Nelson: The Essential Hero (25 page)

From now on, and until the end of his days, he would live with pain. The loss of his eye had been something that he had accepted as stoically as he accepted most things. But the loss of the arm was always to remind him of failure. He had said earlier that he would return from the expedition either crowned with cypress or with laurel but, in effect, he returned with neither. Over-confidence had betrayed him. Midshipman Hoste, that faithful correspondent to his parents, who had been with Nelson since the days in the
Agamemnon
, recorded :

At two in the morning Admiral Nelson returned on board, being dreadfully wounded in the right arm. I leave you to judge my situation, when I beheld our boat approach with him, who I may say has been a second father to me, his right arm dangling by his side, while with the other he helped himself to jump up the ship’s side, and with a spirit that astonished every one, told the surgeon to get his instruments ready, for he knew he must lose his arm, and that the sooner it was off the better.

Fanny Nelson’s memorandum on the events of that night based on her son’s recollections was that:

When the boat reached the side of the ship Nisbet called out ‘Tell the surgeon the Admiral is wounded and he must prepare for amputation’, upon which they offered to let down the chair. Sir H. Nelson said ‘No, I have yet my legs and one arm,’ and he walked up the side of the ship, Lieut. N. keeping so close that in case he had slipped he could have caught him.

On getting on the quarter deck the officers as usual saluted him by taking off their hats, which compliment Nelson returned with his left Hand as if nothing had happened.

There were two surgeons aboard the
Theseus
, Thomas Eshelby and Louis Remonier, the latter a French Royalist refugee. Eshelby was the ship’s official surgeon and Remonier was his assistant. Eshelby’s journal records that Nelson had a ‘Compound fracture of the right arm by a musket ball passing through or a little above the elbow, an artery divided: the arm was immediately amputated and opium afterwards given.’ There was no general anaesthetic in those days, the wounded sometimes being given a tot of rum or a leather pad to bite on during the operation itself. John Masefield in his account of
Sea Life in Nelson
³
s Time
has perhaps the clearest distillation from varying sources of exactly what it was like in a ship’s cockpit when the wounded were brought in: ‘It was the strict, inviolable rule, that a wounded man should take his turn. The first brought down was the first dressed. No favour was shown to any man, were he officer or swabber. The rule was equitable, but not without its disadvantages. Many men were so torn with shot or splinter that they bled to death upon the sail [laid over the operating platforms] long before the surgeon worked his way round to them.’

In Nelson’s case, of course, the ship was not in action and at that moment he was almost the only wounded man aboard the
Theseus.
(He is reported to have said, when asked if he wanted the arm preserved, ‘Throw it into the hammock with the brave fellow that was killed beside me.’) The other wounded would come later to their various ships, among them Betsy Fremantle’s husband who also, like Nelson, was hit in the right arm, although in his case amputation was not necessary. Silk ligatures were used to tie up the arteries of Nelson’s arm and were left long; the second ligature probably included the median nerve as well as the artery. This was to cause Nelson a great deal of pain, and was not to come away until the December of that year. The surgeon also recorded of him that during the night he ‘rested pretty well and quite easy. Tea, soup and sago. Lemonade and Tamarind drink.’ While undergoing the amputation in the cockpit of the
Theseus
Nelson noticed the cold - and the coldness of the knife itself. Later he was to issue orders that portable stoves should be installed in the cockpits of ships, and also that there should be a kid of hot water so that the surgeons could warm their saws and knives before operating. This was done not with the idea of sterilising the instruments - something unknown at that time - but so that some of the shock of the cold metal should be obviated. Thomas Eshelby was subsequently paid £36 for amputating Nelson’s arm and for further attendance upon him, while his assistant, Louis Remonier, received £25 4
s
0
d.
The arm was to require a great deal of further attention by doctors in Bath and London when he went there to recuperate.

Meanwhile, despite the success of Troubridge and his small company getting into the main square of Santa Cruz, the expedition was in ruins. As Troubridge’s own account has it: ‘As the boats were all stove, and I saw no possibility of getting more men on shore, the ammunition wet, and no provisions, I sent Captain Hood with a flag of truce to the Governor, to declare, “I was prepared to burn the town, which I should immediately put in force, if he approached one inch further.” ’ One can only admire his spirit, but Troubridge knew as well as the Governor did that, with his few hundred men opposed against about 8,000 Spanish troops and well-placed gun sites, his position was hopeless. The Governor, however, was willing to accord the honours of war to this brave but misguided enemy. His terms were handsome in the extreme. The British might embark with all their arms aboard their boats and, if they had not enough of their own, he himself would lend them some, provided that neither they nor the ships lying off committed any further action against the town. Don Juan Gutierrez had seen his plans for the defence of Santa Cruz so perfectly put into practice that he could well afford the luxury of old-time courtesy. Gentlemanly to the last he directed that, after an exchange of prisoners, any of the British wounded who were unable to be transported back to their ships might be accommodated in the town hospitals, while the ships might send boats ashore to purchase any provisions they wanted. He himself provided a liberal amount of wine and bread ‘to refresh the people’. Before he left the island Nelson, in some attempt to repay his generosity, asked the Governor if he would kindly accept a cask of English beer and a cheese. The memory of that fateful night is still preserved in the church of Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion in Santa Cruz where a number of British ensigns captured from the boats serve as legitimate spoils of war - and a reminder of Nelson’s defeat.

The squadron remained offshore for three days after the abortive attack on Tenerife - three days in which to tend their wounded, bury their dead, and trade for fresh provisions with the indulgent enemy. They had lost seven officers, among them Captain Bowen of the frigate
Terpsichore
, 139 seamen and marines killed, and a further five officers and one hundred other ranks wounded : roughly a quarter of the original landing force. Nelson, suffering acute pain from his amputation and possibly suspecting that he might not survive it, was anxious to see that Fanny’s son Josiah was not forgotten. His famous letter to St Vincent written with the left hand three days after the disaster is quite explicit:

I am become a burthen to my friends, and useless to my country; but by my letter wrote the 24th, you will perceive my anxiety for the promotion of my son-in-law, Josiah Nisbet. When I leave your command, I become dead to the world; I go hence, and am no more seen. If from poor Bowen’s loss, you think it proper to oblige me, I rest confident you will do it; the Boy is under obligations to me, but he repaid me by bringing me from the Mole of Santa Cruz. I hope you will be able to give me a frigate, to convey the remains of my carcase to England. God bless you, my dear Sir, and believe me, your most obliged and faithful, Horatio Nelson.

You will excuse my scrawl, considering it is my first attempt.

Since it was only three days after he had had his right arm amputated ‘very high, near the shoulder’, it is remarkable enough. Both style and script may ramble a little but the Admiral, even at this nadir of his fortunes, remained as solid as a piece of salt-seasoned oak. His request that Josiah receive promotion was noted by St Vincent, who made him a commander. ‘Pretty quick promotion,’ commented Hoste, who knew Josiah well, and had observed from close quarters that Fanny’s son was singularly lacking in those qualities which Nelson would have liked to find in him. Hoste himself, however, was to profit from the disaster of that night for the death of his great friend Lieutenant John Weatherhead also brought him promotion, although, as he wrote in a letter home, ‘Admiral Nelson gave me a commission to act as Lieutenant in his vacancy; happy would it have made me, had it been in any other.’

The Fortunate Islands, as the ancients had termed the Canary group on account of their indulgent climate and rich volcanic soil, had been singularly unfortunate for the British. The failure of the expedition can be laid only at Nelson’s door. Not having achieved his surprise attack, he had then made the tactical error of attempting a frontal assault on a well-defended position, with under a thousand men - landing from open boats direct in the teeth of shore batteries. ‘My pride suffered,’ Nelson was to write. The parson’s son should have known the Proverb, ‘Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.’ Meanwhile, as the squadron struggled north, the wind which had refused to drive them to their destination now blew as it should have done before, north-east and dead in their teeth. Nelson’s servant Tom Allen looked after his sick master with the attention and care of a loving woman. He even arranged a cord leading from Nelson’s bunk which he attached to his own collar when he himself was turned in, so that the Admiral had only to twitch it with his left hand and Allen would spring awake and see what the sick man needed. Meanwhile aboard the
Seahorse
the eighteen-year-old Betsy Fremantle was tending her husband who had a bad flesh wound in his right arm. It required constant dressing and for some weeks it remained a case of touch-and-go whether he also would not have to endure an amputation.

On 16 August the squadron came in sight of St Vincent and the blockading fleet off Cadiz. Nelson immediately sent a boat across: ‘I rejoice at being once more in sight of your Flag, and with your permission will come on board the
Ville de Paris
[a French prize to which St Vincent had earlier shifted his flag] and pay you my respects. ... A left-handed Admiral will never again be considered as useful, therefore the sooner I get to a very humble cottage the better, and make room for a better man to serve the State. . . .’ St Vincent was full of sympathy for his brilliant junior who had failed so signally on this occasion : ‘Mortals cannot command success,’ he reiterated. ‘You and your Companions have certainly deserved it, by the greatest degree of heroism and perseverance that ever was exhibited. I grieve for the loss of your arm, and for the fates of poor Bowen and Gibson, with the other brave men who fell so gallantly.

I hope you and Captain Fremantle are doing well; the
Seahorse
shall waft you to England the moment her wants are supplied. . . . Give my love • to Mrs Fremantle. I will salute her and bow to your stump tomorrow morning, if you will give me leave.’

Hardly had the
Theseus
dropped anchor than Tom Allen was instructed to get his master into his coat: he was going straight across by boat to St Vincent that very afternoon. So much for the letters to his Commander-in-Chief, to Fanny, and to William Suckling about ‘humble cottages’ and ‘a hut to put my mutilated carcase in’! The fact was that Nelson was as eager as ever to show that he was still hale and active, and would in due course be available for further duty. St Vincent, who may possibly have expected a man physically ruined and morally at low ebb, was impressed. He reported in a letter to the First Lord that Nelson ‘dined with me, and I have very good ground for hope he will be restored to the service of his King and Country’.

Four days later, the
Seahorse
being ready for sea, Horatio Nelson joined her, bringing with him his Burnham Thorpe manservant, Tom Allen, his surgeon, Mr Eshelby, and a number of other sick and wounded homeward bound. Betsy Fremantle recorded that he ‘is quite stout’, an expression hardly applicable to Nelson, ‘but I find it looks shocking to be without one arm. He is in great spirits.’ She too had her own concerns, not only about the state of her husband’s arm (which did not seem to be healing properly), but because she had just realised she was pregnant. This was something Eshelby confirmed, and morning sickness hardly went well with the quick leap of a frigate through the Biscay seas. Nelson, despite the constant pain in his stump, was cheerful enough as long as the wind proved fair, but when it turned foul he proved fractious and irritable - ‘a very bad patient’. Meanwhile the sick and wounded below decks did not add any cheer to the atmosphere or suggest a happy return to ‘England, Home and Beauty’. Nelson confessed himself ‘very indifferent’. The man whom Eshelby and Tom Allen tended was now to all outward appearance the Nelson of legend, the face familiar from so many portraits. His once sandy hair was now white, the sightless eye (though indistinguishable from his good one) necessitated his turning his head if addressed from the right-hand side, and the right sleeve of his jacket was empty. It was only his vitality that impressed, and his enthusiasm and deep knowledge when it came to professional matters. Other than that, despite Betsy’s description, he was never ‘stout’ - or had not been since those faraway East India days - while his 5 foot 5^ inch frame was only kept from insignificance by the fact that his back was still as straight as when his father had made the children sit erect so that their backbones did not touch the chairs. The habit of command was evident in the face, in the set of the jaw, while the distinct, arching eyebrows retained their brown colouring. The mouth, which lifted slightly at the corners, was well-moulded with a full, somewhat sensual, lower lip that belied the austerity of the rest of the Admiral’s appearance. There was, though, and all who came in contact with him -having searched vainly for other remarkable features - remarked upon it, a kind of electric quality. The ‘radiant orb’ which he had seen all those years ago, while it still beckoned him, cast a light around him. Despite the pain from his arm - with which she was soon to become sadly familiar - he wrote cheerfully to Fanny :