On a Making Tide (42 page)

There were dozens of officers present, a few who had come to seek redress for their men. The majority were there to demand that the atmosphere of riot, which had seen many of them jostled and insulted both aboard ship and in the street by common seamen, be put down, if necessary by armed marines and cannon in the streets. Nelson knew that some of those most vociferous in the cause of violence had made a great deal of money in the recent war. Quiet-spoken he might be, but he could hail the masthead in a howling gale and be heard if need be. So when he raised his voice to defend the sailors every head turned to hear his words, many having to search for his slighter figure among men both taller and more rotund than himself.

‘I cannot believe my ears, gentlemen. I cannot credit that you, as commissioned officers, are proposing to turn guns, cannon even on men who have a legitimate cause for grievance. It makes me ashamed of the service. We, as captains, would be better pledging our own credit so that the men and their wives get the full value of their warrants, rather than leaving them to sell them at a discount to the same calibre of thieves who robbed them in the first place.’

Everyone in the room replied in some way, a cacophony of noise in which few voices supported his plea. Admiral Burnaby was glaring at him. ‘You would have your commission insulted, sir?’

Clearly Burnaby didn’t know him. ‘Captain Horatio Nelson, sir, HMS
Albemarle.
As for insults, my opinion would be that they stem from an empty chest. I dislike being jostled any more than the next man, especially in place of the swindlers who hide behind their office.’

It was clear that Burnaby took this as a personal insult, even though he was merely the purveyor of the bad news, not the architect. His red face went purple and his bulging eyes protruded even further out of their sockets.

‘Then I suggest, sir, that you act as your conscience dictates, though judging by the state of your dress you would be hard found to get credit from a trader in used rags.’

Nelson blushed as those who disagreed with him laughed, poking each other and repeating, ‘Used rags’. Two years away, sea air and salt had rendered the deep hue of his best uniform coat a sky-blue colour. What gold lace still decorated his hat had fared little better, his breeches and waistcoat were grey and his stockings so often darned that they looked like patchwork. Set against the dress of an officer like the Admiral, he looked like a naval vagabond.

There should have been words to say, a witticism clever enough to put this pompous red-faced oaf in his place, but Nelson was not gifted in that way. He raised his scruffy hat, spun on his heel and elbowed his way out through those officers who stood between him and the door, his mind trying and failing to produce a simile based on silk purses and sows’ ears.

Outside the entrance there was indeed a marine guard, there to keep back a mob of protesting sailors. Nelson marched towards those red-coated backs with a purpose that made the officer in command order them to open ranks and let him through. His mind was in turmoil, the personal insult to which he had just been subjected mingling with a feeling of inadequacy in the face of official obfuscation. He felt utterly useless. Once among the unhappy tars, he barely noticed the pushing and shoving that made his path difficult, and the roar of insults heaped on him and his kind were just an unintelligible clamour. Then a sailor plucked off his hat, forcing Nelson to stop and seek the culprit.

He saw it raised and the face of the man who had taken it just before Thorpe, he of the lookout’s eyes, felled the thief with a punch to the jaw, his other hand reclaiming the hat as the man went down. Suddenly Nelson was surrounded by Albemarles, who formed a cordon around him and berated those who would insult their captain. The scorn with which they were rebuked was mingled with words he could hardly credit: that he was the best captain any man could serve with, no flogging hard-horse bastard but one who saw his men fed fair and clothed proper, and a damn to the purser’s accounts.

More followed, all flattering, until his crewmen grabbed him and raised him to their shoulders, still declaiming to those outside their circle that they would be lucky sods if they ever got to sail with Nelson. He sat atop, swaying left and right, back and forth, looking at the sea of faces that surrounded the Albemarles, wondering what his men were about. He had gone to the Port Admiral’s office to get their due and emerged empty-handed, but still they cheered. The mob had begun to cheer too, most on the fringe not sure why, but happy, like any mob, to be part of the general mood.

He tried to look round, to see if those first-floor windows in the Port Admiral’s office were a sea of commissioned faces, but he couldn’t crane round enough. Pleased as he was to be rescued in such a way he could not help but feel that the impression he had created back there would not be elevated by this. Then he thought, Damn them. Many of them were little better than rogues. What they thought of him counted for nothing. What his men thought of him counted for everything.

The day came when the crew were finally paid off, with the ship going to a berth where her masts would be removed, her stores unloaded, her
sail-locker
emptied and all the sailors and commissioned officers would depart, leaving to look to her welfare only the officers warranted by the Navy
Board, the purser, the carpenter, the boatswain, the cook and the gunner, men who belonged to the ship throughout its service. Nelson’s barge lay alongside, sea chest loaded, Lepée and the boat crew led by Giddings ready to take him ashore. It was time to say goodbye.

The gathering of the hands on the quarterdeck replicated the day he had commissioned her for service, and a hundred Sunday divisions, in which the men had gathered before him for divine service and a reading of the Articles of War. There was a catch in his voice as he thanked them for their loyalty and abilities, then offered his deeply held hope that they would find prosperity ashore or at sea, should they choose to go back to it. When he finished, Thorpe, certainly one of the best hands on his ship, stepped forward, pulling his woollen hat from his head.

‘I speaks for all, your honour, afore the mast, elected to do so by the whole crew.’ Nelson nodded for him to carry on. The seaman scrunched his hat nervously between his hands. ‘What I’s been asked to say is this, that never have we here served with a better captain, such a good seaman and a fair-minded man.’

That occasioned a murmur of assent. Nelson stared up over their heads unable to look them in the eye.

‘I have been asked to say an’ all that there is not a man aboard this barky who wouldn’t willingly serve under you again, so should you get another ship, which you so richly deserve, then just put the word out an’ we’ll all hot-foot to join it.’ There was a slight pause before he shouted, ‘Three on three for Captain Nelson, lads.’

Nelson left the poop to the sounds of that cheering. They were still at it as he stepped through the entry port to make his way to his barge. Then they manned the yards, and as he looked back, hat raised in salute, he saw that the whole ship’s crew, including his officers, had taken station either aloft or at the bulwarks to cheer him across the Spithead anchorage.

This book is fiction based on the facts surrounding two remarkable people. While it is historical it is not meant to be a history. There are hundreds, if not thousands of books on Horatio Nelson and Emma Hamilton in libraries and bookshops everywhere. Nothing would please me more than that the reader should become so enamoured of the subject as to take a deep interest in the mass of biographical information available.

Allied to the reading of original sources, I too have consumed numerous books. The best biography of Horatio Nelson, to my mind, is still
Nelson
by Carola Oman, first published in 1947. Someone should reissue that for the 200th anniversary of Trafalgar in 2005. Likewise
Beloved
Emma,
by Flora Fraser, which ranks equally when it comes to the life, loves and tribulations of Emma Hamilton.

There is some confusion about Emma's birth date. Some writers give it as the year of her baptism 1765, others go as far back as 1761. For the sake of my story, I am assuming 1762, which puts her birth before the marriage of her parents. Given the times in which they lived, and her mother's subsequent career, it is entirely possible that Emma was born out of wedlock and only baptised after they had regularised their relationship.

As regards to Nelson's officers, I have played ducks and drakes with them, putting men such as Millar, Berry and Hardy in situations
vis
à
vis
our hero earlier in their lives than actually occurred. There are also invented lower ranks, who stay with him throughout this book. My reason for this is simple. In his time at sea Horatio Nelson must have served with hundreds of officers and thousands of men; to use the muster rolls of his ship to name them all accurately would have created deep confusion.

My justification is also simple: it is no desire to denigrate anyone, merely the fact that most would have remained obscure footnotes in history if they had not served with Nelson. Likewise the title: Emma Hamilton was a fascinating character; clever, beguiling, mercurial, theatrical and beautiful, who would have achieved some recognition as an artist's model.

David
Donachie
     

Deal, Kent, 2000    

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D
AVID
D
ONACHIE
was born in Edinburgh in 1944. He has always had an abiding interest in the naval history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as the Roman Republic, and, under the pen-name of Jack Ludlow, has published a number of historical adventure novels. David lives in Deal with his partner, the novelist Sarah Grazebrook.