Frigate Commander (42 page)

Moore resisted the pressure to try the cure at Cheltenham, but decided to go and visit his old and dear friend, James Currie, at Liverpool. Travelling by Post Chaise the journey took the best part of three days, and Moore arrived to find a changed city. His encounters at sea with Liverpool merchantmen had always impressed him with the commercial vitality of the place, but it had been fifteen years since he had last seen it, and he could not help remarking how much the city appeared to have flourished:

The society at Liverpool is not agreeable to me, but the picture which that great commercial town presents to a stranger is certainly very interesting. To a person who has no occupation there the residence of Liverpool cannot be very accommodating as all the inhabitants are busily engaged in their commercial affairs and an idle man is, of course, left entirely to himself for the whole day, but he may pass his evening better as the inhabitants are certainly very hospitable and much given to expensive entertainment.

Moore arrived in good spirits, feeling that in some way the journey had been beneficial for his constitution but he found his friend in poor health. Currie easily persuaded Moore to accompany him to Buxton where he wished to take the benefit of the mineral water baths. The next day the two men travelled to Buxton and took rooms at St Ann’s Hotel in the Crescent. Frustratingly for Moore, the weather was bad and it rained incessantly for the first few days so that he was able to see little of the countryside. When at last the rain eased, Moore rode to Chee Tor,

. . . a perpendicular rock in a most beautiful valley clothed with trees and shrubs through which the Wye, a rivulet here, runs in a beautiful, picturesque, winding way, on its course to join the Derwent.

Although they had planned to stay for just three weeks, the visit extended into July, and then into August, for Moore’s desire to leave the place had suddenly evaporated:

There is a person here who has given a charm to the place, and it will now require some resolution in me to leave it.

Nevertheless, on 16 August, the two men returned to Liverpool, though Moore was cursing himself all the way for leaving. He stayed a week at Liverpool, in emotional turmoil. He had fallen in love once more, and chided himself for being rash and imprudent. He had no wish to sacrifice his independence in a hurry or risk his future happiness on a whim. To prove to himself that he could escape this new attachment, he decided to travel north to Scotland. He rode to Moffat, the town nearest to Craigieburn, the property that he had nearly purchased and, while he was there, he impetuously purchased a property called Heathery Haugh

. . . a small place, . . . situated about a mile from the village of Moffat . . . Its situation is very pretty and may be made much of, if the improvements I propose making at it are directed by the eye of taste, I am building a cottage to replace the miserable Cabins which at present disgrace the place, and my present plan is to let it by the season when complete to any person frequenting the Well who may be allured by the situation and beauty of the place.

However, within days he was beginning to have doubts. Moore was a social animal, and there was very little ‘society’ in this part of Scotland. The nearest town where he thought he might find entertaining company was Dumfries, twenty-one miles away.

By 5 September, heavy autumn rain had set in, and Heathery Haugh and Moffat began to feel dismal and depressing; the romantic idyll had dissolved. Moore’s loneliness had exacerbated the situation, and he found himself thinking more and more about the young woman at Buxton. Within two weeks he was on horseback and riding south through heavy rain. His only regret was the rain which
‘. . . prevented me from seeing to advantage the sublime scenery of the lakes’.
Arriving at Buxton with the same impetuosity that had persuaded him to purchase Heathery Haugh, he engaged himself to the young woman. Then within a few days, he was on horseback once more, riding to Richmond. He arrived in high spirits, partly because he had completed the entire journey on horseback,
‘. . . a great proof of my improved health’
, and partly because he had determined to follow through his affair with the young lady at Buxton.

By the end of October, Moore’s rheumatism had returned. There was gloomy national news as well, as a downturn in negotiations with France over the future of the Island of Malta caused a panic in the City of London, sharply reducing the value of stocks. Moore believed that a resumption of war was inevitable:

. . . it would be better to go to war at once before we have given up all the important conquests that have cost the country so much blood and money. I sincerely wish for peace, as, independent of all other considerations, my health is in so precarious a state that the fatigue of professional employment would knock me up and in all probability completely ruin my constitution just as Nature seems to be struggling to restore it. And at the same time I could not bear to lie by when the Country was engaged in war. I hope we shall be able to avoid it with honour.

Moore had now been out of active service for just over twelve months. It was not unusual for officers who had not been at sea for many years to be given commands, but Moore was a conscientious officer and he was always worried that he might be losing touch with the skills and knowledge essential for command at sea:

I feel already as if I had forgotten the greatest part of the detail of my profession, and as if I should be at a loss how to act if I were immediately to proceed on service.

His hope was that once he was back on board a ship, it would all come back to him, like second nature, and he would restore his own confidence in his abilities

. . . as formerly when I was esteemed an efficient Officer and gained some degree of reputation . . . and trust to my zeal and experience that I shall be able to act as becomes me when the time for action arrives.

Towards the end of the year Moore moved from the comparative tranquillity of Richmond to London where

Professional men in the Army and navy, Literary characters, idlers distinguished for wit and humour, all may be met with at this time.

However, he was anxious not to be associated with the foppish urban set:

What is called fashionable society is extremely insipid and tiresome to me. I am sometimes amused as a spectator but never as an actor in it.

Although Moore had not seen his new love for some time, he received letters from her and was reassured about her feelings towards him, but he had also realized that marriage would mean giving up some of the freedom and pleasures of his bachelorhood. As 1802 closed, Moore found himself pondering the causes of the war with France, and the probability of renewed hostilities:

The boldest experiment in Politics that has ever been tried is the French Revolution, and it does not appear to me that the People at large have benefited much by the destruction of their old vicious Government, and their old errors and Prejudices. If the existing inhabitants are much happier, I believe few people will think the increase of happiness was worth the price it cost of blood and misery . . . The medium seems to me to be the best in almost everything. We must work with the tools we have . . . I see many faults in this much vaunted form of mixed Government of ours, but I have no confidence in the good effect that may be produced by their removal, for the most enlightened men see not all the results that may be produced by a great change. I by no means approve of the system of no change, but they should be put in force gently and with great caution, only removing what is immediately and grievously felt by the great body of the Nation.

Considering the current state of the navy, he foresaw trouble ahead. The war had been over for a year and yet many of the frigates and ships of the line still in commission were manned by men who had been pressed;

The consequence is that very great discontent prevails among the ships and many partial mutinies have taken place, and although they have been quelled and the Ringleaders punished, yet the disgust to the service is increased in the hearts of Seamen who have great reason to complain of being retained in the service so long after a peace in addition to the hardships of having been impressed during the War.

The only excuse the government could have for this state of affairs arose from the difficulty of finding enough men to serve on foreign stations;

This is very true but it is not at all satisfactory and is calculated to increase the dislike of the service in the Seamen in general as well as in those who immediately suffer.

He could not understand why, now that the government’s mind was not fully occupied with the war effort, it could not turn to analysing some of the lessons from the great mutinies at Spithead and the Nore. He found it supremely ironic that even on those two occasions, the country had been saved not by the government but

... by a fortunate concurrence of circumstances and by the general good disposition of the seamen themselves even in the midst of the excesses they had committed. It was not owing to a relaxation of discipline that the Seamen broke out into Mutiny, it was on board the best disciplined ships that it first appeared. No, it was owing to real grievances which they had long suffered, and it is real grievances which has again occasioned all the mutinies since the Peace.

Moore was not alone in this interpretation of the cause of the mutinies of 1797, and views such as these were helping to bring in new, more sympathetic ideas about the nature of command on board men-of-war.

By March 1803, Moore was convinced that a renewal of the war was imminent. Napoleon had been using aggressive language in his addresses to the French people and his diplomatic strategy seemed to be concentrating on isolating Britain from the other continental powers. On 12 March, Moore wrote in his journal:

Three days ago the Armament commenced, I wrote an official letter to the Admiralty offering my services,

adding rather ambiguously,

I hope I may not be appointed to a ship, which would put me to much inconvenience and involve me in expense.

But he firmly believed there was just cause for a new war:

It is a miserable business for France and for Europe, that after all that country has suffered in the cause of Liberty, after all the struggles and crimes of the Revolution, the whole should end in an established Military Despotism in the person of Bonaparte – a man certainly of unrivalled talents, but of boundless and insatiable ambition . . . Public opinion cannot now be known in France. There is no liberty of the Press and the People dare not discuss Politics. They are controlled by an immense Army which Bonaparte has hitherto had the art to keep in allegiance to him. . . . he depends on the Army.

For many people, the real worry was that the British government – satirically known as ‘The Ministry of all the Talents’ – was simply not up to the task of managing a new war. Moore also wondered about this:

There seems to be a pretty general opinion of the want of talent and energy of character of the present Ministry. They appear to be generally regarded as well meaning men of middling ability. I do not know whether or not this opinion is true, I know of no part of their conduct which has yet evinced weakness, but I wonder at their bearing so quietly in Parliament the broad hints they frequently receive to that effect.

By the middle of April 1803, there was a growing feeling that hostilities might be avoided, but the re-armament continued nevertheless. The political situation also seemed to be unstable, and there were rumours that there might be a change of administration with Pitt, Melville and others returning to power, while Addington might remain as Chancellor of the Exchequer;

I would really be sorry to see Pitt again at the Helm after he had so pitifully abandoned it, while the Country was involved in a war of his own making, on a mere pretext, for if the Catholic question was a sufficient cause for his resigning, it certainly should operate with equal force against his returning.
¹²⁰

On a more personal level, Moore’s romance came to a sudden end when both Moore and his fiancée realized how much her family was against the match. Meanwhile, a different issue caught the attention of London Society: the trial of Captain James Macnamara, commander of the frigate
Cerberus
, whom Moore had known for some years,

. . . a captain in the navy of acknowledged bravery who had distinguished himself in his profession, but who was little known in the circles of fashion.

On 6 April, Macnamara killed a Colonel Montgomery, ‘. . .
a very fashionable young man
’, in a duel at Chalk Farm, to the north of London. The duel arose from an argument which took place in Hyde Park. Macnamara’s Newfoundland dog
¹²¹
had become involved in a fight with another dog belonging to Montgomery. The two men exchanged angry words resulting in a duel that same evening. Both men were wounded, but the Colonel mortally so. The coroner found a verdict of manslaughter, and Macnamara was taken into custody. The trial attracted considerable attention in the navy because, in many ways, it became a trial between a representative of the navy on one side, and of fashionable society on the other. Moore attended to support Macnamara and provide him with a character reference. It was clear that in ‘Society’ Montgomery was considered with favour, whilst Macnamara