Nelson: The Essential Hero (11 page)

In only one letter dating from this period of his life do we catch a glimpse of the real Nelson, alone, and aboard his ship, and understand the monotony that made up so much of a sea-officer’s life.
Boreas
was refitting at English Harbour, Antigua, and something of the indolence of the island, the sweat-soaked sailors, the smell of fresh pitch in the seams, the distant sounds from the rope-walk, and the clunk of the caulker’s hammer, emerges. The letter was sent to Fanny Nisbet, and was dated ‘Monday (21 August) Seven in the Evening [1786]’:

As you begin to know something about Sailors, have you not often heard that salt water and absence always wash away love? Now I am such a heretic as not to believe that Faith; for behold, every morning since my arrival, I have had six pails of salt water at daylight poured upon my head, and instead of finding what the Seamen say to be true, I perceive the contrary effect; and if it goes on so contrary to the prescription, you must see me before my fixed time. At first, I bore absence tolerably, but now it is almost insupportable; and by and by I expect it will be quite so. But patience is a virtue; and I must exercise it upon this occasion whatever it costs my feelings. I am alone in the Commanding Officer’s house, while my ship is fitting, and from sunset until bedtime I have not a human creature to speak to; you will feel a little for me I think. I did not use to be over-fond of sitting alone. The moment old
Boreas
is habitable in my cabin, I shall fly to it, to avoid mosquitoes and melancholies. Hundreds of the former are now devouring me through my clothes. You will however find I am better [he still suffered from recurrent fever]; though when you see me, I shall be like an Egyptian mummy for the heat is intolerable. But I walk a mile out at night without fatigue and all day I am housed. A quart of goat’s milk is also taken every day, and I enjoy English sleep, always barring mosquitoes which all Frank’s care with my net cannot keep out at present. . . .

(Frank Lepee, who had been with Nelson on the Nicaraguan expedition, was later to accompany him to Norfolk.) ‘English sleep’, yes, that such as he had known at Burnham, was what he needed. He was constantly ill in the West Indies, ‘worn to a skeleton’ as he wrote to uncle Suckling in July; and several months later, to Captain Locker, that the doctor had ‘thought I was in a consumption, and quite gave me up’.

The arrival on the station of H.M.S.
Pegasus
under the command of Prince William Henry early in November gave him an impetus which — even if at times awkward for a devoted royalist - prevented him from relaxing into any form of languor, and indeed almost took his thoughts off his impending marriage. The Prince, of whom Nelson had expected so much (and to whose clearly apparent faults he turned a blind eye) was to prove something of a handful, and to require a great deal of tact in dealing with. The martinet that was latent in the Prince had surged to the fore under the influence of command. He was also a great gadabout and, as we learn from his medical officer, in May 1787 Prince William was on a mercury cure ‘for a sore I had contracted in a most extraordinary manner in my pursuit of the
Dames de Couleurs\
Less than a year later, in February 1788, his surgeon was to report to his senior officer Captain Elphinstone, who had suggested a further period in the West Indies for the Prince, that ‘I cannot recommend it for his Royal Highness to return where he has suffered so materially’. Clearly there were disadvantages in George III's admirable (on the surface of it) idea of having his son learn the hard trade of a sea-officer. There were nevertheless some who approved, and Frederick the Great rationalised: ‘As our young nobility in general never learn anything, they of course are exceedingly ignorant. In England one of the King’s sons, wishing to interest himself, has not scrupled to set out as a common sailor.’ The phrase which here betrays the Continental, aristocratic outlook towards the service of the sea is ‘common sailor’. But Frederick could also and rightly comment about the England which produced the Prince, as well as men like Nelson, that:

When you see how in this happy country the lowest and meanest member of society testifies the interest he takes in everything of a public nature, when you see how high and low, rich and poor, all concur in declaring their feelings and their convictions, how a carter, a common tar, a scavenger, is still a man, nay, an Englishman, - take my word for it you will feel yourself very differently affected from what you are when staring at our soldiers in their exercise in Berlin.

Nelson, concealing from Fanny any real feelings he may have had about the Prince’s conduct in the islands, could write on Christmas Eve 1786 that: ‘I fancy as many people were as happy to see His Royal Highness quit as they were to see him enter St John’s [Antigua], for another day or two’s racquet would have knocked some of the fair sex up. Three nights’ dancing was too much and never Broke up till near day. ... I will tell you much when we meet, for you never know the danger of putting too much upon paper.’ Later, on 1 January 1787, he confesses that he is worn out - being Senior Captain on the Leeward Islands station was no sinecure when the Prince was about: ‘I was in hopes to have been quiet all this week. Today we dine with Sir Thomas [Shirley]; tomorrow the Prince has a party; on Wednesday he gives a dinner in Saint John’s to the Regiment; in the evening is a Mulatto ball; on Thursday a cockfight, dine at Colonel Crosbie’s brother’s and a ball, on Friday somewhere but I forget; on Saturday at Mr. Byam’s the President.’ One great change in his fortune, however, was that the formerly detested Captain Nelson was now seen to be the close friend and confidant of a prince of the blood royal. That made all the difference, and doors that had been studiedly closed against him ever since the troubles over the Navigation Act were now thrown open, and hats were raised in streets where formerly heads would have been averted - or where, indeed, he would once have been thrown in jail if he had been so unwise as to land.

On the other hand, the Prince brought troubles with him. There was the affair of Lieutenant Schomberg, a knowledgeable thirty-four-year-old officer who had considerable previous West Indies experience and who had been appointed First Lieutenant of the
Pegasus
, to act discreetly as mentor to his twenty-two-year-old Captain. This was something that was far from the Prince’s taste, for he had a great deal of the Hanover autocrat in him, as well as a swaggering insouciance that is reminiscent of Mr Toad. The troubles aboard H.M.S.
Pegasus
were sadly brought to Nelson’s notice when he received a formal letter from her First Lieutenant asking for a court-martial, as his Captain had accused him of neglect of duty. Nelson was faced with a very awkward situation. He had Schomberg put under arrest, hoping for the arrival of the new Commander-in-Chief who would relieve him of responsibility : • at that moment, in any case, there were not enough senior officers available to form a court. He heard in the interim that other officers serving under the Prince were likewise on the verge of asking to be court-martialled. In the end, since no senior authority appeared on the scene to relieve him of an impossible situation, Nelson had the
Pegasus
transferred to Port Royal, Jamaica, where there was a commodore, and where the whole matter could be sorted out — or allowed to simmer down. He was later to be reproved by the Admiralty for his action, though this was little more than a formality, but by then he had yet other troubles to deal with. In the event, Schomberg, though superseded in his post, went on to become First Lieutenant in the
Barfleur
under Lord Hood (a man who certainly never tolerated incompetence or indeed anything else), and finally rose to become one of the Commissioners of the Navy Board.

Far more serious, as far as Nelson was concerned, was the case involving accusations laid by two merchants of Antigua about speculations by Crown officials in the Leeward Islands. They brought the matter to Nelson, since it was now well known that he would defend the rights of the Crown against all comers. This whole affair was to prove every whit as troublesome as the previous one had been, and dragged on for many months. In the end Nelson was finally justified and ‘as the Naval Storekeeper is punished by fine and imprisonment it is to be hoped a stop will by this means be put to further embezzlement’. It never was, of course, and - given the nature of mankind -never will be. But the parson’s son possessed a conscience, while the naval officer would never tolerate the greasy
mores
of landsmen, longshoremen, and civilians in general. Like most seamen he understood perfectly the simple peccadilloes of drunken sailors - though he would never tolerate indiscipline in any form - but he had no tolerance of corruption.

Quite apart from his health, always indifferent, if not bad, on this station, Nelson had found little happiness in the West Indies. He was only to revisit the area once again, and that was in the year of his death. Even then, he found (as Columbus had done centuries before him) that, in the final analysis, the islands yielded little or no luck. But, on the surface at least, his happiness was ensured on Sunday, 11 March 1787, when two twenty-eight-year-olds, Captain Horatio Nelson and Mrs Frances Nisbet, were married by the Rector of St John’s in President Herbert’s house, Montpelier. Prince William Henry, who earlier had jocularly teased Nelson with the remark that it was only ‘a great esteem’ which Nelson felt for Mrs Nisbet, and not that thing ‘which is vulgarly called love’, had broken his rule of never accepting private invitations and undertaken the role of father of the bride. The couple undoubtedly felt the honour of the presence of His Royal Highness in this capacity - though for different reasons. Both perhaps also felt a little uneasy: Mrs Nisbet because the bonhomie of Prince William could hardly disguise his basic cynicism; and Nelson because he must have felt some truth in the Prince’s jest. Had he not quoted the remark to Fanny, adding on his own account: ‘He is right, my love is founded on esteem, the only foundation that can make the passion last’ ? He was correct, some would say, but the words seem a trifle cool and measured coming from so young a man.

In May 1787 the
Boreas
, having completed her tour of duty in the West Indies, sailed from the Leeward Islands bound for Portsmouth, Fanny and her son travelling independently in a West India merchantman. Not long beforehand Nelson had written to his old friend Locker that ‘no man has had more illness or trouble on a Station than I have experienced; but let me lay a balance on the other side - I am married to an amiable woman, that far makes amends for everything: indeed till I married her I never knew happiness. And I am morally certain she will continue to make me a happy man for the rest of my days.’ Captain Pringle, a friend of Nelson’s since his days in the
Albemarle
, voiced another opinion : ‘The Navy, Sir,’ he remarked sadly, ‘yesterday lost one of its greatest ornaments, by Nelson’s marriage. It is a national loss that such an officer should marry; had it not been for that circumstance, I foresaw Nelson would become the greatest man in the Service.’

It
is
the silences that reveal. The whole of Nelson’s life during the five years which were to follow is compressed into two brief sentences in the ‘Sketch of My Life’, which he gave to John M‘Arthur in 1799. The first refers to the years 1787 : ‘And in March, this year, I married Frances Herbert Nisbet, widow of Dr Nisbet, of the Island of Nevis; by whom I have no children.’ The following sentence reads: ‘The
Boreas
being paid off at Sheerness, on November the 30th, I lived at Burnham Thorpe, county of Norfolk, in the Parsonage-house.’

It is true that the Victor of the Nile writing this abbreviated sketch in Port Mahon, Minorca, was only concerned with recording the outline - and the highlights - of his naval career. But it must seem strange that the man who could later add such superficially irrelevant items as that ‘his Sicilian Majesty presented me with a Sword magnificently enriched with diamonds’ should dismiss his marriage so briefly. The answer is contained in the fact that by 1799, when he wrote this outline, he had met and fallen in love with Emma Hamilton, and that for him his marriage was already over. An immense sadness - a bitterness even - lifts like a wave in the brief words, ‘by whom I have no children’.

If one were to judge solely by this laconic account, Horatio Nelson left the
Boreas
and immediately settled down to the quiet routine of life at Burnham Thorpe. This was far from the case, for the foreign situation was such that it looked as if war was yet again to break out between England and France, and the
Boreas
had to be revictualled for further potential service. And this time Nelson was not spared the troubles that so often attended the end of a commission, for the ship’s company was eager to be paid off and to enjoy some of the pleasures of home. Desertions were frequent and the names and descriptions of the men concerned had to be forwarded to the Admiralty. Nelson himself, no more than his crew, could not enjoy the pleasures of the shore or of seeing his wife. The
Boreas
was ordered to the Nore, and it was from here that he had to make arrangements for lodging Fanny and young Josiah in London. It was an unhappy time in his life, and the fact that the
Boreas
was detailed to act as a ‘receiving ship’ did not appeal to an officer who, it is clear, had earlier shown a dislike of the forcible impressment of men to serve the fleet. A receiving ship was one which was detailed to board all passing vessels, whether large or small, and take from them as many of the crew as possible, without actually endangering the seagoing abilities of the ship concerned. In effect, this meant leaving the boarded vessel so short of hands that she could do little but make for the nearest port. It was not until the end of November that, the alarm of war having died down, the
Boreas
was finally paid off and Nelson was free to join his wife. It is not insignificant, however, that at one moment during this period of service, when it seemed as if war was imminent, he had written : ‘If we are to-have a bustle, I do not want to come on shore; I begin to think I am fonder of the sea than ever.’