Nelson (78 page)

As Nelson weighed his chances in a battle with an entire enemy squadron, his troubles multiplied. At about eight or nine the wind fell away. With her masts and sails injured, the
Agamemnon
was sluggish in the calm and open to attack from the undamaged ships of the French squadron as they responded to the urgent signals of the stricken
Melpomene
. Gradually the wounded enemy frigate hauled up towards her sister ships, which were soon lowering boats to send her reinforcements and aid. On her part, the head of the bruised
Agamemnon
paid round to the southward, leaving the enemy ships within a league to the northeast with their sails set. Suddenly, after only about fifteen minutes of stillness, the breeze returned and the sails began to fill. It was time for both sides to assess their situation and decide whether or not to renew the engagement.

At this moment Nelson’s inexperience came to the surface. With none of his usual decisiveness, he summoned his officers to the quarterdeck for their second consultation. Apparently they still believed they were up against at least one ship of the line, the forty-gun
La Minerve
, an ‘enormous frigate’, looking grotesquely large in the poor
light. ‘Do you think we can, by hauling our wind to the northeast after the frigate, close with her before she joins her consorts?’ asked the captain.

‘No, it is impossible’ was the general opinion.

‘From what you see of the state of our ship, is she fit to go into action with such a superior force which is against us, without some small refit, and refreshments for our people?’ Nelson wanted to know.

‘She certainly is not,’ the officers replied. Or, at least, that is what Nelson said they said.

He glanced at the Frenchmen, now bearing away northwest by west, and turned to the master. ‘Mr Wilson, wear the ship, and lay her head to the westward. Let some of the best men be employed refitting the rigging, and the carpenters getting crows and capstan bars to prevent our wounded spars from coming down, and to get the wine for the people and some bread, for it might be half-an-hour before we were again in action.’ He had decided to pause for breath – and then to fight again if he had to, even against five opponents.

But neither side wanted to renew the contest. Nelson was so short-handed that it took him till noon to get his rigging, masts and yards in a condition to proceed, and the French made no attempt to interfere. Accordingly, the combatants withdrew. With the carpenters slaving to plug the shot holes, the
Agamemnon
limped into Cagliari on 24 October. Commodore Linzee was Hood’s brother-in-law. He was there with the
Alcide
and four other ships, but seemed totally uninterested in Nelson’s plight and refused to loan carpenters, sailmakers and tools to help repair the battered ship, despite the fact that he planned to take his squadron to sea in the morning. Nelson was ready on time, but his people had had to work all night mending sails, replacing top and topgallant masts, splicing rigging, fixing holes and fishing the mainmast.

Nelson was probably stung by Linzee’s reception, and perhaps worried that he would be blamed for failing to secure an inferior vessel. He made a careful note of the advice his officers had given during the fight, as if he expected to be called to account, and put the best gloss on the action he could. But if Hood made no complaint, nor did he look as if he had the time to acknowledge Nelson’s adventure, and Horatio prepared his own account for the newspapers. Never before had he resorted to such blatant self-publicity, but he would soon use the method again, also in the belief that he was being undersold in the official dispatches. Nelson’s version, which went through his brother Maurice
to the London papers, totted the opposition up to 170 guns and 1,600 men, as if he had fought all five enemy ships simultaneously, and
The Times
published a brief but laudatory summation on 13 December. However, it was enough to do the trick. According to those back home this one brief clipping brought him ‘very great credit’. Alerted to the power of the press, Nelson thoughtfully stored the information away. He hoped Hood would report any successes of the
Agamemnon
in his dispatches, and that they would appear in the
London Gazette
in the usual way, but if not the news-hungry press seemed happy to publish independent accounts from the Mediterranean.
⁵⁸

In the months that followed Nelson was also gratified to find that his sea fight had been more decisive than at first appeared. Indeed, it led to the capture of the entire French squadron. His opponents had been sailing steadily under top- and foresails from Tunis to Nice when they encountered Nelson, but the
Agamemnon
inflicted considerable damage upon the
Melpomene
. In January the following year a French deserter claimed that she lost twenty-four men killed and fifty wounded, and was ‘so much damaged as to be laid up dismantled in St Fiorenzo. She would have struck long before we parted but for the gunner who opposed it, and the colours were [about to be] ordered to be struck by general consent’ when the ships were becalmed and she was reinforced. The skirmish deflected the French squadron to Corsica, where the
Melpomene
could be repaired. When the British captured the island in 1794 all five ships consequently fell into their hands.
⁵⁹

As he reckoned the pros and cons of his first naval engagement Nelson must also have realised that if the enemy had been more enterprising they might have defeated the
Agamemnon
. Indeed, it was relief rather than disappointment that dominated his first reflections. As he wrote in his journal after the action closed, ‘How thankful ought I to be, and I hope am, for the mercies of Almighty God manifested to me this day.’
⁶⁰

Linzee led his ships out of Cagliari at seven in the morning of 26 October. There were four sail of the line – the flagship
Alcide
, and the
Berwick
,
Illustrious
and
Agamemnon
– and two frigates. The squadron sailed south, following sealed orders Nelson had brought from Hood, and five days later anchored in the Bay of Tunis on the Barbary coast.

Tunis was a place quite unlike any Nelson had yet seen in the Mediterranean. It was nominally part of the Ottoman empire, but was known – and feared – as a city state thriving on the fruits of piracy. Even the French found it convenient to pay the bey of Tunis protection money. When Linzee sailed in he saw a Spanish squadron and two French warships, the eighty-gun
Duquesne
and a corvette, sitting smugly at anchor, as well as a large number of French merchantmen sheltering further up near a fort. Tunis was supposed to be a neutral port, open to ships of every nation, but Nelson expected a fight. With his instinct for finding the hottest spot he anchored the
Agamemnon
between the two French warships, planning to use both his broadsides to engage them simultaneously if firing began.

After a few days Linzee began ‘a damned palaver’ with the bey in his green-domed palace. Nelson, of course, thought it even more frustrating than Hood’s inaction before Toulon earlier in the year, and wanted a speedy and decisive resolution of the matter. The bey, he reasoned, was not going to agree to any attack being made upon the French, but presented with a
fait accompli
he might be reconciled by a cut of £50,000 in spoils. Besides, there was another reason for acting quickly: prize money. Fearful of being seized, the French merchantmen were feverishly unloading their precious cargoes, worth some £300,000. If the convoy was stripped bare, it might scarcely be worth the taking, while in the last extremity the enemy warships could always evade capture by declaring for the French royalists. Nelson had no difficulty advising Linzee’s council of war that they should seize the convoy forthwith, and then negotiate with the bey from a position of strength. In unguarded comments to Fanny and the Duke of Clarence he was even more bullish, and suggested knocking the bey’s forts down ‘about his ears’ if he objected. Fortunately, Commodore Linzee understood that admirals had to be statesmen as well as fighters, and did not care for such heavy-handedness. The principles of neutrality could not be dishonoured with impunity, and the bey was entirely capable of retaliating against British commerce. Moreover, Linzee had Hood’s express instructions to avoid giving offence. ‘My spirits are low indeed,’ a rebuffed Nelson confided in his journal. ‘Had I been commodore most likely I should have been broke by this time, for certainly I should have taken every Frenchman here without negotiating . . . I believe that the people of England will never blame an officer for taking a French line-of-battle ship.’
⁶¹

Nelson’s thinking, in this instance, was influenced by financial
considerations as well as his customary pugnacity. Those dozens of French merchantmen up the bay represented an enormous amount of prize money. Linzee, Nelson later admitted, ‘lost my fortune’. The commodore was not oblivious to either the political or the pecuniary advantages of seizing the French ships, but tried diplomacy instead. He asked the bey’s permission to attack the French ships, and was refused. In fact, the bey was neither as mercenary nor as foolish as the British supposed, and declined to be bribed or persuaded. Linzee offered him one of the smaller French merchantmen, and described the French as enemies of all mankind, unworthy of neutral protection, but the bey politely pointed out that the English had also once executed their king, and that it was not for him to intervene in disputes between Christian powers. He would be grateful if the British respected the neutrality of his port.
⁶²

Stumped, Linzee sent a frigate to Hood for more instructions and got rid of Nelson on a ten-day cruise. The
Agamemnon
’s sortie was fruitless, and Nelson was merely buffeted by wind, rain and thunderstorms, but he was glad to escape the humiliating tedium of Tunis. The sight of that big French eighty-gunner sitting ripe for the taking was more than he could stand. It was a large battle unit to let loose in the Mediterranean, and impudent, too. Every morning and evening her men sang the ‘Marseillaise’ with an English flag draped contemptuously over the roundhouse. When Nelson returned to Tunis on 26 November he found the stalemate intact, though the French had hauled their ships up against the shore to make them more difficult to attack. Fortunately, relief was at hand.
⁶³

On the 29th the
Nemesis
frigate came in from Hood, and Nelson was summoned to Linzee’s flagship. The admiral endorsed Linzee’s policy of negotiation, but had some ‘very handsome’ words for Nelson as well as independent work for him to do. Indeed, he was to command a small squadron – his first since that unofficial command in the Leeward Islands many years before. It was a heartwarming compliment, because there were senior captains in the fleet who would have enjoyed a detached command, however modest in scale.
⁶⁴

Nelson’s orders, dated 15 November, were satisfying. Hood had been worrying about the French garrisons in Corsica. They had refused to declare for the royalists, and when Linzee’s squadron had tried to subdue them by force in October he had taken a beating and lost fifty men killed and wounded. The only alternative was to blockade their strongholds, starve them of supplies and force them to surrender.
Ashore Corsican partisans were trying to liberate their island from the French, but only a comprehensive naval campaign could effectively shrivel the enemy positions. For this work Nelson was given the
Lowestoffe
frigate at Tunis and several ships already stationed in the waters between Corsica and Genoa, the
Mermaid
,
Tartar
and
Topaze
frigates and the
Scout
brig. Nelson’s instructions also mentioned the French squadron he had fought the previous month. It was believed to be at St Fiorenzo in Corsica, but if victuals ran low it might make a run for the mainland, and Nelson was to keep a lookout. Hood cautioned Nelson to give as little offence to neutrals as possible, but clearly reposed confidence in his judgement. With the orders came one of the admiral’s ‘my dear Nelson’ letters, wishing him good fortune. Liberated from Linzee’s uninspiring leadership, Nelson perked up at once. ‘Thank God, Lord Hood . . . has taken me from under his command,’ he said.
⁶⁵

Arriving on his station, Nelson found that his force effectively amounted to two or three frigates, the
Lowestoffe
,
Meleager
and
Leda
, and a twenty-four-gun sloop, the
Amphitrite
. Though little known, their commanders were Nelson’s first captains, and seemed to have liked him. Charles Tyler of the
Meleager
, a slight, handsome, hawkfaced officer who limped from a wound taken in the American war, would grace two of Nelson’s great victories and carry a lock of his admiral’s hair into retirement. On his ship were two lieutenants Nelson also learned to admire. One, Walter Serecold, would distinguish himself at Nelson’s side in Corsica, and the other was the celebrated Thomas Masterman Hardy. The captain of the
Leda
was George Campbell, who would later sign himself Nelson’s ‘very much obliged and faithful friend’ in days before his life soured and turned him to suicide. Anthony Hunt commanded the
Amphitrite
, and William Wolseley the old
Lowestoffe
. Two years older than Nelson though junior in rank, Wolseley was another who had been tried and tested in battle, and carried inside him a bullet received during an attack on Trincomalee ten years before. He and Nelson formed a good friendship during their brief service together, and even agreed to pool prize money. It seems that Nelson benefited most from the arrangement; he only salvaged a deserted French gunboat that December, whereas the
Lowestoffe
sent six neutrals into Leghorn, all suspected of shipping French supplies. Nonetheless, Wolseley reaped a reward of a different kind when the following spring Nelson persuaded Hood to transfer him to a better frigate, the
Imperieuse
. ‘I hope we may soon meet again,’ Wolseley
wrote to his benefactor, ‘and that I shall have the pleasure of shaking you by the hand.’
⁶⁶