The Story of Nelson 1

The Story of Nelson 1

The Boys Nelson

The Story of Nelson

 

Author: Harold F. B. Wheeler

 

Foreword

 

 

The career of the little one-eyed, one-armed man who frustrated

Napoleon’s ambitious maritime plans for the subjugation of England,

who is to sailors what Napoleon is to soldiers, who represented in

his person all that sea power meant when the very existence of our

forefathers was threatened in the latter days of the eighteenth century

and the first half-decade of its successor, must ever appeal to those

for whom Great Britain means something more than a splash of red on a

coloured map.

 

I do not wish to suggest that his fame is insular. On the contrary, it

is universal. Other lands and other peoples share in our admiration

of him. We must not forget that it was an American naval officer,

Admiral Mahan, who first gave us a really great book about this truly

great man. In his “Life of Nelson,” we have the hero’s career reviewed

by an expert whose knowledge of tactics has not blinded him to the

more romantic aspects of Nelson’s forty-seven years of life. Before

its appearance readers were dependent upon the facts and fancies of

the biography by Clarke and McArthur, the “Memoirs” of Pettigrew,

or the stirring but often inaccurate pictures of Southey. The seven

substantial tomes of “Nelson’s Letters and Despatches,” edited with

indefatigable industry by Sir Harris Nicolas, were not compiled for the

general public, although they have furnished much material for later

historians and must necessarily be the foundation of every modern book

on Nelson.

 

On our own side of the Atlantic there is no more eminent authority

than Sir J. Knox Laughton, Litt.D., Professor of Modern History at

King’s College, London. He has not only epitomised Nicolas’s work,

but added to our knowledge by his excellent “Nelson” (English Men of

Action Series), “Nelson and his Companions in Arms,” and “From Howard

to Nelson.” His numerous miscellaneous contributions to the subject are

also of great interest to the serious student.

 

Although there is no Nelson cult like that which is associated with the

memory of Napoleon, England’s great sailor has inspired a considerable

literature, as even the shelves of my own library bear witness. There

are works on his career as a whole, the campaigns associated with his

name, his relations with Lady Hamilton, and so on. The only excuse I

can offer for adding to the list is, I hope, a valid one. It seems to

me that Nelson’s life, told in his own words as much as possible, would

specially appeal to the young, and there is, so far as I am aware, no

book which does this in the simple manner which I deem to be necessary.

For help in carrying out my plan of writing a volume of the kind

indicated I am particularly indebted to Nicolas’s “Letters” and Prof.

Sir J. Knox Laughton’s edition of them.

 

For good or evil the name of Emma, Lady Hamilton, is inextricably

associated with that of Nelson. Many and varied have been the attempts

to whitewash the character of her whom he regarded as “one of the

very best women in the world.” While it is difficult to associate the

possessor of the beauty which appealed with such irresistible force to

such painters as Romney, Reynolds, Lawrence, and Madame Vigée Le Brun,

with “a most inherent baseness,” it is an indisputable fact that she

exercised an adverse influence on Nelson’s career. Her humble origin,

her loveliness, her poses, her attempts at statecraft, above all, her

connection with the great sailor, have made her the subject of almost

innumerable volumes. For those who wish to read an impartial study I

would recommend Mr Walter Sichel’s “Emma, Lady Hamilton.”

 

Nelson’s written communications are not studied literary efforts, but

spontaneous __EXPRESSION__s of his inmost thoughts. For these reasons they

are of inestimable value in an attempt to sum up his life and aims.

The kindest of men, he sometimes chose to mix vitriol with his ink. He

wrote what he meant, and it was always very much to the point. Less

eminent folk have sometimes disguised what they thought and written

what they imagined would please. Such was never Nelson’s way.

 

“This high man with a great thing to pursue,”[1] was never a trifler.

He recognised the importance of a supreme navy and the supreme

importance of its _personnel_. He watched the health of his men as a

loving mother watches that of her children. Proof of this is furnished

in a Report of the Physician to the Fleet, dated the 14th August

1805.[2] In it Dr Leonard Gillespie says that “the high state of

health” was “unexampled perhaps in any fleet or squadron heretofore

employed on a foreign station.” He attributes this to such causes as

the attention paid to the victualling and purveying for the ships;

a sane system of heating and ventilation; lack of idleness and

intemperance, due to “the constant activity and motion in which the

fleet was preserved”; the promotion of cheerfulness by means of music,

dancing, and theatrical amusements; comfortable accommodation of the

sick; and by the serving of Peruvian bark, mixed in wines or spirits,

to men “employed on the service of wooding and watering,” which

obviated any ill effects.

 

Nelson was quite able to “stand on his dignity,” to use a colloquial

and comprehensive phrase, and several instances will be discovered by

the reader as he peruses the following pages, but it is quite wrong

to think that he was in the least a martinet. For instance, during

the trying period when he was hungering for the French fleet to leave

Toulon, he wrote to an officer: “We must all in our several stations

exert ourselves to the utmost, and not be nonsensical in saying, ‘I

have an order for this, that, or the other,’ if the king’s service

clearly marks what ought to be done.” Everyone has heard how Nelson

referred to his captains and himself as “a band of brothers.” You have

only to turn to the memoirs of these gallant officers to learn the

truthfulness of this remark. They loved him: that is the only term that

exactly meets the case.

 

What of the humbler men who worked the ships? Read the following,

which was sent home by a rough but large-hearted sailor of the _Royal

Sovereign_, Collingwood’s flagship at Trafalgar, when he heard that the

Master Mariner lay cold in the gloomy cockpit of the _Victory_: “Our

dear Admiral is killed, so we have paid pretty sharply for licking ’em.

I never set eyes on him, for which I am both sorry and glad; for to be

sure I should like to have seen him--but then, all the men in our ship

who have seen him are such soft toads, they have done nothing but blast

their eyes and cry ever since he was killed. God bless you! Chaps that

fought like the Devil sit down and cry like a wench.”

 

This spontaneous and perhaps unconscious tribute is worth more than the

encomiums of all modern historians and biographers put together.

 

In studying the life of one who has played a leading rôle on the stage

of history there are always a number of subsidiary authorities which

will repay perusal. The memoirs of the men who were associated with

him, of those of his contemporaries who occupied official or high

social positions, even of much humbler folk who have transferred their

opinions to paper or had it done for them, are oftentimes extremely

important. To print a bibliography of the works of this kind which

I have consulted would be inadvisable in such a volume as this,

necessarily limited as it is to a certain number of pages. I need only

say that the nooks and crannies have been explored besides the main

thoroughfare.

 

In the Foreword to my companion volume upon Napoleon, I endeavoured

to show that periods of history are merely make-believe divisions for

purposes of clearness and reference. I wish to still further emphasise

this extremely important point, because I find that one of our most

cherished delusions is that history is largely a matter of dates.

Nothing of the kind! Those who think thus are confusing history with

chronology--in other words, mistaking one of the eyes for the whole

body. Dates are merely useful devices similar to the numerals on the

dial of a clock, which enable us to know the hour of the day without

abstruse calculations. The figures 1805 help us to memorise a certain

concrete event, such as the battle of Trafalgar, but they do not tell

us anything of the origin of that event any more than a clock defines

the meaning of time.

 

The age in which Nelson lived was not conspicuous for its morals. This

is a factor which must be taken into consideration when we attempt to

sum up his character. The standards of 1911 are scarcely the standards

of over a century ago. The code of virtue varies, although the law does

not. The grave of Nelson’s moral reputation was dug in Sicily, where he

had every provocation, but he certainly never attempted to extricate

himself from the pit into which he had fallen. “_De mortuis nil nisi

bonum_” is a good maxim for the Gospel of Things as they Ought to Be,

but cannot apply to the Testament of Things as they Were. The vanity

of both Nelson and Lady Hamilton contributed to their downfall, the

sordid story of which is necessarily referred to in later pages of this

work. I am of opinion that the lack of sympathy shown to the Admiral,

particularly during Pitt’s administrations, was largely due to Court

influence. George III. was a man of frigid austerity, and Nelson’s

private life was too well known for the King to countenance it by

showing him favours. He recognised the value of the man’s services, but

preferred to take as little notice as possible of the man himself. In

this he was unjust.

 

Although Nelson hated the French so vehemently, I cannot help thinking,

after a prolonged study of his career, that he had many of their

characteristics. His vivacity, his imagination, his moods tend to

confirm me in this. A less typical specimen of John Bull would be

difficult to find.

 

A word or two concerning Nelson’s crowning victory and then I must

bring my lengthy introduction to a conclusion. It has a literature all

its own. A wordy warfare, which was indulged in the correspondence

columns of the _Times_ from July to October 1905, made one almost

believe that it is easier to fight a battle than to describe it

accurately. To use Prof. Sir J. Knox Laughton’s terse phrase, “the

difficulty is that the traditional account of the battle differs, in

an important detail, from the prearranged plan.” The late Admiral

Colomb held a brief for the theory that the two columns of the British

fleet moved in line abreast, or in line of bearing, as against the

old supposition of two columns, line ahead. In this contention, he is

supported by Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, G.C.B., whose ideas are set

forth in a pamphlet issued by the Navy Records Society, an institution

which is doing excellent work in rescuing historical documents relating

to the service from ill-deserved oblivion. To add further to the

discussion would probably serve no useful purpose. The second volume of

“Logs of the Great Sea-fights (1794-1805),” and “Fighting Instructions,

1530-1816,” both published by the Society already mentioned, will be

found extremely useful to those who would pursue the subject in detail.