Nelson: The Essential Hero (35 page)

As Napoleon was to remark many years later when, a prisoner aboard the
Bellerophon
, he sailed for St Helena, ‘In all my plans I have always been thwarted by the British Fleet.’

Meanwhile no one in England knew of this action which had changed the whole balance of power. The 50-gun
Leander
, with Captain Thompson in command and Nelson’s Captain Berry bearing the despatches, fell in off Crete with the escaped
Le Genereux
and, after an action in which both Berry and Thompson were wounded, was captured. Fortunately a duplicate set of despatches had been prepared and sent aboard the brig
Mutine
to go to the Admiralty by way of Naples. It was not until two months after the action that the despatches reached England with Captain Capel of the
Mutine.
Speculation in the meantime had been rife, and many of the rumours which had been circulating were detrimental to Nelson. He had missed Napoleon, he had returned to Syracuse, there had been a great battle : who had won? Lord Spencer was moved to comment that he hoped Sir Horatio would have ‘a pretty good story to tell at least’. In the event, when he did finally hear the news, the First Lord fell to the floor in the Admiralty in a dead faint. Emotions had already run riot in Naples where the ‘vapours’ had immediately attacked Lady Hamilton on Capel’s arrival there. She, too, fainted and, as Nelson was to write some weeks later, ‘she . . is not yet properly recovered from severe bruises’. A tidal wave of emotion swept not only England, but also all Europe. So, the French were not in fact all-powerful, but as subject as all others to defeat. In England, of course, the emotion generated was immense, provoking even the cool and patrician Lady Spencer (who had been so scathing about Nelson’s appearance on their first meeting) to write a letter almost as extravagant as those which he was later to receive from Emma Hamilton: Joy, joy, joy, to you, brave, gallant immortalised Nelson! May that great God, whose cause you so valiantly support, protect and bless you to the end of your brilliant career! Such a race surely never was run. . . . All, all I
can
say must fall short of my wishes, of my sentiments about you. This moment the guns are firing, illuminations are preparing, your gallant name is echoed from street to street, and every Briton feels his obligations to you weighing him down.

She concluded, ‘I am half Mad, and I fear I have written a strange letter, but you’ll excuse it. Almighty God protect you. Adieu.’ There could be no doubt now that the ‘radiant orb’ had led him to the Valhalla of fame, folklore, and legend. He would be known throughout his homeland - as indeed Drake had been before him - by ballad and broadsheet, on tobacco boxes and tankards, and on a hundred and one simple pieces of pottery that served as ornaments in country homes.

It was as if all Europe heaved a sigh of relief, and with it came foreign orders, messages of congratulation, and rich presents - a miniature from the Tsar of Russia, a gold-hilted scimitar and a diamond-set turban ornament from the Sultan of Turkey, a sword from the City of London (he had sent the City the sword of Blanquet-Duchayla), and gifts from places as remote from one another as Palermo and the island of Zante. Parliament voted him a pension of £2,000. The East India Company also made Nelson a grant of £10,000, while Alexander Davison, who was the sole prize agent, had medals struck to commemorate the action: in gold for Nelson and his captains, and in silver and bronze for the other ranks. In November Nelson was to receive a peerage, being created Baron of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe : a reward which all his friends thought was less than his due. After all, Jervis after the much lesser action of St Vincent had been made an earl, and Duncan a viscount after the Battle of Camperdown. The award aroused criticism in the House of Commons for being insufficient, but it was pointed out that it was the highest honour that had ever been conferred upon an officer of Nelson’s rank, and that he was not a commander-in-chief, but merely a junior admiral in charge of a detached squadron. What certainly pleased him was that the first lieutenants of all the ships engaged received immediate promotion. His captains had also formed an ‘Egyptian Club’ to commemorate the event and had commissioned a sword to be made for him, which was later to become one of his cherished possessions. Ben Hallowell, who had known him so long and had a deep affection for him, showed that he also possessed a dry sense of humour. He set
Swiftsure’s
carpenter to work on making a coffin from part of the mainmast that had been salvaged from the wreck of
L'Orient.
This
memento mori
was afterwards to adorn Nelson’s cabin, and to stand behind the Windsor chair in which he commonly sat. One day in Palermo, some time later, finding some officers new to the
Vanguard
gazing with interest at this noble if morbid piece of craftsmanship, Nelson remarked: ‘You may look at it, gentlemen, as long as you please; but depend upon it, none of you shall have it.’

‘My head is ready to split, and I am always so sick/ he wrote to St Vincent; ‘in short, if there be no fracture, my head is severely shaken.’ References to his wound occur in other letters, among them one to the Hon. William Wyndham, the British Minister in Florence : ‘My health, from my wound, is become so very indifferent, that I am thinking of going down the Mediterranean, so soon as I arrive at Naples. . . .’ It might have been best if he had done so. In one of the last letters written to Fanny at Round Wood in Suffolk before he sailed from Aboukir Bay, he said : ‘I am thank God as much better as could be expected. . . .’ As always in the past, he did everything he could to disguise from his sensitive and caring wife the extent of the damage to his health. He sent his love to his father and all his friends and again, as ever, signed himself ‘your most affectionate husband’. Jefferson, his surgeon, noted in his journal that ‘I applied every night a compress [to Nelson’s forehead], wet with a discutient embrocation, which was of great service.’ The wound was healed after a month but it is likely that the effects of concussion remained with him for a great deal longer. For the rest of his life he would wear his hair trained down over his forehead to conceal the scar.

On 14 August Sir James Saumarez sailed from Aboukir Bay for Gibraltar with seven of the squadron, taking with him six of the prizes. The previous day some of the missing frigates had at last rejoined, and Nelson detailed off three of them to stay on station with three ships-of-the-line and maintain a blockade off Alexandria. He himself in
Vanguard
, together with Troubridge in the
Culloden
and Ball in the
Alexander
, sailed for Naples on the nineteenth. They were the three most heavily damaged ships and it seemed imperative to take them to the nearest efficient dockyard in the Mediterranean, Castellammare in the Bay of Naples. Ball had received a great part of
L’Orient's
fire and his ship was badly cut up, while the
Vanguard
was under jury rig, and Troubridge had had to fother the damaged bottom of the
Culloden
with oakum and canvas to keep her afloat. Nelson, who at this moment still hoped that he might go home to recover his health, as always placed his trust in Troubridge. He knew him for a far better diplomat than himself, and he felt sure that he could more than adequately take over the command. It was clear that, though the victory had given the British the command of the inland sea, the changed complexion of things would now occasion a general increase of activity: ‘These are not times for idleness’, as Nelson wrote, and later, to Hood off Alexandria, that he relied upon him to maintain a close blockade, thus ensuring the ultimate destruction of the French Army. As for himself - for he was feeling slightly better - ‘I shall not go home until this is effected, and the islands of Malta, Corfu, &c., retaken.’

Meanwhile, with light and contrary winds, the three ships slowly retraced their track across the eastern Mediterranean. The news of the Battle of the Nile had reached Napoleon long before it reached his enemies in Europe. He fully realised its implications: ‘I wanted to create a new religion/ he said years later. ‘I saw myself on the high road to Asia, seated on an elephant, a turban on my head, a new Koran, which I should have composed to suit my interests, in my hand. I saw myself assailing Britain’s power in India. But fortune decided otherwise.’ Fortune had many more tricks up her sleeve. Nelson, who disliked the idea of spending much time away from the eastern area - for he envisaged the main interests of his command as stretching from Sicily to Malta and then to Egypt and the Levant -wrote to St Vincent, 'I detest this voyage to Naples. Nothing but absolute necessity could force me to the measure. Syracuse in future, whilst my operations lie on the eastern side of Sicily, is my port. . . .’ To Sir William Hamilton he wrote that he hoped not to be ‘more than four or five days at Naples’.

Nelson had rightly concluded that the next operation in securing the Mediterranean for the British fleet was to expel the French from Malta. With this in mind, he instructed a Portuguese squadron of four ships-of-the-line, which had been ordered to place itself under his command, to blockade the island. Once more the
Vanguard
passed through the Strait of Messina, but this time headed north with her mission accomplished. Further delayed by the loss of her jury-rigged foremast and her main topmast in a sudden squall - during which several men were lost and others injured - it was not until Saturday 22 September that Nelson’s battered flagship came into the bright Bay of Naples. Under tow by a frigate, the other two ships-of-the-line having preceded him by six days, the
Vanguard
made an impressive spectacle as she passed the steep sides of Capri. On that calm autumn day, she and her Admiral sailed into the land which, since the days of the Greeks, had been known as the haunt of the Sirens.

From
the moment that the
Vanguard
hove in sight all was
opera bouffe.
The blue waters of the famous bay were untroubled by even a ripple as hundreds of pleasure boats put out to welcome the victor of the Nile, the saviour of not only their own kingdom but also all Europe, as his crippled flagship wallowed along behind her tow. Across the water came the sound of music, and ‘Rule Britannia’ sounded somewhat incongruously against the background of idly smoking Vesuvius and the golden glimmer of the houses and palaces of Naples. King Ferdinand, who fancied himself as something of a sailor, had himself rowed out in the state barge to meet and congratulate the hero. ‘Sir William and Lady Hamilton came out to sea attended by numerous boats,’ Nelson wrote to Fanny. He continued, ‘Alongside my honoured friends came, the scene in the boat appeared terribly affecting. Up flew her ladyship and exclaiming: “Oh God is it possible,” fell into my arms more dead than alive.’ (Not for nothing was Lady Hamilton famous for her ‘attitudes’.) ‘Tears however soon set matters to rights, when alongside came the King. The scene was in its way affecting. He took me by the hand, calling me his deliverer and preserver, with every other expression of kindness. In short all Naples calls me “Nostro Liberatore” for the scene with the lower classes was truly affecting.’ The note which was sounded on this first meeting was never to diminish. From now on all was to become more and more truly Neapolitan. As Emma Hamilton herself wrote : ‘My dress from head to foot is
alia Nelson.
Even my shawl is in Blue with gold anchors all over. My ear-rings are Nelson’s anchors; in short we are all be-Nelsoned. . . .’

The characters who were now to circle around the diminutive figure of the Admiral were all in their way equally strange, fantastic even, when set against the sombre hull of the
Vanguard
and the other men-of-war: the sun-tanned, tar-stained sailors, the lowering guns that had destroyed the French fleet, and the shot-riddled oak sides, scarred masts and tom rigging of the victors. Ferdinand IV, who might be cast as the buffoon in this opera, was known to his subjects as ‘Old Nosey’ for his physiognomy, and also affectionately by the working people, and contemptuously by the other classes, as ‘II Re Lazzarone’ for his fondness for the beggars and riff-raff of his city. In an age when monarchs kept strictly aloof from their subjects he enjoyed the simple pleasures of the people, fishing, gaming, drinking wine and, above all, the pleasures of hunting. It has been said of him that ‘Few sovereigns have left behind so odious a memory’, but at the time that Nelson met him he presented no more than an affable and coarse bonhomie. His Queen, who was unable to come with him, being ill as well as in mourning for the death of her youngest child, was an altogether more formidable figure. Of her Bonaparte remarked that she was the only man in Naples. Sir William Hamilton’s first wife (who was a great deal more perspicacious than his second) had recorded of Maria Carolina that:

She is quick, clever, insinuating when she pleases, hates and loves violently . . . there is no dependence on what she says as she is seldom of the same opinion two days. Her strongest and most durable passions are ambition and vanity, the latter of which gives her a strong disposition towards Coquetry, but the former, which I think is her principal Object, makes her use every Art to please the King in order to get the Reins of Government into her hands in as great a measure as is possible.

The Prime Minister of this southern kingdom was an expatriate Englishman, Sir John Acton, who had been born in France and had served in the French Navy as well as those of Tuscany and of Naples. An excellent administrator, and an honest man in a land where such a virtue was rare, he had made himself invaluable to Ferdinand and his Queen. He had inherited his English title seven years before and, although he spoke the language fairly fluently, had never visited his native country. His policy as Prime Minister was largely devised in concert with Sir William Hamilton, its principal aim being to substitute the influence of Britain and Austria for that of Spain in the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples. He shared the Queen’s dislike, if not quite her impassioned hatred, of all things French - a language which he spoke as easily as he did Italian. As an administrator in a corrupt kingdom he was exceptional, but in matters of higher policy he was not astute or perspicacious enough to have risen to the rank of statesman - the role in which he fancied himself.