Nelson: The Essential Hero (24 page)

Nelson, although he had always seen the Santa Cruz expedition as a combined operation, now conceded that he thought the Navy could do it on their own, provided that he could have an additional 200 marines for the shore party. Neither he nor St Vincent can have failed to see how attractive it would be to have a solely naval success, and both had learned from the experience of Corsica that this was feasible. It would also be pleasant to wipe the eye of the military. St Vincent, for his part, did Nelson very handsomely, giving him a squadron of three fine 74s, Nelson flying his flag in the
Theseus
, with Miller as his Captain: Troubridge was in the
Culloden
, and Samuel Hood (a cousin of Lord Hood) in the
Zealous.
In addition, there were the
Leander
of 50 guns, three frigates and a cutter. What may seem strange to those familiar with modern warfare was that Captain Fremantle of the frigate
Seahorse
was allowed to take along with him his newly married wife - a strange form of honeymoon ! But ordinary sailors’ women were not infrequently carried on the lower deck of men-of-war - this depending upon the captain’s feelings on the matter - and Mrs Fremantle, who had asked to go, was a great favourite with St Vincent.

The latter’s orders to Nelson were clear and concise. He was to proceed to the island of Tenerife and capture the port of Santa Cruz. He was then to seize
El Principe d
³
Asturias
with all her cargo, while any enemy warships should be sunk, burned and destroyed. St Vincent concluded : ‘God bless you and prosper you. I am sure you will deserve success. To mortals it is not given the power of commanding it.’ Nelson’s reply was: ‘Ten hours shall either make me a conqueror or defeat me.’ The expedition sailed in fair weather and Nelson, who had earlier written to Fanny that ‘I have had flattery enough to make me vain, and success enough to make me confident’, must have felt that with so fine a squadron, and captains selected by himself, he was on the eve of the greatest moment of his career. The capture of the treasure-ship would not only be a harsh blow to Spain, but would also enrich every officer and man concerned, and delight the king whom he served with such determined devotion.

Their passage southward to the Canaries was uneventful, and on 20 July at sundown, after five days at sea, they sighted the giant peak of Mount Teide rising 12,000 feet from the sea, and feathered with its usual stratum of sea-cloud. Like the other islands in the group, Tenerife was of volcanic origin, a vast upsurge standing out from the bed of the ocean, rich from its volcanic earth in the vine, the date-palm, and the sugar cane. But if the earth made it a kindly land to its Spanish inhabitants, the harbour for which Nelson and his squadron were bound was of a very different nature. Lying on the east coast of the island, Santa Cruz is on a plain, bounded by volcanic rocks. In those days it was open and unsheltered, except for a small mole. The rocks which ran down into the sea were worn smooth by the incessant pounding of the surf. The only anchorage that could be called at all safe was close inshore - under the protective guns of the forts. The island at that point is steep-to, and the land drops away rapidly into great depths.

The plan, which Nelson had carefully studied over with his captains and other officers involved, was for the three 74s to lie off out of sight, while the frigates closed the island after dark. Seamen and marines were to be landed by boats with their oars muffled by canvas, and were to make for the area to the north-east of the town near a valley known as the Lion’s Mouth. Troubridge, designated ‘General’ in command of the land forces, was to lead them to the attack before daybreak, starting on the forts to the east, and making use of scaling ladders and other equipment that had been especially constructed for the operation. Nelson’s ships-of-the-line would come in at dawn, and bring their broadsides to bear. It was hoped that with the fall of the two forts which protected Santa Cruz from the east the Governor of the city would be prepared to treat for peace. The ship’s boats carrying the assault troops were to be roped together in six divisions, each in a long line so that there would be no danger of their losing one another in the darkness. Little or nothing had been left to chance, from the weapons that the men would carry to their escalading gear, and to the movements of the frigates and, subsequently, of the 74s. A bomb-vessel, the
Cacafuego
(Spanish for ‘Shit-fire’), which had been added to the squadron, was to open fire on the town itself, ‘the moment the Boats are discovered by a firing being made on them . . .’.

Unfortunately the only thing that could not have been accounted for, in a detailed and carefully thought-out plan, was that the wind and the sea might fail to prove co-operative. Contrary to normal conditions and expectations, the wind instead of remaining onshore blew off the land, dead in the teeth of the advancing boats, while strong currents hindered their approach and that of the frigates which were escorting them. By daybreak, when Nelson with his 74s advanced to make their ominous threat against a town whose eastern forts should have already been taken, it was seen that the boats had not yet been able to get their troops ashore. There, clearly visible to even the sleepiest Spanish sentry, was the whole British squadron with lines of small boats, laden with men, clearly intended to attack their city.

It was a moment when almost any commander would have hesitated. The element of surprise, upon which the whole operation hinged, was totally lost. Some have been critical of Troubridge for not pressing on with the landing and the attack even at this moment. Lord Charles Beresford, for instance, wrote : ‘But even now the British landing-party might have carried the heights which dominated the town had not Troubridge feared the responsibility of the attack.

He did not, like Nelson at St Vincent, seize his golden opportunity, but delayed to consult the rear-admiral, and when the consultation was over the opportunity had slipped from his grasp. The Spaniards crowded men upon the heights; the attack was hopeless; and the seamen were re-embarked.’ The salient words here are
might have carried the heights
', but almost equally well - or almost certainly -might not. Men struggling ashore from open boats and under full view of an alarmed and expectant enemy are in a very poor condition to make an assault that has any likelihood of success. With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to say that Troubridge did right to return and consult with Nelson, and that a less ambitious or less self-assured commander would at this moment have called off the whole operation.

Nelson’s own account goes on: ‘Thus foiled in my original plan I considered it for the honour of our King and country not to give over the attempt to possess ourselves of the town, that our enemies might be convinced that there is nothing that Englishmen are not equal to. . . Nelson’s experience of the Spaniards at sea had given him no good reason to respect them, but he had never encountered them ashore - except briefly in Nicaragua. He was unaware what magnificent fighting soldiers the Spaniards could be, and how - in those days - their colonial outposts were often manned by their best troops. Any immediate fresh attempt was, in any case, foiled by the weather, and the squadron withdrew. For two days the British were forced to stand off the land, two days in which the Spaniards, now thoroughly alerted, had plenty of time to make their preparations against any renewed attempt at invasion. It was not until the evening of 24 July that Nelson was able to get his ships back into position, coming to anchor at 5.30 p.m. about two miles to the north of the town. His intention now was for the landing to be made on the mole itself, from which point the men would make straight for the town square of Santa Cruz. This time he himself would be in one of the boats and lead the attack.

Nelson was far from unaware of the dangers involved in this second attempt (he himself had made his will) and he was very disturbed when Josiah, now a lieutenant, begged to be allowed to accompany him. ‘Should we both fall, Josiah,’ he said, ‘what would become of your poor mother? The care of the
Theseus
falls to you; stay, therefore, and take charge of her.’ Josiah was adamant. ‘Sir, the ship must take care of herself. I will go with you tonight, if I never go again.’ Unwillingly Nelson acceded. The Spaniards, meanwhile, seeing the British ships anchored as if their intention was, as before, to attack the forts to the east of the town, had despatched troops in that direction. They were not so ignorant of the science of war, however, as not to realise that this might be no more than a feint on the part of the British, and leave the central defences of Santa Cruz undermanned.

While waiting for complete darkness, which could not be expected in that latitude in July until close on midnight, Nelson and his captains dined aboard the
Seahorse
with Mrs Betsy Fremantle as their hostess. Whatever the private anxieties of these officers and her husband may have been, they were certainly in no way communicated to Betsy. She was to record in her diary : ‘As the taking of this place seemed an easy and almost sure thing, I went to bed after they had gone apprehending no danger to Fremantle.’ As soon as it grew dark enough for their movements not to be detected from the shore the seamen and marines, numbering about 700 in all, began to board the boats that rose and fell alongside the ships in the long Atlantic swell. The cutter
Fox
embarked a further 180, while a Spanish merchantman which had been captured that dawn took another 80. The orders were clear enough : they would attack in six divisions, with Nelson leading the centre, land at the mole, and make straight for the town square.

The heavy sea that was now running helped to conceal the boats’ approach, and it was not until they were within half-gunshot of the mole that they were sighted labouring out of the darkness. All hell now broke loose, the bells of the town ringing, the Spaniards everywhere running to arms, and the cannon that commanded the approaches opening up with canister and grapeshot. In the wind, darkness, white-capped waves, and rain that had begun to fall, some of the boats missed the mole altogether. Among them were those containing Troubridge and Waller, who found themselves on that menacing shore in a roar of pounding surf. As their boats were overwhelmed, torn to pieces on the volcanic rocks or, in a few cases, managed to turn about and get seaward, rockets began to illuminate the night sky. In every respect the British - which means above all Nelson - had underestimated their enemies.

Troubridge, who has been censured by some for his previous reluctance to take action without consulting his Admiral, was among the small band who actually managed to get ashore and, although most of the special gear such as scaling ladders was lost in the stormy landing, he gathered together the remnants of his men. They, and they alone, crossed the wind-and-rain-swept terrain. He and Waller with about three hundred men managed to fight their way into the piazza, where, in Nelson’s words, ‘they took possession of a convent from whence they marched against the citadel, but they found it far beyond all their power to take’. The Admiral himself, together with Captains Thompson, Fremantle, and Bowen, had found his way correctly to the mole which was, of course, the area that the Spanish garrison had long ago decided was the most important outpost of Santa Cruz. Not only had they had their guns trained upon the mole, but they had also stationed musketeers in every house or situation that commanded the approach. The cutter
Fox
, inevitably more conspicuous than the ship’s boats, was singled out for cannon fire. Struck between wind and water, she went down taking with her her captain and nearly all the ship’s complement.

The one redeeming feature, from the British point of view, about the utter debacle of that night was the competence of their seamen. It was little short of astounding that they managed to get so many boats to the right place and, despite the bursting surf, to land as many men as they did. In fact, the leading division in which Nelson was present managed, in the face of all the fire, to land sufficient men to overwhelm the immediate defenders of the mole and spike the cannons that were sited on it. Further than that they could not go, for the Spanish defences beyond were far too strong and well-organised. Nelson’s report sums up the situation : ‘. . . such a heavy fire of musketry and grape shot was kept up from the citadel and houses at the head of the mole that we were nearly all killed and wounded’.

Among those wounded was Nelson himself who, in the act of drawing the sword which had been a present to him from Captain Maurice Suckling, was hit in the right arm. There are two accounts of how it happened, one stating that he was stepping out of the boat on to the mole, and the other that he had already landed and was leading the charge towards the guns. In any event, it is clear that he was wounded within seconds of his boat coming alongside and that, although conscious enough (under the immediate anaesthesia of pain) to transfer his sword to his left hand, he was from that moment on no longer in command of the action. It was well that Fanny’s son was with him on that night. Josiah was largely instrumental in saving his step-father’s life. Helped by one of the crew he got Nelson laid down safely in the boat, took a scarf from around his neck and applied a simple tourniquet. Nelson’s arm was so shattered that there was nothing for it but to withdraw him from the battlefield. The ‘Brigadier’ had fought his last campaign ashore.

A
seaman
named Lovel tore up his shirt and made a simple sling for the Admiral’s arm. In the darkness, the general confusion, the thunder of guns, and with most of the boat’s crew advanced along the mole with the other attackers, it was difficult to find hands enough to get the boat manned and under way. When Josiah Nisbet had finally found a scratch crew, the night was torn apart by the sinking of the cutter
Fox
, the thunder of the cannonade being sufficient to arouse Nelson from his semi-coma to order the boat’s crew to put to the assistance of any survivors. He knew already that he must lose the arm. He knew already that the whole attack had been a failure. The main assault up the mole had been stopped and, even though the Spaniards had suffered casualties and some of the guns been spiked, the British had not been able to advance any further. What he did not know was that Troubridge and his party, who had landed in the wrong place, were to make their way into the square and - if they had had the assistance expected from the main landing force - might possibly have taken Santa Cruz.