The Boys' Nelson

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Harold Wheeler. The Boys' Nelson

Foreword

CHAPTER I. Boyhood and First Years at Sea (1758–1773)

CHAPTER II. A Hero in the Making (1773–1783)

CHAPTER III. Pleasure in France and Work in the West Indies (1783–1793)

CHAPTER IV. The Beginning of the Great War (1793–1794)

CHAPTER V “I wish to be an Admiral” (1795–96)

CHAPTER VI. Nelson’s First Great Fight: The Battle of Cape St Vincent (1797)

CHAPTER VII. From Triumph to Failure: The Attempt on Santa Cruz (1797)

CHAPTER VIII. In Chase of the French Fleet (1798)

CHAPTER IX. The Battle of the Nile. 1798

CHAPTER X. The Neapolitan Court and Lady Hamilton

CHAPTER XI. The Neapolitan Rebels and their French Allies (1799)

CHAPTER XII. Nelson in Temporary Command (1799–1800)

CHAPTER XIII. Disobedience to Orders

CHAPTER XIV. The Campaign of the Baltic (1800–1)

CHAPTER XV. The Battle of Copenhagen (1801)

CHAPTER XVI. The Threatened Invasion of England (1801)

CHAPTER XVII. The Vigil off Toulon (1803)

CHAPTER XVIII. Twelve weary Months in the Mediterranean (1804)

CHAPTER XIX. The Crisis (1805)

CHAPTER XX. Nelson’s Last Command (1805)

CHAPTER XXI. The Rout in Trafalgar Bay (1805)

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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.

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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.

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