Nelson (55 page)

Nelson’s request reached William Suckling at a bad time. He had his own children to support. William junior was also likely to become a candidate for marriage before long, and to boot he was a lieutenant in the guards, where promotion had to be purchased. There were other offspring too: Benjamin, who was in the church; Horace, who was set to follow; and Elizabeth. Furthermore, Uncle William had lost his first wife, Elizabeth, and was drifting towards remarriage himself. Without troubling Horatio with the news he eventually wedded Mary, the daughter of Thomas Rumsey of Kentish Town, on 26 October 1786.
¹³

Unaware of his uncle’s uncomfortable deliberations, Horatio fell ever more deeply in love, and the periods when business parted him from Nevis became increasingly tiresome. Towards the end of 1785 he was charged with returning Mrs Parry from Nevis to her husband, the governor of Barbados. A fierce storm overtook the
Boreas
as it struggled eastwards. The mainmast was badly cracked and almost lost, and the sails and rigging torn to pieces. Bringing his battered ship into Antigua in mid-December, Nelson resolved to proceed to Barbados against the advice of dockyard officers. As he explained to Fanny, ‘We know that if a person does not perform what he promises, the world
is very apt to say he never did intend to do it. Therefore I will get up and bring down Mrs Parry [to Barbados] at all risks.’
¹⁴

He did – and was back at Nevis for Christmas, where he spent an unusually enjoyable festival and discovered delight in such domesticities as trying to teach little Josiah to read. ‘I am well, and as merry as I [could] wish,’ he told his brother William on New Year’s Day. ‘So I must be, you will conclude, sitting by the woman who will be my wife, and every day am I more than ever convinced of the propriety of my choice, and I shall be happy with her. You will esteem her for herself when you know her, for she possesses sense far superior to half the people of our acquaintance, and her manners are Mrs Moutray’s.’
¹⁵

Unfortunately, the engaging interlude was curtailed by another voyage to Barbados, which had Nelson opening a long poetic love letter to Fanny at sea early in the morning of 3 March 1786:

Separated from my dearest what pleasure can I feel? None! Be assured all my happiness is centred with thee, and where thou art not, there I am not happy. Every day, hour, and act convinces me of it. With my heart filled with the purest and most tender affection do I write this, for was it not so, you know me well enough to be certain that even at this moment I would tell you of it. I daily thank God who ordained that I should be attached to you. He has I firmly believe intended it as a blessing to me, and I am well convinced you will not disappoint His beneficent intentions. Fortune – that is, money – is the only thing I regret the want of, and that only for the sake of my affectionate Fanny. But the Almighty who brings us together will, I doubt not, take ample care of us, and prosper all our undertakings. No dangers shall deter me from pursuing every honourable means of providing handsomely for you and yours, and again let me repeat that my dear Josiah shall ever be considered by me as one of my own. That Omnipotent Being who sees and knows what passes in all hearts knows what I have written to be my undisguised sentiments towards the little fellow.
¹⁶

When Nelson reached Carlisle Bay in Barbados five days later, he found a letter waiting for him. It was dated 3 January and written by William Suckling, and it threw Horatio into torment. Though his uncle did not refuse help, and remained ‘very kind’, his tone betrayed a distinct lack of enthusiasm. If necessary his purse would serve, but Horatio should reflect that as a bachelor he was at least financially self-supporting. Before marrying he should clarify what
immediate provision Fanny’s uncle would make for her and her son.
¹⁷

Nelson was cut to the quick. Instinctively generous himself, he hated playing the supplicant. ‘O my dear uncle!’ he replied, ‘You can’t tell what I feel. Indeed, I can hardly write, or know what I am writing. You would pity me did you know what I suffer by that sentence, for although it does not make your act less generous, yet it embitters my happiness. You must know me, and consequently that I am guided by the strictest rules of honour and integrity, and that had I not been more ambitious of fame than money, I should not most probably [have] been under the necessity of making the present application to you.’ Worst of all, he was forced back upon Mr Herbert, whom he little knew but wished to please, to establish exactly what he would do. No proud man enjoys badgering another for money.

But on the afternoon of 9 March the deed was done. ‘In the course of the morning I have wrote to Mr Herbert,’ he told Fanny, ‘and have touched in as handsome a manner as I was able about you.
I fear
but hope it will have that effect I wish it. I am going to dine at Pilgrim [the governor’s house]. I wish the dinner was over, for I am miserably low spirited.’
¹⁸

Things did not go right for Nelson in Barbados, which became another ‘detestable spot’. Worries about Fanny, the merciless sun and yet more debacles with the authorities contributed to ferocious headaches, which were probably stress-induced migraines. Only occasionally was he able to dilute the tension with the felicities of a shopping list supplied by Fanny and her relations, and expeditions in search of ‘strings’, a riding hat and ribbon, and a red parrot.
¹⁹

‘Duty,’ Captain Nelson wrote to his fiancée at the beginning of May, ‘is the great business of a sea officer. All private considerations must give way to it, however painful it is.’
²⁰

The particular business prolonging his stay in the ‘detestable spot’ was the most blistering round yet fought in the battle over the navigation laws. Fanny, fearful of further consequences, had begged Nelson to let sleeping dogs lie; and that is what most of the captains in the squadron did. When the
Boreas
nosed into Carlisle Bay, the fine, large, open gulf upon which the Barbadian capital was situated, she found the
Adamant
and the
Latona
riding gently at anchor. Neither seemed
to worry about whether the merchantmen dropping in and out of the bay were legitimate or not, but Captain Nelson rested his reputation upon the stand he had made. In his opinion to suffer irregularities was to condone and encourage them.

He knew, though, that Barbados was a special case. The customs and prize-court administrations here were very different from those in St Kitts, Nevis and Antigua, over which Nelson and his allies had already prevailed. They were probably corrupt and certainly obdurate. One naval officer was sure that Judge Nathaniel Weeks of the vice-admiralty court held ‘republican principles’. Whether true or not, Barbados was the hardest nut to crack in all the Lesser Antilles.
²¹

The Barbadian court had already triumphed over Cuthbert Collingwood, turning loose his prize, the
Dolphin
, and saddling the captain with fearsome costs. Despite the reaffirmation of the navy’s rights in other courts, Judge Weeks continued to espouse Scott’s dictum that naval officers had no right to seize vessels, unless armed with a ‘deputation’ from the board of customs. Even mild-mannered Sir Richard Hughes was reduced to indignation, ranting to Lord Sydney about the ‘shameful and unjust decision’ that had stripped Collingwood of the
Dolphin
and made the navy a toothless watchdog. The Admiralty sympathised, and decided that the quickest way to neutralise the court was to have the English Customs House send out ‘deputations’ to all naval officers on the station, but by March 1786 those documents had yet to arrive.
²²

Almost as destructive was the behaviour of the island’s attorney general, Charles Brandford, who was also king’s advocate, responsible for representing the captors in the vice-admiralty court. A political appointment of Lord North, the former chief minister in England, Brandford had demanded extraordinary advisory fees from Collingwood in advance – fees that would have burned a hole in many a captain’s purse and deterred him from proceeding with his case. In short, between them the attorney general and judge had immobilised the navy. Nor was the governor of any use. In the Leeward Islands, Shirley had suppressed his private reservations to lean upon wayward officials on behalf of the navigation laws. But Governor David Parry of the Windward Islands openly acknowledged his powerlessness. When he suggested that he might issue naval officers with ‘deputations’ himself, the court quickly informed him that he had no legal right to exercise such powers, which were the preserve of the customs. ‘I have no control over the officers of His Majesty’s customs, except
the power of reporting their delinquencies,’ Parry wailed to Sydney in April 1784. ‘I find it very difficult to stimulate them to a proper execution of their duty.’
²³

But now a more formidable figure than Parry, Hughes and Collingwood had entered the contest. Ridiculously young, slight and insignificant in appearance, and far from well, Captain Horatio Nelson of the
Boreas
was nevertheless the acknowledged champion of the navigation laws. His arrival in Carlisle Bay presaged the ultimate clash of wills.

From the beginning Nelson’s boats were out, and her officers scrambling aboard more or less unwilling merchant ships to examine their credentials. Most of the masters were allowed to proceed, and a few went on their way with advice about correcting one minor irregularity or another. But on 16 March a brig named the
Jane and Elizabeth
was seized. The ship flew English colours and carried a register purporting to show that she hailed from Dartmouth, England. Her master, John Frazier, claimed to be making a voyage from Nova Scotia to Barbados and Grenada. Unfortunately, Nelson’s investigation penetrated the disguise; the
Jane and Elizabeth
was really owned by the Sheaffe family of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and was engaged in illegal trade.

Two days later Nelson struck again. He had gone ashore leaving Second Lieutenant Dent in command of the
Boreas
. Some of his men had been left in Nevis, including the first lieutenant, who had fallen sick, and the master, ‘Jemmy’ Jameson, who was relieving his rheumatism in the spa waters. That day the
Brilliant
, a schooner under British colours, attracted Dent’s attention and a boat under the ship’s gunner and Midshipman William Batty was sent to board her. When Nelson was piped back aboard he examined the schooner’s papers, interviewed her master and decided that the ship was foreign built and owned. He put prize crews aboard both ships and sent their own crews ashore.
²⁴

The merchants rose in fury, complaining that Nelson was blockading the port and acting as a revenue officer. Someone said that aggressive tars from the
Boreas
had physically attacked seamen aboard the impounded ships. Governor Parry dutifully passed the allegations to Rear Admiral Hughes, who was spending most of his time in Barbados, but Nelson briskly defended himself. He had not interrupted ‘the
legal
business of the port’, he reminded his accusers, nor had anyone been assaulted. In fact, the owner of the
Lovely Lass
, which he had also
examined but released after due consideration, publicly admitted in the presence of Brandford and other officials that Nelson had actually done him a service by pointing out that he had an ‘improper’ register.
²⁵

Sweeping criticisms aside, Nelson proceeded against his prizes and made several important calls upon Brandford, the king’s advocate who had fleeced Collingwood the previous year. He confidently presented him with the papers of the two ships, and at his request lodged them with William Forbes, the king’s proctor, who prepared an ‘information’ in the king’s name. For a while all ran smoothly. Perhaps there was something steely about Nelson, or maybe his reputation went before him, but the ludicrous fees levied upon Collingwood the previous year appear to have been postponed in this case. However, when the case went before the vice-admiralty court on 6 April the notorious Judge Weeks declined to proceed upon a technicality. He said the suit could not be made for the king alone as Brandford wished, but had to be the joint venture of the king and captors.

There followed a ridiculous deadlock. Brandford insisted the crown’s rights could not be compromised by including Nelson in the suit. The ship had to be condemned to the king, who would then confer the proceeds of its sale to the captors through largesse. ‘The judge is wrong – egregiously wrong,’ he told Nelson, and refused to amend his presentation, praising the captain for standing ‘cool and guarded’ in court on 10 April, when Weeks ‘told you some whimsical tales not at all applicable to the business in hand’. However, with equal tenacity the judge stood his ground like a boar at bay. He flatly refused to try the suit as it stood. And to complete the farce, counterclaims were made to the
Brilliant
. Shortly after Nelson’s men had taken possession, a customs boat had sped from Bridgetown and come alongside. On this flimsy basis the customs service also claimed to have made the seizure. Possibly, the customs officials anticipated that Weeks would disqualify the navy from seizing, and wanted to claim the rights as captors themselves.
²⁶

In the meantime, Nelson received the sort of abuse he had known in St Kitts and Nevis the previous year. The vice-admiralty court showed no interest in overcoming the deadlock, Governor Parry offered wine and sympathy but spread his hands helplessly, and the captain was threatened with another damaging lawsuit. Someone even challenged him to a duel. By the middle of April almost all the ships of the squadron were in Carlisle Bay, including the flagship and the
Latona
,
Mediator
,
Falcon
,
Rattler
and
Unicorn
, but only Nelson was embroiled in the battle.