Nelson (29 page)

An unconfirmed story published by the biographer James Harrison after the admiral’s death relates to the Indians’ regard for Nelson. Its provenance is unknown, but perhaps it came from members of Nelson’s family, who supplied Harrison with some of his information. The story tells how Nelson was accustomed to slinging his hammock between trees in the overnight camps. On one such occasion he was rudely awakened from sleep by a lizard that crawled across his face. Jumping up in alarm, Nelson cast off his blanket, only to see a venomous snake, probably a coral snake or pit viper, fall from its folds and slide into the undergrowth. The watching Indians were astonished. They believed that people possessed individual guardian spirits, and convinced themselves that Nelson’s must be potent indeed to have protected him from the snake. Their confidence in the young officer consequently increased.
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Whether this incident happened or not – the ethnographic data at least is reliable – it is certain that the Indians liked Nelson. They would shortly desert the expedition, and among several grievances count their unsatisfactory relations with the British officers. Polson had warned his men of the dangers of alienating valuable auxiliaries. The blacks, he said, had ‘to be treated with the utmost humanity’, and the Indians were not to be deprived of ‘their private plunder’ in case ‘a general defection’ proved ‘fatal to the enterprise’. Indeed, ‘the necessity of keeping such people in good humour’ was so ‘obvious’ that ‘inconsistencies and even absurdities’ had to be tolerated. In an effort to preserve interracial harmony Polson had ordered his men to avoid fraternising with the Indians, but however well intentioned the order it may have simply suggested an aloof contempt. Certainly the Indians later complained of ‘Polson’s severity’ but admitted themselves ‘very fond of Captain Nelson’ and a number of other leaders.
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Setting off before daylight the boats were now moving ten miles a day and the Spaniards were not far ahead. Polson ordered his men to make as little noise as possible, even in camp, and kept his boats closer together. On 5 April the British passed an island with the ruins of an old Spanish fortification on it, and the next day they camped at the foot of rapids which the Indians said were only six miles below an enemy lookout post. Polson forbade any more fires to be kindled, and, rather than blundering forward to disturb the Spaniards, he detached Lieutenant (Acting Captain) James Mounsey of the 79th, Despard and some thirty men to go ahead with the Indian ‘spies’ to reconnoitre.

While waiting for Mounsey, Polson learned that he could at least ascend the rapids without alerting the Spaniards, and on 8 April ordered the men to march up the north bank of the river to the top of the rapids while the Indians took complete charge of the boats. Nelson went with the soldiers on this occasion, hiking through a forest humming with insects and alive with movement. Wild pigs rooted in the wooded glades, ducks and pigeons started noisily and large lizards scuttled for cover. In the green treetops brilliant parrots flitted and squawked, while monkeys clambered about, some discernible only by the distant crashing of branches and others setting up furious vocal battles that rang through miles of dark forest. At the head of the rapids Nelson and Polson were not only reunited with the triumphant Indian boatmen, but also met Mounsey’s party.

The Spanish lookout post was on an island ahead, about seventy-five yards from the north bank of the river. Only three sentries were
seen on night duty, but they appeared to be regular soldiers and alert. Later the British discovered that the river was fordable near the upper end of the island, but at the time no one knew it. Some of Mounsey’s Indians had stolen forward to test the depth of the water but withdrew when it began to lap about their waists only a short distance from the river’s edge.

Nonetheless, Despard had a plan. To prevent the Spaniards carrying news of the approaching British upriver to Fort San Juan it was imperative to seal off the lookout post before making an attack. On the south side of the island the water looked deep enough for light boats to steal by in the night. Despard suggested sending a force around the post that way, cutting off the Spanish retreat and making a surprise attack on the island from behind at daylight. Another party could offer covering fire from the north bank of the river. Nelson immediately offered to command the boats and make the main attack, while Mounsey was entrusted with the land party. That night Nelson led his small force forward. He had two boats from the
Hinchinbroke
, two Indian pitpans, forty soldiers (including Despard) and some Indians and sailors. Ahead lay the first hand-to-hand action of his life.

As usual, it was the Indians who went ahead, sneaking past the island in the darkness without being seen. Nelson had more trouble. One of his boats grounded and had to be left behind, and as dawn broke on 9 April the others were still below the lookout post. Nelson continued to row forward, hoping the poor light might still shield him as he passed, but he was spotted. The island of Bartola was five or six miles below Fort San Juan and about a quarter of a mile wide and twice as long. Manned by fifteen Spanish regulars, it had a semicircular battery mounting four swivel guns, all pointing downstream. As soon as they saw the British boats pulling fast towards them, the Spaniards fell to those guns and opened fire.
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Mounsey’s men opened their covering fire but shot still spattered around Nelson’s boats. One man was hit in the abdomen and was fortunate that the ball spent itself working through his cartouche box; another had three of his fingers shattered. As the keel of Nelson’s boat drove ashore, Horatio jumped out, sword in hand. According to his official biographers his feet sank so deeply into the mud that he left his shoes behind and stormed the redoubt in his stockings. Shoeless or not, he won a speedy victory. After a token resistance the defenders ran to their boats and fled, straight into the hands of the waiting Indians, and all but one were rounded up as captives. The only fatality
suffered by either side was one of Mounsey’s soldiers, bitten beneath his left eye by a snake hanging from a tree as he marched through the forest. The wretched fellow’s body swelled up, his skin turned a deep yellow and the injured eye ‘entirely dissolved’. Within hours he was dead.
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From the prisoners Nelson learned that Fort San Juan was only five or so miles upstream. When Polson arrived, and decided to make Bartola a base for the final advance, Horatio offered to make a personal reconnaissance of the fort ahead. After dark the same day he set off in a pitpan with Despard and one of the prisoners. It was dangerous work, paddling several miles against a strong current in an unknown river strewn with snags and shoals, while around them gathered an eerie blackness intensified inshore by looming trees. But on the morning of 10 April they suddenly passed around a sharp right-hand bend to see the fort straight before them.

It stood on the summit of a steep green hill, situated on a spur of land jutting from the south bank of the river, and appeared to measure about sixty-five by thirty-one yards. A hundred feet below the fort the water frothed white and wild, and the newly whitewashed walls themselves were strong, four feet thick and fourteen feet high. There were regular bastions at each corner and a flag flew above a fifty-foot keep. A small barrack and a picket linked the northwestern and southeastern bastions and an imperfect ditch enclosed the whole. Using a glass, Nelson noticed the detached redoubts too, some on an eminence that commanded the south of the fort, and another near a few huts on the river at the foot of the hill. The garrison drew its water there, for it had no well. Round about the hill the timber had been cleared to give the fort a field of vision, but the place looked calm against the brooding jungle beyond. To all appearances there was no sign of alarm.

Yet Don Juan d’Ayssa, the commandant of El Castillo de la Immaculada Concepción, to give it its full name, knew about the British from the refugee who had tumbled in from Bartola. He had no illusions about holding his post against a determined attack. He had some twenty cannons, twelve swivels and a mortar, but only 149 armed defenders, near half of them regulars and the rest a mixed collection that included seventeen boatmen. The eighty-six other souls
in the place included artificers, a chaplain, women, children, slaves and three malefactors. It was far from a formidable list, and hearing of the British advance d’Ayssa herded his cattle into the fort, stored as much water as possible and packed his wife and two messengers into a canoe to summon help from Granada.
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Back at Bartola, Lawrie had arrived in camp at last, telling Polson that MacDonald was now fighting his way upstream with the second division of the troops. Polson sent word back, urging them forward, and upon hearing from Nelson continued his own advance. He proceeded cautiously, sending Captain Richard Bulkeley of the 79th ahead with an advance to enfilade the Spanish garrison and secure a ridge that commanded the fort from the west and south. While Bulkeley’s men slogged through the jungle, where one was attacked by a disoriented jaguar, Nelson’s boats slowly proceeded upstream and Polson’s men marched on the adjacent banks.

The eleventh of April found them making camp a few miles below the fort, hidden from it by a bend of the river. Nelson landed the stores and four four-pounders. By nightfall Bulkeley, whose force was strengthened, had seized the ridge, discovering abandoned Spanish outworks, and taken a position on the river above the castle. D’Ayssa had managed to rush one more boat up the river, but was now effectively sealed off. A sixty-man relief force and supplies from Granada failed to reach the fort. Impatient, Nelson suggested the fortifications be stormed. In hindsight some merit can be seen in the proposal, but in truth it was reckless. An assault party would have had to advance against enemy fire up a bare hill, cross a ten-foot-wide ditch and climb seventeen feet to the rampart without scaling ladders or a breach having been knocked in the walls. Polson opted for the obvious alternative. To the south and west the commanding ridge was not more than three hundred yards from the castle, and effective batteries placed on its summit would soon compel the Spaniards to surrender.
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Guns would have to be hauled up the ridge and a supply route cut. A rough back trail was eventually hacked through the jungle southwest of the landing place. Most of it was out of sight of the garrison, winding along and within the skirt of the forest and then north, either to a British base in the woods southwest of the fort or ascending the reverse slope of the ridge that overlooked the castle. The most laborious work was done at night. Late on 12 April Nelson and his seamen dragged one of the four-pounders across the open space from the river to the ridge, bullied it up the slope and prepared a platform. By daylight
the weapon was grinning devilishly upon the enemy fortress from the south-southwest. It began firing at first light with what Polson described as ‘great success’. Nelson pointed the guns himself, but perhaps with less than the precision of a practised siege artillerist. Experienced siege men knew that fortifications were best weakened at the base, so that the masonry above crumbled to form an incline into the breach. Nelson seems to have fired high. Indeed, one of his first shots brought down the Spanish flagstaff and colours.
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There was more difficulty bringing the other guns to bear. All three were brought up by Polson’s men the same morning, but at first they were badly positioned and discharged to ‘little effect’. The next day one was given to Nelson, while Despard shifted the other two further along the ridge to the west of the fort. Nelson situated his new piece between his first gun and Despard’s, and the bombardment at last began to tell. By now Polson was beside himself with admiration for a young naval officer who exceeded his duty to share every tribulation. The boy who had gratuitously negotiated with Indians, led the boats upriver, stormed a lookout post and reconnoitred the fort was now erecting and fighting batteries. ‘I want words to express the obligations I owe that gentleman,’ Polson wrote to Dalling in his official dispatch. ‘He was the first on every service, whether by day or by night. There was scarcely a gun fired but was pointed by him or Lieutenant Despard . . .’
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For a while Nelson and Despard did well and brought down the merlon on the keep but on the fourth day of firing their shot ran out. Only two hundred and fifty of three hundred and fifty four-pound shot supposed to have been packed in the boats could be found. Nelson, who would enjoy a reputation for detailed planning, may have learned expensive lessons from what was swiftly becoming a fiasco. Polson had arrived to attack a fort without scaling ladders or enough shot and the British guns fell silent. As urgent messages raced downstream to summon more ammunition the attackers wasted five days worrying the garrison with small-arms fire. They wormed into positions under the hill and near the river to prevent thirsty Spaniards from scrambling down to refill water casks, and started a mine from a distance of forty yards. The idea was to undermine and blow the fort wall with explosives, but the tunnel ran into rock and got no more than seventeen yards. In reply the Spaniards fired briskly with cannons and muskets, much of it directed against an advanced British breastwork, but there were few casualties on either side. During the
entire siege no more than fifteen Britons were hit by hostile fire. One of the wounded was a man from the
Hinchinbroke
who got drunk and ran down the ridge towards the fort in pursuit of a pig.
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On 21 April the ammunition from MacDonald’s division arrived. Polson, whose men were busy making scaling ladders, was relieved – but not for long. Instead of the two hundred four-pound shot expected, only fifty-three were counted; the rest had been lost, either shipped by mistake up branching creeks, or gone to the bottom of the river in accidents with the boats. Nelson and Despard did what they could. They pummelled the fort again, knocking down a sentry box at one of the angles, but ran out of shot in two days. MacDonald’s men had also brought a couple of short-range twelve-pound carronades but only forty shot to serve them. To achieve even the most futile of bombardments nine-pounder balls had to be loaded. First, the carronades threw their shot short. Then, when the powder charge was increased to improve range, they lost velocity and one gun was blown off its carriage.