The Life of Nelson, Volume 2

Through such difficulties in front, and such clamor in the rear, Nelson pursued his steadfast way, in anguish of spirit, but constant still in mind. "I am not made to despair," he said to Melville, "what man can do shall be done. I have marked out for myself a decided line of conduct, and I shall follow it well up; although I have now before me a letter from the physician of the fleet, enforcing my return to England before the hot months." "Brokenhearted as I am, at the escape of the Toulon fleet," he tells the governor of Gibraltar, "yet it cannot prevent my thinking of all the points intrusted to my care, amongst which Gibraltar stands prominent." "My good fortune seems flown away," he cries out to Ball. "I cannot get a fair wind, or even a side wind. Dead foul!—dead foul! But my mind is fully made up what to do when I leave the Straits, supposing there is no certain information of the enemy's destination. I believe this ill-luck will go near to kill me; but as these are times for exertions, I must not be cast down, whatever I feel." A week later, on the 26th of April, he complains: "From the 9th I have been using every effort to get down the Mediterranean, but to this day we are very little advanced. From March 26th, we have had nothing like a Levanter,96 except for the French fleet. I have never been one week without one, until this very important moment. It has half killed me; but fretting is of no use." On the 1st of May he wrote to the Admiralty, "I have as yet heard nothing of the enemy;" beyond, of course, the fact of their having passed the Straits.

On the 4th of May the squadron was off Tetuan, on the African coast, a little east of Gibraltar, and, as the wind was too foul for progress, Nelson, ever watchful over supplies, determined to stop for water and fresh beef, which the place afforded. There he was joined by the frigate "Decade" from Gibraltar, and for the first time, apparently, received a rumor that the allied fleets had gone to the West Indies. He complains, certainly not unreasonably, and apparently not unjustly, that Sir John Orde, who had seen the French arrive off Cadiz, had not dogged their track and ascertained their route; a feat certainly not beyond British seamanship and daring, under the management of a dozen men that could be named off-hand. "I believe my ill luck is to go on for a longer time, and I now much fear that Sir John Orde has not sent his small ships to watch the enemy's fleet, and ordered them to return to the Straits mouth, to give me information, that I might know how to direct my proceedings: for I cannot very properly run to the West Indies, without something beyond mere surmise; and if I defer my departure, Jamaica may be lost. Indeed, as they have a month's start of me, I see no prospect of getting out time enough to prevent much mischief from being done. However, I shall take all matters into my most serious consideration, and shall do that which seemeth best under all circumstances." "I am like to have a West India trip," he wrote to Keats, one of his favorite captains; "but that I don't mind, if I can but get at them."

The wind hauling somewhat to the southward on the 5th, allowed the fleet to lay a course for Gibraltar. The operation of getting bullocks was stopped at once, and the ships weighed. In this brief stay, the water of the fleet had been completed and another transport cleared. Next day Gibraltar was reached. The wind, westerly still, though fair for this stretch, remained foul for beating out of the Straits against a current which ever sets to the eastward; and many of the officers, presuming on a continuance of the weather that had so long baffled them, hurried their washing ashore. Nelson, however, keenly vigilant and with long experience, saw indications of a change. "Off went a gun from the Victory, and up went the Blue Peter,97 whilst the Admiral paced the deck in a hurry, with anxious steps, and impatient of a moment's delay. The officers said, 'Here is one of Nelson's mad pranks.' But he was right."98 The wind came fair, a condition with which the great admiral never trifled. Five hours after the anchors dropped they were again at the bows, and the fleet at last standing out of the Mediterranean; the transports in tow of the ships of war. Nelson's resolve was fast forming to go to the West Indies. In fact, at Tetuan, acting upon this possibility, he had given conditional orders to Bickerton to remain in command of the Mediterranean squadron, assigning to that service half a dozen frigates and double that number of smaller cruisers, and had transferred to him all station papers necessary for his guidance,—a promptness of decision which sufficiently shows one of the chief secrets of his greatness. "If I fail," said he to Dr. Scott, "if they are not gone to the West Indies, I shall be blamed: to be burnt in effigy or Westminster Abbey is my alternative." Evidently he was not unmindful of the fickle breath of popular favor, whose fluctuations Radstock was noting. Dr. Scott, who witnessed his chief's bearing at this time, always considered that he never exhibited greater magnanimity than in this resolution, which Jurien de la Gravière also has called one of his finest inspirations.

Great, indeed, was his promptitude, alike in decision and in act; but he was no less great in his delays, in the curb he placed on his natural impetuosity. "God only knows, my dear friend," he wrote at this moment to Davison, "what I have suffered by not getting at the enemy's fleet;" but, in all his impatience, he would not start on that long voyage until he had exhausted every possibility of further enlightenment. "Perseverance and patience," he said, "may do much;" but he did not separate the one from the other, in deed or in word. Circumspection was in him as marked a trait as ardor. "I was in great hopes," he wrote the Admiralty, "that some of Sir John Orde's frigates would have arrived at Gibraltar, from watching the destination of the enemy, from whom I should have derived information of the route the enemy had taken, but none had arrived." Up to April 27th nothing had been heard of them at Lisbon. "I am now pushing off Cape St. Vincent, and hope that is the station to which Sir John Orde may have directed his frigates to return from watching the route of the enemy. If nothing is heard there, I shall probably think the rumours which are spread are true, that their destination is the West Indies, and in that case think it my duty to follow them." "I am as much in the dark as ever," he wrote on the same date, May 7th, to Nepean, one of the puisne lords. "If I hear nothing, I shall proceed to the West Indies."

The wind continued fair for nearly forty-eight hours, when it again became westerly; but the fleet was now in the Atlantic. On the 9th of May the "Amazon" rejoined, bringing a letter from another ship of war, which enclosed a report gathered from an American brig that had left Cadiz on the 2d. According to this, while there were in Cadiz diverse rumors as to the destination of the allied fleets, the one most generally accepted was that they were bound to the West Indies. That night the fleet anchored in Lagos Bay, to the eastward of Cape St. Vincent, and the unending work of discharging transports was again resumed. Nelson, shortly before leaving Gibraltar, had received official notification that a convoy carrying five thousand troops was on its way to the Mediterranean, and would depend upon him for protection. He felt it necessary to await this in his present position, and he utilized the time by preparing for a very long chase.

At Lagos, Rear-Admiral Campbell of the Portuguese Navy, who had served with the British in the Mediterranean six years before, visited the "Victory," and certain intelligence that Villeneuve was gone to the West Indies was by him given to Nelson. The latter had now all the confirmation needed, by such an one as he, to decide upon his line of action. "My lot is cast, my dear Ball, and I am going to the West Indies, where, although I am late, yet chance may have given them a bad passage, and me a good one: I must hope the best." "Disappointment has worn me to a skeleton," he writes to his late junior in the Mediterranean, Campbell, "and I am in good truth, very, very far from well." "If I had not been in pursuit of the enemy's fleet, I should have been at this moment in England, but my health, or even my life, must not come into consideration at this important crisis; for, however I may be called unfortunate, it never shall be said that I have been neglectful of my duty, or spared myself." "It will not be supposed I am on a party of pleasure," he wrote to the Secretary of the Admiralty, "running after eighteen sail of the line with ten, and that to the West Indies;" but, he summed up his feelings to Davison, "Salt beef and the French fleet, is far preferable to roast beef and champagne without them."

On the 10th of May only was his purpose finally and absolutely formed, for on that day he sent a sloop to Barbadoes, his intended point of arrival, to announce his coming; requesting that an embargo might be laid at once on all vessels in port, to prevent the news reaching the enemy at Martinique or elsewhere. In the morning of the 11th the fleet weighed, and at 4 P.M. the expedition from England arrived. It was accompanied by two ships-of-the-line, to which Nelson joined a third, the "Royal Sovereign," which sailed so badly, from the state of her bottom, that she would retard a movement already too long delayed. At seven that evening the fleet was under full sail for the West Indies.

The voyage across was uneventful; the ships, as customary for this passage, stood to the southward and westward into the trade winds, under whose steady impulse they advanced at a daily average speed of one hundred and thirty-five miles, or between five and six miles an hour. This rate, however, was a mean between considerable extremes,—a rate of nine miles being at times attained. The slackest winds, which brought down the average, are found before reaching the trades, and Nelson utilized this period to transmit to the fleet his general plan for action, in case he found the allies at sea. The manner in which this was conveyed to the individual ships is an interesting incident. The speed of the fleet is necessarily that of its slowest member; the faster ships, therefore, have continually a reserve, which they may at any moment bring into play. The orders being prepared, a frigate captain was called on board the "Victory" and received them. Returning to his own vessel, he made all sail until on the bow99 of one of the ships-of-the-line. Deadening the way of the frigate, a boat was dropped in the water and had only to pull alongside the other vessel as it came up. The frigate remained slowed until passed, and the boat, having delivered its letter, came easily alongside again,—the whole operation being thus conducted with the least expenditure of time and exertion.100

There was in the fleet one ship that had been steadily in commission since 1801, and was now in very shaky condition. This was the "Superb," seventy-four. She had only been kept out by the extreme exertions of her commander, Keats, one of the most distinguished captains of the day, and he had entreated that he should not be sent away now, when the moment of battle seemed near. By a singular irony of fate, this zealous insistence caused him to miss Trafalgar, at which the "Royal Sovereign," that parted at Lagos, was present, repaired and recoppered,—a new ship. Keats, whose energy and readiness made him a great favorite with Nelson, obtained permission not to stop when other ships did, but always to carry a press of sail; and he lashed his studding-sail booms to the yards, as the constant direction of the trade-winds allows them to be carried steadily. Notwithstanding all that could be done, the "Superb" seems to have set the pace, and slower than could have been wished; which drew from Nelson's customary kindly thoughtfulness a few lines too characteristic to be omitted.

MY DEAR KEATS,—I am fearful that you may think that the Superb does not go so fast as I could wish. However that may be, (for if we all went ten knots, I should not think it fast enough,) yet I would have you be assured that I know and feel that the Superb does all which is possible for a ship to accomplish; and I desire that you will not fret upon the occasion.... Whatever may happen, believe me ever, my dear Keats, your most obliged and sincere friend,

NELSON AND BRONTE.

A week seems to have elapsed before he could get a suitable opportunity for sending this, and he then, on the 27th of May, added: "Our passage, although not very quick, has been far from a bad one;" and he thought that they would gain fourteen days upon the allies. The actual gain was ten, the latter being thirty-four days from Cadiz to Martinique, the British twenty-four to Barbadoes. The enemy were therefore three weeks in the West Indies before Nelson arrived; but in that time they neither accomplished nor undertook anything but the recapture of Diamond Rock, a precipitous islet off the south end of Martinique, which the British had held for some time, to the great annoyance of the main island.

Reaching Barbadoes on the afternoon of June 4th, Nelson found that the day before information had been received from General Brereton, commanding the troops at Santa Lucia, that the allied fleets had passed there, going south, during the night of May 28-29. The intelligence was so circumstantial that it compelled respect, coming from the quarter it did. "There is not a doubt in any of the Admirals' or Generals' minds," wrote Nelson to the Admiralty, in the despatch announcing his arrival, "but that Tobago and Trinidada are the enemy's objects." Nelson himself was sceptical,—the improbability seemed great to his sound military perceptions; but, confident as he was in his own conclusions in dilemmas, his mind was too sane and well balanced to refuse direct and credible evidence. Summing up the situation with lamentations, six weeks later, he said to Davison: "When I follow my own head, I am, in general, much more correct in my judgment, than following the opinion of others. I resisted the opinion of General Brereton's information till it would have been the height of presumption to have carried my disbelief further. I could not, in the face of generals and admirals, go N.W., when it was apparently clear that the enemy had gone south." His purpose had been not to anchor, but to pick up such ships-of-the-line as he found there,—two seventy-fours,101 as it turned out,—and to proceed with them to Martinique, which he naturally assumed to be the enemy's headquarters. As it was, receiving a pressing request from the commanding general at Barbadoes to let him accompany the fleet with two thousand troops, he anchored in Carlisle Bay at 5 P.M. At half-past nine the next morning he was again under way for Trinidad. Some curious misunderstandings maintained this mistaken impression as to the enemy's actions, until communication with Trinidad was had on the evening of June 7th. It was found then that no hostile force had appeared, although the British fleet for a moment had been believed to be such.

Nelson at once started north again. A report reached him that a second squadron, of fourteen French and Spanish ships from Ferrol, had arrived at Martinique. He said frankly that he thought this very doubtful, but added proudly: "Powerful as their force may be, they shall not with impunity make any great attacks. Mine is compact, theirs must be unwieldy, and although a very pretty fiddle, I don't believe that either Gravina or Villeneuve know how to play upon it." On the 9th he for the first time got accurate information. An official letter from Dominica102 announced that eighteen ships-of-the-line, with smaller vessels, had passed there on the 6th of June. But for the false tidings which on the 4th had led him, first to pause, and then to take a wrong direction, Nelson argued, and not unjustly, that he would have overtaken them at this point, a bare hundred miles from Barbadoes. "But for wrong information, I should have fought the battle on June 6th where Rodney fought his." The famous victory of the latter was immediately north of Dominica, by which name it is known in French naval history. "There would have been no occasion for opinions," wrote Nelson wrathfully, as he thought of his long anxieties, and the narrow margin by which he failed, "had not General Brereton sent his damned intelligence from St. Lucia; nor would I have received it to have acted by it, but that I was assured that his information was very correct. It has almost broke my heart, but I must not despair." It was hard to have borne so much, and then to miss success from such a cause. "Brereton's wrong information could not be doubted," he told his intimates, "and by following it, I lost the opportunity of fighting the enemy." "What a race I have run after these fellows; but God is just, and I may be repaid for all my moments of anxiety."

When Villeneuve, with his ill-trained and sickly103 fleet, left Martinique on the 4th of June, he had, of course, no knowledge of Nelson's approach. Nearly up to that date it was not known, even in London, where the latter had gone. A frigate had reached the French admiral on the 29th of May, with orders from Napoleon to make some attempts against the British islands during the time he was awaiting the Brest squadron. For this reason he sailed, and just outside the harbor was joined by two ships from France, raising his force to twenty of the line. He steered north, intending to gain to windward, and thence return upon Barbadoes, his first proposed conquest. On the 8th of June, off Antigua, were captured fourteen British merchant-ships, which had imprudently put to sea from that island. From these Villeneuve got a report that Nelson had arrived with fourteen ships-of-the-line, to which his imagination added five he believed to be at Barbadoes. He decided at once to return to Europe, abandoning all his projects against the British possessions. Transferring hastily a number of troops to frigates, as garrisons for the French islands, he sailed the next day for the northward to gain the westerly winds which prevail in the higher latitudes. Of the forty days he was to remain in the West Indies—reduced to thirty-five by subsequent instructions—only twenty-six had passed. Whatever else might result in the future, Nelson was justified in claiming that his pursuit, effected under such discouragements, had driven the enemy out of the West Indies, saved the islands, and, as he added, two hundred sail of sugar ships. Only extreme imprudence, he fairly maintained, was responsible for the loss of the fourteen from Antigua.

Nelson himself was off Antigua on the 12th of June, exactly one week after he left Barbadoes. There he received all the information that has just been mentioned as to the enemy's movements. A rapid decision was necessary, if he might hope yet to overtake his fortune, and to baffle finally the objects of the allies, whatever they might be. "I must be satisfied they have bent their course for Europe before I push after them, which will be to the Straits' mouth;" but later in the same day he has learned that they were standing to the northward when last seen, and had sent back their troops to Guadaloupe, therefore, "I hope to sail in the morning after them for the Straits' mouth." That night the troops were landed, and a brig of war, the "Curieux," was despatched to England with word of his intentions. At the same time, while believing the allies were bound back to the Mediterranean, he recognized that it was possible they might be going farther north, to one of the Biscay ports, and consequently took measures to notify the commanding officer off Ferrol to be on his guard. The frigate charged with this communication was kept with the fleet until the 19th, by which time he had obtained at sea additional and more precise knowledge of Villeneuve's direction. This important warning was duly received, and in advance of the enemy's appearance, by the admiral for whom it was intended.

In taking this second decision, to abandon the West Indies once more to themselves, as a month before he had abandoned the Mediterranean, Nelson had to rely only upon his own natural sagacity and practised judgment. "I hear all, and even feel obliged, for all is meant as kindness to me, that I should get at them. In this diversity of opinions I may as well follow my own, which is, that the Spaniards are gone to the Havannah, and that the French will either stand for Cadiz or Toulon—I feel most inclined to the latter place; and then they may fancy that they will get to Egypt without any interruption." "So far from being infallible, like the Pope, I believe my opinions to be very fallible, and therefore I may be mistaken that the enemy's fleet has gone to Europe; but I cannot bring myself to think otherwise, notwithstanding the variety of opinions which different people of good judgment form."

Still, as before, his judgments, if rapid, are not precipitate. Though characterized by even more of insight than of reasoning, no conditions are left out of sight, nor, as he declared, was a deaf ear turned to any suggestion. Upon the whole, one is more struck by the accuracy of the inferences than by the antecedent processes as summarized by himself; yet the weight of evidence will be found on the side he espouses. Erroneous in particulars, the general conclusions upon which he bases his future course are justified, not only by the results now known to us, but to impartial review of their probability at the moment. Most impressive of all, however, is the strength of conviction, which lifts him from the plane of doubt, where unaided reason alone would leave him, to that of unhesitating action, incapable of looking backward. In the most complete presentation of all his views, the one he wished brought before the Prime Minister, if his conduct on this momentous occasion were called in question, he ends thus: "My opinion is firm as a rock, that some cause, orders, or inability to perform any service in these seas, has made them resolve to proceed direct for Europe, sending the Spanish ships to the Havannah." It is such conviction, in which opinion rather possesses a man than is possessed by him, that exalts genius above talent, and imbues faith with a power which reason has not in her gift.

There were among his conclusions certain ones which placed Nelson's mind, however fretted by disappointment, at ease concerning any future harm the enemy might be able to do. Another wreath of laurel, which seemed almost within his grasp, had indeed evaded him, and no man felt more keenly such a loss; but he was reasonably sure that, if Villeneuve were gone to Europe, he could not outstrip pursuit by long enough to do much harm. The harassing fear, which he had borne through the long beat down the Mediterranean and the retarded voyage to Martinique, had now disappeared. Going out he had gained ten days upon the allies; they had only five days' start of him in the return. He recognized, moreover, the great significance of their inactivity during the three weeks they had the Windward Islands, if not all the West Indies, defenceless before them. "If they were not able to make an attack for three weeks after their arrival, they could not hope for greater success after our means of resistance increased, and their means of offence were diminished." If this consideration, on the one hand, showed the improbability of their proceeding against Jamaica, after Nelson's coming, when they had not ventured before, it gave also an inkling of their probable efficiency for immediate action in Europe. "They will not give me credit for quitting the West Indies for a month to come;" therefore it was unlikely that they would think it necessary to proceed at once upon their next enterprise, after reaching port. "I must not despair of getting up with them before they enter the Straits," he writes Elliot. "At least, they will have no time to carry any of their future plans into execution, and do harm to any of the countries under my charge." If his thirst for glory was unslaked, his fears of disaster had disappeared.

Villeneuve, guided by instructions recently received from Napoleon, to meet the case of the Brest squadron not getting away, had gone actually for Ferrol, where he was to join a squadron of five French and nine Spanish ships, which would raise his own force to thirty-four of the line; but Nelson, unable to know this, argued correctly that, in the uncertainty, he must leave this chance to the Biscay ships, and that for himself the Mediterranean possessed the first claim. At noon of June 13th, nine days after reaching Barbadoes, he got away from Antigua. The necessity for gaining the westerly winds made his course for some time the same as that of Villeneuve, and left him not without hopes that he might yet fall in with the allies, especially if, as he thought, they were destined to the Straits. On the 17th an American schooner was spoken, which had seen the combined squadron two days before, steering also to the northward. This report, wrote Nelson to the Admiralty, "can leave me no room to doubt but that I am hard upon the heels of the enemy's fleet. I think we cannot be more than eighty leagues from them at this moment, and by carrying every sail, and using my utmost efforts, I shall hope to close with them before they get to either Cadiz or Toulon." The news was sent ahead by two vessels, which parted from the fleet on the 19th of June,—one for Gibraltar, with despatches and letters for the admiral and ministers in the Mediterranean; one for Lisbon, whence this important intelligence would be forwarded to England and to the commanding officer off Ferrol. Still believing them bound for the Straits, Nelson expressed in the fleet the opinion that they would keep well to the southward of the Azores, so as not to be seen by British cruisers centred there. In this he was mistaken, as he was in their final destination; both fleets sighted the islands,– the French on the 30th of June to the northward of the group, while the British passed through it on the 8th of July. He admitted, however, that he was doubtful in the matter. "It is very uncertain whether they will go to Ferrol or Cadiz;" and nothing can indicate more clearly his perplexity, and his sense of the urgency of the case, than his parting on the same day with two of the four small cruisers he had with him, in order to insure that Ferrol as well as Gibraltar should have prompt warning.