Nelson: The Essential Hero (2 page)

The winters in East Anglia are harsh, long and cold. It was the custom of the Reverend Edmund Nelson, whenever he could, to travel across to the famous West Country spa of Bath during the winter to take the waters, enjoy the warmer climate, and - though he was well used to the quiet monotony of his Norfolk parsonage - to see a little of the great outside world. As he wrote in a letter, with his habitual self-disparagement, he had little to offer ‘except a willingness to make my family comfortable when near me and not unmindful of me when at a distance, and as it has fallen to my Lott to take upon me the care and affection of double parent, they will Hereafter excuse where I have fallen short and the task has been too Hard’.

It was perhaps not without some relief that the Reverend Edmund received a letter while he was in Bath in the winter of 1770, written by his son William. It was not on his own behalf that he wrote but on that of young Horatio. The two boys had read in a local newspaper that their uncle Captain Maurice Suckling had been appointed in command of the
Raisonable,
a warship of 64 guns, which had been recommissioned in view of an impending war with Spain. Horatio’s request that his father ask Captain Suckling if he would take the boy aboard his new command was met by Suckling with the jovial, if cynical, response : ‘What has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he, above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea? But let him come and the first time we go into action a cannon-ball may knock off his head, and provide for him at once.’ Suckling was to become Comptroller of the Navy as well as M.P. for Portsmouth, and was to prove a good friend to the young Nelson, but he was certainly under no illusions about the latter’s physique. All the Nelson boys appear to have been sickly, and Nelson was small-boned, undersized and, on the face of it, the least likely to survive in a world that called for almost superhuman qualities of strength and endurance. All his life, in fact, quite apart from his wounds, he was to suffer from ill-health.

At the age of twelve years and three months, Nelson was rated on the books of the
Raisonable
as midshipman. There was no examination - he had on the face of it no qualifications - but there was nothing unusual in this. His uncle was the Captain, and that was enough. He had in any case chosen his own destiny, and, though he must have been quite ignorant of what life was like aboard a man-of-war, something deep in his nature had made this choice. (He might in due course have opted for Holy Orders which, some aspects of his character reveal, might equally well have suited him.) In any case, he was to do one more term at school, for the
Raisonable
had not yet finished her refit. It was not until March 1771 that a small, bewildered boy saw .London for the first time and heard the deep murmur of the capital, lying under its greasy cowl of sea-coal.

His father, who had accompanied him up from King’s Lynn, saw him aboard the stage-coach bound for Chatham. For the first time in his life Horatio was completely separated from family, in a world of strangers, and destined for a world about which he knew little except what he had gleaned from gossip or newspaper reports, as they filtered into the quiet drawing-rooms and parlours of Norfolk. He was to have an early foretaste of the harsh life that awaited him, for he was not expected by anyone, and his uncle was not aboard his ship - to which he was finally directed by a kindly officer who found a young boy with a soft Norfolk burr inquiring the whereabouts of the
Raisonable
. Given some refreshment and sent on his way, Nelson later recalled how he spent all the first night pacing the deck. He smelled for the first time the damp oak, the tarred rigging, and heard the wind stir over the great dockyard that had been founded by Henry VIII in the early days of England’s naval expansion. It was not until the following morning that someone inquired his name and took pity on him - probably taking him below and giving him a plate of burgoo, the rough porridge with which day aboard ship more often than not began. In the early light, as he looked around the unfamiliar scene, he may well have admired a first-rate of 100 guns lying nearby. Launched only six years before, she was untried and held in reserve. On her stern in yellow letters twelve inches high was proclaimed her name:
victory.

Captain Suckling, who had already distinguished himself in 1757 in an action against heavy odds off the West Indies, was recognised as a distinguished sea officer and one who ran a tight ship. It is possible that his young nephew escaped some of the rigours of the midshipmen’s mess, but somewhat unlikely. In that iron age it was generally accepted that, as life aboard was almost equally unpleasant for all, the young ones had better start where the going was as rough as anything they were ever likely to encounter. Many years afterwards, in his
Reminiscences
(1843), Lieutenant George Parsons recalled how he dined when a midshipman aboard the
Foudroyant
with Lord Nelson, on the anniversary of the Battle of St Vincent:

‘His Lordship, after taking a bumper in honour of the glorious victory of the year ninety-seven, addressed me in a bland tone -“You entered the service at a very early age, to have been in the action off St Vincent?”

“Eleven years, my lord.”

“Much too young,” muttered his Lordship.’

And now, only a year and a few months older himself, Horatio was to learn the realities of the sea-life as it was first encountered by aspirants to rank, fame and fortune - which only a minute handful ever achieved.

A 64
-gun
ship
like the
Raisonable
, which was Nelson’s first introduction to the world that he was to serve for the rest of his life, was similar in her construction to all the other ships he was to know -whether frigates, or schooners, or even giant first-rates like the
Victory.
In many respects they had changed little over the centuries, and a sailor of Drake’s time, though he would have at first been confused by the size of the vessels and the multiplicity of their standing and running rigging, would quite soon have felt himself at home. Oak was the heart of these ships, much of it grown in the great royal forests like the New Forest in Hampshire and the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. In theory it should never have been used until it had been properly seasoned, being left for at least a year after cutting. But during the Napoleonic Wars especially, with the immense expansion of the fleet, it was inevitable that green oak should come into use - as well as Baltic oak, which was never as good as the native product. A ship like the
Raisonable
would have required nearly two thousand trees for her construction.

The principal shipbuilding yards of the country were at Chatham, Deptford, Plymouth, and Woolwich, and it was here that the ships were designed in large ‘mould-lofts’ by master-shipwrights, who drew out the plans at full size on the floor of the great sheds, the side elevations similarly being drawn on the high walls. Once the design was approved, and the timber ordered, the first step was to lay down the keel. This, unlike most of the rest of the vessel, was of elm, often sheathed with a false keel, also of elm, to protect the backbone of the vessel in the event of her grounding. Built in the open air, the smaller vessels were usually constructed on slips so that they could be run down to the water’s edge upon completion. Very large ships like the first-rates, on the other hand, were more often than not built in dry docks so that in due course they could simply be floated out, by letting in the sea through sluices.

Since the terms will constantly occur in the story of Nelson’s life, it must be explained that a first-rate like the
Victory
, mounting 100 guns and more, was 186 feet long on the waterline, with an extreme breadth of 52 feet, a draught of about 21 feet, and a tonnage of approximately 2,200. A second-rate would be 170 feet long with equivalently diminishing proportions, a third-rate 160 feet, a fourth-rate 144 feet, and so on down to the small brigs and schooners that were used as maids-of-all-work. First-, second-and third-rates formed the Navy’s battle fleet, and were generally referred to as ships-of-the-line, or line-of-battle ships, since they fought in line-ahead formation. All other ships, from those mounting 50 to 60 guns down to the fast, relatively lightly armed frigates, were known as ‘below the line’.

Quite apart from fire - the greatest hazard whether in battle or through negligence - the main enemy of the wooden ship was the teredo worm,
Teredo navalis,
which had been well known to mariners since ancient times (metal sheathing to protect the hulls under water having been used by both Greeks and Romans). This marine borer enters the hull quite inconspicuously, then proceeds to tunnel its way along the wood so that in due course, with hundreds of these marine molluscs quietly eating away, a plank which to outward appearance looks perfectly sound is no more than an empty honeycomb. More common in warm waters than in northern climates, it had nevertheless been brought back to such an extent by foreign-going vessels over the centuries that no part or port of Europe was safe from its menace. At one time lead sheathing had been used in large vessels, but this was extremely expensive, as well as weighty, and it had finally been discovered that the best all-round protection was provided by thin sheets of copper nailed over heavy brown paper, which had been plastered on to the hull with pitch. A further advantage of copper was that it not only kept out the worm but also made it more difficult for barnacles and other marine growths to adhere to the ship’s bottom. In days when even a fast ship like a frigate might make no more than nine knots under good sailing-conditions, a good clean copper bottom was highly important. Heavy marine growth could take two knots or so off a ship’s speed.

After the final operation of sheathing the ship and launching her, she was then towed out to what was called a sheer hulk, usually an old man-of-war which had had her two upper decks removed and sheer-legs and other lifting gear sited on what had once been her lower gun-deck. The operation of masting the new vessel now began. The masts, a stock of which was kept at all the dockyards, were of fir and were preserved until needed in a mast-pond of brine. Except in small vessels where one fir might serve as a mast, the masts of all ships of any size were built out of two or more lengths of fir which were bound together with iron hoops. Once completed, the mast was heaved up on the sheer-legs and then lowered into the ship, the heel of the mast being stepped into immensely strong sockets at the bottom of the ship. The timbers which formed these lay across the keelson, the inner part of the keel. Once the fore, main and mizzen masts were in position, the master-riggers and their mates took over, setting up the lower and bowsprit rigging first and then sending aloft the topmasts and the rigging to support them. There was no wire rope in those days, so all the complexity of the standing rigging depended on hemp rope, heavily tarred on the outside to protect it against wind and weather. After this the fir yards, on which the ship’s motive power - her square-sails - depended, were sent aloft and ‘crossed’ on their respective masts.

Ships like the
Raisonable
, as well as her much larger sisters, would have appeared heavy and unwieldy to the eyes of sailors of the later nineteenth century, when the clipper ship - that perfection of nautical design - had been evolved. But the purpose of the man-of-war was to serve as a floating platform for guns, and as such, when her vast areas of canvas were spread and she surged down the seaways of the world, there has probably never been a more beautiful or imposing sight in the whole history of man the navigator. The guns - it was to serve these that all the men worked, and it was to bring them into the best position to batter in the sides of the enemy that the skills of men, officers, captains and admirals were directed. It was in the sight, smell, service and thunder of them that all these men lived and died. The famous broadside of which one hears so much in history - and subsequent fiction - did not mean that all the guns on one side were fired at the very same moment. Strong though the ship’s planking, ribs and main timbers were, the whole structure would have hardly withstood the immense recoil and concussion for any length of time. The normal practice was what was known as ‘ripple firing’, in which the guns were fired consecutively from the forward end of the ship to the stern. Then, as each gun had fired, was run back, scoured out (to remove any burning scraps left in barrel), reloaded and run out again, the whole process was repeated. An efficient gun’s crew could get off three rounds in little more than two minutes.

The guns had changed little since Elizabethan days although, like the ships themselves, they had become heavier and more powerful. The advantages of breech-loading had long been understood, but there had not been sufficient technological advance to construct an efficient breech that could withstand the concussion of the explosion. In Nelson’s navy the guns were muzzle-loaders. They were almost all of iron (a very few were still of bronze); the metal itself being cast as a solid block and then bored smooth. They were known by the weight of ball they fired:
i.e.
12 pound, 18, 24, and 32; 42-pounders had been tried in the larger vessels but they had been generally found too cumbrous to handle, and the 32-pounder was the standard major gun in the first-rates of the time. A 32-pound gun, weighing 2 tons, was 8J feet long, and was manned by a crew of fifteen men. This included the boys (or, on occasion, women who were aboard) employed in bringing up the powder from the magazines. Gunpowder was the only propellant, and the maximum range was about 2,500 yards. Really effective range was a good deal less, and the whole process of a naval engagement consisted in battering the enemy into submission, principally by bringing down his masts and yards so that he could no longer navigate or even maintain steerage-way. Chain-shot, two balls or half-balls connected by a link of chain, was used against rigging, while grapeshot and canister-shot were used for anti-personnel purposes.