Nelson (52 page)

However inspiring, this had been merely a preliminary skirmish, and Nelson’s attention was then focused on the four brigs coming to trial on Nevis. It promised to be a far uglier contest, with the defending masters filing suit against Nelson for personal damages. They alleged that he had imprisoned them on their ships, preventing them contacting the shore, and had them assaulted and intimidated. According to one account, the masters had been forced into false depositions with one of Nelson’s officers standing over them with a drawn sword. All of which, the writs stated, warranted compensation of £4,000.

It was a sum utterly beyond Nelson’s reach. While rumour had it that subscriptions were being opened in the islands to support the prosecution, Nelson had barely the means for his defence. After the verdict against the
Eclipse
, Adye, who again prosecuted the ships, was a new man. ‘In justice to him,’ Nelson wrote, ‘I must say that by night as by day his advice has always been ready, and that too without fee or reward.’ But while Adye believed he could condemn the ships, he cautioned Nelson about the writs for personal damages and urged him to avoid being arrested. For seven or more weeks Horatio kept his ship, like an animal secure in its burrow, resisting every inducement to go ashore, as well as at least one undignified but unsuccessful attempt to remove him from the frigate by force. In between competing for the attentions of Mrs Peers, the purser’s wife, Lieutenants Wallis and Dent and Dr Graham stood steadfastly behind their captain. ‘The marshals had frequently come on board to arrest him,’ recalled Wallis, ‘but by fair words I was always able to elude their vigilance.’
²⁷

Help also came from more unlikely quarters. Despite Nelson’s tendency to see corruption and disaffection around every corner, ‘my good friend’ Adye was not the only eminent islander to come to his support. Mixing with the Adyes he also met their neighbours, the Georges. More important, the hugely influential John Richardson Herbert, president of the Nevis council, whose pretty niece was attracting Nelson’s attention, offered to stand bail at £10,000 if Nelson was arrested, while the island’s attorney general, John Stanley, a
neighbour of the Herberts, tried to stop the suit against the captain. Like Adye, Stanley was a member of the council of St Kitts and a party to its protests against the navigation laws, but he scrupulously adhered to the letter of the law. He asked Judge John Ward of the vice-admiralty court to go aboard the
Boreas
and examine the prisoners from the four prizes, who were being detained there. Ward found them unanimous that there had been no ill usage. Indeed, the detainees ‘were never more contented or better treated than they were on board the
Boreas
’, and Ward formed the opinion that the charges of assault and false imprisonment had originated with malignant merchants rather than seamen.
²⁸

Nevertheless, public opinion still ran against Nelson. ‘The admiral was in Nevis roads the whole time of my persecution,’ Nelson later reported, but neither he nor crown lawyers were able to protect him from insults. When the case went to court on 8 June the judge gave Nelson protection so that he could attend. The merchants had promised to indemnify the local marshal for any losses he suffered in arresting Nelson as he came ashore, but the judge threatened the marshal with imprisonment if he interfered and the captain was able to enter the courtroom unmolested.
²⁹

Supported by ‘an honest lawyer’ Nelson won a second victory at Nevis. After a two-day battle all four ships were condemned. Though the masters’ suit for personal damages remained, his conduct with regard to the seizure of ships had been vindicated.
³⁰

First St Kitts and now Nevis. Nelson’s successes raised the morale of his brother officers. The rejuvenated Hughes was still in the offing as the Nevis court deliberated, while both the
Mediator
and the
Rattler
, commanded by the indefatigable Collingwoods, had arrived to give support.

It was the Collingwoods who took the same battle to Antigua, which immediately followed suit. Early in July Cuthbert Collingwood sent three ships into St John’s, where the collector of customs quickly declared them contraband traders. Two at least had illegal registers. In October another foreign ship was sent into St John’s by the
Rattler
.
³¹

From so bleak a beginning, the campaign had gone from success to success, and the relationship between Nelson and his commander-in-chief began to thaw. On 19 June Hughes was able to give the
Boreas
an assignment to her captain’s liking. A French frigate,
L’Iris
of thirty-two guns, appeared off Nevis, cruising close enough to draw warning shots from the forts before putting out to sea. France and England
were now at peace, but acutely suspicious of one another nonetheless. Hughes asked Nelson to investigate, and the next day he tracked the French frigate to St Eustatius. The governor hosted a dinner ashore, shared by Nelson and the French captain, and Horatio courteously offered to escort
L’Iris
around the British islands if it was so desired. As he anticipated, the French had no wish to attract such close attention, and protested their ship was bound for Martinique.
³²

As for Nelson, he was again destined to spend the hurricane season in English Harbour, but this time without the compensation of Mrs Moutray’s company. He arrived on 10 August in a lighter mood than might have been expected. His successes, and those of Collingwood, had fused with Lord Sydney’s voluble support to create a more cooperative environment in Antigua. The officials, at least, were falling over themselves to prove their loyalty to the crown, now that they knew it wholeheartedly supported the enforcement of the navigation laws. Hughes was beginning to portray his deviant captains as heroes, and the doors of Shirley and other public officials graciously opened. Nelson felt a new spirit abroad and cooperated accordingly. In July he had sent a brigantine into Nevis, forwarding her papers to the local customs officers with his observation that he suspected the register to be false. The officials examined the documents and exonerated the ship, and Nelson happily allowed her to proceed.
³³

There was still far to go, however, as the unfortunate elder Collingwood was even then discovering. While Antigua, Nevis and St Kitts – all in the Leeward Islands within the remit of Shirley’s authority – had been brought into line, the Windward Islands were another matter. Collingwood induced the authorities in Grenada to seize the
Speedwell
in October, and before the end of the year had sent three more ships for trial there, but the outcomes were as yet unclear. But the hardest nut to crack was undoubtedly Barbados, where the people were blaming the shutting out of American ships for the high cost of grain and the miseries of the poor, especially the blacks. A petition seeking the admission of American maize during times when harvests failed was afoot, and Governor David Parry was unwilling to exert himself against powerful island cliques. Nothing exemplified the growing conflict between the navy and the Barbadian court than the case of the
Dolphin
.
³⁴

Collingwood seized the ship in July, soon after Nelson’s victory in Nevis, and innocently sent her into Barbados for adjudication. To
proceed with the case the king’s advocate in Barbados, Attorney General Charles Brandford, demanded extraordinary advance fees from Collingwood, and when it finally got to court in October it was thrown out. Despite the decisions in the other courts, Judge Nathaniel Weeks ruled against the navy’s right to seize, and the
Dolphin
was not only released but also given a new register. It was a terrific blow to Cuthbert Collingwood. He was now personally liable for fees, expenses and court costs, and had to tout around to raise a bond to cover them pending an appeal.

The navy was furious. Even Hughes, a traditional English gentleman, pronounced the decision ‘shameful’ and the judge ‘a good-for-nothing dirty fellow’. He urged the Admiralty to support Collingwood. Nelson too was appalled, and wrote to Uncle William Suckling, a lifelong employee of the Customs House in London, asking him to secure the opinion of their solicitor.
³⁵

Barbados was a shock but failed to check growing optimism. While sheltering in English Harbour Nelson received an exhilarating piece of news. Back in June, when a lawsuit for personal damages had been filed against Nelson in Nevis, the crown lawyers had suggested he petition the king for assistance through Lord Sydney, the home secretary. As the suit remained, even after the condemnation of the ships in question, Nelson had done so, and on 4 August Sydney replied. ‘His Majesty has been pleased to direct that the Law Officers of the Crown should defend the suit upon this occasion,’ Nelson eventually read. If his defence still failed, Sydney indicated that an appeal against the judgement would be favourably considered. The same day the home secretary fired off a brief letter to Governor Shirley. Nelson’s reports had been received by government, and ‘from the character’ he bore there was no reason to doubt their accuracy; consequently, the law officers of the crown should defend him at public expense. There could no longer be any doubt that Nelson enjoyed the government’s full confidence, and that it was the duty of the king’s servants to support him. Equally, there was little likelihood of the suit for personal damages now being pressed against him with any success.
³⁶

Captain Nelson, the scourge of the islands, had been vindicated – by some of the courts and now by the king. Notwithstanding the setback in Barbados, the navy hungered to return to its hunt for contraband traders, its predatory instincts fully aroused. ‘My dear boy,’ Nelson wrote to Collingwood, ‘I want some prize money!’ Nor would the
Mediator
miss out on the excitement, for in October Hughes
authorised Collingwood to cruise entirely for the purpose of enforcing the navigation laws.
³⁷

The
Boreas
herself got to sea on 17 October. There was another reason why Nelson was pleased to see the hurricanes blow themselves out. At Nevis he had met an interesting young lady and he longed to return.

He steered straight for St Kitts and Nevis, where the ship ran aground on the point and had to be hauled off by her stern. It was the fourth time the
Boreas
had been ashore since leaving England, so Nelson or the master, Jameson, might have been less than attentive to the business of navigation. However, the damage was repaired and for several months Nelson patrolled the northern islands in search of suspicious merchantmen, occasionally retreating to Antigua or Barbados for supplies and maintenance.
³⁸

On 21 October he arrested the
Active
brig off Nevis. Her colours were British but she was illegally manned and American built. This new seizure, heralding the return of the most feared of the naval captains to these waters, threw the islands into what Nelson termed ‘a violent ferment’. The merchants and their coadjutors had used the respite given them by the hurricane season to arm themselves with a formidable new weapon from London: the opinion of Judge William Scott, later Lord Stowell. An advocate for the Admiralty, Scott was already well into a career as the foremost authority on English prize law.

It says much for the disturbance Nelson had caused that interested islanders had written to England for the advice of Scott. Nevertheless, they found his views largely satisfactory, for they raised serious doubts about the right of the navy to seize in support of the navigation laws. Scott maintained that acts of 1662 had reserved such powers to customs officers and those authorised by either a warrant from the Treasury or by a special commission from the king under Great or Privy Seal.

If anyone thought that such legal jargon would silence Nelson, they were mistaken. Scott’s interpretation denied the navy the right to intervene and turned them into powerless observers of flagrant illegalities. Horatio pored over his copies of the various acts in his cabin, sometimes beneath a flickering light in the quieter hours after dark, and steadily picked holes in his opponents’ case. As he told his Uncle William to whom he turned for an opinion of his own:

I am clearly of opinion that we [naval officers]
do
hold our commissions eventually under the Great Seal, for the Admiralty is only a Patent place during pleasure; and that the act seems to think so. Read the next clause, ‘an indemnification for all officers of the customs, or any officer or officers, person or persons authorised to put in execution the act for increasing shipping and navigation, their deputies,’ &c. What occasion could there be to indemnify the officers enjoined to put the navigation act in force if the power had been taken away by the preceding clause? It appears to me that the parliament was afraid it might be wrong construed, [and] therefore included them by name in a subsequent clause. Well done, Lawyer Nelson!
³⁹

He was soon framing complicated arguments about the circumstances in which naval officers could or could not seize transgressors, but in November appealed again to Lord Sydney. ‘A doubt is now started (and I may probably be persecuted in this country upon it),’ he explained, ‘that if the Custom House give leave to a foreigner to trade, I have no right to hinder him, but must look on as an idle spectator.’
⁴⁰

Nelson’s points went home and the
Active
was condemned.

Next came the forty-ton sloop
Sally
, owned and navigated by Seth Warner of Connecticut and stopped at Nevis on 23 January 1786. Here, Nelson discovered, was outright deception. The original
Sally
had been an older vessel, registered by Governor Shirley in 1784 after she entered St John’s in an unseaworthy condition. At that time it was sworn that the ship was a former American prize eligible for registration. The owner himself claimed to be a subject of the British island of Dominica, and although no proof supported any of these protestations, the ship got her register permitting her to trade. But then something strange happened. The ship returned to the United States, where a new vessel was built to the specifications of the old and took her name. Being foreign-built, the new vessel had no right to trade with the British islands, but she did so, claiming to be the old
Sally
and flaunting her register and documentation.