The War of Wars (38 page)

The war between Britain and France and its rebellious American allies was now under way. Horatio soon showed his mettle, taking part in the capture of three prizes, of which he was entitled to a thirty-second share, securing his first modest financial capital. In 1779 he was made master and commander of his first ship, the
Badger
, a small two-masted brig. With this he rescued the crew of a sloop accidentally set on fire. Under Parker’s patronage Horatio continued his effortless rise, being appointed to the coveted position of post-captain of the
Hinchinbrook
in June 1779. Still only twenty, he was one of the youngest ever to be so appointed – a faster rise than either Hood or Jervis.

He had risen through family connection and patronage – first from Suckling, then Locker, then Parker. Being respectful, loyal, disciplined and a fine sailor, he clearly had an uncanny ability to impress his superiors. As promotion to admiral was merely a matter of seniority among post-captains, Nelson was now clearly in the fast stream to the
top. Yet extraordinarily he was largely untested, except as a promising seaman: he had never been in a significant engagement.

It was not that the young captain showed any reluctance to put himself in the line of fire. In February 1780 the governor of Jamaica, General John Dalling, conceived a madcap scheme for invading the Spanish province of Nicaragua, securing the towns of the north during the American War of Independence. He assembled 2,000 regular troops and a hundred ‘volunteers’ from the backstreets of Kingston to stage a landing at the mouth of the San Juan river.

Nelson was ordered by a reluctant Parker to escort this force to the mouth of the river. On arrival, the intrepid young officer ignored his orders to return and took command of the land force, which had to drag canoes along the bank of the river to avoid its strong downstream currents, plunging deep into the rainforest which was infested with snakes and alligators. By early April they reached the fortress of the Immaculate Conception, near the huge freshwater inland sea of Lake Nicaragua. Nelson urged immediate attack, but fell seriously ill and was evacuated downstream in a canoe to take up a new appointment as captain of the 44-gun frigate
Janus
. The castle meanwhile surrendered, but the hopeless expedition fizzled out as the little British invading force succumbed to tropical diseases.

Nelson himself only just survived his illness, and was unable to take up his new command, to his bitter disappointment. He was shipped back to England and sent to convalesce at Bath, where he spent months recovering. It had been another terrible career setback for a man with an apparently golden staircase to the top. He still had seen no significant action.

In the autumn of 1791 he was given a new command: the 32-gun
Albemarle
, a French prize of unprepossessing appearance. Still less promising was his mission: dull escort duty for convoys of merchantmen in the Baltic, the North Sea and the Atlantic. There at last he ran into the enemy: he was pursued by five French ships of the line and a frigate for ten hours before, in a first superb display of seamanship, eluding them in fog and then sailing across the shoals of Newfoundland’s St George’s Bay, and on to where the larger ships could not follow.

In Quebec he fell in love with the daughter of the provost marshal of the garrison, the sixteen-year-old Mary Simpson. When ordered to New York – perhaps because her father disapproved – he displayed his romantic streak by threatening to disobey orders in order to stay with her. When he arrived in New York, his old talent for ingratiating himself with his superiors had not deserted him, and Admiral Hood, another old friend of Suckling, took an immediate shine to him, although he turned down the twenty-four-year-old’s extraordinarily ambitious request to command a ship of the line.

Nelson made friends with the King’s younger son, Prince William, who was serving as a midshipman aboard Hood’s flagship. The Prince later gave this impression of the strange, ambitious, slight young man:

He appeared to be the merest boy of a captain I ever beheld; and his dress was worthy of attention. He had on a full-laced uniform: his lank unpowdered hair was tied in a stiff Hessian tail, of an extraordinary length; the old-fashioned flaps of his waistcoat added to the general quaintness of his figure, and produced an appearance which particularly attracted my notice; for I had never seen anything like it before . . . My doubts were, however, removed when Lord Hood introduced me to him. There was something irresistibly pleasing in his address and conversation; and an enthusiasm, when speaking on professional subjects, that showed he was no common being . . . I found him warmly attached to my father . . .

Thus Nelson first displayed the romantic – or perhaps merely snobbish and self-interested – attachment to royalty which was later to do him so much harm.

Nelson learnt that Turks Island in the West Indies had been taken by the French. He assembled a force of four small ships, bombarded the town and landed some 170 seamen, before being forced to retire with eight men wounded. It was a small attack and, with peace soon concluded, Nelson returned to England where his ship was laid up. He continued to cultivate his grand friends, however, being introduced by Hood to the King and visiting his friend Prince William at Windsor as well as Admiral Parker at his country seat. He paid a visit to France
and nearly became engaged to Elizabeth Andrews, a minor heiress he met there. Nelson dabbled in politics, enthusiastically supporting Pitt who, just a year younger than he, had been asked to form a government. He even considered standing for parliament himself.

Hood gave him command of the small 28-gun frigate
Boreas
newly returned from the West Indies. Arriving in Barbados in the summer of 1784, just after the conclusion of the final peace with France, he fell into the parochial bitchiness of expatriate military duty at peace. He took an instant dislike, for once, to his superior, Admiral Sir Richard Hughes, and to his wife’s ‘eternal clack’, flirted openly with the governor of Antigua’s pretty young wife, Mary Moutray, and admirably led a one-man crusade against local merchants illegally trading with the now independent American colonies. In the latter, at least, he showed integrity and courage.

After thus offending almost everyone he could, clearly bored by serving in this peaceful small-town backwater and treating others as his inferiors, he met Fanny Nisbet, a young widow with a five-year-old son, the daughter of a prominent judge on the island. One of Fanny’s friends had vividly described the young Horatio Nelson in a letter to her:

He came up just before dinner, much heated and was very silent: yet seemed, according to the old adage, to think the more. He declined drinking any wine: but after dinner, when the resident, as usual, gave the three following toasts, the king, the queen and royal family, and Lord Hood, this strange man regularly filled his glass, and observed, that these were always bumper toasts with him: which having drank, he uniformly passed the bottle, and relapsed into his former taciturnity. It was impossible, during this visit, for any of us to make out his real character; there was such a reserve and sternness in his behaviour, with occasional sallies, though very transient, of a superior mind. Being placed by him, I endeavoured to rouse his attention by showing him all the civilities in my power; but I drew out of him little more than yes and no. If you, Fanny, had been there, we think you would have made something of him; for you have been in the habit of attending to these odd sort of people.

Fanny certainly ‘made something of him’; for, the summer of 1785 Nelson was plainly infatuated, declaring that to live in a cottage with her would be like living in a palace with anyone else. She was a petite, dark-haired, nervous young woman, graceful and good-looking, but her shyness and reticence were unfairly to gain her a reputation for coldness. At the time she was housekeeper to her mother’s brother, John Herbert, the wealthy president of the island council, descended from the distinguished Herberts of Powys and Pembroke.

Nelson was soon writing passionate letters to her: ‘As you begin to know something about sailors, have you not often heard that salt water and absence always wash away love? Now I am such a heretic as not to believe that faith: for behold every morning since my arrival [at Antigua], I have had six pails of water at day-light poured upon my head, and instead of finding what the seamen say to be true, I perceive the contrary effect . . .’

He begged Herbert for her hand, but the rich old man counselled delay. Nelson was a highly promising, if rather odd, young man, yet in poor health and someone who had upset the local establishment. It was unsurprising that Herbert thought this impecunious captain something of a comedown for his beloved niece who belonged to the most prominent family on the island (and islanders are nothing if not snobs) and would one day inherit his fortune.

Nelson found himself with the task of escorting Prince William, who had been appointed captain of the frigate
Pegasus
at the age of twenty-one. William was soon at odds with his ship’s officers and regarded Nelson as his best friend as he careered around the Leeward Islands in search of amusement. As Nelson complained: ‘How vain are human hopes. I was in hopes to have been quiet all this week. Today we dine with Sir Thomas [Shirley], tomorrow the prince has a party, on Wednesday he gives a dinner in St John’s to the regiment, in the evening is a mulatto ball, on Thursday a cock fight, dine at Col Crosbie’s brother’s and a ball, and on Friday somewhere but I forget, on Saturday at Mr Byam’s the president [of Antigua] . . . Some are born for attendants on great men, I rather think that is not my particular province.’

Prince William acted as best man at Nelson’s wedding which was held in considerable style on 11 March 1787. The wedding, held at Herbert’s extensive house, Montpelier, was celebrated with an enormous banquet and ball attended by 200 people.

Nelson, who was suffering from one of his periodic bouts of ill-health, had at this time turned into something of a disciplinarian, flogging three of his men with two dozen lashes for using mutinous language – a very severe punishment. He then sentenced another man to death for desertion, but the sentence was not carried out. On his return to England he had another fourteen crewmen flogged. By the time he had paid off the men on his ship, the
Boreas
, he had had sixty-one of its 142 crew flogged – a huge proportion for the time. Nelson went on fawning to Prince William in England: ‘I am interested only that Your Royal Highness should be the greatest and best man this country ever produced . . . When I go to town, I shall take care to be presented to His Majesty [the King] and the Prince of Wales, that I may be in the way of answering any question they may think proper to ask me. Nothing is wanting to make you the darling of the English nation, but truth.’ Nelson’s friendship with the Prince, with whom the Admiralty was profoundly dissatisfied, won him no favours. Together with his brothers, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, William was seen to be opposing Pitt’s government more or less openly, much to the irritation of their father, the King.

Nelson constantly badgered his superiors for a ship but obtained none: this was peacetime and few were available. Moreover, he was regarded for the first time with disfavour as an undiplomatic young man who had offended just about every vested interest in the West Indies, associated too closely with Prince William and had risen above his station. He had seen little action, been promoted largely through connection, and apart from a few minor skirmishes and a few acts of seamanship, he was anything but a hero. There were many others with far better claims. No doubt his disciplinarian streak did not go unnoticed: it was regarded with approval by some, disapproval by others. Both Lords Howe and Hood of the Admiralty were pestered with demands for a ship for Nelson, which annoyed them. Angrily Nelson contemplated entering the service of the Tsar of Russia as a mercenary.

Meanwhile he introduced his wife to his father, Edward, who got on famously with his modest, charming and beautiful young bride. Seven-year-old Josiah, her son, went to school in Norfolk. Nelson was to spend another three years in Norfolk, bombarding the Admiralty with demands for a ship – even control of a cockleboat, he remarked caustically. He was a young man in a hurry who had greased his way quickly up the slippery pole and now had attracted the ire of his superiors through his arrogance.

There are striking parallels between Nelson’s and Napoleon’s careers. That self-important young man had also married a widow from the West Indies – had also experienced brilliant early success, been disappointed, his career stranded in the doldrums leaving him contemplating serving Russia or Turkey. Napoleon secured his next big break at the age of twenty-six. Nelson had to wait until the beginning of 1793, when he was aged thirty-four, for another chance to prove himself. In his case it was command of a ship – but a fine one, the
Agamemnon
, a 64-gun ship of the line, the smallest, as war with France inexorably approached. Moreover Nelson had succeeded to modest wealth, having inherited £4,000 from an uncle. Josiah, his stepson, was appointed a midshipman aboard the
Agamemnon
. He left Fanny in order to captain his new ship to Cadiz and then sailed to the French port of Toulon.

There the people of the city had rebelled against the Revolution and Hood, Nelson’s commander, offered them his protection. Nelson was despatched to seek troops from the court of Naples, which was allied to Britain. Here he made the acquaintance of the boorish King Ferdinand IV and his formidable Queen. The young British captain was received in state, dining with the King who lent him the 4,000 soldiers he sought.

The burly, ugly King’s wife was the real power in the land: Maria Carolina was Austrian, sister of Marie Antoinette of France, and her prime minister was John Acton, descended from a prominent English family. The British Ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, was a noted
collector, and a former member of the fashionable Dilettante Society in London. Nelson was entranced to meet Hamilton’s wife, Emma, a celebrated beauty. Nelson wrote to his wife: ‘She is a young woman of amiable manners who does honour to the station to which she is raised.’ Possibly this is a reference to her humble origins as a blacksmith’s daughter who had mothered an illegitimate child at sixteen and had been mistress to several men of importance, including the painter George Romney, who painted her fresh sensuousness frequently, before she took up with Hamilton, who married her in 1791. It was rare in those days for marriage with a member of the lower orders not to attract social opprobrium; possibly she had succeeded because of her beauty and charm, and the ease with which she fitted into upper-class society. She danced beautifully, spoke Italian and French and became Queen Maria Carolina’s best friend.