Nelson: The Essential Hero (4 page)

Cups were used instead of glasses. The soup tureen, a heavy lumbering piece of block tin, pounded into shape, was, for want of a ladle, emptied with an ever-lasting tea cup; the forks were wiped on the table cloth by the persons about to use them, who, to save eating more than was requisite of actual dirt, always plunged them through the table cloth to clean between the prongs. . . . The rest of the furniture was not much cleaner; now and then an empty bottle served as a candlestick; and I have known both a shoe and a quadrant-case used as a soup plate. . . . [The midshipman] dressed and undressed in public; the basin was invariably of pewter; and the wet towels, dirty head-brush etc., were, after use, deposited in his chest. A hammock served as a bed, and so closely were we all stowed in war, that the side of one hammock always touched that of another; fourteen inches being declared quite sufficient space for one tired midshipman.

What Captain Chamier omits to say in his depressing account of the midshipman’s life is that a hammock was far more comfortable than a bunk or a bed in a seaway and, whatever else may have been amiss in the midshipmen’s quarters, hammocks were eminently practical. (They remained in use in the Royal Navy and the United States Navy until after the Second World War.)

On the
Raisonable'
s paying off, Captain Suckling was transferred to the 74-gun
Triumph
, guardship at the Nore, that famous sandbank at the mouth of the Thames. It was a dull routine job, and one which offered practically no chance for a young man to learn about the sea-life, or indeed about anything very much except sailing and handling the ship’s boats. Maurice Suckling very wisely decided that his nephew needed sea-experience, and something in the youth’s bearing and capabilities as shown during his brief time in
Raisonable
must have convinced him that it was worth giving him a real chance to prove himself. Nelson had been entered in the books of the
Triumph
as ‘captain’s servant’, a normal custom of the time whereby captains could take young relatives along to sea with them - and designed most probably to ensure that they could keep a strict eye on them. It was in this capacity that Maurice Suckling recommended Horatio to John Rathbone, master of a West Indiaman, running from the Bahamas and the Antilles all the way through the sunny, sugar-cane islands as far as Venezuela. Nelson saw real sea-time for the first time aboard a merchantman, and the experience was to have a lasting effect upon him.

The little he had seen of naval life in the
Raisonable
had probably shocked a sensitive youth, fresh from the quiet of Norfolk and from the age-old decencies of church and family life at Burnham. His own words written from Port Mahon in 1799, twenty-eight years later, show that the impressions made by the Merchant Service after his initial experience of the Royal Navy still had not faded :

‘Erroneous principle’ Nelson may well have been able to term it all those years and triumphs later, but it is clear how deeply it had sunk in that he should recall it in the very short space of his autobiography.

So now he saw the chops of the Channel for the first time, felt the long Atlantic surge as the merchantman ran down with the northeast trade winds boosting her canvas. With all sail set, she made that sparkling passage which puts Europe behind, and suddenly one day hauls up out of a seemingly limitless skyline the wind-broomed islands of the West. The youth who had known nothing but the simplicities of the English countryside, and then that brief spell aboard the
Raisonable
in ‘Chatty Chatham’, encountered the brilliant Caribbean seas, flying-fish weather, the eternal green of the tropics, and an entire new world. The discipline, though stringent aboard a merchantman, had none of the harshness of a man-of-war. Captain Rathbone was kind to the young man, and life, which had seemed to close upon him with the harsh thud of a gun-port coming down, opened in a flower of islands. His fresh eyes registered black faces; immaculately dressed white planters; longshoremen of all types; bum-boats piled with unfamiliar fruit; lean dark bodies diving for small coins or buttons; orchids and tobacco; the rich plantation-lands that gave Europe its sugar, and the local boats carved from a single tree-trunk that crested under thin sails over the flashing Trade Wind seas. After a year, when he returned to rejoin the
Triumph
, he had a memory of this world that he would never lose. He might have echoed their great discoverer who, all those centuries before on his first voyage westward, had written : ‘It is like April in Andalusia. Nothing is missing except the nightingales. . . . How great a pleasure is the taste of the mornings!’

Captain Suckling, seeing perhaps in this sun-tanned young nephew a spirit of antagonism towards the Navy (Nelson could never conceal his feelings), came to the wise decision to give him as much practical boat-work as possible. This was something that got a youngster out into the cold fresh air and gave him a feeling of independence as well as responsibility. Nelson applied himself to his navigation, and was then allowed to put it into practice in the
Triumph's
cutter, and later in her decked long-boat. This experience was to serve him in good stead, for it was to some extent on account of his proven abilities in command of small boats that he secured his next, and so far most important, step forward in his career. Both cutters and long-boats were equipped for sailing as well as rowing, the cutter being the general maid-of-all-work used for carrying stores, provisions and passengers. The long-boat, on the other hand, was the largest boat carried aboard a man-of-war and was often decked, or at least halfdecked, and sometimes used for sending boarding parties aboard enemy merchantmen, for cutting out smugglers, and for landing troops in shore actions. A young man in command of a ship’s boat learned in microcosm, as it were, all the niceties of sailing, of pilotage, and of the ever necessary use of lead and line in shoal waters.

In 1773, Nelson, who was nearly fifteen, heard the story that was exciting everyone in the naval service — an expedition to the Arctic was being fitted out. Two bomb-vessels, chosen because of the massive strength built into them to allow for the recoil of the heavy guns in their bows, had been selected and were already being provisioned and further strengthened against ice. (Two-masted, with main and mizzen, a bomb-ketch of this type was between 100 and 250 tons, and was designed for engaging fortresses. Falconer in his
Marine Dictionary
credits them with having been a French invention and first used in the bombardment of Algiers, adding ‘till then it had been judged impracticable to bombard a place from the sea’.) One of the two ketches was the
Racehorse
, Captain Constantine Phipps, and the other the
Carcass
, Captain Skeffington Lutwidge. Nelson at no time in his life was one to hang back when there was a chance of preferment. He had already shown his determination in that original letter which he had made William write to their father and now, having chosen his career, he was equally determined that he should get ahead in it. With peace heavy on the waters there was little or no chance of advancement for anyone in the Service, let alone young midshipmen. The only thing on the horizon at that moment was this Arctic expedition, and young Horatio would move hell and high water to make sure that he at any rate was considered, even if not taken. The very fact that the proclaimed order of the day was ‘no boys’ spurred him on even further.

As always in rules and regulations there was a loophole, for although boys were not required, as being of ‘no use’, the captains themselves might take some personal servants. Captain Lutwidge was accordingly badgered by Horatio Nelson (Maurice Suckling without any doubt lending a private word, not only about his nephew’s enthusiasm but also his ability as a small-boat handler). ‘. . . Nothing could prevent my using every interest to go with Captain Lutwidge in the
Carcass
; and, as I fancied I was to fill a man’s place, I begged I might be his cockswain : which, finding my ardent desire for going with him, Captain Lutwidge complied with, and has continued the strictest friendship to this moment.’ Nelson not only knew how to be persuasive but, as events would prove, to show such spirit and evidence of his capabilities that no senior officer from whom he sought preferment regretted his choice.

The expedition, designed to explore the possibilities of a northeast passage into the South Seas, as well as to promote the interests of science, was not very memorable in itself. The ships penetrated to within ten degrees of the Pole, but were stopped by ice. In scientific terms, the most useful advance was found in an ingenious machine which turned seawater into fresh - something which forestalled the condensers of later days after the Age of Sail had yielded to that of Steam. For Nelson as for his companions, however, the experience must have been vivid and memorable. They moved through waters that few men had known, and saw off the gloomy coast of west Spitsbergen the dazzling sheen of the giant glaciers. From time to time with a horrendous crash huge sections fell away and burst into the sea, while all the time the ice-blink, the frost-smoke and the water-skies spoke of the world where Captain Pell had vanished two centuries before, attempting to unravel its secrets.

From Spitsbergen, where seal abounded and where they saw blue whales, the ships moved on over a greasy sea to the north of Novaya Zemlya. Fog was often with them now and they kept one another informed of their position by firing signal guns. The two pilots, who were masters of Greenland traders and had been specially picked for the voyage, were constantly aloft conning the ships through pack ice -difficult enough nowadays, but fantastically so under canvas and with light, errant winds. Finally they were embayed, two stalwart bomb-ketches, the ice glistening in their rigging, while the ships’ companies, as if unaware of their very real danger, played like schoolboys over the frozen fields.

It was during this period that an incident occurred which, though always recorded by Nelson biographers, cannot be omitted for a very good reason. It indicates an aspect of Nelson’s character which has often been misconstrued - and generally in his favour. Here it is in the words of Clarke and M‘Arthur, his first biographers:

Among the gentlemen on the quarter-deck of the
Carcass
, who were not rated midshipmen, there was, besides young Nelson, a daring shipmate of his, to whom he had become attached. One night, during the mid-watch, it was concerted between them that they should steal together from the ship, and endeavour to obtain a bear’s skin. The clearness of the nights in those high latitudes rendered the accomplishment of this object extremely difficult: they, however, seem to have taken advantage of the haze of an approaching fog, and thus to have escaped unnoticed. Nelson in high spirits led the way over the frightful chasms in the ice, armed with a rusty musket. It was not, however, long before the adventurers were missed by those on board; and, as the fog had come on very thick, the anxiety of Captain Lutwidge and his officers was very great. Between three and four in the morning the mist somewhat dispersed, and the hunters were discovered at a considerable distance, attacking a large bear. The signal was instantly made for their return; but it was in vain that Nelson’s companion urged him to obey it. He was at this time divided by a chasm in the ice from his shaggy antagonist, which probably saved his life; for the musket had flashed in the pan, and their ammunition was expended. ‘Never mind,’ exclaimed Horatio, ‘do but let me get a blow at this devil with the butt-end of my musket, and we shall have him.
⁶
His companion, finding that entreaty was in vain, regained the ship. The captain, seeing the young man’s danger, ordered a gun to be fired to terrify the enraged animal. This had the desired effect; but Nelson was obliged to return without his bear, somewhat agitated with the apprehension of the consequences of this adventure. Captain Lutwidge, though he could not but admire so daring a disposition, reprimanded him rather sternly for such rashness, and for conduct so unworthy of the situation he occupied; and desired to know what motive he could have for hunting a bear? Being thought by his captain to have acted in a manner unworthy of his situation, made a deep impression on the high-minded cockswain; who, pouting his lip, as he was wont to do when agitated, replied, ‘Sir, I wished to kill the bear, that I might carry its skin to my father.’

This tale is often told with admiration as evidence of Nelson’s daring and courage, but it was evidence of more than that. Nelson was, like many another boy, high-spirited, thoughtless and brave. But he is shown here as acting in disobedience of the orders of an officer infinitely senior to himself while in pursuit of an immediate ambition. It also makes clear that, when on fire with this ambition, he was capable of recklessness - something that was to cost him dearly many years later at Tenerife. Something else about his character is also revealed — that deep love of home and of his family, for the picture that inspired him to disobedience was of a snow-white polar-bear skin shining out against the sombre browns of wood and leather in his father’s study.

The two bomb-ketches having finally extricated themselves from the ice, more by luck than anything else (for the wind shifted favourably into the north-north-east), returned to England in the autumn of 1773 and paid off. In a time of inactivity for the Navy Nelson might well have found himself, along with so many others, relegated once again to such tedious duties as aboard the guardship at the Nore, but he was lucky in two things - his uncle’s influence and the fact that a squadron was fitting out for the East Indies station. The squadron was under the command of Commodore Sir Edward Hughes in the
Salisbury
, and under him was Captain George Farmer in the 20-gun frigate
Seahorse
. Farmer had served with Maurice Suckling as a midshipman, so it was natural enough for one old friend to help another over the matter of finding a berth for his nephew. Nelson was lucky not only in Suckling’s influence but in the spheres to which that influence managed to send him. Having experienced the West Indies and the Caribbean world, he had known the Polar ice and was now to see the East from which Britain and so much of Europe drew its wealth and its luxuries. He was lucky also in his captain, George Farmer, a strict disciplinarian, and in the master, Mr Surridge, who unlike so many others took a real interest in teaching the youngsters their duties and was also a first-class celestial navigator. Years later Nelson was to say of him that he was ‘a very clever man and we constantly took lunar observations’: these, the most difficult of all astronomical observations in the days before the predigested tables of today, involved a considerable knowledge of trigonometry. George Farmer later went on to meet a heroic death in battle against a French frigate in 1779 when, his own ship having been set afire, he refused to leave her after all the ship’s company had done so, and went down sitting on the anchor flukes after a last exhortation to his men, ‘Conquer or die ! ’ Apart from the influence of these two officers, Nelson was also lucky in having with him Thomas Troubridge who was his own age but who had entered the Navy two years later than him, having been educated at St Paul’s School. Troubridge was to be one of Nelson’s lifelong friends, one of those who formed the ‘Band of Brothers’ who during the long struggle with Napoleon helped give England the mastery of the seas.