Nelson (33 page)

Locker also handled Nelson’s affairs in London, visiting Rigaud’s studio to supervise further work on the portrait which Horatio wanted altering so that it depicted a captain rather than a teenage lieutenant. The likeness was one of three portraits of individuals that Locker appears to have been overseeing, one of them of their mutual friend Captain Charles Pole. ‘When you get the pictures, I must be in the middle,’ Nelson wrote, ‘for God knows, without good supporters, I shall fall to the ground!’
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Locker had not put his own health problems behind him and Nelson tried to persuade the captain to join him. ‘I wish you had come to Bath when your sons went to school, instead of being cooped up in Gray’s Inn without seeing any body,’ he said. ‘I am sure yours is a Bath case, and therefore you ought to come for a month or six weeks.’ There was a vacancy in Kirke’s lodgings, but Locker went instead to an older friend, Captain Robert Kingsmill of Sidmonton Place, near Newbury, Berkshire. Indeed, Kingsmill extended the invitation to Nelson. A little weak but feeling better, Horatio took the London stage on the morning of Monday 15 March, travelling as far as Newbury with the Kirkes. There he enjoyed a brief reunion with Locker and found Kingsmill a remarkably agreeable companion, before proceeding to London to stay with his uncle, William Suckling.
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Suckling had acquired a country house in what was then the village of Kentish Town, an agreeable rural area waiting to be swallowed by the rapacious metropolis and reached by a short coach ride from the city. The house was a regular-fronted two-storey residence on the west side of Kentish Town Road, adjacent to the Castle Tavern and Tea Gardens and sporting a view from the rear towards the famed beauty spot of Primrose Hill. The extensive grounds, both front and back, were ornamented with shrubs and ‘extraordinary box trees’ that later generations decided were planted by Nelson himself.
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It was Uncle William who led Horatio’s campaign for employment. Nelson was a post-captain, and would ascend the captains’ list by seniority as a matter of course, but he had no wish to remain on ‘half-pay’ without a command, and used his surviving interest to get a ship. There was less of it now, after the comptroller’s death, and William Suckling was the best patron at Nelson’s disposal. He lacked the
standing of his brother, Maurice, but was still deputy collector at the Customs House on the river and had a few useful friends.

The most powerful of these was Charles Jenkinson, the secretary for war, who may have become acquainted with Suckling when he was Lord of the Treasury. Suckling wrote to him at least once, and perhaps twice. Accordingly, on 12 February 1781 Jenkinson tackled Lord Sandwich, first lord of the Admiralty, on behalf of the ‘nephew of the late comptroller’, a young man, he understood, of ‘very good character’. Sandwich hesitated, but on 6 May Nelson personally appeared before him at the Admiralty, and the first lord promised to employ him at an early opportunity. With that, for the time being, Horatio had to be satisfied.
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During his short stay in London Nelson returned to Rigaud, and had him complete his portrait and add the castle of San Juan to the background. There were also friends to look up, including his brother Maurice and Locker, and new physicians to find. He placed himself in the care of Robert Adair, the surgeon general to the army. In May a relapse cost him a temporary loss of the use of his left arm and part of his left leg, but Adair assured him that a few weeks’ rest would repair the damage. In the meantime his account with Robert Winch, apothecary, for ointments, vial drops and decoctions ran to nearly £9 in two months.
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Nelson’s resources were modest, and his pay was slow in coming. As captain of the
Janus
he had been too ill to keep adequate records, and although he petitioned the Victualling Board to pass his deficient accounts, a portion of his wages would be withheld for four years. But moving here and there about town demanded a new wardrobe, and Nelson presented himself to one Richard Shepherd, a gentleman’s outfitter. To judge from his purchases his taste was entirely suited to a sober parson’s son. Though he chose ‘silver Tishua’ and ‘striped satin’ waistcoats, he preferred black outer garments, and ordered a ‘super fine cloth coat lined with silk’ and Florentine breeches, the four items costing him £6 12s. 0d. He also had an existing pair of silk breeches dyed black. Three years later we find him at the same store, replenishing his civilian attire with another black cloth silk-lined coat, a black silk waistcoat and breeches, and a sleeved flannel under-waistcoat for £7 5s. 0d. There were other necessities, and buried among his accounts are payments for such items as stockings, shirts and lace and for the dressing of his hair. Nor, as he prepared for his next ship in 1781, did Nelson forget the requirements of his servant – probably
Frank Lepee, whom he had retained. Domestic staff were essential tokens of gentrification, and their deficiencies an almost indispensable subject of polite conversation. Nelson paid Shepherd £2 7s. 0d. to mend his servant’s coat and breeches and supply him with a new suit of ‘thickset materials’.
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Adair was right about getting Nelson on his feet, for in May he felt fit enough to brush the cobwebs off an old promise. ‘Now you will say, “Why do[es] not he come into Norfolk?”’ he wrote to his brother William on 7 May. Some time in the late spring or early summer of 1781, after ten long years away, Captain Nelson returned to the quiet county of his childhood. William, he discovered, had just been awarded his Master of Arts and was on the verge of being ordained a priest, while his sister Susanna and her new husband, Thomas Bolton, a worthy merchant in corn, malt and coal, were established at Wells. Horatio’s younger brothers, Edmund and Suckling, were both apprentices, ‘Mun’ to one Nicholas Havers of Burnham and Suckling to a linen draper, Mr Blowers of Beccles.
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Much as he loved Burnham and thought of it as his home, Horatio found it a lonely, provincial place, far from the affairs that had now become his life and the news he longed to hear. Almost indecently he hurried back to London, and the letter he had been awaiting from the Admiralty. On 15 August 1781 he was appointed captain of the frigate
Albemarle
, fitting out at Woolwich.

Nelson was on the ship the same day, and watching it being caulked, repaired and readied for coppering in the dock. His commission was read to the assembled company.
Albemarle
was a prize taken from the French and converted into a twenty-eight-gun, nine-pounder ship, among the weakest class of frigates, but her new captain was proud of her and brought friends aboard. Captain Locker thought the ship deficient, as she indeed proved to be. She had the lines of a ponderous store ship rather than a fast frigate, and would serve her purposes ill. But Nelson’s less practised eye saw no imperfections in his new command. After taking his brother Maurice aboard on 23 August he declared himself ‘perfectly satisfied’ with the
Albemarle
, and fancied her far superior to the
Enterprize
being fitted alongside. Though he acknowledged that the space between the
Albemarle
’s decks was low, ‘she has a bold entrance and clean run’.
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The Admiralty allowed him to choose some officers, and the ship was short of its complement, so Horatio commanded his first substantial powers of patronage. It seemed sensible to offer opportunities to the people at home, strengthening his position in the local community and tapping the existing support of family and friends. His appointment was announced in the
Norfolk Chronicle
and his brother William was soon offering one man the position of master’s mate, with a volunteer’s bounty of £5 and an additional £2 for every recruit he could raise in Wells and ship to Woolwich. Eventually, some twenty lower-deck volunteers answered Nelson’s call, and a few officers also applied. John Oliver, ‘a very good man’, was provisionally rated a quartermaster, and Valentine Boyles, whose father collected the customs duties at Wells and regularly joined William for cards, apparently sought a lieutenancy. Horatio liked the Boyles family, especially his old shipmate Charles (‘I wish much to meet him’), but on this occasion was unable to oblige; perhaps at that time his lieutenants had already been appointed.
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For key officers he turned or bowed to naval colleagues. His two lieutenants were ‘very genteel young men’. First Lieutenant Martin Hinton was about Nelson’s age and had gone to sea in 1771 with Captain James Ayscough of the
Swan
. He had completed his six years of sea time as an able seaman and midshipman on that ship and the
Leviathan
, serving also under Captains Dewey, Tatty and Tathwell. When Nelson met Hinton in 1784, he was a lieutenant of two years’ standing. Horatio’s second lieutenant, William Osborne, was the son of Admiral Sir Charles Hardy’s secretary. Hardy had been dead a year, but Nelson probably wanted to please one of the late admiral’s friends, since he also took Charles Hardy junior as a captain’s servant and midshipman. Less fortunate than Hinton and Osborne was Horatio’s old friend Joseph Bromwich of the
Lowestoffe
. Despite his qualities as an officer, Bromwich had slipped and slid on the promotion ladder. He had remained in the
Lowestoffe
after Christopher Parker succeeded Locker in command, and followed his new captain to the
Diamond
in 1780, rising to the position of acting lieutenant. But then his diligently acquired knowledge of the Bahama keys proved to be his undoing, for he was asked to surrender his acting lieutenancy in order to pilot Sir John Hamilton’s
Hector
home. Bromwich arrived in England in June 1781, just in time to sign up with his old messmate on the
Albemarle
. He had lost sea time, however, and Nelson was obliged to ship him aboard as master’s mate, though he backdated
Bromwich’s appointment to 24 June to strengthen his claim to any acting lieutenancy that might arise.
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On the whole, Nelson was pleased with his efforts. He had a good carpenter, Samuel Innes, transferred from the
Hound
, and thought his master, a Londoner named Donald Trail, ‘exceeding good’. The surgeon (James Armstrong), purser, boatswain (Joseph Pike) and lieutenant of marines (Charles Stuart) pleased him, while the other marines were ‘likewise old standers’. Cordially Nelson concluded, ‘I have an exceeding good ship’s company. Not a man or officer in her I would wish to change.’
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The empty spaces among the hands were not filled without difficulty, and the muster bore considerably fewer names than the official complement of two hundred. The ship was only shifted to the Nore on 14 October with the aid of forty retired seamen from Greenwich Hospital and twenty-five yachtsmen sent by the Navy Board. At the Nore recruits being held for him on the
Greenwich
and
Conquistadore
and seamen from a recently decommissioned ship replaced the temporary labour, but Nelson remained ready to profit by every opportunity to improve his manpower.
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A tender hailed the
Albemarle
with news that some homeward-bound East Indiamen were on their way upriver. It was a chance to press men, but Nelson was warned that the crews on the Indiamen were bragging that the navy would not be allowed on board. He had already prepared himself for such an encounter by enquiring of the local admiral what force he could legitimately use to press men from merchant ships, as well as what inducements were at his disposal. ‘Leave of absence they will want,’ he remarked. Armed with the reply Nelson resolved to halt the Indiamen, but on 28 October he found himself boxed in by them and lost an anchor extricating his ship. Struggling clear, he caught up with the four leading vessels, but they refused to heave to until Nelson fired twenty-six nine-pounders at their masts and rigging. He anchored close to the
Haswell
, the leading ship, and tried to send a boat across, but her master truculently refused to accept any boarders. It was midnight, so Nelson gave the master until daylight to think it over, and sense prevailed. When the
Albermarle
ran alongside the
Haswell
at five in the morning his men boarded without difficulty and recruits were obtained.
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A more satisfying outcome attended Horatio’s efforts to dissuade his brother William from enlisting on the
Albemarle
as a naval chaplain. After chewing over the unexpected suggestion with Uncle William
Suckling, Horatio warned his brother that ‘he thinks as I do that fifty pounds where you are is much more than equal to what you can get at sea’. Although Nelson feared his brother’s obstinacy (‘In that, I know you will please yourself,’ he wrote), he gently weaned him off the idea for the time being. ‘I hope you have lost all ideas of going to sea,’ Horatio said in December, ‘for the more I see of chaplains of men [of] war the more I dread seeing my brother in such a disagreeable station of life.’ Parson Nelson took the hint and deferred his naval service for three more years.
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In the meantime Nelson’s health had improved, but fears of a relapse continued to overshadow his new command. There were still days when he was confined to bed, and he dreaded being posted to an exacting climate. The East Indies station was his preferred destination, and it was with some mortification that he heard that he was being sent to the North Sea, as if ‘to try my constitution’. When they came the instructions were dated 23 October and confirmed those forebodings. Taking the
Argo
and
Enterprize
under his command, Nelson was to collect the homeward-bound merchantmen of the Russia Company at Elsinore in Denmark and bring them to England. Their cargoes of tar, hemp and timber were essential for Britain’s naval dockyards, but it was dull and cold work. Nelson consoled himself with the thought that the Dutch, with whom Britain had just gone to war, might intervene and give him some action, but the greater indications were that the
Albemarle
would be a cold and unstimulating command.
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