Nelson (57 page)

If Nelson’s denial of the press gang fails to convince, what about his version of the shooting itself? Scotland’s account of his pistol being discharged accidentally as he ran from a mob sounds very implausible. One wonders, for instance, what happened to this mob, and why, if a bystander was hit, it did not gather round in indignation. Yet Nelson, who arrived almost immediately, mentions nothing about an irate or outraged crowd. Equally, if Scotland took Elliott to the
hospital, assisted the doctor in treating him and surrendered his pistols to the steward, as Nelson claimed, why did the doctor make no reference to it at the inquest?

Whatever happened, there is no doubt that Nelson protected Scotland. He sent him to the ship instead of surrendering him to the authorities and frustrated attempts to root him out. Eventually, as we shall see, he went further, discharging Scotland from the
Boreas
without declaring him a deserter and fighting for the full payment of his wages.

As one would expect, Scotland’s escape is equally wreathed in conjecture. Governor Parry believed that he was aboard Nelson’s ship as late as 23 April, when the marshals failed to make an arrest. The muster of the
Boreas
seems to bear him out, since it recorded Scotland as being present at two full musters following the shooting, on 16 and 23 April. Further, against the boatswain’s name is the discharge date of 30 April – seven days after the under marshals had attempted to serve their warrant.

Some months later Nelson admitted to Sir Charles Middleton, the comptroller of the Navy Board, that he had discharged Scotland willingly and with the approval of Sir Richard Hughes, something about which the admiral himself was understandably silent. At that time Nelson also gave an account of Scotland’s flight that contradicts the signed muster of his ship but strikes a chord with other circumstances. According to Nelson, Scotland remained doing his duties on the
Boreas
until the afternoon of Saturday 15 April, when he was discharged. This makes sense. Elliott’s death that day changed the boatswain’s prospects. If convicted he stood to hang, and Scotland probably preferred to take his chances running. A flight on or soon after the 15th would also have allowed Nelson truthfully to deny that Scotland was on his ship between the 20th and the 23rd, though in a way that afforded no help to the authorities whatsoever.

Scotland apparently got aboard the
Cyrus
store ship, or at least the carpenter of that vessel later deposed as much. The log book of the
Boreas
records one possible means of transfer in its reference to a delivery of staves made to the
Cyrus
shortly before the store ship sailed for Antigua on 16 April. But Captain Sandys was shipping aboard the
Cyrus
as an invalid, and it is possible that Nelson prevailed upon him to take Scotland aboard. Whatever, the
Cyrus
was unlucky, and ran upon a rock one and a half miles off the northwestern shore of Barbados the day she sailed. She sank in seventy fathoms with some loss of life, and Nelson took a number of the survivors on to his own
ship and presided over the court martial that condemned her commander and master for the accident. Scotland made it ashore but was not among those survivors who returned to service. With some comrades he apparently reached a coastal plantation and then slipped away again to work his passage to England.
³⁵

The affair ended with Parry and Nelson wrestling for Scotland’s fate with mutual dissatisfaction. The governor urged the Admiralty and the British home secretary to bring the boatswain to justice and reprobated Nelson’s conduct, while at the end of August Nelson made a serious attempt to secure the fugitive a pardon and his pay. In support of these requests he sent the Navy Board three depositions he had caused to be sworn by himself, Jameson, the master, and Balentine, the gunner, of the
Boreas
. Nelson’s statements have been given, and those of Jameson and Balentine carry little weight. Neither saw the actual shooting, and their accounts lack the diversity of detail one would expect of spontaneous, undirected statements, and were obviously contrived to reinforce circumstantial points favourable to Scotland. However, they emphasised the hostility naval parties encountered ashore. Some days before the fatal incident Balentine and Scotland were abused by a waterfront crowd, had bottles thrown at them and took refuge in a house. The mob only dispersed after ‘expressing the most bitter oaths that if they had catched [sic] this deponent and the said boatswain they would have done for us’. Jameson, who was ashore the day Elliott was killed, took six armed men for security against ‘the several bodies of armed men who constantly paraded the streets of Bridgetown’. The master also testified that he was on the spot immediately after the shooting. ‘He, this deponent, ordered the said [wounded] man to be carried to the naval hospital, when the said boatswain with the assistance of some others, conveyed him there.’
³⁶

Nelson spoke with passion for his boatswain. It had all been a tragic accident, whipped up by a hostile Barbadian population. The inquest had reached a decision without consulting anyone from the
Boreas
. ‘If the said jury had taken the trouble to enquire of this deponent,’ he said, ‘or summoned any one of the supposed press gang . . . they would never have been able to state upon their oaths such falsities as would deprive the boatswain of even that pity which the most vile of men deserve.’ But his pleas fell unheeded. In August, Scotland visited his agents in London, explaining that he had come home to recover his health, and applying for the wages that had
accrued over several years on the
Boreas
. Unfortunately, the Admiralty had put a stop on his pay and a warrant was issued in Bow Street for his arrest. A constable even went to Deptford, where Scotland was supposed to be hiding, but arrested the wrong man. The final upshot is unclear, but the probability is that Scotland neither received his pay nor ever answered for his offence before a court. Had he done so Nelson would surely have been summoned as a witness.

But why did Nelson defend Scotland so disingenuously and determinedly? It is a fair question given the gravity of the charge and the risks attending the obstruction of justice. Captain Nelson’s conduct pitted him against the civil authorities in Barbados and created difficulties for Sir Richard Hughes and the Admiralty. More crucially, even today it bears upon his reputation as a law-abiding man of honour.

Loyalty was one dimension. Nelson obviously respected Scotland. He had promoted him, and probably knew that if occasion demanded the man would have fought and died for his country. In deciding whether to surrender or shield Scotland, Nelson also had to weigh his own standing with his men. The company of the
Boreas
worked to an unwritten contract. The men obeyed, and if necessary suffered for their officers, but in return they looked to the captain for protection and help in difficulties. He was their representative in the mysterious, inaccessible and intimidating world of gentrified officialdom above. He knew how to fight for their just rights, and what to do if they got into trouble. Scotland now put that contract on trial. Perhaps no one aboard the frigate but Scotland knew the truth about the shooting, but they all knew that a man with whom they had forged a clannish camaraderie in a dangerous service was facing a hanging offence, and they looked to the captain to arbitrate his fate.

Nor must Nelson’s actions be judged outside another essential context. As Dr Rodger has informed us, eighteenth-century naval justice was considered to be more lenient than that exercised in English civil courts. It stipulated, for example, only a tithe of the number of offences for which men could be executed. Naval officers were apt to regard the civil courts as vindictive and unjust, and Nelson’s case was not unique. Commodore Keppel had once refused to surrender a marine to the attorney general of Jamaica in the belief that he would not receive a fair trial. Nelson had exactly those same misgivings in 1786. The people of Bridgetown were prejudiced against the navy, and particularly the
Boreas
for her part in stopping illegal trade. The cases of the
Jane and Elizabeth
and
Brilliant
were stirring those embers
at the very time Elliott had been shot. In the captain’s opinion Scotland would not have been tried fairly in Barbados. The civil authorities had already proved themselves to be corrupt and incompetent in the matter of prize, while in the proceedings against Scotland an inquest had been wound up without any witnesses from the
Boreas
having been called. Reflecting thus darkly, Nelson believed there was no justice to be had in Bridgetown. He could not abandon Scotland to its mercies. Nelson’s actions may have been misguided, and were unquestionably duplicitous, but they were not devoid of principle or courage.
³⁷

One thing is certain: the Elliott affair ended cooperation between Nelson and Parry, and with it any hopes that the governor would unlock the stymied proceedings in the prize courts. As late as October, Parry stormily reminded Nelson of the steps he had been ‘compelled’ to take ‘in support of the dignity of the king’s government’ and ‘the lives, liberties, and properties of His Majesty’s subjects’ as a result of the activities of the
Boreas
. Nelson was so furious that he forwarded the correspondence to Lord Sydney, affecting ‘total’ ignorance of the roots of Parry’s insinuations and demanding the governor specify his charges.
³⁸

And against this background Nelson’s battle with the Barbadian prize court raged on and reached a dramatic climax.

The Elliott–Scotland case smouldered but Nelson’s search for illegal traders continued without remission. Among the suspicious vessels he examined was Collingwood’s old nemesis, the
Dolphin
, now renamed the
Greyhound
. Horatio would have loved to arrest her, but the vessel was still under judicial appeal and beyond his reach. In fact no more ships were seized at Barbados, and as Nelson’s relations with the islanders deteriorated he was ever more impatient to bring the suit against his existing prizes to a conclusion and be gone.
³⁹

The
Jane and Elizabeth
and
Brilliant
were still in his hands, but the people of Bridgetown were so ‘very tumultuous’ that Nelson feared an attempt might be made to take them from him by force. He even had the king’s mark, a broad arrow, carved into their masts so that they could be identified if stolen. Yet without proper maintenance the vessels themselves were also decaying. Their hulls leaked and their cables rotted, and Nelson talked about unloading their cargoes to save them from shipwreck. Still ‘the door of Justice’ remained closed. Judge
Weeks obstinately refused to act on the crown suit, and Brandford, the king’s advocate prosecuting the case for Nelson, would submit no other. ‘Thus circumstanced the vessels will soon require no information to be filed against them,’ Nelson complained to Parry on 1 May. ‘They will either be driven on shore or out to sea, for their cables are getting very bad.’
⁴⁰

But Parry was refusing to see him, and when Brandford waited on the governor Parry would only say that while he thought the judge wrong he had no powers to intervene. Perhaps he spoke the truth, for Nelson heard that when Parry’s secretary called upon Weeks to persuade him to give way, the judge declared that he would ‘never’ yield to the governor, nor to any order but that of the king in council. Finally, on 20 May Brandford informed Nelson that he doubted there was any ‘probability’ of the ships ‘being brought to a speedy trial
here
’. He planned removing the case to England.
⁴¹

By then similar ideas were occurring to the naval officers. In May, Hughes and Nelson had sent three letters across the Atlantic voicing their frustration to the Admiralty, and the law did eventually vindicate their opinion. In August, Admiralty solicitors would rule that Weeks was wrong to refuse to proceed against Nelson’s prizes, but back in steaming Barbados such long-winded procedures were of no use whatsoever.
⁴²

Nelson had a quicker remedy up his sleeve. Very well, he decided: if the Barbadian court refused to deal with his prizes, he would take them to a court that had no such qualms. It was a high-risk strategy, involving the removal of prizes from one jurisdiction to another and a pick-and-choose courts policy of doubtful legality, but Nelson had never been afraid of using his initiative.

Reclaiming the relevant papers from an astonished king’s proctor, Nelson had the sails of the
Boreas
set and put to sea on the 21st, taking both of the prizes with him. He sailed for Nevis, the scene of earlier victories over the illegal traders, where his influence with island officials was the strongest. President Herbert, his prospective father-in-law, and the attorney general Stanley were both worried about their health and planning to retire to England, but at the moment they were still at their posts and powerful allies of the little captain. Magnus Morton, Herbert’s brother-in-law, and John Ward, who had helped Horatio in the past, were both judges of the vice-admiralty court. They did not fail Nelson at this crucial moment. The ships were condemned on 26 June.

In Bridgetown the administrators were furious. The court had lost its fees for processing the suits, the customs service saw its claim to the
Brilliant
disappearing and Governor Parry was forced into the open about his own ambitions to profit from the sale of the
Jane and Elizabeth
. He insisted that it was a governor’s prerogative to share in confiscated prizes, and when the ship was condemned in Nevis he appealed against the distribution of the proceeds. He wanted a traditional third for himself, ‘for the sake of his successors’. Equally, perhaps, he and his associates felt a loss of face. Nelson’s actions volubly proclaimed the inability of the Barbadian court to perform its duty.
⁴³