Caribbean (67 page)

Every anxiety that Nelson had voiced in his famous letters now had a favorable resolution—money, a fighting ship, promotions, and a wife already accustomed to naval matters—and as he strolled nervously beneath the stars he could visualize his ready-made career: Given the right ship and the right command and a faltering French opponent, I could soar to the highest realms of glory. Stomping about the deck, he made brave to voice his innermost dreams: “Once I have a fair start, Westminster Abbey for me. Buried among the great ones. My memory respected.”

Caught in the grandiloquent euphoria of battles and heroisms ahead, he uttered the final self-assessment: “The day will come when England will need me. I cannot fail. And I shall not fail with her.”

But then the awful truth thrust its ugly head over the side of the ship, like some fearful dragon come to slay the sleeping defenders: The key to all this is Rosy, and no man should be expected to pay such a heavy price, not even for immortality. And he continued to stomp the ship, muttering under his breath with each step: “No, no, no, no, no!” By the time the midnight bells sounded, he had made up his mind: if his future was to be determined in the hideous bed of Rosy Hughes, he would have to forgo it. And in the final days of his voyage he provided Lady Hughes with enough negative hints to enable her to guess what his decision had been.

To his surprise, this battle-hardened veteran of the matrimonial wars showed no personal grievance against him for rejecting her daughter, and on their last night at table she said effusively: “Captain Nelson, I predict a great future for you in the navy.”

“What have I done to encourage that generous opinion?”

“I’ve watched you with the young boys who serve on deck.”

“Have I been harsh with them? They do require minding.”

“On the contrary. You’ve been kind and understanding.”

“Madam,” he said with forced gallantry, “you have the advantage of me.”

“I mean that twice when some little fellow was too frightened to scramble up the shrouds to the crow’s nest, I heard you tell him in a kindly voice: ‘Well, sir, I am going to race up the masthead, and believe that I may meet you there,’ and when the lad saw you climbing the rigging, out of respect he had to follow, and when you greeted him at the top, all fear was gone.”

Her good wishes for his career in her husband’s navy were so generous, and delivered with such honest warmth, that this last supper ended in general benevolence, with Nelson even smiling at Round Rosy, as the younger officers called her. “Mistress Rosy, I do believe I’ve seen some of my men making eyes at you,” Nelson said, joking good-naturedly with the girl, and at the end of the meal a bright-eyed officer, who had ambition but no prospects of help from his family, stopped by to ask permission to lead Miss Rosy for a walk around the deck, which both Lady Hughes and Captain Nelson granted almost too eagerly, and as the two departed, Nelson thought: Clever chap. He’s heard about the dowry. And he felt so relieved to be free
of responsibility for the admiral’s ungainly child that he almost forgot that he was paying, out of his meager salary, the costs of her courtship.

Horatio Nelson was twenty-seven when he sailed the
Boreas
into the roadstead at Barbados and took temporary quarters ashore at The Giralda Inn, but his character was already formed, many parts of it not pleasant. Ambitious almost to the point of frenzy, he was intensely jealous of even the slightest prerogative that might accrue to him, and he was so bold in defending his rights that within a few days of his arrival at the station, it was so obvious that he was going to be difficult that one-eyed Admiral Hughes, who was nearing retirement and who had hoped to round off his duty without unpleasantness, warned his wife: “I think we may have trouble on our hands with that young man you seem to like.” But she defended Nelson: “He’s stern, but he’s just, and I doubt you’ve ever had a better.”

The admiral’s prediction was the right one, for the moment at least, because his young captain set something of a record by immediately precipitating a series of crises, each stemming from his vanity and obsessive demand for recognition. The first, as might be expected, arose from his mortal distrust of anything French. Upon putting into the island of Guadeloupe to pay a courtesy call at Point-à-Pitre he became so outraged when the proper respect was not paid to the British flag, he initiated protests of such vehemence that they might have led to war, except that the French backed down and fired the proper salutes. Storming ashore, he demanded that the officer who had been delinquent be punished, and only when this was done did his anger subside. “No Frenchman humiliates a ship commanded by Horatio Nelson,” he told Lieutenant Wrentham.

But he could also show his fury to English malefactors, for when on the same voyage he approached for the first time the splendid anchorage on the island of Antigua, known then as English Harbour, and later as Nelson’s, he studied not the beauty of the place nor the security it would offer a battle fleet, but a military sight which infuriated him.

“Lieutenant!” he shouted in his high-pitched voice. “What do I see hanging from the yardarm of that ship over there?”

“I do believe it’s a broad pendant, sir,” and when Nelson put his glass upon it his suspicions were confirmed; the English ship riding at
anchor did fly a broad pendant, a kind of long flag which indicated that the ship displaying it was personally commanded by the senior officer in the area, and in this case that officer could only be Nelson himself.

In slow, carefully accented words Nelson demanded: “What ship could that possibly be, Lieutenant?”

“A supply ship, based here in Antigua.”

“And who would be the captain of such a workhorse ship?”

“Someone appointed by the land-based officer in charge of the base, I presume.”

“Send for that someone!” Nelson thundered, and when the unhappy young man stood nervously before him, Nelson asked in tones of ice: “Have you any order from Admiral Hughes to fly a broad pendant?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why do you dare to do it when I am the senior officer present?”

“The officer in charge of the base gave me permission.”

“Does he command any ship of war?”

“No, sir.”

“Then strike it, sir. Immediately. I am the senior officer in Antigua and I demand the respect due my rank.” And he watched while Lieutenant Wrentham rowed the frightened young man back to his ship, where the two officers quickly lowered the offending flag. Only then did Nelson raise his own pendant aloft. When Wrentham returned, Nelson told him: “I’m in command in these waters and I intend to let people know it.”

He soon had the opportunity to prove his determination, for one calm, sunny afternoon when the 24-gun
Boreas
was on patrol among the small islands north of Antigua, he came by chance upon a trading vessel flying the flag of the newly constituted United States of America. Since the provisions of the famed Navigation Act of 1764 forbade all commerce, no matter how trivial, between the British islands of the Caribbean and the merchants of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, Nelson, obedient to those harsh laws, saw it as his duty to arrest this illegal intruder.

“Lieutenant, be so kind as to put a shot across her bow,” and when this was done a second time, the astonished Boston ship hove to and allowed herself to be boarded by the Englishmen. When her captain was brought to the
Boreas
, Nelson demanded: “And why do
you trade in these waters when you know it is forbidden?” and the captain almost laughed when offering his reply: “But, sir! We’ve been trading with your islands since time out of mind. You want our spars and horses. We want your sugar and molasses.”

Nelson’s jaw dropped: “You mean other of your ships are engaged in this unlawful trade?”

“Many. All your islands are hungry for what we have to sell.”

“Such traffic ends today,” and he ordered his men to board the American trader and toss overboard the entire cargo. But Wrentham was soon back, reporting: “Sir, he was telling the truth. He has sixteen fine horses aboard.”

“Overboard, like all the rest.”

“But, sir …” And upon reflection, Nelson conceded: “We’ll land the horses ashore. Confiscated property.” But when he did so he found that no one in Antigua had ordered them or had specific use for them, and this perplexed him, until the young officer who had flown the broad pendant improperly suggested in a whisper: “We could take them to the French islands, where the lack of a reliable breeze makes it necessary for them to import horses to work their sugar mills. In Guadeloupe those sixteen horses will be worth a fortune.”

Drawing himself to his full height, which was not great, Nelson stormed: “Me, Horatio Nelson? Trading with the French to their advantage? Never!” and he ordered that the captured horses be distributed free among the farmers of Antigua.

But this act of generosity did not make him a hero to the Antiguans, nor to the English planters in nearby St. Kitts and Nevis, either, for the well-to-do businessmen of all the islands, English and French alike, had grown accustomed to the secret arrival of ships from the United States and dependent upon the profits earned in such trade. They were therefore perturbed when the new commander of the fleet in their waters stated publicly that he intended not only putting a stop to this illegality but also arresting those merchants ashore who connived at it.

When word of his decision circulated in the islands, Nelson found himself confronted first by stern advisers, who warned him: “Captain Nelson, if you interfere with this profitable trade, our islands will suffer grievously,” and then by actual revolutionaries, who brazenly announced that they would continue the trade, whether he liked it or not. Fuming in his cabin on the
Boreas
, he threatened to hang any man who did business with the American blockade runners, but before
he could announce his intentions ashore, Wrentham prudently warned against such a pronouncement, whereupon Nelson turned his attention away from the Englishmen in Antigua and toward the insolent Americans on the high seas. In the weeks that followed he captured one Yankee vessel after another, confiscating and dumping a fortune in trade goods and putting island commerce in peril. The outcries of the damaged American sea captains were reinforced by the wails of the English traders, but Nelson remained impervious to both.

He loathed Americans, seamen or not, on grounds which he expressed forcefully to Wrentham: “Good heavens, man! They were part of the British Empire, weren’t they? What better could happen to a land than to be an honorable part of our system? Look at those pitiful French islands compared to the order and sanity of Barbados and Antigua. Those damned Americans, little better than savages, should get down on their knees and beg us to take them back … to decency … to civilization. And mark my words, Alistair, one of these days they’ll do just that!” He simply could not understand why the colonies should have battled to be what they called
free
when they could have remained a part of England.

Infuriated by their ingratitude, he found positive pleasure in sinking or capturing their impertinent ships, not caring about the effect on the islands’ sugar producers, and turning a deaf ear to the plea so well voiced by their spokesman, one Mr. Herbert of Nevis: “There are not enough British trading ships to supply our needs, nor do they arrive often enough to provision us. Without the Americans we’ll starve.”

Nelson, like most naval officers, especially those who traditionally came from circles of social prominence, held in awe those exalted families that had inherited fortunes but despised those hardworking merchants who were in the process of acquiring theirs. The latter were beneath contempt, necessary perhaps, but hardly people with whom one would care to associate, and to hear them complaining against the manner in which their betters ran the empire was intolerable: “Dammit, Wrentham. England sends out what ships she deems best and at what times she proposes. Let ’em accommodate themselves to us, not us to them.”

Navy personnel acquainted with Nelson soon realized that he never used the words
Britain
or
Great Britain
, nor did he take it kindly when his officers did so in his presence: “It’s an English fleet, commanded by English officers trained in the great traditions of English seamen, and upstart American pirates invading our waters better
be careful of their ships … and their lives.” He never wavered from those simple convictions: Americans were a worrisome lot of ungrateful freebooters. Merchants were a grubby lot who should be ignored. And both should be disciplined by English naval officers, who tended to know what was best for everybody. Some twenty years hence, on the morning of his death at the youthful age of forty-seven, when it came time to utter the most famous phrase of naval history, he did not refer to Great Britain. Instead, he harkened back to his basic belief that it was England which was destined to rule the world: “England expects every man will do his duty.”
^*

On a historic day in January 1785, Captain Nelson sailed the
Boreas
to the beautiful little island of Nevis to discuss matters regarding the sugar trade with that community’s leading English planter, the same Mr. Herbert who had lectured him in Antigua about the desirability of allowing American freebooters to continue their illicit trade in the Caribbean. Always fascinated by money, but loath to associate with mere merchants, he told Wrentham prior to the meeting with Herbert: “He is, we must remember, a sugar planter with proper estates and not some hawker of vegetables.” And Nelson became excited when Wrentham reported the results of cautious inquiries: “Sir, this Herbert, he’s the richest fellow in Nevis, Kitts or Antigua. Has a daughter Martha, but she’ll inherit none of his great wealth because she’s marrying against his wishes. His great fortune will go to a very attractive niece, a Mrs. Nisbet …”

“But if she’s already married …”

“Widow. Five years younger than you, just right. Has a fine-looking five-year-old son.”

At this information, Nelson began daydreaming: An attractive widow, very wealthy, with a fine son already in being—that fits my requirement for a perfect naval marriage. With secured funds and a family safe at home, a man could venture against the French with every feeling of security. To get at one blow a wife, a fortune and a
great ship of seventy-four guns … I hear the stately march of mourners’ feet in Westminster Abbey.