Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 (28 page)

But Decres was right. The Royal Navy had not dispersed its strength. True to its instinctive tradition, it had shunned ex-centric movements and steadily, against all combinations and chances, retained its advantage of interior lines. Its subordinate Admirals, acting on remote stations and without certain knowledge of their enemy's or their colleagues' movements, honoured the principle of concentration in danger and ubiquity in attack which they inherited from their predecessors. They knew what to do without being told.

On May 16th, five days after Nelson sailed for Barbados, Bickerton, left behind at Gibraltar with the
Royal Sovereign
and two other battleships, decided on his own responsibility to reinforce the Channel Fleet. Fearful lest Villeneuve should double back to Europe before Nelson could cat
ch him, he sailed north to join Calder off Fe
rrol. He left Craig's transports at Gibraltar guarded only by frigates until he could be sure of the safety of a still more vital object. But on his way he met Collingwood and his Flying Squadron off Finisterre hurrying south to rescue those very transports. After consultation, both Admirals continued on their respective courses. On June 8th the Admiralty, aware that Villeneuve had gone to the West Indies, approved Bickerton's junction with Calder, but ordered him to return to the Straits with a single three-decker.

Meanwhile, having rescued Craig's transports from the Algeciras gunboats, Collingwood had despatched his two fastest battleships across the Atlantic to reinforce Nelson. It was characteristic of the automatic way in which British Admirals supported one another and constantly subordinated secondary considerations to the defence of the Channel, that when in July these two much-needed vessels reached the West Indies, Cochrane at once sent them home again. For by then, though Jamaica was still in danger, Villeneuve was reported to have sailed again
for Europe. " Every line-of-batt
le ship that can be spared from hence," Cochrane wrote to the Admiralty, " may be wanted in the Channel." At that very hour Barham, acting on the same intelligence, was writing to Cochrane asking for their return. It was almost as though the English Admirals had anticipated the invention of wireless by a hundred years.
¹

There was little summer in England that June and July. Cold, dry winds continued from the north, and in the House " the noise, violence and clamour of Opposition" beat about the" fallen Melville. "Think," wrote the rejoicing Creevey, "of Pitt's situation—his right hand, Melville, lopped off—a superannuated Methodist at the head of the Admiralty in order to catch the votes of Wilberforce and Co. —all the fleets of France and Spain in motion—the finances at their utmost stretch—not an official person but Huskisson and Rose to do anything at their respective offices—public business multiplied by Opposition beyond all former example—and himself more averse to business daily—disunited with Addington—having quite lost his own character with a King perfectly mad and involving his Ministry in the damnedest scrapes upon the subject of expense."
²
Though more than a thousand gunboats and transports lay nine deep along the newly built quays at Boulogne, England had settled down into a state of curious apathy. She seemed content with the knowledge that Nelson had followed Villeneuve to the sugar islands. In fashionable society, "as gay, extravagant and as dissipated as ever," the

¹
Corbett, no,
147-53,
Mahan, II,
257.

²
Cre
evey, I,
36.

only serious topic of conversation was the resignation of Lord Sidmouth and the possibility of a Coalition between Pitt and Fox.
¹

On the last day of June an unconvoyed merchantman from Dominica brought tidings that Villeneuve had reached Martinique on May 16th. It seemed that no harm had been done beyond an attack on the Diamond Rock, and Nelson was known to be in pursuit. But unlike the public Lord Barham realised the significance of the news. As soon as the fearful Villeneuve heard of Nelson's arrival in the West Indies he would be sure to sail with all speed for Europe. He would make either for the Channel or Cadiz. By the one he would threaten the British Isles, by the other the Secret Expedition and the Mediterranean.

At that moment Cornwallis was holding Ganteaume's twenty-one battleships in Brest with twenty-two, Stirling Missiessy's returned five in Rochefort with an equal force, and Calder fourteen French and Spanish ships in Ferrol with twelve. Seven more British capital ships were in reserve in the Channel ports. Somewhere in the Atlantic Nelson's ten were in pursuit of Villeneuve's eighteen. A further eleven were on the West Indian stations, two were on their way there from Colling wood's squadron off Cadiz, and one lay on guard off Naples.
²

The weakest point was in the Straits. Here Collingwood, having been reinforced on June 22nd by the
Queen,
had detached Bickerton with three three-deckers to escort Craig's long-delayed transports past Cartagena. With his remaining five of the line he was holding in Cadiz two Spanish first-rates and two other battleships ready for sea and an unknown number fitting out. Though without news of Villeneuve's movements, he was fully alive to his danger.
"I
shall have all these fellows coming from the West Indies again," he wrote,' " unless they sail from there directly to Ireland, for this Bonaparte has as many tricks as a monkey. I believe their object in the West Indies to be less conquest than to draw our ships from home."
³

Confirmed in the same belief, Barham on July
7th
drew up a plan by which Cornwallis was to send ten battleships, or nearly half his force to Collingwood. But to guard against the risk of Villeneuve making for the Channel instead of Cadiz, Calder, having shown

¹
"Sat till half-past three in the morning," wrote the Speaker, "upon
...
the Duke of Atholl's claim for compensation in respect of his alleged loss by the inadequate price for which his rights in the Isle of Man were sold to the public in
1765.
Strange proceeding
to be debating twelve hours upon the inadequacy of a bargain settled forty years ago, at this time when hourly invasion is threatened." Colchester, II,
6.
See
also
idem,
II,
9, 14-15, 19;
Paget Brothers,
34
; Dudley,
28-9
; Granville, II,
74, 87
; H.
M. C. Dropmore
, VII,
283-4, 292.

²
Colchester,
n,
13;
Corbett,
178-9;
H.
M. C. Dropmore, VTI,
285-7.

³
Corbett,
175, 179-81, 185;
Upcott,
77.
Blockade
of
Brest,
II,
296.

himself off Ferrol, was to stretch north-north-west across the Bay with a cloud of outlying frigates, while Cornwallis, his depleted battle strength brought up to fifteen by three fresh vessels from England, was to cruise south-south-west from Ushant to meet him. If Villeneuve attempted to raise the blockade of either Ferrol or Brest, he would thus risk an encounter with twenty-seven capital ships—a force greatly superior to his own. Napoleon's idea that his Brest or Ferrol squadron would be able to join forces with Villeneuve at the crucial point and moment was based on a misunderstanding of naval warfare. For not only would it take time for the blockaded to discover that the blockaders had gone, but any wind favourable for the former would almost certainly be foul for the homecoming fleet. In anemography as much as in geography the blockaders were acting from interior lines.

But Barham's ingenious expedient was unnecessary. On the night of the
7th
a sloop from the West Indies anchored at Plymouth. All next day, while the Admiralty clerks were drafting the requisite orders, her captain was posting up the Exeter road. Towards midnight his post-chaise rattled over the Charing Cross cobblestones and drew up at the Admiralty door. He brought urgent dispatches from Nelson.

The story contained in Captain Bettesworth’s wallet was one unrelenting pursuit, expectation,
frustration and renewed pursuit. Nelson had covered the 3200 miles from the Straits to Barbados in little more than three weeks—an almost record average of 135 miles a day. With the trade wind astern blowing steady and strong, there had been little for the sailors to do except to steer. Only on the barnacled old
Superb,
with studding sail booms lashed to the yards and her crew and captain working while others slept, had the strain of the past two months continued unabated. Officers and men were on short allowance, but no one minded, for after two years of endurance and waiting they believed they were about to meet the enemy. "We are all half starved," wrote one of them, "and otherwise much inconvenienced by being so long away from port, but our recompense is that we are with Nelson."

At five o'clock on the afternoon of June
4th
the Fleet reached Barbados. A fast sloop, sent ahead, had already brought news of its coming. Since Villeneuve's arrival three weeks before, the island had been in a state of intense excitement:
"a
horseman does not come up quick to the door day or night," wrote Lady Nugent, from Jamaica, "but I tremble all over."
¹
At the moment Bridgetown was

¹
Nugent,
301.

agog with a message from Brigadier-General Brereton at St. Lucia that the Combined Fleet had been seen on May 29th steering south towards Trinidad.

All through the night of his arrival, at the urgent entreaty of the local Commander-in-Chief, Nelson embarked troops. By ten next morning he was on his way to Trinidad, taking with him two battleships of Cochrane's which he had found in the port. Five hours later he made the signal, "Prepare for Battle." As before the Nile every captain knew what was expected of him, for during the Atlantic crossing the tactics to be employed had been repeatedly discussed. No man could do wrong, the Admiral had told them, who laid his ship close on board the enemy and kept it there till the business was over. For though the Combined Fleet was nearly twice as large as his own, Nelson was confident he could annihilate it. "Mine is compact, theirs unwieldy," he wrote, "and, though a very pretty fiddle, I don't believe that either Gravina or Villeneuve know how to play upon it."
¹

At Tobago, sighted on June 6th, there was no word of the enemy. Next day, as the Fleet approached the Dragon's Mouth, the British outposts on Trinidad, mistaking its sails for Villeneuve's, fired the blockhouses and withdrew into the woods: at the sight, expectation in the oncoming ships hardened into certainty, only to be dashed by an empty roadstead. Brereton's intelligence had proved false. Without wasting an hour Nelson put about for Grenada and the North. Next day he learnt that his unsuspecting quarry, having captured the Diamond Rock on June 3rd, was still at Martinique on the 5th. Had he kept his course for that island—less than a hundred miles distant from Barbados—he would have encountered him on the very spot where Rodney had beaten De Grasse a quarter of a century before. " But for General Brereton's damned information," he wrote to his friend, Davison, " Nelson would have, been, living or dead, the greatest man that England ever saw."

Meanwhile Villeneuve had been in as great a state of apprehension as the planters he had come to ruin. On his arrival at Martinique on May 13th he had found that Missiessy had returned to France. Hoping daily for Ganteaume's appearance and the signal for his own return, he dared not commit himself to any major operation. One June 4th, after three thousand of his men had gone down with sickness, there arrived from France not Ganteaume but Magon with two battleships and orders to await the Brest Fleet for five more weeks and then, if there was still no sign of it, to sail for Ferrol,

¹
Corbett,
164;
Clarke and McArthur,
n,
408;
Austen,
136-8;
Nicolas, VI,
443;
Fortescue. V,
257;
Mahan, II,
161;
Nelson,
II,
298-9.

release the French and Spanish force held there by Calder, and with thirty-three sail of the line make for the Straits of Dover. There, he was assured, the Emperor would be waiting with the Grand Army.

As part of this terrifying programme Villeneuve was instructed to fill in his remaining time in the West Indies by capturing as many British islands as possible. With this intention he had sailed next day for Guadeloupe to embark troops for Barbuda,
¹
a small and, as he hoped easy, objective in the extreme north of the Leeward Islands. On his way there on June 8th, while Nelson was still three hundred miles to the south, he had the fortune to encounter a small convoy of sugar ships off the west coast of Antigua. Capturing fourteen of them, he learnt to his consternation that his terrible pursuer had anchored off Barbados four days before. From that moment the risk of missing Ganteaume in mid-Atlantic became negligible to the French Admiral compared with the infinitely more alarming risk of meeting Nelson. Ordering his frigates to take back the troops to Guadeloupe and rejoin him in the Azores, he sailed next morning for Ferrol.

When Nelson reached Antigua on the 12th he found that he was four days too late. Once more he was faced with the task of basing on a few fragmentary wisps of evidence a decision involving not only his career but the very existence of his country. If the French had gone to Jamaica and he. did not follow them, Britain's richest colony was lost; if they had gone to Europe, every ship would be needed in the Western Approaches or off Cadiz. Precipitate action would endanger the islands and two hundred sugar ships he had saved by his timely arrival; yet delay might jeopardise England herself. He was put out of his agony, just as he was about to return to Dominica, by news that the French troops, taken a week before from Guadeloupe, were disembarking. This satisfied him that Villeneuve did not intend to attack Jamaica. His last doubts were removed a few hours later by the arrival of the
Netley
schooner which had been escorting the captured convoy. Powerless to defend his charges against eighteen sail of the line, her young captain had kept the enemy under observation as long as he could and then returned to Antigua to report. When last seen the Combined Fleet, thirty-two strong, had been crowding away into the north-east.
²