A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan - The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2)

A >> A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan >> The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2)

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35

Among the military duties that weighed upon Nelson, not the least was
the protection of British trade. The narrow waters of the
Mediterranean favored the operations of privateers, which did not have
to go far from their ports, and found shelter everywhere; for the
littoral states, in their weakness and insecurity, could but feebly
enforce neutrality either in their continental or insular territories.
In fact, both parties to the war, Great Britain and France, derived
from the infringement of neutrality advantages which checked their
remonstrances, and gave the feebler nations an apt retort, when taken
to task in their painful efforts to preserve an attitude that was
rather double-faced than neutral. If France, on the one hand, was
deriving a considerable revenue from Spanish subsidies, and subsisting
an army corps upon Neapolitan territory, Great Britain, on the other,
could scarcely have maintained her fleet in the Gulf of Lyons, if
unable to get fresh provisions and water from neutral ports; for, save
Gibraltar and Malta, she had none that was her own or allied. Under
these conditions, small privateers, often mere rowboats, but under the
colors of France or the Italian Republic, swarmed in every port and
inlet; in the Adriatic,--a deep, secluded pocket, particularly
favorable to marauding,--in the Ionian Islands, along the Barbary
coast, upon the shores of Spain, and especially in Sicily, whose
central position and extensive seaboard commanded every trade-route
east of the Balearics.

Nelson's correspondence is full of remonstrances addressed to the
various neutral states--including even Austria, whose shore-line on
the Adriatic was extensive--for their toleration of these abuses,
which rested ultimately upon the fear of Bonaparte. He has, also,
constant explanations to make to his own Government, or to British
ministers at the different Courts, of the acts of his cruisers in
destroying the depredators within neutral limits, when found
red-handed. He makes no apologies, but stands firmly by his officers,
who, when right, could always count upon his support in trouble. He
never left a man in the lurch, or damned him with faint approval. "The
protection afforded the enemy's privateers and rowboats in the
different neutral ports of these seas, so contrary to every known law
of neutrality, is extremely destructive of our commerce.... Although
their conduct is infamous, yet their doing wrong is no rule why we
should. There is a general principle which I have laid down for the
regulation of the officers' conduct under my command--which is never
to break the neutrality of any port or place; but never to consider as
neutral any place from whence an attack is allowed to be made. It is
certainly justifiable to attack any vessel in a place from whence she
makes an attack." "I very fully approve every part of Captain ----'s
conduct on the above occasion," he writes to the Admiralty in such a
case.

The supplying of convoys, therefore, was ceaseless, for the
depredations of the marauders were unending. "I am pulled to pieces by
the demands of merchants for convoys," Nelson said; and he recognized
that it must be so, for he entirely disapproved of even a fast-sailing
vessel attempting to make a passage unprotected. "I wrote to the
Admiralty for more cruisers until I was tired," he told Ball, "and
they left off answering those parts of my letters. The late Admiralty
thought I kept too many to the eastward of Sicily; the Smyrna folks
complain of me, so do the Adriatic, so they do between Cape de Gatte
and Gibraltar. If I had the vessels, I do assure you not one of them
should go prize-hunting: that I never have done, I am a poorer man
than the day I was ordered to the Mediterranean command, by upwards of
L1,000; but money I despise except as it is useful, and I expect my
prize money is embarked in the Toulon fleet." "I am distressed for
frigates," was his continual cry. "From Cape St. Vincent to the head
of the Adriatic I have only eight; which, with the service of watching
Toulon, and the necessary frigates with the fleet, are absolutely not
one half enough." For military duties, "frigates are the eyes of a
fleet. I want ten more than I have in order to watch that the French
should not escape me, and ten sloops besides, to do all duties." For
nine stations which ought to be filled, "I have but two frigates;
therefore, my dear Ball, have a little mercy, and do not think I have
neglected the protection of the trade of Malta." This was written soon
after joining the station, and he represents the number as diminishing
as time passed. "It is shameful!" he cries in a moment of intense
anxiety.

In this fewness of cruisers he was forced to keep his vessels
constantly on the go,--to the Levant, to the Adriatic, to Sicily, to
Italy,--scouring the coasts for privateers, gathering merchant ships
by driblets, picking up information, and at the end of the round
returning to Malta with their fractions of the large convoy. When this
was assembled, a frigate or a ship-of-the-line, with one or two
smaller ships of war, sailed with it for Gibraltar at a date fixed,
approximately, months before. Meanwhile, at the latter place a similar
process of collection had been going on from the ports of the western
Mediterranean, and, after the Malta convoy arrived, the whole started
together in charge of a division, composed usually of vessels of war
that had to return to England for repairs.

To arrange and maintain this complicated process, and to dovetail it
with the other necessary cruising duties, having in consideration
which ships should first go home, required careful study and long
foresight--infinite management, in fact. "The going on in the routine
of a station," he tells Ball, who seems to have trod on his toes, "if
interrupted, is like stopping a watch--the whole machine gets wrong.
If the Maidstone takes the convoy, and, when Agincourt arrives, there
is none for her or Thisbe, it puzzles me to know what orders to give
them. If they chace the convoy to Gibraltar, the Maidstone may have
gone on with it to England, and in that case, two ships, unless I
begin to give a new arrangement, will either go home without convoy,
or they must return [to Malta] in contradiction to the Admiralty's
orders to send them home; I am sure you see it in its true point of
view." "I dare not send a frigate home without a convoy," he says
later. "Not an officer in the service bows with more respect to the
orders of the Admiralty than myself," he writes St. Vincent; "but I am
sure you will agree with me, that if I form plans for the sending home
our convoys, and the clearing the different parts of the station from
privateers, and the other services requisite, and that the Admiralty
in some respects makes their arrangements, we must clash." Then he
points out how the Admiralty diverting a ship, unknown to him, has
tumbled over a whole train of services, like a child's row of blocks.

An extremely critical point in the homeward voyage was the first
hundred miles west of Gibraltar; and it was a greater thorn in
Nelson's side, because of a French seventy-four, the "Aigle," which
had succeeded in entering Cadiz just after he got off Toulon. For the
ordinary policing of that locality he assigned a division of three
frigates, under a Captain Gore, who possessed his confidence. "The
enemy's privateers and cruisers," he tells him, "are particularly
destructive to our trade passing the skirts of the station."
Privateering was thus reduced; but when a convoy sailed, he tried
always to have it accompanied through that stage by a ship of size
sufficient to grapple with the "Aigle." For a while, indeed, he placed
there an eighty-gun ship, but the gradual deterioration of his
squadron and the increase of Latouche Treville's obliged him to recall
her, and at times his anxiety was great; not the less because Gore,
like other frigate captains, entertained the fancy that his three
frigates might contend with a ship-of-the-line. "Your intentions of
attacking that ship with the small squadron under your command are
certainly very laudable; but I do not consider your force by any means
equal to it." The question of two or three small ships against one
large involves more considerations than number and weight of guns.
Unity of direction and thickness of sides--defensive strength, that
is--enter into the problem. As Hawke said, "Big ships take a good deal
of drubbing." Howe's opinion was the same as Nelson's; and Hardy,
Nelson's captain, said, "After what I have seen at Trafalgar, I am
satisfied it would be mere folly, and ought never to succeed."[74]
What Hardy saw at Trafalgar, however, was not frigates against
ships-of-the-line, but vessels of the latter class opposed, smaller
against greater.

It seems singular, with such a weak link in the chain of communication
from the Mediterranean to England, that the Admiralty, on the outbreak
of the war with Spain, in the latter part of 1804, should have divided
Nelson's command at this very point, leaving as a somewhat debatable
ground, for mutual jealousy, that through which valuable interests
must pass, and where they must be transferred. The reason and manner
of this division, impolitic and inopportune as it was, and bitterly as
Nelson resented it, seem to have been misunderstood. Convinced that he
could not endure another winter such as the last, he made a formal
application, about the middle of August, 1804, for permission to go
home for a while. "I consider the state of my health to be such as to
make it absolutely necessary that I should return to England to
re-establish it. Another winter such as the last, I feel myself unable
to stand against. A few months of quiet may enable me to serve again
next spring; and I believe that no officer is more anxious to serve
than myself." In accordance with this last intimation, which speaks
his whole heart, he wrote privately to the First Lord that he would
like to come back in the spring, if his health were restored, as he
believed it would be; and he assured him that his second, Bickerton,
whose rank did not entitle him to the chief command under ordinary
conditions, was perfectly fitted to hold it during his absence--in
short, to keep the place warm for his return.

Nelson knew that the Admiralty was besieged with admirals, many senior
to himself, seeking for employment, and that it would be very
difficult for it to resist the pressure for the vacancy in "my
favourite command," to resume which he was impelled by both his sense
of duty and his love of glory. He wrote therefore to Elliot, and to
the King of the Two Sicilies, in the same sense as he had to Melville,
recalling his well-tried devotion to the interests of that Court,
which a successor might not equally show, and suggesting that his
cause would be strengthened by an application for his return on the
part of the King. The latter consequently intimated to the British
Government that he hoped Lord Nelson would be sent back. He was, in
truth, so much agitated over the prospect of his going, that he
offered him a house in either Palermo or Naples, if he wished to
remain in the South to recruit; an offer which Elliot, equally uneasy,
urged him to accept.

The Government did exactly what was asked. Nelson received permission
to go to England, when he felt it necessary, leaving the command in
the hands of Bickerton; but at the same time the Admiralty had to meet
the rush of claimants for the vacancy, all the more pressing because
rumors were afloat of a Spanish war, which would make the
Mediterranean not only the most important, but, in prize-money, the
most lucrative command. Among the applicants was Sir John Orde, who
had been nursing a technical grievance ever since he had been passed
over, in Nelson's favor, for the command of the detachment with which
the Battle of the Nile was fought. Nelson's leave was issued on the
6th of October, and on the 26th Orde was given a small squadron--five
ships-of-the-line--to blockade Cadiz. Being senior to Nelson, and of
course to Bickerton, he could only have this position by reducing the
latter's station, which had extended to Cape Finisterre. The line
between the two commands was drawn at the Straits' mouth, a rather
vague phrase, but Gibraltar was left with Nelson. Orde thus got the
station for prize-money, and Nelson that for honor, which from youth
until now he most valued. "The arrangement," wrote his friend, Lord
Radstock, "will be a death-stroke to his hopes of the galleons; but as
your chief has ever showed himself to be as great a despiser of riches
as he is a lover of glory, I am fully convinced in my own mind that he
would sooner defeat the French fleet than capture fifty galleons."

Nevertheless, Nelson was sorely aggrieved, and complained bitterly to
his correspondents. "I have learnt not to be surprised at anything;
but the sending an officer to such a point, to take, if it is a
Spanish war, the whole harvest, after all my trials (God knows
unprofitable enough! for I am a much poorer man than when we started
in the Amphion,) seems a little hard: but _patienza_." "He is sent off
Cadiz to reap the golden harvest, as Campbell was to reap my sugar
harvest. It's very odd, two Admiralties to treat me so: surely I have
dreamt that I have 'done the State some service.' But never mind; I am
superior to those who could treat me so." His contempt for money,
however acquired, except as a secondary consideration, remained
unchanged. "I believe I attend more to the French fleet than making
captures; but what I have, I can say as old Haddock said, 'it never
cost a sailor a tear, nor the nation a farthing.' This thought is far
better than prize-money;--not that I despise money--quite the
contrary, I wish I had one hundred thousand pounds this moment." "I am
keeping as many frigates as possible round me," he wrote to his friend
Ball, "for I know the value of them on the day of battle: and compared
with that day, what signifies any prizes they might take?"[75] Nor did
such utterances stand alone. "I hope war with Spain may be avoided,"
he wrote. "I want not riches at such a dreadful price. Peace for our
Country is all I wish to fight for,--I mean, of course, an honourable
one, without which it cannot be a secure one." But his outlays were
very heavy. Besides the L1,800 annually paid to Lady Nelson, he gave
Lady Hamilton L1,200 a year, exclusive of what was spent on the house
and grounds at Merton; and it may be inferred from Dr. Gillespie that
the cost of the cabin mess, beyond the table money allowed by the
Government, was assumed by him. He himself said, early in the cruise,
"Unless we have a Spanish war, I shall live here at a great expense,
although Mr. Chevalier [his steward] takes every care." "God knows, in
my own person, I spend as little money as any man; but you[76] know I
love to give away."

That he was thus sore was most natural; but it was also natural that
the Government should expect, in view of his strong representations
about his health, that the three weeks between the issuing his leave
and Orde's orders would have insured his being on his way home, before
the latter reached his station. Had things fallen out so, it would not
have been Nelson, the exceptional hero of exceptional services, but
Bickerton, a man with no peculiar claims as yet, who would have lost
the prize-money; for Nelson himself had just won a suit against St.
Vincent, which established that the moment a commander-in-chief left
his station, his right lapsed, and that of the next flag-officer
commenced. Nor was the division of the station an unprecedented
measure. It had been extended from the Straits to Cape Finisterre at
the time St. Vincent withdrew from the Mediterranean, in 1796; and in
1802, when Lord Keith asked for additional aids, on account of the
enormous administrative work, the Admiralty made of the request a
pretext for restricting his field to the Mediterranean, a step which
Keith successfully resisted.

Before Nelson received his leave he had begun to change his mind about
going home. This was due, partly, to a slight betterment in his
health, which he at this time mentions; chiefly, it would seem, to the
prospects of a Spanish war. This, by doubling the number of his
enemies and the quarters whence they might come, contributed to the
pleasurable excitement that was always a tonic to his physical frame,
and roused the eager desire for conspicuous action, which was his most
prominent passion. Indications also assured him that the expectation
of the French coming out, in which appearances had so often deceived
him, was now on the point of being realized; that Bonaparte's
projects, whatever they were, were approaching maturity. His "guess,"
founded on the reports before him, was wonderfully penetrative. He did
not see all the way through the French mill-stone, but he saw very
deep into it; his inference, indeed, was one in which intuition and
sagacity bore equal shares. "If the Russians continue increasing their
naval force in this country [that is, in the eastern Mediterranean], I
do not think the French will venture to the eastward; therefore, I
rather expect they will, as the year advances, try to get out of the
straits; and should they accomplish it with 7,000 troops on board, I
am sure we should lose half our West India Islands, for I think they
would go there, and not to Ireland. Whatever may be their destination,
I shall certainly follow, be it even to the East Indies." The last
allusion is interesting, for it shows the wide flight of his
speculations, which had found utterance before in the casual remark
that his ships were provisioned for a voyage to Madras; and, even as a
guess, it struck perilously near one of Bonaparte's purposes. The
splendid decision, formulated so long before the case arose, to follow
wherever they went, held in its womb the germ of the great campaign of
Trafalgar; while in the surmise that the Toulon fleet was bound to the
West Indies, the arrow of conjecture had gone straight to the
bull's-eye.

In this same letter, addressed to General Villettes, at Malta,
formerly his coadjutor at the siege of Bastia, Nelson, in the intimacy
of friendship, reveals what was to him at once the secret of health
and the fulfilment of desire; the congenial atmosphere in which his
being throve, and expanded to fulfil the limits of his genius. "Such a
pursuit would do more, perhaps, towards restoring me to health than
all the doctors; but I fear" (his application for leave having gone
in) "this is reserved for some happier man. Not that I complain; I
have had a good race of glory, but we are never satisfied, although I
hope I am duly thankful for the past; but one cannot help, being at
sea, longing for a little more." "I hope," he had written a few months
earlier to Lord Minto, "some day, very soon, to fulfil the warmest
wishes of my Country and expectations of my friends. I hope you may be
able, at some debate, to say, as your partiality has said before,
'Nelson has done more than he has done before;' I can assure you it
shall be a stimulus to my exertion on the day of battle.... Whatever
happens, I have run a glorious race."

On the 12th of October Nelson received a piece of news which elicited
instantaneously a flash of action, illustrative at once of the
promptness of his decisions and of the briskness of temper that has
been noted already. A letter arrived from Captain Gore, commanding the
detachment outside of the Straits, that two frigates, sent from the
Brest squadron by Admiral Cornwallis, had arrived, with a captain
senior to himself, who had taken him under his orders, and carried two
of Nelson's frigates off Cadiz to intercept the Spanish treasure-fleet
expected there from America. Cornwallis's action had been taken by
orders from England, but no communication to that effect, either from
him or from the Admiralty, reached Nelson at this moment. Astounded by
a measure which could scarcely fail to cause war, and convinced, as he
said, that Spain had no wish to go to war with Great Britain, he gave
himself a night to pause; but early next day he wrote to the
Admiralty, intimating pretty plainly that, if done by its direction,
this was not the way the commander of the Mediterranean fleet should
receive word of so momentous a step taken in his district, while to
Gore he sent emphatic orders to disobey Cornwallis, although the
latter was Nelson's senior. Summing up with admirable lucidity the
facts before him, and thereby proving that the impression under which
Cornwallis's action probably was taken was erroneous, he said: "Unless
you have much weightier reasons than the order of Admiral Cornwallis,
or that you receive orders from the Admiralty, it is my most positive
directions that neither you, or any ship under your orders, do molest
or interrupt in any manner the lawful commerce of Spain, with whom we
are at perfect peace and amity."

It is permissible, because instructive, to note that in this order,
while Nelson amply provides for discretion on the part of his
subordinate, he throws the full weight of his authority on the
difficult horn of a possible dilemma, the act--so momentous to an
officer--of disobedience to a present superior; in this case the
captain sent by Cornwallis. Contrast this with the Government's orders
to the commander of the troops at Malta, when it wished him to send a
garrison to Messina.[77] Instead of saying, "You will send so many
men, _unless_ you think you _cannot_ spare them," its orders ran:
"You will send, _if_ you think you _can_ spare them." Of course, as
Nelson invariably experienced, an officer addressed in the latter
style found always a lion in his path. So his orders to Gore were not,
"Obey, _if_" but "Disobey, _unless_;" and Gore knew, as every man in
the Mediterranean knew by long trial, that, if he disobeyed, he would
have at his back, through thick and thin, the first sea-officer in
Great Britain. But Nelson's orders were always stamped with the
positive, daring, lucid character of his genius and its conceptions;
and so, except in unworthy hands, they were fulfilled in spirit as
well as in letter.

An interesting illustration of this trenchant clearness is to be found
in instructions given to the captain of the "Donegal," an eighty-gun
ship, sent under very critical circumstances to cruise off Cadiz, in
September, 1803. It appears to the author not only characteristic of
Nelson, but a perfect example of the kind of directions a junior would
wish to have in a difficult case, when desirous to carry out the
spirit of his superior's orders. It explains itself.

26th September, 1803.

TO CAPTAIN SIR RICHARD JOHN STRACHAN, BART., H.M. SHIP DONEGAL.

The occurrences which pass every day in Spain forbode, I fancy,
a speedy War with England; therefore it becomes proper for me to
put you on your guard, and advise you how to act under
particular circumstances. By looking at the former line of
conduct on the part of Spain, which she followed just before the
commencement of the last War, we may naturally expect the same
events to happen. The French Admiral Richery was in Cadiz,
blocked up by Admiral Man; on August the 22nd, they came to sea,
attended by the Spanish Fleet, which saw the French safe beyond
St. Vincent, and returned into Cadiz. Admiral Man very properly
did not choose to attack Admiral Richery under such an escort.
This is a prelude to what I must request your strict attention
to; at the same time, I am fully aware that you must be guided,
in some measure, by actual circumstances.

I think it very probable, even before Spain breaks with us,
that they may send a Ship or two of the Line to see L'Aigle
round Cape St. Vincent; and that if you attack her in their
presence, they may attack you; and giving them possession of the
Donegal, would be more than either you or I should wish,
therefore I am certain it must be very comfortable for you to
know my sentiments. From what you hear in Cadiz, you will judge
how far you may venture yourself in company with a Spanish
Squadron; but if you are of opinion that you may trust yourself
near them, keeping certainly out of gun-shot, send your Boat
with a letter to the Spanish Commodore, and desire to know
whether he means to defend the French Ships; and get his answer
in writing, and have it as plain as possible. If it be 'yes,
that he will fire at you if you attack the French under his
protection,' then, if you have force enough, make your attack on
the whole body, and take them all if you can; for I should
consider such an answer as a perfect Declaration of War. If you
are too weak for such an attack, you must desist; but you
certainly are fully authorized to take the Ships of Spain
whenever you meet them. Should the answer be ambiguous, you must
then act as your judgment may direct you, and I am sure that
will be very proper. Only recollect, that it would be much
better to let the French Ships escape, than to run too great a
risk of losing the Donegal, yourself, and the Ship's company.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35