Nelson (73 page)

The Nelsons had expected Herbert’s will to secure their immediate future and erase the humiliating spectre of a propertyless gentleman and his lady utterly incapable of returning the hospitality of the likes of Coke, Walpole and Martin. It had done neither, and one can only assume that Fanny sold a £100 investment in 3 per cent consols for £76 because of their shortage of ready cash. If the war was going to be merely the brief spat many predicted, Horatio could anticipate more needy years on half-pay. Only the possibility of quick prize money suggested a long-term solution.
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Fanny worried more about bidding farewell to her husband and son, and confronting a lonely, quiet and cold existence in Norfolk than anything else. On 4 April Nelson took Josiah on board the
Agamemnon
at Sheerness, where she had a new berth. The boy had missed the guns being hoisted aboard, but he was in time to see the powder hoy come alongside and the most dangerous part of the ship’s cargo being loaded. Josiah’s ‘high glee’ at getting under sail would soon disintegrate into seasickness when the ship weighed anchor for the Great Nore, but his stepfather was in good spirits after the brief trip down the Medway. ‘We appear to sail very fast,’ he marvelled. ‘We went, coming out, nearly as fast without any sail as the
Robust
[of seventy-four guns] did under her topsails.’ Recruits were coming in handsomely and officers and men were forming a productive partnership, ‘the greatest comfort a captain can have’.
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Fanny wanted to see her husband before sailing. Their own partnership had not been blessed with children, and she was sterile, but her husband had been affectionate and kind and she loved him deeply. She always would. Nelson supposed the
Agamemnon
would stop for a while at Portsmouth, and Fanny arranged to stay with the Matchams, who had just taken Shepherd Spring, a house at Ringwood, Hampshire, not far from Portsmouth. Horatio’s letters to her were dutiful, but lacked the impassioned urgency of those he would later write to Lady Hamilton, and his sentiments expressed almost indifference as to whether he saw Fanny or not. Rather, he was absorbed by his command. He talked about escaping to Ringwood if he could, or of Fanny renewing her acquaintanceship with the Palmers at the George
inn at Portsmouth. On 28 April, Nelson brought a convoy to Spithead, just outside the town. ‘If you and my sister [Kitty] wish to come [to Portsmouth], [I] shall be glad to see you,’ he wrote to Fanny, ‘but do as you like.’
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Two days later the
Agamemnon
sailed on a short prize hunt. With the swell beneath his feet and the old enemy before him Nelson was alive again. The second day out he found four French merchantmen in La Hague roads, and at seven in the evening almost ran them ‘on shore’ beneath two forts that guarded a harbour near Pointe de Barfleur. Shallows and threatening rocks on one side of the anchorage deterred him from pressing the attack, and after counting four small warships in Cherbourg he reluctantly returned to Spithead on the fifth. During the cruise he had shared his cabin with his brother Maurice, who had been trapped aboard by the bad weather while visiting at Spithead, and apparently also young, wide-eyed William Hoste. While Josiah was conquering his seasickness, Hoste – watched protectively by Weatherhead, the older of the two – felt ‘very well and very comfortable’ and found Nelson the perfect hero. ‘I like my situation very much,’ he told his father in one of his entertaining letters. ‘Captain Nelson treats me as he said he would, and as a proof I have lived with him ever since I have been on board.’
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In May the
Agamemnon
was ready for her voyage to the Mediterranean, and there were final moments ashore and partings to manage. Suckling passed his examination for lieutenant, while Hoste spent an interesting day about the quayside at Spithead with Weatherhead and his brother, the latter attached to the
Edgar
. They watched some treasure being unloaded and carted to Portsmouth, accompanied by a band and a regiment of horse.
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After surviving rather more perils, including the overturning of her coach, Fanny reached Ringwood. It was apparently on the ‘fine’ morning of 10 May that she bade farewell to her husband at Portsmouth. Neither of them expected the separation to be a long one, but they would not meet again for four years; when he returned to her he would be rich in honour but ruined in body and spirit, a half-sighted, one-armed creature with a stomach hernia. Fanny never really understood the fires burning within her husband, but she knew every bit as much about duty as he, and steadfastly took his place as the supporter and comforter of his old father.
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Her letters, whether written from Ringwood, Hilborough or new lodgings at Swaffham, did not always reach him in the Mediterranean,
and sometimes he missed her. Horatio wrote a few times most months, and even managed the occasional sentimentality. ‘How I long to have a letter from you’ was the message of 4 August. ‘Next to being with you, it is the greatest pleasure I can receive. I shall rejoice to be with you again. Indeed, I look back as to the happiest period of my life the being united to such a good woman, and as I cannot show here my affection to you, I do it doubly to Josiah, who deserves it as well on his own account as on yours, for he is a real good boy, and most affectionately loves me. He tells me he intends to write you all the news.’
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On 11 May the
Agamemnon
sailed from St Helen’s as part of a division commanded by Vice Admiral William Hotham from the
Britannia
. Three seventy-fours – the
Colossus
(Captain Charles Pole), the
Courageux
(Captain William Waldegrave) and the
Fortitude
(Captain William Young) – and two frigates (one of them the old
Lowestoffe
) made up the rest of the squadron, but Nelson felt that it was wasted cruising west of Guernsey where no enemies were to be found. ‘Indeed,’ he complained, ‘I believe we are sent out for no other purpose than to amuse the people of England by having a fleet to sea.’ They remained doing ‘worse than nothing’ until Lord Hood joined them off the Lizard on 25 May.
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For two weeks the combined squadrons stood off the Scillies in fog, rain and cold trying what remained of Nelson’s patience. ‘What the fleet is doing here, I can’t guess,’ he grumbled from his place in the rear of the force, ‘not having seen a single Frenchman.’ Regular ‘naval evolutions’ barely relieved the frustration, but on the 7th they fell in with a large convoy of British merchantmen plodding home from the West Indies. This, Nelson thankfully concluded, must have been the reason for Admiral Hood’s interest in such a ‘very barren’ spot, and he looked forward to greater activity. Sure enough, once the merchantmen had passed, the fleet sailed for Gibraltar, eleven ships of the line and attendant frigates bowling elegantly into the Atlantic.
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Nelson’s thirst for action remained unquenched, though Pole captured ‘a poor miserable National brig’, but at least the captain of the
Agamemnon
renewed his friendship with Lord Hood. It was the first time they had met since Hood had crushed Nelson’s hopes for employment three years before, but now the tension was brushed aside.
The admiral was ‘very civil’, Fanny learned, and ‘I dare say we shall be good friends again’.
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Hood needed good officers for the job he had been given. At the outbreak of war Britain had not a single ship of the line in the Mediterranean. Now the admiral was expected to establish naval superiority, if not complete supremacy, in that quarter by destroying the French fleet or bottling it in Toulon. While stifling enemy trade and supplies, he had to protect British commerce and the country’s important communications with India and the East Indies, and assist the allied powers to resist French aggression. One such power, Sardinia, had already lost Villefranche and Nice.

Unfortunately, Hood got little support from home. His government was not expecting a long war, for while France had won some military victories she was still internally divided and ringed by predatory powers eager to stove in her boundaries and restore her monarchy. The coalition against her grew as one state after another – Austria, Prussia, Britain, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Sardinia and Naples – entered the fight. Against this background Pitt’s war effort remained minimalist. He was content to contribute money and advice, but as long as the Low Countries were kept free of the enemy, he saw no reason to deploy British troops on the Continent. Certainly not in the Mediterranean. Instead, he planned to use the navy and most of his army to advantage overseas. While France was enmeshed in the European quagmire, Britain would ravage her seagoing trade and strip her of rich Caribbean islands. By recycling the pillage to finance allied armies, Britain could make her great rival pay towards her own defeat.

Time would prove that the British had greatly misjudged the situation. Pitt and his advisers underestimated French endurance and overrated the utility of the allies. The war was not a quick, lusty clash of arms. It intensified, and went on and on. Pitt’s finances, which had begun to erode the national debt, were premised on a short war and fell into disarray. Instead of imposing emergency taxation to create a war chest, he relied upon uncertain spoils from the enemy and ruinous loans. Even more disastrous, Britain’s colonial and commercial strategy did not spare her casualties. Indeed, it cost her the flower of the British army. Between 1793 and 1796 eighty thousand troops were killed or disabled by diseases in the West Indies without having landed one significant blow upon the French.

Hood, therefore, had few soldiers to help him regain the
Mediterranean, and no base east of Gibraltar. He was expected to rely heavily upon the allies, particularly Austria and Spain. Unfortunately, Austria was bogged down in continental campaigns, and Spain’s great days as an imperial power, when she had tantalised the world with riches hewn from the New World, were spent. True, Spain had tried to reverse the decay of her fleet, and massively increased the numbers of her capital ships and frigates from the mid-century. With seventy-six ships of the line in 1790, Spain had the third largest navy in the world, boasting such impressive battle units as the
Santissima Trinidad
, the biggest warship afloat. But her fleets were chronically under-manned, and had yet to shrug off the unfortunate habit of carrying too great a proportion of soldiers to seamen. Moreover, like the French, the Spanish spent too much time languishing in port, recruiting hands for voyages at short notice. Without enough trained seamen or sea-going experience, even brave and patriotic Spanish crews tended to be undisciplined and incompetent.

It did not take Nelson long to gauge the worth of the Spanish navy. To ease the watering situation at Gibraltar, Hood ordered Captain George Elphinstone to take six ships of the line, including the
Agamemnon
, into Cadiz. They reached the Spanish port in uncomfortable heat on 16 June. Nelson’s ship was in good shape, and he was able to wander around the dockyards, the arsenal on Isla de León, and the fortifications of Cortadura. He and the other captains sampled lavish Spanish hospitality dining with their admiral aboard the huge
Concepción
. The ‘Dons’, Nelson observed, had ‘very fine ships’ but they were ‘shockingly manned’ and unlikely to be of ‘much use’. In fact, ‘I am certain if our six barges’ crews . . . had got on board one of their first rates they would have taken her.’

One spectacle Nelson and his fellow captains beheld at Cadiz filled them with revulsion. They were invited to a ‘bull feast’ in which ten animals were driven one by one into an amphitheatre to be baited, tortured and slaughtered before a blood-lusting, baying crowd of twelve thousand people. ‘We had what is called a “fine” feast’, Nelson wrote home, ‘for five horses were killed and two men very much hurt. Had they been killed it would have been quite complete. We felt for the bulls and horses, and I own it would not have displeased me to have had some of the Dons tossed by the enraged animal[s]. How women can even sit, much more applaud, such sights is astonishing. It even turned us sick, and we could hardly sit it out. The dead, mangled horses with their entrails tore out [and] the bulls covered
with blood was too much. However, we have seen one [bull feast] and agree that nothing shall tempt us to see another.’
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On 24 June Hood reassembled his fleet at Gibraltar, bringing together Elphinstone’s squadron, his own and a detachment of ships that had been sent in advance. Captain Nelson shopped for a cask of sherry for Locker, and exchanged warm greetings with old friends on the streets and quays of the great stronghold. The captain of the
Britannia
was John Holloway of Leeward Islands fame, while Skeffington Lutwidge, who had commanded the
Carcass
, was now at the head of the
Terrible
. No doubt opinions of the Spanish navy passed freely during these conversations, and the worst of them were vindicated when the fleet proceeded through into the Mediterranean.

Nelson used Sunday 7 July to distribute his psalters and monitors to the crew, but towards the end of the day his attention was drawn to a large number of sails spotted off the Spanish port of Alicante. In case they were French ships from Toulon, Hood had his nineteen ships of the line in battle formation the next morning, but the newcomers proved to be part of the Spanish fleet bound for Cartagena. Nelson watched their allies wasting four fumbling hours trying to form a line of battle, and marvelled even more to hear that a mere sixty days at sea had reduced their ships to such a poor state that they had been forced to run for port. This seemed ‘ridiculous’ to the British, said Nelson, ‘for from the circumstance of [us] having been longer than that time at sea do we attribute our getting healthy. It has stamped with me the extent of their nautical abilities. Long may they remain in their present state.’
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