Nelson (72 page)

The war in Europe exercised Nelson’s mind much more urgently. Things looked grimmer towards the end of 1792, when the Prussian and Russian armies were surprisingly overthrown and the French overran part of the Rhineland, invaded the Austrian Netherlands and opened the
Scheldt. The old enemy, wracked as it might be with social schism and administrative chaos, had reached the shores of the North Sea. In December Pitt called out the militia, and the dockyards began to hum. On the 29th the French batteries at Brest fired on a British sloop of war.

Nelson’s friends were unsure about what would happen. Never had France seemed more burdened with problems of her own, and Clarence doubted that Britain would go to war. Even Collingwood, who had written from the northeast, seemed resigned to more months on the beach. ‘My regard for you, my dear Nelson, my respect and veneration for your character I hope and believe will never lessen,’ he said. ‘God knows when we may meet again, unless some chance should draw us again to the sea-shore.’
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However, after so many humdrum years Horatio Nelson was wasting no opportunities. In December he wrote again to the Admiralty. The dispiriting reply was little more than an acknowledgement that his letter had been received, but during the first days of the new year Nelson made a freezing journey to London and presented himself to Lord Chatham on 6 January. The next day he scrawled a hurried note to Fanny:

Post nubila Phoebus
: Your son will explain the motto – after clouds comes sunshine. The Admiralty so smile upon me that really I am as much surprised as when they frowned. Lord Chatham yesterday made many apologies for not having given me a ship before this time, but that if I chose to take a 64-gun ship to begin with, I should be appointed to one as soon as she was ready; and that I should as soon as in his power be removed into a 74. Lord Hood has sent for me to nominate the first lieutenant . . . Everything looks war. One of our ships looking into Brest has been fired into. The shot is now at the Admiralty.
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He rushed jubilantly back to Burnham, where he learned within a few weeks that he was being appointed to the
Agamemnon
, a sixty-four-gun ship of the line fitting at Chatham. His commission was dated 30 January 1793.

Two days later France declared war on Britain, Spain and the Dutch United Provinces, and on 4 February Nelson left Norfolk ‘in Health and Great Spirits’.
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When Peace disturb’d recalls him to his post
He issues forth, like Mars, himself an host,
Undaunted braves the peril of the seas,
Preferring Glory to his private ease.

S.H.,
Of the Late Lord Nelson
, 1805

NO one knew how long the war would last, but as one power after another entered the lists against France there were reasons for believing they would make short work of it. Pitt himself was complacent. He did not want to involve Britain in the Austro-Prussian campaign to restore the French monarchy, and contented himself with limited war aims. His country’s security was paramount, so a few battalions of soldiers were sent to Holland to clear the French from the Austrian Netherlands. Beyond that the fighting in Europe could be left to the allies, fortified by British subsidies, while the country searched overseas for juicy French colonies to purloin. Little was prepared. The army was under strength and poorly led, and a year of conflict had to pass before the home secretary, Henry Dundas, was turned into a war minister.

The navy at least was in respectable shape, and as the mainstay of the realm was fully mobilised. Ships were put into commission, and the dockyards buzzed with noise and industry. The streets of Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth were choked with cartloads of provisions, horny-handed artificers and excited seamen. Across the country sea chests were packed and tearful farewells made as officers and men
returned to service. Some were bound for the Caribbean with Rear Admiral Alan Gardner, more for the Mediterranean under Lord Hood, and others would man the crucial Channel fleet with ‘Black Dick’ Howe. There were too few seamen. Bounties never attracted enough volunteers, and incoming merchantmen had to be embargoed and stripped of suitable hands, while the impress service worked at full stretch. On 10 February 1793 a warrant authorising Captain Horatio Nelson of His Majesty’s ship
Agamemnon
to press seamen into service was signed at the Admiralty.
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The
Agamemnon
was special to Nelson, the most favoured of all his ships. Because she brought long, barren years to an end and took him through many and distinguished services, he identified with her. So did her men, who proudly called themselves
Agamemnons
for the rest of their lives.

As a sixty-four-gunner, armed with a dozen nine-pounders and fifty-two eighteen- and twenty-four-pounders, the
Agamemnon
was actually one of the weakest ships of the line. In fact sixty-fours were gradually being dropped from the line of battle altogether. Yet though she pitched against head seas and her helm responded indifferently, the ship handled easily and could make ten knots before the wind. Captain Nelson found her at Prince’s Bridge, Chatham, on 7 February and formally took command in the presence of his first lieutenant and master. He thought she was magnificent. Launched at Buckler’s Hard in Hampshire almost a dozen years earlier, the
Agamemnon
was built of solid English oak, and measured one hundred and sixty feet in length by forty-four and a half in breadth. Her figurehead depicted the King of Mycenae for whom she had been named, and gazed grimly ahead, armoured, helmeted and brandishing a sword.
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Manning her was Nelson’s first objective. For the first time Horatio had to raise a crew from scratch. He distributed posters, directed recruiting officers to forward men to ports between Newcastle and Great Yarmouth, and circulated friends in East Anglia. Many locals answered the call, including Joseph Levrington, John Chadd, J. G. Anniss and Christopher Cook from Wells and the Burnhams, and eventually almost a quarter of the ship’s company hailed from Norfolk and Suffolk. Other men were recruited in Kent and Essex while the
Agamemnon
was at Chatham, and Nelson was fortunate that the trusty Captain Locker commanded a ship in the Thames, the
Sandwich
. Locker used it to house London recruits for the
Agamemnon
, and even helped prepare Nelson’s ship for sea during her captain’s absences.
Every month saw a steady increase in the ship’s company. With late entrants picked up at Spithead, she eventually came to within about sixty men of her official complement of five hundred before she was ready to sail in May. The majority appear to have been volunteers, in receipt of the king’s bounty, though numbers of pressed men were also aboard.

Nelson was now a credible patron, and the gentry wanted positions as trainee officers for their sons. The class of the
Agamemnon
included relatives of Nelson and protégés of Norfolk notables. Maurice William Suckling, who had been to the East Indies since quitting the
Boreas
, was rated master’s mate, while the captain’s servants included Nelson’s thirteen-year-old stepson, Josiah, urged to sea by Fanny, and sixteen-year-old William Bolton, a son of the Reverend William Bolton of Hollesley in Suffolk, brother of Thomas. The Walpoles proffered a twenty-one-year-old volunteer, Midshipman Samuel Gamble from King’s Lynn, while Coke of Holkham rewarded two friends by getting places for their boys. Both sons of Norfolk parsons, they made the finest material. John Weatherhead was about twenty and the son of Thomas Weatherhead of Sedgeford, while thirteen-year-old William Hoste was the son of Dixon Hoste of Tittleshall.
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So many eligible young men competed for places among the petty officers that Suckling, Gamble and Weatherhead had to be rated able seamen until they could be raised to midshipmen. Another aspirant, Thomas Bourdon Fellows, possibly a relation of the ship’s purser, was twenty-two years old and claimed to have served on seven ships in the past thirteen years, but also had to enter as able seaman before he could be more suitably rated master’s mate. Less experienced protégés took refuge among the score of captain’s servants to which Nelson was entitled. Bolton, Nisbet and Hoste began as captain’s servants, but elbowroom remained, and Nelson filled his allocation with charity boys from the Marine Society. At least twenty joined him on 19 and 20 February, aged between thirteen and nineteen years, many of them undersized for their age but each thoroughly scrubbed and equipped with a sea outfit.
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Good officers were needed to train the recruits into an efficient team and Nelson turned to tried and tested followers from his past. Martin Hinton, formerly of the
Albermarle
and known to be ‘a good sailor’, became first lieutenant, and Joseph Bullen of the
Hinchinbroke
his second. Since his previous spell under Nelson, Bullen had returned to his old patron, Captain Cornwallis, and commanded half a gun
deck on the
Prince George
during the battle of the Saintes, but the
Agamemnon
rescued him from half-pay. Nelson got George Andrews of the
Boreas
for his third lieutenant, though the fourth and fifth commissions went to Wenman Allison and Thomas Edmonds, men he knew but with whom he had never worked. Allison had gone to sea as a captain’s servant on the
Suffolk
in May 1778, a protégé of Captain Adam Duncan, the future hero of Camperdown. Duncan had just been promoted vice admiral of the blue squadron in 1793, and either he, or Captain John Vashon, another of Allison’s patrons, may have pressed Nelson to take the young man. Allison came to the
Agamemnon
from half-pay, but there was no reason to expect a novice because he had been a lieutenant for three years. Nelson’s new master was John Wilson, possibly the same man who had served him on the old
Badger
.
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Further down other familiar faces came to rejoin their old commander. They included Frank Lepee, now rated coxswain; Richard Pryke, a thirty-five-year-old Colchester man rated master’s mate; and the boatswain and sailmaker of the
Boreas
, Joseph King. King had spent twenty-one of his thirty-five years in the service, and with the help of the Duke of Clarence got a special discharge from the
Valiant
to return to his old captain. When the existing boatswain, Alexander Moffat, fell ill in Gibraltar later that year, Nelson was able to restore King to his old office.
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After the spiritless years ashore everything Nelson saw magnified his excitement. The
Agamemnon
was ‘the finest 64 in the service’ and a ‘remarkably’ good sailer, and her officers appeared to know their duties. He spoke with most of them, including the purser Thomas Fellows. Pursers had a bad name on warships. They made up their salaries by conserving the stores entrusted to them, for which they had paid a bond in advance, and were notorious for their stringency in meeting the men’s needs. Nelson assured Fellows that supplies would be used carefully, but he would not ‘suffer any poor fellow to be lessened of his due’.
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In March Nelson learned that he was to sail to the Mediterranean with his old patron, Lord Hood, but first he must hurry to Spithead for a preliminary cruise in the Channel. He hopped happily between London and Chatham, setting interminable arrangements in train. Charts, teacups, wineglasses, shirts, towels and a fine new quadrant made by Richard Hornby made their way to his cabin at the rear of the quarterdeck. Nelson spent £50 on as many dozen bottles of port,
sherry and claret, a third of them for consumption in the officers’ wardroom, and purchased bread, butter, beef, pork, mutton, tea, coffee and rum for his table. In Spain he would top up with ninety-six chickens and twelve turkeys. Various delicacies, along with personal belongings from the parsonage, were shipped through Wells by his father, taking months to dribble in for sorting. The hams and bacon had chafed while rocking in a wagon and Nelson’s bureau arrived without its key. Nevertheless, he contrived a degree of comfort in his new quarters, with a cheery coal-fired brazier to drive away the cold and damp.
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The
Agamemnon
slowly readied for sea. Hoys bumped alongside with iron and shingle to furnish ballast for the hold. Sacks of bread, flour, raisins and biscuit were hauled aboard, along with casks of beef, pork, peas, oatmeal, sugar, cheese, butter, water, beer, wine and spirits. The masts, yards and rigging were set up, and men scrubbed the timbers and applied fresh paint. Nor were the educational and spiritual needs of the company ignored. In March Nelson’s appeal to the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge produced 150 psalters and 125 copies of
The Christian Soldier
, or
The Seaman’s Monitor
. It took Nelson longer to get a satisfactory schoolmaster for the boys, for twenty-four-year-old Thomas Withers of the
Victory
did not join him until May. Withers, it transpired, was one of the most remarkable men on board. The son of a yeoman of North Walsham, where Nelson had gone to school, he was trusting and transparent but intelligent. The nephew of a naval purser, Withers had been a nautical scholar of Christ’s Hospital and a merchant seaman in the Indian Ocean. Nelson was so impressed that he re-rated him midshipman within five months and was repaid by unflinchingly loyal service.
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March brought Fanny and Josiah to London, where they lodged with the Sucklings in Kentish Town. The new year had brought much joy to Horatio, but not to his wife. Her uncle John Richardson Herbert had died in Nevis on 18 January, increasing her isolation on a wintry, wet island far from the place of her birth, and his will, upon which the Nelsons had placed hopes, was a disappointment. Herbert’s property was entailed on his daughter, Martha Hamilton, with the right of reversion upon her death to Fanny’s cousin, the younger Magnus Morton. The £20,000 once promised Fanny had shrunk to £4,000, and that could be withheld for up to six years on the payment of 5 per cent interest. Josiah would receive a further
£500 on his twenty-first birthday, and in the meantime receive the interest for his maintenance and education. The annual yield from the whole package barely made up for the loss of the one or two hundred pounds the couple had previously been receiving from their uncles’ annuities.
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