Nelson (9 page)

Hanson certainly seems to have been a less than conscientious pupil. He reminded Nelson that ‘Classic Jones’ the headmaster was a ‘flogger’ of the first water, but perhaps that was merely how he chose to remember it. As an adult Hanson was a flamboyant author and traveller, fair-complexioned, red-haired and round-faced, but school records suggest an unruly boy. Just before Horace left the Paston in 1771 Hanson absconded. On 24 February Jones explained to Hanson’s guardian that the boy had been ‘out of bounds after dark’, and on one occasion had negotiated a hedge to smoke a pipe in the master’s garden with another boy. Hanson had also failed to form a Greek verb, and received one or two punitive blows over the shoulders, but Jones protested that ‘my natural disposition is rather to mildness than severity, and my punishments are never proportional to a boy’s faults’.
²⁵

There is no evidence that Nelson particularly distinguished himself at school. He was unquestionably intelligent, but his mature letters contain few of the Classical allusions Jones and his staff attempted to instil. Dawson Turner, who studied at North Walsham a dozen years later, testified that stories about Nelson were still going round at the time, and that the name of the future admiral was cut in a pew in the school church. A subsequent pupil, the father of the novelist Henry Rider Haggard, thought he discerned it carved upon a brick in the playground wall at the back of the school.
²⁶

It was of little consequence, for Horace’s schooldays ended abruptly. He was the second of the Nelson children to leave home.

In time the Reverend Edmund Nelson would guide all but one of his children into employment. In 1773 eighteen-year-old Susanna, who answered to ‘Sukey’, was apprenticed to Messrs Watson, milliners of Bath, and in three years became a shop assistant in the same town. William, despite a growing capacity for self-interest, went to Christ College, Cambridge, in 1774, destined for holy orders. Neat and taciturn Ann (‘Nancy’ or ‘Nan’) eventually left school in 1775 and embarked upon her apprenticeship in millinery at a ‘Lace Warehouse’ in Ludgate Street, London. Edmund (‘Mun’) and Suckling were also
apprenticed, the former to Nicholas Havers of Burnham and the latter to Mr Blowers, a linen draper of Beccles, though neither would be particularly successful. Only little Catherine, who everyone called ‘Katy’, would be rescued from an apprenticeship by a timely legacy. Their father loved his children and worried that he had served them inadequately, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Ann’s apprenticeship alone cost a premium of £105, one of the highest demanded by a London trade, a clear indication that Edmund was stretching his meagre means to find good positions for his offspring.
²⁷

But, apart from Maurice, Horace left home before any of them, at the tender age of twelve. It happened suddenly.

The winter of 1770–71 was lonely and dark at the rectory, for the reverend had retreated to Bath and the boys spent their Christmas holidays under the charge of the hired help. But perusing the pages of the
Norfolk Chronicle
, Horace read something that enlivened even that timeless place. Britain and Spain were squabbling for possession of the Falkland Islands, and the Admiralty was commissioning additional ships, and calling captains from retirement. One of them was Horace’s uncle, Maurice Suckling, who was appointed to a new sixty-four-gun line of battle ship, the
Raisonable
, on 17 November. She was fitting at Chatham, and taking on men, and impulsively Horace asked William to write to their father. He wanted Uncle Maurice to take him to sea.

The Reverend Nelson probably did not blanch at the proposal. He knew that Captain Suckling had offered to take one of the boys, and the navy was by no means a bad option. Indeed, there were few more acceptable alternatives. As a clergyman Edmund had a traditional place among the country gentry, but it was a rank to which his modest income was barely equal, and like many wearing the cloth he mixed uneasily with local landowners, merchants and professional men far wealthier than himself. Money was a particularly serious concern when it came to starting sons in life. The professions were the obvious outlets, but most demanded considerable and enduring investment. Promotion in the army was based upon purchase, and threatened constant embarrassment to families of limited means. The law was a possibility, but the road to the Bar through the inns of court might drain a modest purse, and even an apprenticeship with a good London attorney could cost a hundred pounds. The Church involved the expenses of a university education. The navy, however, was different. A commissioned officer had status and the prospect of making a
fortune through prize money. But more immediately, provided a boy had the ‘interest’ to get aboard a ship as the protégé of some captain, his promotion would depend upon influence and kinship rather than money, and he would receive his education at the king’s expense. Edmund would have to pay for Horace’s uniforms, equipment and sea chest, but, all things considered, the navy was a respectable and inexpensive way forward. True, the service was a hard one, but then Captain Suckling would be on hand to monitor his nephew’s progress.

As William remembered it, Uncle Maurice himself was not so sure. It was common for captains to take fledgling relatives on board their ships, and Suckling had himself gone to sea at thirteen. He had also promised to provide for one of the boys, but perhaps it was William he had had in mind, rather than his fragile younger brother, so readily stricken with the mild marsh fevers of the East Anglian flats. ‘What has poor Horace done, who is so weak, that he above all the rest should be sent to rough it out at sea?’ Suckling is said to have replied. ‘But let him come, and the first time we go into action a cannon ball may knock off his head and provide for him at once.’
²⁸

Not yet though. The ship was still being prepared and Horace was ordered back to school with his brother for the beginning of the new term. Not until early one gloomy March or April morning in 1771 did their father’s servant arrive at the Paston with a summons. The brothers parted painfully, and the school doors closed behind Horace for the last time. He was bound for London and a new life at sea.
²⁹

Nelson would miss home, for all its grim silences and stunted horizons. He remembered his early associates in Norfolk with great affection, and referred to them often in his letters to William. There was Horace Hammond, ‘my old school-fellow’, the son of Dr Horace Hammond, who had not only married a cousin of Nelson’s mother but stood as one of the boy’s godparents. And among those whose kindnesses remained with him were Dr Poyntz, Henry Crowe, Lord Walpole, and Mrs John (Charlotte) Norris, daughter of Edward Townshend, sometime Dean of Norwich, and another of the Suckling–Walpole–Townshend tribe.
³⁰

But homesickness would have to be cured, for as Horace sat excitedly beside his father, shaken this way and that as the coach sped over rutted roads to London, he could not have known that he would not see Burnham Thorpe again for ten years.

From thence a NELSON, – DUNCAN sprung,

Brave HOOD, and numbers yet unsung;

Let not then a despiteful tongue,

Defame the name of midshipman.

‘Peter’,
The Midshipman
, 1813

E
IGHTEENTH-CENTURY
London was very different from the London of today. No part of it was more than an afternoon’s carriage ride from the open country, and while the main roads that stretched from its nucleus like tentacles were built up for miles, the ground between was covered in fields, market gardens and rural villages. But it must have still seemed overwhelmingly stirring to a twelve-year-old from Norfolk, even one familiar with Norwich. Pedestrians of every description thronged the pavements, while carts, coaches, sedan chairs, carriages and wagons plied furiously through the streets. The air was full of the smells of an eccentric sewage system and new sounds, the echo of wood and iron on cobbles, the chimes of huge bells and the incomprehensible cries of street vendors. The Reverend Edmund Nelson might have led his wide-eyed son through myriad interesting sights to the house of William Suckling, apparently then at New North Street in Red Lion Square. Horace knew that Uncle William had been with the customs service as a boy. His station was probably the Customs House off Thames Street, but at home he lived with his wife Elizabeth (née Browne) and their nine-year-old son, also called William. There was little time for Horace to explore, however. After completing his
sea outfit, which included navigational instruments and the long, plain single-breasted uniform coats of a midshipman, he was soon careering downriver on the Chatham stage with instructions to find the
Raisonable
and report to Captain Suckling.
¹

In all probability the ship was at Sheerness, for it had slipped down to the mouth of the Medway on 15 March. The
Raisonable
still had only about half of its complement of five hundred men, but was already being licked into shape. On 1 April a man received the customary twelve lashes for fighting. The ship’s rigging was being set up, and stores of beef, bread, wood, beer, pork, oatmeal, butter, cheese and water were loading.
²

When the bewildered Horace finally arrived at the moorings there was no one to meet him or take him aboard. According to the story told by his brother William, Horace wandered forlornly about the quayside until an officer acquainted with Captain Suckling encountered him, and, learning his plight, took him home for refreshments. When Horace did reach the
Raisonable
, it was to the news that his uncle, the captain, had not yet arrived. He stowed his gear and spent that day and several that followed pacing the quarterdeck, lonely and homesick. Even William, still enduring the mercies of ‘Classic’ Jones, seemed to have been dealt a kinder hand.
³

It was an uncomfortable introduction to the dark, arduous, cramped and dangerous world of the eighteenth-century warship, but slowly Horace adjusted to its tarry smells, the creaks and groans of wood and rope, the shifting, ceaseless swell beneath him, the shouts and oaths and running feet, and the crowded sights of an arterial waterway. If the
Raisonable
did little but rock at anchor, other vessels glided here and there beneath billowing sails, ships with such names as the
Conquistador
,
Glasgow
,
Cornwall
and
Augusta
. One, a passing yacht, drew a rumbling gun salute, and Horace would have learned that it contained Lord Sandwich himself, recently restored to the head of the board of Admiralty.

While new recruits climbed aboard and volunteers received their ‘bounties’ from the dockyard clerk of the cheque, Horace tackled the everyday complexities of shipboard life as a ‘young gentleman of the quarter-deck’ training to be an officer, from mastering sleeping in a hammock and keeping himself in a presentable condition to fathoming the mysteries of navigation and seamanship at the behest of the sailing master, William Clark. He also quickly learned to jump at a word from the superior officers on the quarterdeck: the captain himself, and
Matthew Anderson, St Alban Roy, William Scott and Faithful Adrian Fortescue – lieutenants with the king’s commission in their pockets.

There were new friends to be made too, many of them aspirants like himself, including a score of ‘captain’s servants’ and five other midshipmen. It was the last – Thomas Underwood, John Cook, Thomas Pewtress, William Swan and Charles Boyles – who were his immediate associates. Boyles was his favourite and he probably assumed the role of a protective older brother. Five years Horace’s senior, he was a lively Norfolk lad whose father, the collector of customs at Wells, was known to the Nelson–Suckling families. In fact, Charles owed his presence on board to one of their Townshend relatives. Horace watched Boyles mature into ‘an exceedingly good character’, very ‘much beloved’ by his colleagues. He was capable too: he became a post-captain in 1790, distinguished himself in Calder’s action with the French in 1805 and reached flag rank a year later.
⁴

The
Raisonable
was supposed to be bound for the Falklands but did not put to sea. The dispute between Britain and Spain subsided when the Spanish restored a British post they had seized on the islands, and the two powers agreed to let the question of sovereignty simmer.
Raisonable
was decommissioned, but Captain Suckling was not returned to the half-pay list. Instead, he was transferred to a larger warship, the seven-year-old, seventy-four-gun
Triumph
, which was anchored at Blackstakes, an anchorage on the River Medway, doing duty as a guardship. On 15 May the captain shifted to his new berth, and among those duly following was his nephew. Horace was discharged from the
Raisonable
on Tuesday 21 May 1771, and the following day rated a captain’s servant on the
Triumph
.
⁵

As we have seen, the navy was a logical choice for boys of Nelson’s means, status and connections, but he was probably tempted by what seemed to him a glamorous profession, one that was also adventurous, prestigious and popular. The life was hard, but those who endured it, whether officers or common seamen, walked ashore with a certain pride and approbation. For in the eighteenth century the Royal Navy was not an occasionally useful but secondary arm: it was the very foundation of the security, independence and prosperity of an island nation living in dangerous times.

Going aboard the
Raisonable
and the
Triumph
, Horace was taking his place in the front line of his country’s defences. Britain had been involved in three significant wars since the beginning of the century: the wars of Spanish and Austrian Succession of 1702–13 and 1740–48,
and the Seven Years War of 1756–63, which for the British, French and American Indians began in skirmishes along the Ohio River in 1754. France was the principal adversary in each of the conflicts, and remained a major threat to Britain’s sovereignty and her greatest rival for overseas empire. Compared with France, Britain was a poor under-populated country of eight million people and militarily weak. But, luckily, she was also an island power with the sea for her borders and a powerful navy to protect her from invasion and allow a degree of freedom of action.