Nelson (98 page)

What was more, from among Lazare Carnot’s new breed of young and vigorous generals, the French had found a leader of unusual ruthlessness, ambition and enterprise. He would face Nelson for the first time here, on the riviera coast, but his towering figure would throw a giant shadow over the remainder of the admiral’s life. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte.

The evening of 17 July 1795 found Nelson in Genoa, making a careful note of the four French frigates and corvettes that sat invulnerable at their moorings. Unable to do anything about them in a neutral port, Nelson talked to Francis Drake, the British minister plenipotentiary who had been appointed to liaise with the Austrian army and had also just arrived. Six years younger than Nelson, and like him the son of a parson, Drake shared the captain’s appetite for business and soon briefed him on the military situation.
³

In June the Austrians and Sardinians had thrown the advancing French ‘Army of Italy’ under General François-Christophe Kellermann, the hero of Valmy, back across the Apennines, but now the opposing forces were stalemated near the coast at Albenga. Thirty thousand French had dug into the St Esprit mountains with Nice to their rear, while the Austrians under De Vins were quartered at Vado Bay near Savona with their advanced posts a few miles further west, near Loano. For the moment both sides glowered at one another, unable to move forward. But the ability of the French to advance or even to hold their existing positions depended upon supplies. With the Sardinians at Ormea and Garessio threatening the enemy’s land communications, most of their provisions had to be brought in by sea. If Nelson could stifle them and drain the French of strength, he might be able to force them to retreat or at least weaken their lines and expose them to Austrian attack. The Austrian general was grumbling about the lack of naval support, and not without some justification. Even as Drake was briefing Nelson in Genoa a score of feluccas were landing provisions for the French at Oneglia and rescuing them from a regimen of a quarter of a ration a day.
⁴

Stopping such supplies would not be easy, however – if possible at all. For one thing many of the sea-borne supplies were sneaked along the coasts at night, in light-draught vessels capable of exploiting the treacherous shallows inshore, where larger ships could not go. For
another, the trade was largely in the hands of Genoese, Italian and Algerian neutrals who had endless ruses to protect their livelihoods. False flags and forged papers were used to disguise the ownership of freight, and any legitimate property seized by mistake could involve the hapless captors in damaging lawsuits. Nelson had been ordered to avoid offending the neutral states whenever possible, but as the French had now penetrated the republic of Genoa itself it was possible for Genoese merchants to supply them without leaving their own territorial waters. It was a diplomatic minefield. To help his allies Nelson had to stop those provisions, but in doing so he risked financial penalties and the full weight of diplomatic disapproval.

Back in the reassuring surroundings of his cabin on the
Agamemnon
, Nelson was mortified to find that Hotham’s instructions were also peculiarly obstructive, ordering him to abide by a misconceived Admiralty circular. It demanded that inventories of the cargoes of impounded neutrals be sent to London, where any decision to prosecute would be taken. This long-winded and preposterous injunction would not only have congested the processes of seizure and trial, but also have destroyed the bulk of the disputed cargoes, which consisted of perishable foodstuffs. Spoiled goods could not be restored, even if the Admiralty deemed them unlawful prize, and the captors would inevitably become liable for their value. Neither Nelson nor any of his captains could be expected to labour under such an imposition.
⁵

Nelson liked Hotham but not his inertia and want of ‘political courage’. The admiral was ‘alarmed at everything, and dreads doing wrong, which makes him err twenty times in a month’. He ‘must get a new head’, wrote Nelson. ‘No man’s heart is better, but that will not do without the other.’ So, encouraged by Drake and Trevor, Nelson decided to overturn the Admiralty’s instructions himself, presenting Hotham with a
fait accompli
.
⁶

With typical self-confidence, Nelson waived his instructions and resolved to seize all vessels, whether neutral or not, found transporting supplies to the enemy, either in France or territories occupied by the French. Captures would be brought into Vado Bay for Nelson’s inspection. Neutral ships would be released, but any suspect cargoes would be taken to Leghorn, their perishables sold and the proceeds held by an agent pending the outcome of the legal process. As for Genoese merchants shipping goods to areas of their republic occupied by the French, but for the specific use of the native populations, they would be required to show passports from De Vins, Drake and the secretary
of state in Genoa, who went under the exhausting name of Felice Giacinto Gianelli Castiglione.

Nelson’s dictum would not endear him to neutrals, whether they were shipping contraband or not, but he intended to back it all the way. In July he ordered Cockburn to be ‘particularly vigilant’ in examining vessels sailing under Genoese colours, as he suspected that many of them were transporting money from France. The Genoese government acquiesced reluctantly. Mindful of the rights of neutrals to trade with whomsoever they pleased, it stopped short of positively approving Nelson’s plans. There was even the shadow of a challenge to them in August, when Castiglione attempted to send a national war galley to escort a convoy of provisions to the Genoese garrison at San Remo. But when Nelson made it clear that he was still prepared to intercept the convoy, seizing any merchant ships without the necessary passes, Castiglione retreated and agreed to ensure the supplies were solely discharged to Genoese officials who would keep them out of the hands of the French.
⁷

A procedure decided, Nelson and his associates sent to Hotham, who found himself beseeched by Trevor and Drake to back ‘the temporary resolution which that spirited officer [Nelson] had taken upon him’, and publicly affirm the new policy. Hotham was sick and waiting to go home. There were times when his hands shook so desperately he could hardly hold a pen. But to give him his due the admiral agreed without the slightest prevarication, and even reiterated Nelson’s orders to the fleet captains under his own authority.
⁸

That train set on its way, Nelson took Drake to Vado to confer with the Austrian commander-in-chief in his camp at the bottom of the bay. When they arrived after a voyage of calms on 20 July, Nelson was distinctly unimpressed by the anchorage. There was a fort on a commanding promontory, which the
Agamemnon
saluted with seventeen guns, but the bay itself was merely a bend in the coastline; ‘if it had not been called a bay, I should not have named it one,’ Nelson said. However, the next day Nelson and Drake locked themselves in long, earnest discussions with Baron De Vins and Britain’s men from Turin, John Trevor and Thomas Jackson, who had themselves just arrived. The general had been thrown into an ill humour by the arrival of the Genoese victuallers in Oneglia four days before, and did not look like a conqueror. He was old and diseased, but spoke confidently. Starved of provisions the enemy would be driven back to Nice. The Austrian army might winter in Provence, and Nelson’s ships anchor
in Villefranche. In fact, so important did De Vins consider the work at sea that he was already commissioning Sardinian privateers to attack the enemy coasters. Captain Nelson assured the Austrians of his full support and established a system by which the army could signal any of his ships offshore, but no doubt he also explained the difficulties of chasing small provision ships through coastal shallows. At this point Trevor had a powerful contribution to make. Foreseeing the problem, he had already applied to Admiral Hotham for the assistance of a flotilla of small boats from Naples. Though Trevor did not know it, his request was then going before the Neapolitan government; the response was positive, and in August two galliots and eight feluccas were being fitted out to serve under Nelson’s command.
⁹

Applying the strategy, even after Hotham’s approval of Nelson’s plans, was more complicated. Nelson’s force increased to thirteen or so ships, and he dispersed them widely, some cruising between La Spezia in the east and Oneglia in the west, and others doing escort or dispatch duty. Nelson commanded from Vado Bay, and relied a great deal on information from Genoa, where Drake and Joseph Brame, the local British consul, had spies watching French ships like hawks, and noting when cargoes were loaded in the harbour and vessels prepared for sea. Nevertheless, as the British cruisers began to strike there was an immediate howl of protest. When Nelson returned to Genoa to drop Drake and Trevor, an angry, hooting crowd gathered on the waterfront. Neither that, nor the bewildering shades of complicity that emerged as cases went to court, intimidated the captain of the
Agamemnon
, who stood his ground. He held his captains accountable for their conduct, but understood they had to make decisions quickly, and when in doubt preferred to seize rather than risk supplies reaching the enemy. It was ‘better’, he said, that the British ‘should pay for twenty cargoes [taken wrongly] and finish the war, than the war be continued into another campaign’.
¹⁰

The legal cases were certainly thorny. What was the status of a ship owned by a Swiss national domiciled in Marseilles? Or of the French ship
L’Africaine
with doubtful papers that claimed she had been sold to an Algerian? Or of a Dutch-built brig using the cover of a Danish consul but evidently owned by the French? Outright dishonesty, as well as confusion, was endemic. Take the case of the
Belvedere
polacre, seized by the
Meleager
as it ran for the shelter of batteries near Alassio on 21 July. The quarry landed up to forty bags of money and threw a packet of papers overboard before Captain George Cockburn’s boats
got alongside, but a search of the ship unearthed considerable wealth, including a chest of silver, some gold and a quantity of loose and set diamonds and other jewels. The
Belvedere
was unquestionably French and the crew staged a brief resistance, but her master filed an entirely false if ultimately unsuccessful claim that she had been taken within a neutral harbour, and was therefore under diplomatic protection and exempt from capture.
¹¹

Despite every precaution the neutral shipowners in Genoa clamoured vociferously against Nelson’s campaign, but, forewarned by Drake, Admiral Hotham stood firm, insisting that all seizures would be fairly investigated by the prize courts. Nelson himself knew he had a real war with the French to win. Though he painfully explained himself to the Genoese, he would not be swayed. As he truthfully observed, ‘it almost appears a trial between us, who will first be tired, they of complaining, or me of answering them. However, my mind is fixed.’
¹²

After landing Drake and Trevor at Genoa, Nelson went to Leghorn for wood, oxen, lemons and onions. He took Adelaide aboard, too. Her voyage began gently on 28 July, when Nelson quit Leghorn with the
Inconstant
and
Ariadne
to hit a dead calm that kept them off the port for a day. It probably ended when the
Agamemnon
returned to Leghorn for provisions on 24 September. One wonders what Adelaide made of life at sea, and her voyage to and from Vado. She must have learned to recognise the chilling drum roll that accompanied the fourteen floggings administered on her lover’s ship during that period, and at Vado seen boats leaving on forays against the French. Most probably she saw the dead and wounded return from a bloody skirmish near Oneglia at the end of August.

On 8 August, a week after reaching Vado, Nelson contemplated establishing Adelaide ashore at Savona. It was not unknown for selected officers to board on land, and the purser of the
Agamemnon
, Mr Fellows, treated the house of one local dignitary as if it was an inn. Fellows had good reasons to be ashore, for he was in constant communication with Giovanni Firpo, an acting vice consul at Savona, regarding the supply of provisions and local services. Among the purser’s requests for cabbages, meat, fish, salt, water, lemons and onions for Nelson’s ship, we find one for six pairs of women’s silk
hose, probably on Adelaide’s account. Nelson also alerted Firpo to his interest in a good sitting room and bedchamber ashore, and told him to look out for ‘two cool good rooms’.
¹³

But in the end Adelaide seems to have remained on board, where Captain Fremantle of the
Inconstant
found them later in the month. As he wrote in his diary on 21 August: ‘A convoy arrived [at Vado] from Genoa. Dined with Nelson. Dolly aboard, who has a sort of abscess in her side. He makes himself ridiculous with that woman.’ Nelson may have flirted outrageously with his mistress, but the war against French sea-borne trade was his principal concern, and there were times when Adelaide had to be put ashore. Five days after the dinner with Fremantle the captain sailed to raid Alassio. Adelaide had gone overland to Genoa to visit her mother, and Nelson sent a letter after her through Brame. On 28 August she rejoined him at Vado, and Brame returned Nelson’s letter. ‘As you have found the Signora Correglia,’ he wrote, ‘I return the letter for her.’ The day the couple reunited they again entertained Captain Fremantle, who dutifully noted the fact in his diary: ‘Dined with Nelson and his Dolly.’
¹⁴

We know nothing else about Adelaide’s excursion to Vado, and she next appears in Fremantle’s diary on Sunday 27 September, three days after Nelson’s return to Leghorn. ‘Dined with Nelson and Dolly,’ wrote Fremantle, ‘Very bad dinner indeed.’ Afterwards the couple probably communicated through the interconsular packets that passed by land between Udny and Brame, both of whom knew Adelaide. On 5 March 1796, for example, Brame wrote to Nelson to acknowledge a letter he had sent with two enclosures. Both would be carefully delivered, he assured the captain, but he added that ‘the letters from Livorno [Leghorn] are not arrived . . .’
¹⁵