Nelson: Britannia's God of War (43 page)

From his station with the Grand Fleet off Brest, Collingwood could see powerful French forces gathering to invade Ireland. But he knew that if they put to sea when the gales had blown the British ships away, they would be unequal to the elements. Nelson would do all he could to destroy the invasion shipping, despite the difficult navigation: ‘however, he will make a fair experiment, and at least let them know what they are to expect when they venture beyond’ their ports.
²⁹

Encouraged by news of the French capitulation in Egypt, added to Saumarez’s victory in the Gulf of Gibraltar, St Vincent recognised peace was close. But he was not going to let his chief asset rest until the deal was done. His show of concern for Nelson’s health was mere formality: he was convinced the ailments were all in the mind, and advised him to ignore the mischevous wits who were mocking his small-scale warfare. ‘Be assured no service whatever can be of greater importance than that Your Lordship is employed in, and, as we have every reason to believe it cannot be of long duration, I trust in God that you will be enabled to go through with it.’ Expecting the main French effort to be aimed at Ireland, with diversionary demonstrations
at Dunkirk and Ostend, he would approve anything Nelson proposed with his existing force, but saw no need for consultation.
³⁰

Instead of setting course for Flushing, as everyone was expecting, Nelson had quietly developed a plan to capture or destroy the boats lying outside the harbour at Boulogne. He would have preferred the as yet unseen opportunities of Flushing, but for this he needed troops and other assets that were not available. His orders were highly detailed, using fifty-seven boats in four divisions to overwhelm the twenty-four enemy vessels. It was a large-scale version of the common British practice of cutting out enemy vessels with boats. His purpose was to expose the fraudulent French threat.

At Boulogne, Latouche Tréville was prepared: having no offensive object, he could deploy all his forces for a strictly defensive action. His preparations paid off: the line of boats outside the pier was prepared and fully manned, with a lot of heavy ground tackle and cables used to secure the craft in position, and to each other. He noted the preparations around the flagship, HMS
Medusa
, on the afternoon of 15 August, warning his men to expect a night attack. Nelson’s plans were thorough, and would have been successful against most opponents, but this French admiral was a wily old fox. After dark, the four divisions of boats rowed in, but in the darkness they were separated by the wind and tide, arriving in fragments, one division missing the French flotilla altogether. The combination of limited attacking strength and well-prepared defences negated the usual British advantages in skill, daring and determination. One or two boats were carried, but the moorings could not be cut, and the French recaptured them with heavy supporting fire from the shore. Desperate to prove himself, and to earn post rank, Nelson’s young favourite and
aide
de
camp
Captain Edward Parker pressed on, but suffered a horrific double fracture of the thigh, and had to be carried away. As the other officers were disabled the attack petered out. Unable to take part – for the want of an arm, rather than from any sense that vice admirals did not engage in boat work – Nelson was forced to wait and peer into the darkness as his men went to work, taking some comfort from writing out his anxieties to Emma.

By first light it was clear the attack had failed with heavy losses: forty-five killed and 128 wounded from nine hundred men. French losses were ten dead and thirty-four wounded. Nelson was distraught, the defeat compounded by terrible injuries to Parker and another
young favourite. However, he rose to the occasion with characteristic flair. He reported the failure, and praised the astonishing bravery of his officers and men. He stressed that the object was worthy of their sacrifice, and passed on a report that the French had moored their vessels with chains. However, he did not flinch from taking full responsibility for the failure. Heavy losses among the best men from
Ley
den
and
Medusa
would force him to postpone an attack on Flushing.
³¹

Having read Nelson’s letter and sent it to the King,
³²
St Vincent knew the defeat would depress Nelson’s spirits. He enlisted Addington to send an encouraging letter, while repeating his own commendation after the failure at Tenerife: ‘It is not given to us to command success’, and noting the ‘zeal and courage’ displayed. Nelson immediately communicated these sentiments to the squadron, and promised to take them to glory, if the French would only cast off their chains.
³³
While his next letter to Emma still moaned because the Admiralty would not let him come to London on private business, he was already planning another operation.
³⁴

London gossip had it that Nelson attacked with no purpose, on some notion of his own. Even Hood repeated this canard,
³⁵
wholly unaware that St Vincent was directing the campaign, leaving only the execution to Nelson. It was also unjust and ignorant. The attack, whatever the outcome, had shown the French that they could not leave ships on the coast without being attacked, and forced them to adopt extensive defensive measures, further reducing the slight possibility of an invasion.

St Vincent had no doubt it had been worthwhile; he stressed his unquestioning support for anything Nelson planned and the ‘incalculable importance to your country’ of his health. Addington argued that the Boulogne attack had confirmed British naval superiority, ‘disinclining the enemy to contest it’. The losses were to be deplored ‘but they have fallen in a good cause’.
³⁶
Nelson agreed: ‘Our loss is trifling, all circumstances considered.’ He explained that St Vincent and Hood disagreed fundamentally on the best method of securing the coast: the former favoured a close watch, the latter pulling back everything onto the English coast apart from fast cutters.
³⁷
He preferred offensive action, commending a smart piece of boat work that destroyed six French vessels, and a considerable quantity of naval stores.
³⁸

Flushing remained the preferred target, however. Troubridge sent every scrap of information, and Owen updated his report with new
sketches and information. Nelson pressed Owen for more, sending detailed queries, hoping to replace his losses and arrive off Flushing ready for an immediate attack with thirty vessels. He would lead in with the
Ley
den
and
Medusa
, and other craft would support, buoying the channel as he went.
³⁹
When he arrived off Flushing, local pilots declared it impossible to attack or retreat without buoys, a fair wind and a suitable tide. Captain Owen had been too optimistic, ignoring sandbanks and tides: ‘We cannot do impossibilities.’

The operation was ‘out of the question’. Instead he would assemble a powerful force under Dungeness to counter any French moves. Closer inspection the following day only confirmed his decision, not least from the paucity of ships to be attacked, and the ease with which they could retreat.
⁴⁰
He stressed the impossibility of the operation to Colonel Stewart, who knew as well as any man alive that Nelson would do whatever was possible. He also confessed a growing sense of frustration with his thankless task:

The Earl accepted the decision to give up the attack on Flushing, and doubted the utility of a fireship attack on Boulogne. He let Nelson know that the peace negotiations were coming to a close, and promised to inform him as soon as the terms were settled. The problem would be keeping Nelson in command when he could not attack, and knew that peace was imminent.
⁴²
He saw no reason to remain ‘beyond the moment of alarm’.
⁴³

One strategy was the promise of the Mediterranean, which had some basis in reality: St Vincent wrote that the officers of the
St
George,
apart from Hardy, were kept in place ‘to be in the way of his Lordship on a future occasion, which I am not at liberty to communicate’
⁴⁴
– though he meant the Mediterranean, of course. This promise was combined with a little moral blackmail. The Earl employed his trusted lieutenant Nepean to stress the point. Nepean claimed it was his personal opinion that it would be improper for Nelson to leave his post now; it would be ‘an act which might injure you in the opinion of the public’:

He added that the service entrusted to him was honourable and flattering, it would not require him to be at sea very often, and he should now look only to the means of making himself comfortable at Deal ‘till something may turn up that may be consonant with your wishes’.
⁴⁵

Although the Hamiltons and brother William and his wife were with Nelson at Deal, helping to lift the gloom of young Parker’s continued struggle with his injuries, Nelson was anxious to leave. He had private affairs to settle: Emma had found him a house at Merton, and he was anxiously trying to raise £9,000 to pay for it. His solicitor William Haslewood negotiated the price down, while Davison loaned some of the money.
⁴⁶
This would be the first house that Nelson lived in that he could call his own. Its attraction to Nelson was its location: only an admiral wrapped up in his duty would have selected a house just outside London, on the main road to Portsmouth. It was highly suggestive that for all the glory of his battles and the impact of his campaigns, he had trouble raising such a trifling amount to buy a low and undistinguished farmhouse.

St Vincent, whose own prize successes had made him very wealthy, should have been embarrassed to keep Nelson engaged on a station where there were so few rewards, had he chosen to reflect on the issue. Although a lack of concern with making money and complete indifference to keeping it explains some of Nelson’s relative poverty, his country had not done enough to reward him, by contemporary standards, and he had reason to feel aggrieved. Such thoughts did not help him endure the last two months of his command. Soon after, he was obliged to sell the diamonds from various regal and imperial gifts, replacing them with paste.
⁴⁷

Matters were made worse by the continued newspaper squibs about Nelson’s command, and there was even an attempt to blackmail him: £100 was demanded to prevent the publication of a hostile account of the Boulogne operation. And Nelson was hurt by the failure of his old friends, Troubridge and St Vincent, to recognise the human needs that
underlay his call for release from duty. He had let both of them know of his inner turmoil, and could not understand how men he loved could treat him like this. Personal affections were at the core of his approach to war, and he was unable to disentangle them from the hard-nosed concerns that were driving policy in London. It is pointless to criticise Nelson for this failing, since it was inseparable from his whole approach to his duty. In reality, neither the Earl nor Troubridge was ‘jealous’ of him,
⁴⁸
or anxious to do him down, as he began to suspect. There was no conspiracy against him, but it was necessary for the common good that he remain in command in the Channel until the French had settled.

Troubridge kept up the praise. All the world, he declared, was thoroughly satisfied with Nelson’s arrangements, and felt at ease while he was afloat. He larded the compliments with news that Lord Keith and his captains in the Mediterranean had fallen out.
⁴⁹
But for Nelson, the lure of the Mediterranean was beginning to pall: bored, unhappy and distressed by the lingering death of Parker, he claimed that he would soon be too worn out for that command. His views on the political situation, too, were gloomy: