Nelson (36 page)

Fully repaired, the
Albemarle
sailed from Spithead on 7 April 1782, and braving bad weather made Cork on the 17th. There the men had fun helping to haul His Majesty’s ship
Jason
off a shoal at the entrance to the harbour, and for some reason Nelson’s second lieutenant, Osborne, switched to the
Preston
. Nelson was not displeased because it enabled him to promote Bromwich acting lieutenant on the 24th. The preferment increased Bromwich’s claim to any prize money, but Horatio thought he did ‘his duty exceedingly well’ and dearly wanted to get his commission confirmed; in return he received unswerving loyalty.
²⁰

On 26 April the Atlantic voyage began. The
Daedalus
and
Albemarle
ushered thirty-five more or less disobedient merchantmen through gales
and fogs. One passage from Nelson’s log is enough to indicate the tenor of the month’s travail:

At 1 PM [10 May 1782] bore down to the
Jane
. Fired a shot at her for her to make more sail. At midnight dark and cloudy. Convoy in company. At 3 AM up topgallant masts and yards. At 6 made the signal for the
Jane
to make more sail, which she paid no attention to. Brought to, spoke her, and ordered she would set her fore topgallant sails, stay sails and studding sails. She [master, William Henderson] answered she had no main topmast or middle stay sails. After much delay she set fore topgallant sail and fore topmast studding sail. At noon three sail in company.

Ships being damaged and lagging . . . one man falling overboard from the
Albemarle
and drowning . . . murky North Atlantic rain and fog. One problem succeeded another, and the convoy split as it approached Canada. On 27 May Nelson anchored in St John’s, Newfoundland, ‘a disagreeable place’, and assembled up to half a dozen merchantmen, while the
Daedalus
groped its way into nearby Capelin Bay with most of the others. Reuniting with his senior officer, and reinforced by the
Leocadia
and
Aeolus
, Nelson eventually helped push the convoy up the St Lawrence through more thick weather until he reached the Isle of Bic, below Quebec, on the evening of 1 July. There, where a naval squadron under James Worth of the
Assistance
was stationed, he conceived his mission complete and relinquished both his charges and letters and packets he had brought for Quebec.
²¹

Like most naval officers, Nelson disliked convoy work, but it had not been as bad a trip as he feared. He realised that he had misjudged Captain Pringle, whom he would soon pronounce ‘my particular friend, and a man of great honour’. Furthermore, contrary to his expectations, his health had actually improved, and now there suddenly loomed an opportunity for prize-taking – something not to be squandered in these final years of the war. Coming from Newfoundland, Nelson had discovered that American privateers were active in the Gulf of St Lawrence, and he persuaded Worth to allow him to return downriver to hunt for them before proceeding to Quebec. On 4 July the
Albemarle
was on its way back to the open sea in search of the
²²
enemy.

However, in his eagerness for action Nelson neglected a fundamental foundation for any success at sea: an adequate supply of victuals. The master’s log of the
Albemarle
shows that though the ship took on
wood and water several times after reaching Canada – at St John’s, Capelin Bay and in the St Lawrence – she failed to replenish food supplies reduced by the Atlantic voyage. Nelson was sailing towards an enemy coast with a serious shortage of fresh food. It was a mistake for which he would pay, but from which he would also learn an important lesson.

He was away for two months but for the most part without luck. ‘In the end our cruise has been an unsuccessful one,’ he told Locker on 19 October. ‘We have taken, seen and destroyed more enemies than is seldom done in the same space of time, but not one arrived in port.’ Even this was an exaggeration, for the ship’s logs show that few prizes were taken, and those inconsiderable ones at that. Compared with the fruits of that cruise in the old
Bristol
back in ’78 this was an exceedingly lean harvest.
²³

On 6 July Nelson came up with the
Pandora
off Cape Rozier, bent upon the same errand. Captain John Inglis was sick, and complaining about the Canadian climate, but at least his cruise would net him a Salem privateer. Nelson was not so fortunate. On 11 July he found what might have been an enemy privateer, but it was too close inshore to be captured, and the following month other promising ‘chases’ were lost in the all too frequent fogs. Nelson’s first successes occurred on 11 and 12 July, when he recaptured two British vessels taken by the Americans, the last a schooner from Madeira taken only the previous day by the enemy privateer
Lively
.
²⁴

Operating in Boston Bay, Captain Nelson found little to whet his appetite. True, there were prizes to be had, but they promised meagre amounts of prize money, and one gets the impression that Nelson thought the work dirty. These were not privateers but small fishing schooners, each manned by about half a dozen men eking an uncertain living by working the offshore banks. Some British officers would have happily destroyed the trade, and did so. Three-quarters of the Chatham fishing fleet were lost by the last year of the war. But the captain of the
Albemarle
showed no such zeal. Several times during the cruise he ‘spoke’ enemy fishing vessels – that is, he exchanged words with their masters without boarding, and then allowed them on their way, and at least once, on 24 August, he ‘left off’ a ‘chase’ after discovering that it was merely a fishing schooner. In fact, Nelson’s exploits off the American coast in July and August were
marked by acts of generosity on both sides that are pleasing to record.

Nelson’s first real prize was a fishing boat from Cape Cod, which fell into his hands on 13 July. The master, Richard Rich, and his five companions were taken aboard the
Albemarle
to act as pilots, while Nelson threw a tow rope onto the vessel itself, intending to use her as a tender. Though the prisoners had little choice but to cooperate, they forged a reasonable relationship with the British captain, and when he took a Plymouth fishing boat off Cape Sable on 9 August Nelson not only discharged his ‘pilots’ but also returned their ship.

An almost daily catalogue of escapades followed. Early in August Nelson spent several days chasing a square rigger he took to be a French warship. He got close enough to force the ‘chase’ to jettison small boats and spars but lost her on the 5th. On the 9th and 10th Nelson captured fishing boats from Plymouth and Marblehead, while the 12th saw him overtake an American prize of His Majesty’s ship
Charlestown
. It was leaking and he destroyed it and shifted the prize crew to his own frigate. The next day a Cape Cod fishing schooner with six men was captured, and on the 14th the
Albemarle
drove another ship ashore near Cape Cod and dismasted it. On the 15th a Plymouth fishing boat fell into the bag, but Nelson merely used her to receive his remaining prisoners and spare his thinning provisions. A Boston fishing boat taken the following day was less fortunate. Nelson suspected it was spying for French warships sheltering in Boston harbour, and destroyed the vessel after removing her four-man crew. There were one or two more prizes, the last on 29 August when a shallop was boarded inshore from the
Albemarle
’s pinnace.
²⁵

The most attractive incident occurred on 18 August, when the
Albemarle
spotted a schooner inshore and sent a tender after it. To Nelson’s surprise, the vessel made no attempt to escape but turned towards the British frigate. It was the
Harmony
, of Plymouth, Massachusetts, owned by Thomas Davis and commanded by Nathaniel Carver. In some way Davis and Carver were connected with the prize Nelson had taken in July and then released after her master had served him as a pilot. The Americans had been overwhelmed by Nelson’s generosity in restoring the prize, and when the
Albemarle
reappeared Davis sent Carver out with a strange but remarkable offering.

The ‘pilots’ had noticed the lack of fresh provisions aboard the British frigate, as well as the first signs of scurvy, a disease feared by all sailors. In gratitude for the return of his ship, Davis sent Nelson
animals, fresh vegetables and a copy of the current Boston newspaper. Captain Nelson was greatly moved. He sent the provisions to his sick, pressed an unwelcome payment upon his benefactors and also a gift equal in value to their own. It was a written testimonial that Carver’s ship had been captured and returned ‘on account of his good services’, and that he deserved well of British officers. In effect, it gave the
Harmony
immunity from the British cruisers, and enabled her to fish the banks unmolested for the duration of the war. Davis was so proud of his certificate that he had it framed and exhibited in his home for many years.
²⁶

It had been an unsuccessful cruise, but Horatio made a notable escape on 14 August, when he hovered outside Boston harbour. At about three in the afternoon five ships were seen coming out, but fog reduced visibility and Nelson had to close in for a better look. An hour later brought him near enough to see four ships of the line and a frigate. They were French, part of a force under the Marquis de Vaudreuil, which had been driven from the West Indies by the British under Admiral Rodney and was holing up in Boston. Every one of the oncoming enemy ships was superior in strength to the
Albemarle
. At four-thirty one of the big ships of the line fired a signal gun, and the squadron turned towards the lone British frigate. It was then that Nelson realised the mistake he had made. He had closed upon an enemy force he could not fight.

Coming towards him the five French warships were ultimately bound for Piscataway to bring some mast ships back to Boston. The ships of the line were seventy-four- or eighty-gunners, and their frigate was the thirty-two-gun
Iris
. Any one was capable of crushing the little
Albemarle
, a mere twenty-eight-gun frigate. Nelson did the only thing he could; he wore his ship and fled.

What happened next is uncertain. According to the logs of the
Albemarle
, Nelson simply outstripped his pursuers. The captain’s log, for instance, states that ‘at 7 the ships in chase had dropped much [behind]’, and Master Trail’s more detailed account as well as Hinton’s log carry the same story. It appears that a chase of about two-and-a-half hours left the enemy far astern, and the
Albemarle
out of immediate danger. This is much as we would have expected, for if frigates could not outfight ships of the line they were generally able to outsail them.

However, when recounting the incident for Captain Locker two months later Nelson resorted to fantasy. The French, he said, ‘gave
us a pretty dance for between
nine or ten hours
, but we beat all except the frigate, and though we brought to for her, after we were out of sight of the line-of-battleships, she tacked and stood from us. Our escape I think wonderful: they were upon the clearing up of a fog
within shot of us
and chased us the whole time about one point from the wind. The frigate, I fancy, had not forgot the dressing [drubbing] Captain [Elliot] Salter had given the
Amazon
for daring to leave the line-of-battle ships.’ In this account, therefore, Nelson outsailed the ships of the line in a prolonged chase and then offered battle to the frigate, which mercifully opted for discretion rather than valour. Though an improved version of the incident, even this was a mere halfway house.

For in the ‘Sketch of My Life’, written for the
Naval Chronicle
in 1799, Nelson claimed to be ‘chased by
three
French ships-of-the-line and the
Iris
frigate. As they
all
beat me in sailing very much, I had no chance left but running them amongst the shoals of St George’s bank. This alarmed the line-of-battle ships, and they quitted the pursuit; but the frigate continued, and at sun-set was little more than gun-shot distant, when the line-of-battle ships being out of sight, I ordered the main topsail to be laid to the mast, when the frigate tacked, and stood to rejoin her consorts.’

Obviously the details were cloudier in 1799 than seventeen years earlier, but Nelson seems to have embroidered his escapade for public consumption. His claim to have shaken off the ships of the line by running his frigate between dangerous shoals has no counterpart in the contemporary evidence, not even in the exaggerated story sent to Locker. However, it echoes the then forgotten achievements of Elliot Salter, to which Nelson had alluded in the letter to Locker. Salter’s exploit had occurred about the same place and time – off Cape Henry on 29 and 30 July 1782, a mere fortnight before the chase involving Nelson. Salter’s frigate, the
Santa Margaretta
, had been reconnoitring Vaudreuil’s ships before two enemy frigates, the
Amazon
and
Iris
, chased him away. Boldly deciding to fight, Salter squared up to the superior
Amazon
and defeated and took her before the sluggish
Iris
saw fit to intervene. The
Iris
then retreated towards her reassuring ships of the line, but the following day the impudent Salter was pursued by the entire French squadron. He had to relinquish his prize and only escaped by running the
Santa Margaretta
into the tricky shoals off the Delaware.

Though writers have accepted Nelson’s final and heroic version of
the pursuit of the
Albemarle
, the kernel of truth it contained was probably deliberately inflated to exalt the captain’s prowess. Nelson was becoming increasingly besotted with public attention and learned to be his own publicity agent. He never invented incidents, but was prone to magnify his achievements, sometimes (as here) to the point of grossly misrepresenting the facts. Nevertheless, even unvarnished, the escape off Cape Cod was fortunate and dramatic enough, and Horatio justly regarded it as compensation for the barren returns of his prize taking.
²⁷