Captain Deane wanted him to accompany the
Ruby
to their old cruising grounds off Haiti. Instead, Horatio had to content himself sharing the captains’ mess in Jamaica, cultivating new friends as if they were exotic plants.
¹⁵

Deane, Collingwood and Cornwallis were particularly close companions during this time. Collingwood, a round-faced Tynesider who had known Nelson since 1773, was ten years older but inferior in rank. He seemed to step into every post Nelson vacated and followed him
to the
Lowestoffe
,
Badger
and
Hinchinbroke
. Captain William Cornwallis of the
Lion
, a ruddy-complexioned, quiet and self-effacing officer, was five years older than Collingwood, but Horatio also enjoyed his company. ‘I hope I have made a friend of him,’ he told Locker. The remark, though casually made, reveals much about young Nelson’s character. He was a taciturn, sober man, but there was nothing stony or stiff about him. Far from one of life’s unemotional passers-by, falling indifferently in and out of acquaintanceships at the drop of a hat, he actively sought like spirits, and invested time and effort into making them friends. To them he was fiercely loyal and compassionate, rejoicing in their successes and commiserating over tribulations. In time his circle widened, as he infected one colleague after another. We have already seen him standing by Captain Locker, and here in Jamaica he forged lifelong friendships with Deane, Collingwood and Cornwallis.
¹⁶

To Nelson’s relief his enforced spell ashore was not devoid of incident. A large French fleet from Toulon was already among the West Indian islands, under the command of the Comte d’Estaing. In June it seized St Thomas and Grenada, two British islands in the Lesser Antilles. And then, amid rumours of the approach of this overwhelming force, came the news that Spain, too, had finally declared war on a harassed Britain, hoping to regain Gibraltar in any peace negotiations. It was not unexpected but serious all the same. Suddenly the dangers from occasional American corsairs seemed small indeed, for the seas were full of powerful enemies.

At the beginning of August 1779 the
Gayton
, a Jamaican privateer, came into port with a tender. Its company had seen some of d’Estaing’s ships on 29 July, eight ships of the line, several frigates and many transports, and they were close by, off the northeast coast of Hispaniola, within striking distance of Jamaica. Some Spaniards, as ignorant as the
Gayton
of the deteriorating relations between their respective countries, told the captain of the privateer that d’Estaing’s full force was larger still, and consisted of twelve line of battleships, as many frigates and a hundred or so transports. They were going to embark twelve thousand soldiers at St Nicolas Mole, guarding the Windward Passage, and then fall upon Jamaica itself.

For a few days the island was in turmoil, as every scrap of news seemed to confirm the ominous tidings. His Majesty’s ships
Charon
and
Pomona
reported seeing eighteen large ships at Port au Prince on 4 August, evidently preparing to join d’Estaing, and on the 17th a neutral Dutch vessel put into Jamaica from Hispaniola. It brought
word that d’Estaing’s fleet had reached Cape François on the north coast of Haiti, and twenty-six ships of the line, up to a dozen frigates and twenty-two thousand troops were massing for the invasion of Jamaica. There was a panic. Without waiting for the approval of the island’s assembly, on 7 August the governor, Major General John Dalling, declared martial law from the King’s House in Spanish Town and summoned a considerable proportion of the militia into service. Blacks were mustered to complete unfinished fortifications, and batteries and redoubts were thrown up along a thirty-mile front from six miles to windward of Kingston to the old harbour. Letters for help went from Dalling and Parker to Sir Henry Clinton commanding the British troops on the American mainland, and to Vice Admiral John Byron. They explained that a full-blown attack was ‘daily expected’.
¹⁷

For more than a century Jamaica had stubbornly represented Britain in the Caribbean, defying the powers of imperial Spain and France, but now the island seemed doomed to fall before overwhelming forces. The tension, tightened by the heat and humidity of the hurricane season, lasted for weeks. At the dead of night on 24 August, Kingston was jolted from sleep by the sound of gunfire, and the militia spilled out ‘with wonderful alacrity’, evidently determined to resist the enemy as if they were not most indifferently armed. But it was a false alarm. This time the invaders proved to be no more than a convoy of London merchantmen, being escorted in by His Majesty’s ship the
Pallas
.
¹⁸