Chapter VIII (2)

On the 23d of February the fleet sailed again, and on the 28th anchored in the Tagus. The same day Nelson wrote to his wife that he was to go to sea on the 2d of March, with three ships-of-the-line, to look out for the Viceroy of Mexico, who was reported to be on his way to Cadiz, also with three ships-of-the-line, laden with treasure. "Two are first-rates," said he, "but the larger the ships the better the mark, and who will not fight for dollars?" Foul winds prevented his getting away until the 5th. From that date until the 12th of April he remained cruising between Cape St. Vincent and the coast of Africa, covering the approaches to Cadiz; frigates and smaller vessels being spread out to the westward, to gain timely notice of the approach of the specie ships, upon whose safe arrival Spain depended both for her commercial affairs and her naval preparations.

But while thus actively employed, and not insensible to the charm of dollars, the immediate business on board was not in itself so engrossing, nor to him so attractive, as to obtain that exclusiveness of attention which he prided himself upon giving to matters more military in character, and more critical in importance. "The Spaniards threaten us they will come out, and take their revenge," he writes to an occasional correspondent. "The sooner the better; but I will not believe it till I see it; and if they do, what will the mines of Mexico and Peru signify, compared with the honour I doubt not we shall gain by fighting an angry Don? They will have thirty sail of the line, we twenty or twenty-two; but fear we shall have a peace before they are ready to come out. What a sad thing that will be!" His mind reverts to the troops in Elba, which had been left in a most exposed position, and were now about to withdraw under the protection of some frigates, passing through a thousand miles of hostile sea open to the line-of-battle ships at Toulon. He is more concerned about them than about his possible prize-money in the rich ships from Vera Cruz and Havana, whose danger from his own squadron was agitating all Spain. "Respecting myself," he writes to Jervis, "I wish to stay at sea, and I beg, if line-of-battle ships are left out,[55] either on this side the Gut, or to the eastward of Gibraltar, that I may be the man. This brings forward a subject which I own is uppermost in my mind,--that of the safety of our troops, should they embark from Elba. The French have a number of ships at Toulon. They may get two, three, or four ready, with a number of frigates, and make a push for our convoy. I am ready, you know, to go eastward to cover them, even to Porto Ferrajo, or off Toulon, or Minorca, as you may judge proper."

This exposed detachment continued to occupy his thoughts. A month later, on the 11th of April, he again writes: "I own, Sir, my feelings are alive for the safety of our army from Elba. If the French get out two sail of the line, which I am confident they may do, our troops are lost, and what a triumph that would be to them! I know you have many difficulties to contend with, but I am anxious that nothing should miscarry under your orders. If you think a detachment can be spared, I am ready to go and do my best for their protection." In both letters he apologizes for this freedom of urgency with his superior: "I have said much, but you have spoiled me by allowing me to speak and write freely. I trust you will not imagine that my taking the great liberty of thus mentioning my thoughts, arises from any other motive than affection towards you."

Jervis had already joined him on the 1st of April, before the second letter was written. His hesitation about sending the detachment suggested by Nelson had arisen, not from doubt as to the danger of the troops, but from the imminent expectation of the Spanish fleet coming out. The British force was already too inferior, numerically, to risk any diminution, in view of such a contingency. Confronted with divergent objects, Jervis would not be drawn into the snare of dividing his force; but after reconnoitring the port, he was satisfied that the Spaniards could not sail before Nelson had time to fulfil the proposed mission, and on the 12th of April he gave him the necessary orders. The latter transferred his own squadron to the command of Sir James Saumarez, and started at once. He had now returned to the "Captain," which had doubtless come down with Jervis. "She is little better than a wreck," he wrote to a friend; but the cripples had to be kept to the front, pending the arrival of fresh ships. Besides her, he had the "Colossus," seventy-four, and "Leander," fifty, with a suitable number of smaller cruisers. Passing within gunshot of Port Mahon in Minorca, he heard from several passing vessels that a French squadron of four ships-of-the-line was at sea, as he had anticipated; and these, he afterwards learned, were seen off Minorca only twenty-two hours before he passed. Fortunately a fresh northwest gale had carried them to the southward, and on the 21st of April, sixty miles west of Corsica, he joined the convoy, which carried over three thousand soldiers. He reached Gibraltar with it in safety in the early days of May, without adventures of any kind. "I observed a man-of-war brig evidently looking at us; but my charge was too important to separate one ship in chase of her, especially as three frigates had parted company; for until this garrison is safe down, I do not think our business is well finished." Its arrival completed the evacuation of the Mediterranean.

At Gibraltar several days were spent, evidently crowded with administrative details concerning the coming and going of convoys, for there is here an almost total cessation of Nelson's usually copious letter-writing. An interesting and instructive incident is, however, made known to us by one of the three letters dated during these ten days. The Consul of the United States of America had to apply to him for the protection of twelve American merchant ships, then at Malaga, against the probable depredations of French privateers lying in that port, which, under the edicts of the government of the French Republic, with whom the United States was at peace, were expected to overhaul and capture them when they sailed. Nelson at once complied, ordering a British frigate to go to Malaga and escort the vessels to the Barbary coast, and even out of the Straits, if necessary. In doing this, he wrote courteously to the Consul: "I am sure of fulfilling the wishes of my Sovereign, and I hope of strengthening the harmony which at present so happily subsists between the two nations."

On the 24th of May Nelson rejoined the admiral off Cadiz, and on the 27th shifted his own flag into the "Theseus." The day before he left the fleet, April 11th, Jervis had decided to institute a strict commercial blockade of Cadiz, with the object of distressing Spanish trade, preventing the entrance of supplies, upon which depended the operations of Spain against Portugal, as well as her naval preparations, and so forcing the Spanish fleet out to fight, in order to rid itself of such embarrassment. Nelson, as commander of the inshore squadron, had then issued the necessary notices to neutrals in the port, and to this charge he now returned. Under Jervis's intelligent partiality, he, the junior flag-officer, was thus intrusted with a command, which in the conduct of details, great and small, and in emergencies, was practically independent. Jervis, knowing his man, was content to have it so, reserving of course to himself the decision of the broad outlines of military exertion. The inshore squadron was gradually increased till it numbered ten sail-of-the-line. The boats of the fleet, which had been rowing guard off the harbor's mouth under the general supervision of the two senior flag-officers, were ordered, shortly after Nelson's arrival, to report to him; and upon him, indeed, devolved pretty nearly all the active enterprises of the fleet. It was his practice to visit the line of boats every night in his barge, to see by personal inspection of these outposts that his instructions were fully observed. "Our inferiority," he wrote about this time, "is greater than before. I am barely out of shot of a Spanish rear-admiral. The Dons hope for peace, but must soon fight us, if the war goes on."

Another motive, perhaps even more imperative than the wish to force the Dons out, now compelled Jervis to seek by all means to increase the activity of his fleet, and to intrust the management of such activities to his most zealous and capable subordinate. These were the months of the great mutinies of the British Navy, in which the seamen of the Channel fleet, and of the North Sea fleet, at the Nore, had taken the ships out of the hands of their officers. The details of Jervis's management, which was distinguished as much by keen judgment and foresight as by iron-handed severity, that knew neither fear nor ruth when it struck, belong to his biography, not to Nelson's; but it is necessary to note the attitude of the latter, a man more sympathetic, and in common life gentler, than his stern superior. Always solicitous for everything that increased the well-being and happiness of his crew,--as indeed was eminently the case with Jervis also,--he did not withhold his candid sympathy from the grievances alleged by the Channel fleet; grievances which, when temperately presented to the authorities, had been ignored. "I am entirely with the seamen in their first complaint. We are a neglected set, and, when peace comes, are shamefully treated; but for the Nore scoundrels," passing on to those who had rebelled after substantial redress had been given, and had made unreasonable demands when the nation was in deadly peril, "I should be happy to command a ship against them." Jervis's measures received full support from him, clear-headed as ever to see the essentials of a situation. The senior vice-admiral, for instance, went so far as to criticise the commander-in-chief for hanging a convicted mutineer on Sunday. "Had it been Christmas Day instead of Sunday," wrote Nelson, "I would have executed them. We know not what might have been hatched by a Sunday's grog: _now_ your discipline is safe." His glorious reputation and his known kindly character, supported by that of his captain, made mutiny impossible under his flag. It had not been up a month on board the "Theseus," which was lately from the Channel and infected with the prevalent insubordination, when a paper was dropped on the quarter-deck, expressing the devotion of the ship's company to their commander, and pledging that the name of the "Theseus" should yet be as renowned as that of the "Captain."

The stringent blockade, and the fears for the specie ships, weighed heavily on the Spaniards, who were not as a nation hearty in support of a war into which they had been coerced by France. Their authorities were petitioned to compel the fleet to go out. Whatever the event, the British would at least have to retire for repairs; while if the Lima and Havana ships--to look for which the Cadiz people every morning flocked to the walls, fearing they might be already in the enemy's hands--should be captured, the merchants of Spain would be ruined. Better lose ten ships-of-the-line, if need be, than this convoy. With rumors of this sort daily reaching him, Nelson's faculties were in a constant state of pleasing tension. He was in his very element of joyous excitement and expectation. "We are in the advance day and night, prepared for battle; bulkheads down, ready to weigh, cut, or slip,[56] as the occasion may require. I have given out a line of battle--myself to lead; and you may rest assured that I will make a vigorous attack upon them, the moment their noses are outside the Diamond. Pray do not send me another ship," he implores; "if you send any more, they may believe we are prepared, and know of their intention." "If they come out," he writes later to a naval friend, when he had ten sail under him, "there will be no fighting beyond my squadron."

To increase yet further the pressure upon the Spanish fleet to come out, a bombardment was planned against the town and the shipping, the superintendence of which also was intrusted to the commander of the inshore squadron. Only one bomb-vessel was provided, so that very extensive results could scarcely have been anticipated; but Nelson saw, with evident glee, that the enemy's gunboats had taken advanced positions, and intended to have a hand in the night's work. "So much the better," wrote he to Jervis; "I wish to make it a warm night in Cadiz. If they venture from their walls, I shall give Johnny[57] his full scope for fighting. It will serve to talk of better than mischief." "It is good," he writes to another, "at these times to keep the devil out of their heads. I had rather see fifty shot by the enemy, than one hanged by us."

The bombardment, which was continued upon two successive nights, did little direct harm; but it led to a sharp hand-to-hand contest between the British and Spanish boats, in which Nelson personally bore a part, and upon which he seems afterwards to have dwelt with even greater pride and self-satisfaction than upon the magnificent victories with which his name is associated. "It was during this period that perhaps my personal courage was more conspicuous than at any other part of my life." On the first night the Spaniards sent out a great number of mortar gunboats and armed launches. Upon these he directed a vigorous attack to be made, which resulted in their being driven back under the walls of Cadiz; the British, who pursued them, capturing two boats and a launch. In the affray, he says, "I was boarded in my barge with its common crew of ten men, coxswain, Captain Freemantle, and myself, by the commander of the gunboats; the Spanish barge rowed twenty-six oars, besides officers,--thirty men in the whole. This was a service hand-to-hand with swords, in which my coxswain, John Sykes, now no more, twice saved my life. Eighteen of the Spaniards being killed and several wounded, we succeeded in taking their commander." In his report he complimented this Spanish officer, Don Miguel Tyrason, upon his gallantry. Near a hundred Spaniards were made prisoners in this sharp skirmish.

Not even the insult of bombardment was sufficient to attain the designed end of forcing the enemy's fleet out to fight. The Spaniards confined themselves to a passive defence by their shore batteries, which proved indeed sufficient to protect the town and shipping, for on the second night they got the range of the bomb-vessel so accurately that the British were forced to withdraw her; but this did not relieve the vital pressure of the blockade, which could only be removed by the mobile naval force coming out and fighting. So far from doing this, the Spanish ships of war shifted their berth inside to get out of the range of bombs. Nelson cast longing eyes upon the smaller vessels which lay near the harbor's mouth, forming a barricade against boat attack, and threatening the offensive measures to which they rarely resorted. "At present the brigs lie too close to each other to hope for a dash at them, but soon I expect to find one off her guard, and then--" For the rest, his sanguine resolve to persist in annoyance until it becomes unbearable, and insures the desired object, finds vent in the words: "if Mazaredo will not come out, down comes Cadiz; and not only Cadiz, but their fleet."

This close succession of varied and exciting active service, unbroken between the day of his leaving Lisbon, March 5th, and the date of the last bombardment, July 5th, had its usual effect upon his spirits. His correspondence is all animation, full of vitality and energy, betraying throughout the happiness of an existence absorbed in congenial work, at peace with itself, conscious of power adequate to the highest demands upon it, and rejoicing in the strong admiration and confidence felt and expressed towards him on all sides, especially by those whose esteem he most valued. He complains of his health, indeed, from time to time; he cannot last another winter; he is suffering for the want of a few months' rest, which he must ask for in the coming October, and trusts that, "after four years and nine months' service, without one moment's repose for body or mind, credit will be given me that I do not sham."

Bodily suffering was his constant attendant, to which he always remained subject, but at this time it was powerless to depress the moral energies which, under less stimulating conditions, at times lost something of their elastic force. They never, indeed, failed to rise equal to imminent emergency, however obscured in hours of gloom, or perplexity, or mental conflict; but now, supported by the concurrence of every favoring influence, they carried him along in the full flow of prosperity and exhilaration. Thanking Earl Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty, for a complimentary letter, he says: "The unbounded praises Sir John Jervis has ever heaped, and continues to heap on me, are a noble reward for any services which an officer under his command could perform. Nor is your Lordship less profuse in them." To his wife he writes: "I assure you I never was better, and rich in the praises of every man, from the highest to the lowest in the fleet." "The imperious call of honour to serve my country, is the only thing that keeps me a moment from you, and a hope, that by staying a little longer, it may enable you to enjoy those little luxuries which you so highly merit." "My late affair here[58] will not, I believe, lower me in the opinion of the world. I have had flattery enough to make me vain, and success enough to make me confident."

FOOTNOTES:

[41] It is evident that this must have involved a compliment personal to Nelson.

[42] See Plate, Figure 1.

[43] See Plate, Figure 2.

[44] Captured.

[45] That is, the weather division,--the eighteen ships.

[46] That is, was left in.

[47] Shrouds are large ropes which support the masts.

[48] See Plate, Figure 3.

[49] The italics are the author's.

[50] In his letter to Nelson this is thirteen, but evidently a slip. His log of the action says forty-three.

[51] Both papers are headed: "A few remarks relative to myself in the Captain," etc. It is unfortunate that Nicolas, in giving these two papers, puts first the one which, from internal indications, is (in the author's judgment) the later in date.

[52] Author's italics.

[53] Hailed to stop firing because the "San Nicolas" had surrendered.

[54] See _ante_, page 89.

[55] That is, at sea, the main fleet being still in the Tagus.

[56] Cut, or let go, the cables,--leaving the anchor in haste, instead of raising it from the bottom.

[57] The British seamen.

[58] The night conflict with the Spanish launches.