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Chapter 1

Nelson and Sea Power

VICE ADMIRAL Horatio Lord Nelson was a hero from the time of his first great victory at the battle of the Nile in 1798. He was mobbed wherever he went, and showered with titles and orders of chivalry by the powerful, presentation swords by his brother officers, and gifts of money by Parliament and the East India Company. He is probably the only admiral whose name is known to the general public, and not only in Britain. Hero status was richly deserved and arduously earned. He was, and continues to be, honoured by the Royal Navy because he was a master of his profession. He set the highest standards for performance, and his consummate leadership transformed the way the profession went about its business. In 1797, in justification for the receipt of a pension, he wrote

That, during the present war, your Memorialist has been in four actions with the fleets of the enemy, viz. on the 13th and 14th of March 1795; on the 13th July 1795; and on the 14th of February 1797; in three actions with frigates; in six engagements against batteries; in ten actions in boats employed in cutting out of harbours; in destroying vessels, and in taking three towns. Your Memorialist has also served on shore with the army four months, and commanded the batteries at the sieges of Bastia and Calvi. That during the war, he has assisted at the capture of seven sail of the line, six frigates, four corvettes, and eleven privateers of different sizes; and taken and destroyed near fifty sail of merchant vessels; and your Memorialist has actually been engaged against the enemy upwards of ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TIMES. In which service your Memorialist has lost his right eye and arm, and been severely wounded and bruised in his body. All of which services and wounds your Memorialist must humbly submit to your Majesty’s most gracious consideration.¹

Woodcut of the stern of Queen Charlotte, a 100-gun ship of the line, and the most potent manifestation of seapower in the age of sail. She was Howe’s flagship at the battle of the Glorious First of June, 1796.

In the next eight years he was to fight and win his three great victories at the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar. He was devoted to his duty to a degree which may be hard for the late twentieth century to understand. His devotion to his friends, and they to him, awake easier echoes and ensure his continuing popularity.

Over one hundred years after his death, the Admiralty thought it important at the eve of the First World War to order a study of the tactics Nelson had employed at Trafalgar.² The Admiral’s art was developing faster during Nelson’s early years than at any time since the mid-seventeenth century when the line of battle was first introduced. The Seven Years War and the War of the American Revolution stimulated the development of new ideas about the most effective use of naval materiel, making tactics more technical, but also more flexible. Experience, developments in ship design and signalling, and the perfection of drill, transformed naval methods. Nelson became a master of them.

His victories, however, were not simply the fruits of technical prowess. No less important was his ability to judge the capacity of his enemy, and most important of all was his ability to lead his men. Following Nelson’s victory in the battle of the Nile, Admiral Lord Howe, who had himself done so much to develop British naval tactics and team work, remarked to Sir Edward Berry ‘that it stood unparalleled, and singular, in this instance, that every captain distinguished himself.’³ Nelson himself referred to them as a ‘band of brothers’, and the Nelsonic band of brothers remains a model for command relationships in a service that has to its cost not always followed the standard set in Nelson’s great cabin. His capacity to make decisive moves which produced unprecedented results, based on his understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of his enemy and of his own fleet, became known as ‘the Nelson Touch’. As Admiral the Earl of St Vincent put it, Nelson had an all but unique capacity to infuse ‘the same spirit into others’ as inspired his own actions.⁴

Throughout his service life Nelson continued to evoke the warmest loyalty from subordinates by his own commitment to them. George Duff, captain of the Mars, had not previously met Nelson before the latter assumed command of the force assembled off Cadiz in October 1805. He was invited to dine with Nelson on board Victory, and reported to his wife that ‘He certainly is the pleasantest admiral I ever served under.’ A few days later he added: ‘He is so good and pleasant a man, that we all wish to do what he likes, without any kind of orders. I have been myself very lucky with most of my admirals, but I really think the present the pleasantest I have ever met with.’⁵

Edward Berry, captain of Nelson’s flagship at the battle of the Nile in 1798, sent a ‘Narrative’ to The Naval Chronicle that contains the following account of Nelson’s method. Nelson, he wrote, had the ‘highest opinion of, and placed the firmest reliance on the valour and conduct of every captain in his squadron’. Whenever the weather permitted, he signalled for some of his captains to come over to the Vanguard, where he described to them his ‘ideas of the different and best modes of attack, and such plans as he proposed to execute upon falling in with the enemy, whatever their position or situation might be by day or by night’. He had prepared a plan for every eventuality, and made his captains ‘thoroughly acquainted’ with them all. The result was that ‘upon surveying the situation of the enemy, they could ascertain with precision what were the ideas and intention of their commander, without the aid of any further instructions’. This careful preparation made signalling almost unnecessary, and saved time. ‘The attention of every captain could almost undistractedly be paid to the conduct of his own particular ship.’⁶ Lieutenant George Browne of the Victory, writing to his parents six weeks after the battle of Trafalgar in 1805, virtually reiterated Berry’s assessment: ‘the frequent communications he [Lord Nelson] had with his Admirals and captains put them in possession of all his plans, so that his mode of attack was well known to every officer of the fleet’.⁷

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who spent some time as secretary to Alexander Ball who was one of Nelson’s captains at the Nile and later Governor of Malta, wrote that Nelson was as capable of learning from others as he was of teaching.

He collected, as it passed by him, whatever could add to his own stores, appropriated what he could assimilate, and levied subsidies of knowledge from all the accidents of social life and familiar intercourse. Even at the jovial board, and in the height of unrestrained merriment, a casual suggestion, that flashed a new light on his mind, changed the boon companion into the hero and the man of genius; and with the most graceful transition he would make his company as serious as himself.⁸

Cuthbert Collingwood was Nelson’s friend from the time they served together as lieutenants in the West Indies, although their personalities were very different. In comments to a friend about Nelson’s method, he expressed a belief that it was not a matter of careful planning in a narrow sense. In Collingwood’s opinion, it was Nelson’s habit of tactical analysis, flexibility of mind, and rapport with his officers, which enabled him to make deft responses. ‘Without much previous preparation or plan’, Collingwood wrote, ‘he has the facility of discovering advantages as they arise, and the good judgment to turn them to his use. An enemy that commits a false step in his view is ruined, and it comes on him with an impetuosity that gives him no time to recover.’⁹ Nelson was implacably committed to one object: the annihilation of the French fleet. Before the battle of Trafalgar he wrote that it is ‘annihilation that the country wants, and not merely a splendid victory of twenty-three to thirty-six, honourable to the parties, but absolutely useless in the extended scale to bring Bonaparte to his marrow-bones.¹⁰ To obtain annihilation, he needed numbers: ‘numbers can only annihilate.’ He constantly worked over his strategic and tactical ideas, without ever losing his flexibility, and was ever ready to pursue his enemy to the end of the earth. At the Nile there was no time for last-minute detailed instructions, unless the element of surprise were to be lost. Everything depended upon the capacity of his captains to interpret the tactical ideas Nelson had discussed with them. When there was time to issue more detailed and particular tactical instructions, however, as there was at Copenhagen, Nelson was careful to do so.

Behind Nelson’s ability to take his officers so completely into his confidence was his own devotion to duty, and his humanity. According to the contemporary biography of Robert Southey, Nelson as a young man, returning from the East Indies an invalid, depressed, and worried about his future without important connections in the Admiralty or at Court, suddenly caught the idea that his patron should be his ‘King and Country’. ‘Well then,’ I exclaimed, ‘I will be a hero, and confiding in Providence, I will brave every danger.’¹¹ Southey’s information is no longer considered to be reliable, but it should be kept in mind that nothing remotely like his anecdotes about Nelson were told about other naval commanders. There must have been enough truth in them to have convinced his contemporaries; Southey’s brother was a distinguished captain in the Navy and saw action at Copenhagen. Nelson was as good as his word, and acquired a reputation for seeking danger. He once wrote to his wife: ‘A glorious death is to be envied; and if anything happens to me, recollect that death is a debt we all must pay, and whether now, or a few years hence, can be but of little consequence.’¹² At the battle of Copenhagen he cheerfully remarked to Colonel Stewart, who wrote the most important eyewitness account of the battle, that ‘It is warm work and this day may be the last to us at any moment. But mark you!’ he added, ‘I would not be elsewhere for thousands.’¹³ However, his own euphoria did not blind him to the need to sustain the morale of others. He agreed with the reprimand administered at Copenhagen to a lieutenant for the manner in which he reported the grounding of two ships: he thought ‘at such a moment, the delivery of anything like a desponding opinion, unasked, was highly reprehensible.’¹⁴

His concern for the public service, and determination to ensure that the task in hand was properly done, could be illustrated by many instances. A powerful example of his commitment is provided by the account given by Alexander Briarly, Master of the Bellona. After the battle of Copenhagen, when Nelson was left behind to conduct diplomacy with the Crown Prince’s officers, the Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, sent a message to him that the Swedish fleet was reported to be at sea. Nelson immediately

ordered a boat to be manned, and without even waiting for a boat cloak (though you must suppose the weather pretty sharp here at this season of the year) and having to row about 24 miles with the wind and current against him, jumped into her and ordered me to go with him, I having been on board to remain till she had got over the Grounds [the shoals south of Copenhagen].

All I had ever seen or heard of him could not half so clearly prove to me the singular and unbounded zeal of this truly great man.

His anxiety in the boat for nearly six hours (lest the Fleet should have sailed before he got on board one of them, and lest we should not catch the Swedish squadron) is beyond all conception.¹⁵

His humanity transformed his demanding sense of duty. Prince William Henry, son of King George III, described his meeting with Nelson onboard Admiral Lord Hood’s flagship at New York in 1781.

Captain Nelson, of the Albemarle, came in his barge alongside, who appeared to be the merest boy of a Captain I ever beheld: and his dress was worthy of attention. He had on a full laced uniform: his lank unpowdered hair was tied in a stiff Hessian tail, of an extraordinary length; the old fashioned flaps of his waistcoat added to the general quaintness of his figure, and produced an appearance which particularly attracted my notice; for I had never seen anything like it before, nor could I imagine who he was, nor what he came about. My doubts were, however, removed when Lord Hood introduced me to him. There was something irresistibly pleasing in his address and conversation; and an enthusiasm, when speaking on professional subjects, that showed he was no common being…. I found him warmly attached to my Father, and singularly humane: he had the honour of the King’s service, and the independence of the British Navy, particularly at heart.¹⁶

Unfortunately, Nelson’s devotion to the royal family was extended to the dissipated and undisciplined prince, and earned him no regard from King George.

Lady Hughes, who travelled to the West Indies in the Boreas under Nelson’s command, provided a vivid account that was published by Southey. There were thirty young midshipmen onboard, and some of them were naturally timid. Nelson apparently never rebuked them. He

always wished to show them he desired nothing of them that he would not instantly do himself: and I have known him say – ‘Well, Sir, I am going a race to the mast-head, and beg I may meet you there.’ No denial could be given to such a wish, and the poor fellow instantly began his march. His Lordship never took the least notice with what alacrity it was done, but when he met at the top, instantly began speaking in the most cheerfull manner, and saying how much a person was to be pitied who could fancy there was any danger, or even anything disagreeable, in the attempt. After this excellent example, I have seen the timid youth lead another, and rehearse his Captain’s words.¹⁷

When on the West Indies Station, Nelson was discovered by John Herbert, the President of the Nevis, under a table playing with the young son of his widowed niece Fanny. Nelson was introduced to Fanny, and they soon married.

His attitude to subordinates was both firm and considerate. As a young man he had been impressed by the First Lieutenant of the Carcass, on which ship he sailed on a voyage north of Spitzbergen, who, whatever the dangers or difficulties, ‘never was heard … to enforce his commands with oath, or to call a sailor by any other than his usual name.’¹⁸ As a young captain in the West Indies he was reprimanded by the Admiralty for pardoning a sailor who had been condemned to death for desertion, and discharging him from the service. He went to considerable trouble to establish a plea of insanity for another of his men who murdered a prostitute. During the early years of the French Revolution, while he was unemployed, he became actively concerned by the agitators preaching social revolt in his native Norfolk, but when he considered how hard was the lot of the poor labourers he felt indignation that the landlords had not long before increased their wages to keep pace with rising costs. On the other hand, he did not shrink from inflicting the tough punishments that were such a feature of naval life.

Towards his superiors whom he thought deficient in their duty he was resolute. His efforts to ensure that officers did not abuse their authority to enrich themselves during his service in the West Indies did not endear himself to the Admiralty and may explain the five years he was unemployed before the outbreak of war with France in 1793. He always sought the annihilation of his enemy, and was intolerant of commanders with lower standards. When in 1795 he commanded the 64-gun ship, Agamemnon, in action under the command of Admiral Hotham and captured a French 80-gun ship, Ça Ira, he was bitter about the failure to pursue the defeated enemy. Fourteen British ships had taken on seventeen French, and captured only two. In indignation Nelson wrote his wife: ‘had we taken ten Sail, and allowed the eleventh to escape, when it had been possible to have got at her, I could never have called it well done … We should have had such a day as I believe, the annals of England never produced … Nothing can stop the courage of English seamen.’¹⁹

When one of the captains who commanded a ship at the battle of Camperdown in 1797 was court-martialed for misconduct, Nelson commented to Captain Bertie, who was one of the members of the court, that he wanted officers going into battle to have in mind that the chance of being shot by the enemy if they did their duty was less than the certainty of being shot by their friends if they failed in it.²⁰ However, the mellowing effect of experience increased his willingness to comprehend the limitations of others. He was to be more sympathetic with Vice Admiral Sir Robert Calder, who, in the campaign leading to Trafalgar, conducted a battle against the odds with technical skill but broke off the engagement without seeking annihilating results.

Nelson rightly regarded the spirit and ability of his officers and men as more important than the materiel strength of the fleets placed under his command. Writing to Lord Melville in support of one of his captains who had been censured and broken by a court martial for wrecking his ship, he said that he did not ‘regret the loss of the Raven compared to the value of Captain Layman’s services, which are a National loss’.²¹

Writing to an old friend during the long blockade of Toulon in 1804, Nelson commented that

The great thing in all Military Service is health; and you will agree with me, that it is easier for an Officer to keep men healthy, than for a Physician to cure them…. I have, by changing the cruizing ground, not allowed the sameness of prospect to satiate the mind – sometimes by looking at Toulon, Ville Franche, Barcelona and Rosas; then running round Minorca, Majorca, Sardinia and Corsica; and two or three times anchoring for a few days, and sending a Ship to the last place for onions, which I find the best thing that can be give to Seamen; having always good mutton for the sick & cattle when we can get them, and plenty of fresh water.

A pencil sketch of Nelson drawn by Simon De Koster. It was, apparently, done for Lady Hamilton herself, at Merton, a few days before Nelson sailed for Copenhagen. It is of particular interest as it was the portrait that Nelson believed to be most like him.

(National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)

Admiral Cornwallis, he complained, who commanded the Channel Fleet blockading Brest ‘has great merit for his persevering cruise, but he has everything sent him: we have nothing; We seem forgotten by the great folks at home.’²² The burden of contracting locally for supplies, and of corresponding with the surgeons at Gibraltar to ensure that his men in hospital were properly cared for, he resolutely shouldered. Ball observed that Nelson

looked at everything, not merely in its possible relation to the Naval Service in general, but in its immediate Bearings on his own Squadron; to his officers, his men, to the particular ships themselves, his affections were as strong and ardent as those of a Lover. Hence, though his temper was constitutionally irritable and uneven, yet never was a Commander so enthusiastically loved by men of all ranks, from the Captain of the Fleet to the youngest Ship-boy. Hence too the unexampled Harmony which reigned in his Fleet year after year, under circumstances that might well have undermined the patience of the best balanced Dispositions, much more of men with the impetuous character of British Sailors.²³

It is hardly surprising that he inspired devotion amongst his men. In a boat action at Cadiz he had his life saved three times by his coxswain who even interposed his hand to ward off a sword blow aimed at Nelson’s head.²⁴ A sailor writing home after Trafalgar said

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.²⁵

Nelson’s sense of the theatrical, while entirely natural to him, was also a useful tool of leadership. Like several other well-known commanders, he wore distinctive headgear: he wore his cocked hat in line with his shoulders, which was not the contemporary fashion. His taste for the gaudy stars of chivalry helped to identify him to sailors who would not otherwise have recognised him.

William Beatty, Nelson’s personal physician during the Trafalgar campaign, wrote that Nelson’s habits of life were abstemious, and yet very open.

His Lordship used a great deal of exercise, generally walking on deck six or seven hours in the day. He always rose early, for the most part shortly after daybreak. He breakfasted in summer about six, and at seven in winter: and if not occupied in reading or writing despatches, or examining into the details of the Fleet, he walked on the quarter-deck the greater part of the forenoon; going down to his cabin occasionally to commit to paper such incidents or reflections as occurred to him during that time, and as might be hereafter useful to the service of his country. He dined generally about half-past two o’clock. At his table there were seldom less than eight or nine persons, consisting of the different Officers of the Ship: and when the weather and the service permitted, he very often had several of the Admirals and Captains in the Fleet to dine with him; who were mostly invited by signal, the rotation of seniority being commonly observed by his Lordship in these invitations. At dinner he was alike affable and attentive to every one: he ate very sparingly himself, the liver and wing of a fowl, and a small plate of macaroni, in general composing his meal, during which he occasionally took a glass of champagne. He never exceeded four glasses of wine after dinner, and seldom drank three; and even those were diluted with either Bristol or common water.

Few men subject to the vicissitudes of a Naval life, equalled his Lordship in an habitual systematic mode of living. He possessed such a wonderful activity of mind, as even prevented him from taking ordinary repose, seldom enjoying two hours of uninterrupted sleep; and on several occasions he did not quit the deck during the whole night. At these times he took no pains to protect himself from the effects of wet, or the night air; wearing only a thin great coat: and he has frequently, after having his clothes wet through with rain, refused to have them changed, saying that the leather waistcoat which he wore over his flannel one would secure him from complaint. He seldom wore boots, and was consequently very liable to have his feet wet.²⁶

One of Nelson’s many biographers, Oliver Warner, remarked that

with the Battle of the Nile, such a light fell upon Nelson as might have distressed a man of another stamp. He welcomed it. He loved being a hero. Twin ardours burnt in him. One was for fame: the other for Emma Hamilton. Through his admiration for Lady Hamilton, Nelson made himself, at times, ridiculous. The evidence is overwhelming, some of it forced from reluctant friends.²⁷

There is no denying that following his victory, the experience of adulation in so dissipated a court as that of Naples, and the constant attention of Sir William Hamilton’s beautiful and forceful wife Emma, went to Nelson’s head. For some months he neglected his duty, and exercised irresponsibly the latitude for ignoring orders which he allowed himself with such good results at the battles of Cape St Vincent, and Copenhagen, and which he was willing that his subordinates exercise when they were well placed to interpret his general intention. The Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean, Admiral Lord Keith, wrote to his sister that Nelson at Palermo was ‘cutting the most absurd figure possible for folly and vanity’.²⁸ And Sir John Moore wrote that in the Neapolitan Court Nelson was ‘covered with stars, ribbons and medals, more like a Prince of an Opera than the Conqueror of the Nile. It is really melancholy to see a brave and good man, who has deserved well of his country, cutting so pitiful a figure.’²⁹ Eventually, he was ordered home. Writing shortly after his death, Collingwood admitted that Nelson ‘liked fame, and was open to flattery, so that people sometimes got about him who were unworthy of him’. But, he concluded, Nelson was ‘a loss to his country that cannot easily be replaced’.³⁰

In extenuation, it should be noted that the psychological strain was so great for Nelson in the days before the Nile battle, and later before Copenhagen, and when he sailed on what was to be his last campaign, that he experienced tormenting physical pain. If he had been brought straight back to England for a period of leave with his family after the Nile he might have dealt with the inevitable reaction with better balance. There is also reason to suspect that the head wound he received at the Nile affected his judgment.

Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, only met Nelson once, in September 1805 shortly before Nelson sailed on his last campaign. At first Nelson did not know who Wellesley was, and paraded all the foolish affectation of which he was capable. When he discovered Wellington’s identity, however, he entirely changed his manner.

All that I had thought a charlatan style had vanished, and he talked of the state of the country and of the aspect and probabilities of affairs on the continent with a good sense, and a knowledge of subjects both at home and abroad, that surprised me equally and more agreeably than the first part of our interview had done; in fact, he talked like an officer and a statesman.… I don’t know that I ever had a conversation that interested me more.³¹

His character was inconsistent, but most who knew him were able to come to terms with the vagaries, and the common man responded to him with wholehearted devotion.

He was loyal to his family, but in the end he deserted his wife for Emma Hamilton. Fanny was a quiet and dignified woman who was devoted to Horatio, and remained close to his father for the rest of his life.³² She had a reputation even before she met Nelson for being a sympathetic listener to ‘difficult’ people, and Nelson’s flag-captain at Trafalgar, Thomas Masterman Hardy, regarded her as the best of women. He deprecated his friend’s conduct. Fanny, however, was not one to feed his vanity, and her solicitude for his safety provoked him. She was made desperately unhappy by her husband’s betrayal, and good society in England did not exonerate him. The King all but snubbed him, and there was never any possibility that Emma would be accepted at court.

Emma was boisterous, more than a little vulgar, and incapable of any sympathy for her displaced rival, but she filled a need. She was a woman who is more easily respected in the twenty-first century than in her own. A blacksmith’s daughter who had been taken up by a succession of ‘protectors’ because of her beauty and vivacity, she had eventually been passed on to Sir William Hamilton by his nephew. She made the best of her vicissitudes, and retained an affection for all her lovers. Sir William was a remarkable man who used his post as Envoy to the Court of Naples to study antiquities and natural history. He eventually married Emma when he was sixty-one in 1791, but he accepted with complacency her attachment to Nelson. In Palermo, and again in England, the three shared a home.

During the last years of his life, Nelson was totally dependent emotionally upon Emma. She bore him the only child he was to have, a daughter, Horatia. A second child died soon after birth. Nelson called her his ‘wife’, and after Sir William’s death she most certainly was in every way but the legal formalities. Nelson’s evident wish to remake her into the domestic anchor that he had lost in Fanny, however, showed the limitations of his perceptiveness.

She was no less devoted to him. When the Franco-Spanish fleet was assembling in the late summer of 1805, however, she understood that he could not be happy unless he took command of the forces arrayed against them. According to Southey, she said: ‘Nelson, however we may lament your absence, and your so speedily leaving us, offer your services immediately, to go off Cadiz; they will be accepted, and you will gain a quiet heart by it.’ Southey had it that Nelson ‘looked at her ladyship for some moments; and, with tears in his eyes, exclaimed – ‘Brave Emma! Good Emma! if there were more Emmas, there would be more Nelsons; You have penetrated my thoughts.’³³

Probably this recollection, which must have originated with Emma herself, was a pastiche. Nevertheless, it is consistent with her regard for Nelson as a hero who must be faithful to his duty. In his will, witnessed in the cabin of the Victory just before she came within range of the enemy guns, Nelson left Emma and Horatia to the care of his ‘King and Country’. Sadly to relate, both failed in their obligation to him.³⁴

Nelson’s fatherly interest in his midshipmen continued all his life, and took the place of the son he never had. He tried to promote the naval career of Fanny’s son Josiah, and was exasperated by the latter’s drunkenness, but Josiah may perhaps be excused his failures which came to a head at the time of Nelson’s triumph at the Nile and betrayal of his mother. He later did well in business. Nelson had more success with his protégés such as William Hoste, Edward Parker who died of wounds after the abortive raid on Boulogne in 1801, and John Quilliam who was first lieutenant of Victory at Trafalgar.

Nelson’s Early Career

It is only necessary to sketch in the chronicle of Nelson’s life before he came to assume the responsibility of commanding British battlefleets. From the contemporary biography by Robert Southey, to those by Tom Pocock, Christopher Hibbert and Roger Knight, Nelson’s life has been the subject of numerous books.

He was born in Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk in 1758, the son of the rector. His mother died when he was young, leaving him with the chief recollection that she ‘hated the French’, and a great sense of loss he was never able to resolve. Horatio first joined the navy in 1770 when the fleet was mobilised during the Falkland Islands crisis.³⁵ His mother’s brother, Captain Maurice Suckling, introduced him to the service. When the danger of war passed, Nelson made a voyage on a commercial vessel to the West Indies, and then on the Carcass, a survey vessel, which penetrated the ice fields north of Spitzbergen. Allegedly, Nelson had to be rescued from a youthful effort to kill a polar bear. He then made the voyage in a frigate to the East Indies. His promotions came fast, helped by Suckling’s appointment as Comptroller of the Navy Board in 1775 which gave him a patron with influence enough to take the exam for lieutenant at the early age of eighteen. Suckling had also given him a good grounding in seamanship, and in human relations.

In 1779 Nelson was ‘made’ Post-Captain at the very early age of twenty by an appointment to command the frigate Hinchinbrook. In 1780 he saw his first active service in a land operation against San Juan de Nicaragua, and nearly died there of fever. He recovered when he was invalided home, and an appointment to command the frigate Albemarle, which took him to the healthier climate of Canada, completed the cure. After the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War, Nelson was fortunate enough to obtain the appointment to the frigate Boreas in which he sailed to the West Indies with Lady Hughes as a passenger.

It was during his service in the West Indies that he made enemies amongst the merchants and senior officers by his insistence on enforcing the Navigation Acts against the King’s former American citizens who were attempting to continue their trade with the Islands. Despite the reputation this gave him in the planter community, Frances Nisbet accepted his offer of marriage. He had, however, to cool his heels for five years, perhaps because his officious probity had made him enemies at the Admiralty, or perhaps because his friendship with Prince William Henry was not regarded with favour by King George III. He was not employed during the crisis of 1790 occasioned by the Spanish attack on British interests at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island. He was too capable an officer, however, to be overlooked in the greater crisis of war with revolutionary France.

The execution of Louis XVI in January 1793 was quickly followed on 1 February by the declaration of war by France on England, Spain, Austria and the Netherlands. The day before, Nelson had been appointed to command a 64-gun ship of the line, the Agamemnon, with orders to place himself under Admiral Lord Hood who was to be Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean. The reputation he had already acquired in Norfolk by his concern for the sufferings of the poor, and for his readiness to greet warmly old friends from all stations in life, enabled him to fill his needs for ships company with Norfolk men without extensive reliance on the press. When later Hood offered him a 74-gun ship he declined to leave those who had been loyal to him.

The Spanish participation in the First Coalition against the French Revolution was a result not only of the hostility of deeply monarchist Spanish sentiment, but also of resentment of French betrayal at the time of the crisis over Nootka Sound. It gave Nelson an opportunity to observe Spanish army and navy commands as an ally, and he was not impressed. In Cadiz, which he visited on his way to the Mediterranean, he was shocked by the inefficiency with which the Spanish navy manned their otherwise excellent ships.

A royalist insurrection in southern France, supported by a badly directed Spanish force, opened the port of Toulon to the British Navy in August 1793. Nelson was involved in the operation, most notably by his effective diplomacy at the Court of Naples, which led to Neapolitan soldiers being rushed to Toulon. It was on this mission that Nelson met Sir William Hamilton and Emma. It proved impossible to defend Toulon against the army of the French Republic, however, and the irresolute behaviour of the Spanish army holding part of the perimeter was a major contributing cause. Artillery, commanded by the young General Napoleon Bonaparte, forced the Royal Navy to leave the harbour before the task of burning the Toulon fleet was complete. The failure of Spanish incendiary parties to carry out their task properly no doubt added to Nelson’s conviction that the forces of Spain were not to be rated highly. This was not blind prejudice, but it was an over-reaction that cost him dearly at Tenerife in 1797, and influenced his tactics at Trafalgar.

Nelson’s attack on 13 May 1795 on the Ça Ira, which had been damaged by an accident and was being towed by a frigate.

Nelson later played an active part in an operation intended to liberate Corsica, and he was the driving force behind the siege and capture of Bastia, although this was never acknowledged in dispatches. And it was at the works before Calvi, which later fell, that he lost the sight in one eye from gravel thrown up by a mortar bomb.

His resourcefulness and determination ashore was more than matched afloat. The disgust Nelson had expressed to Fanny when Hotham broke off an indecisive action against the French off Toulon in March 1795 is the more understandable because it was in that action that Nelson had so brilliantly distinguished himself in the fight with the 84-gun Ça Ira. The general action was no more than a skirmish, but over a thousand men were killed or wounded on each side. When two French ships, the Ça Ira and Jean Bart, collided, and the former lost speed, Nelson hauled the 64-gun Agamemnon out of the line and headed for her. Nelson’s journal gives a stirring account:

Sir William Hotham’s engagement, 14 May 1795. Nelson, in Agamemnon, was directly ahead of the flag and took the opportunity to urge decisive action, but Hotham was content with the capture of the isolated Ça Ira and the Censeur.

March 13th – At daylight the Enemy’s Fleet in the S.W. about three or four leagues with fresh breezes. Signal for a General chase. At eight A.M. a French Ship of the Line carried away her main and fore topmasts. At a quarter-past nine, the Inconstant frigate fired at the disabled Ship, but receiving many shot, was obliged to leave her. At ten A.M., tacked and stood towards the disabled Ship, and two other Ships of the Line. The disabled Ship proved to be the Ça Ira of 84 guns … [supported by the] Sans Culotte, one hundred and twenty guns; and the Jean Bart, seventy-four guns. We could have fetched the Sans Culotte by passing the Ça Ira to windward, but on looking round I saw no Ship of the Line within several miles to support me: the Captain was the nearest on our lee quarter. At twenty minutes past ten the Ça Ira began firing her stern-chasers. At half-past ten the Inconstant passed us to leeward, standing for the Fleet. As we drew up with the Enemy, so true did she fire her stern-guns, that not a shot missed some part of the Ship, and latterly the masts were struck every shot, which obliged me to open our fire a few minutes sooner than I intended, for it was my intention to have touched his stern before a shot was fired. But seeing plainly from the situation of the two Fleets, the impossibility of being supported, and in case any accident happened to our masts, the certainty of being severely cut up, I resolved to fire so soon as I thought we had a certainty of hitting. At a quarter before eleven A.M., being within one hundred yards of the Ça Ira’s stern, I ordered the helm to be put a-starboard, and the driver and after-sails to be braced up and shivered, and as the Ship fell off, gave her our whole broadside, each gun double-shotted. Scarcely a shot appeared to miss. The instant all were fired, braced up our afteryards, put the helm a-port, and stood after her again. This manoeuvre we practiced till one P.M., never allowing the Ça Ira to get a single gun from either side to fire on us. They attempted some of their after-guns, but all went far ahead of us. At this time the Ça Ira was a perfect wreck, her sails hanging in tatters, mizen topmast, mizen topsail, and cross jack yards shot away. At one P.M., the Frigate hove in stays, and got the Ça Ira round. As the Frigate first, and then the Ça Ira, got their guns to bear, each opened her fire, and we passed within half pistol-shot. As soon as our after-guns ceased to bear, the Ship was hove in stays, keeping, as she came round, a constant fire, and the Ship was worked with as much exactness, as if she had been turning into Spithead. On getting round, I saw the Sans Culotte, who had before wore with many of the Enemy’s Ships, under our lee bow, and standing to pass to leeward of us, under top-gallant sails. At half-past one P.M., the Admiral made the signal for the Van-ships to join him. I instantly bore away, and prepared to set all our sails, but the Enemy having saved their Ship, hauled close to the wind, and opened their fire, but so distant as to do us no harm; not a shot, I believe, hitting. Our sails and rigging were very much cut, and many shot in our hull and between wind and water, but, wonderful, only seven men were wounded.³⁶

The next day the fleets fought a passing action at long range, with the British to leeward, and doubled by the Ça Ira which was to leeward under the tow of Le Censeur. Eventually, these isolated ships were beaten into surrender, and Nelson was on hand to send a lieutenant to hoist British colours. He was rewarded with the courtesy rank of Colonel of Marines that added to his pay without adding to his duties.

Poor Fanny Nelson completely failed to fall in with Nelson’s mood. She was so worried for his safety that she fretted herself into ill health. It was in vain for him to write to reassure her that a heroic death was to be envied. His inability to understand how distressing to her must be his accounts of his personal heroism, it must be said, was a failing many of his brother officers shared. In Leghorn at this time Nelson was keeping company with Adelaide Correglia, an opera singer and intelligence source, with whom his friends thought he was making himself ridiculous. It was common for officers who had been away from home for years to make such friendships, but Nelson had no capacity to do so discreetly. How significant was Fanny’s failure to flatter his ego is a matter for conjecture, but it is significant that Emma was more than happy to oblige in this respect.

In December 1795 Admiral Sir John Jervis succeeded to the Command in Chief of the Mediterranean station. He was a commander to Nelson’s exacting standards, and in Nelson he recognised a subordinate of the highest capacity. On their first meeting in January 1796 Jervis offered Nelson promotion to Rear Admiral, if approved by the Admiralty, and an immediate promotion to the post of Commodore, which was then a temporary rank.

Nelson’s service with the Mediterranean fleet was important to his later triumphs because he experienced Jervis’s methods of discipline, and of fleet management. Jervis was a very strict disciplinarian, but his severity was all directed to the goal of conditioning officers and men for combat, and training the fleet for action in all weathers. Conditions of service at the end of the eighteenth century had grown increasingly hard, and the French Revolution stood as an awful warning of the consequences of the breakdown of authority. Irish nationalism added to the discontent in a fleet manned with pressed men of whom many were Irish. In the summer of 1797 the discontent was to turn to mutiny at the fleet anchorages at Spithead off Portsmouth, and the Nore in the Thames estuary. The Spithead mutineers, who would certainly now be thought of as taking highly responsible collective action and who were careful to leave no one exposed to reprisal, succeeded in their demands for improved conditions, and received a royal pardon. Those at the Nore were more isolated, the mutiny was crushed, and the men who had allowed themselves to appear as leaders were hanged. There was to be no mass mutiny in Admiral Jervis’s command, however, because he resolutely stamped out any sign of disaffection, and because he took good care to look after his men’s health.

Courts martial became a regular occurrence on the ships which were sent out to join his command in the months after the mutiny, and when the death sentence was passed it was always carried out. Jervis once ordered four mutineers hanged on a Sunday to demonstrate his determination, and sent home Vice Admiral Charles Thompson when he protested at the profanation of the Sabbath. He always obliged the condemned man’s mess-mates to carry out the execution, and ordered that two armed marines from each ship be sent to ensure that it was carried out. This fierce control was matched by a no less fierce insistence that the ships and supplies sent to him should be in a condition fit for service, and for consumption. It was Jervis’s training that made the officers who were to be Nelson’s band of brothers at the battle of the Nile.

The general action under Hotham was the first in which Nelson had held command. From that date, however, his career was to be meteoric. Agamemnon was worn out with service, many of her original crew had been dispersed, and Nelson was persuaded to hoist his new pendant on the 74-gun Captain. As her captain, and commodore, he was to establish his reputation so convincingly at the battle of Cape St Vincent that a year later he was appointed over the heads of more senior officers to command the detached force with which he annihilated the French Mediterranean fleet at the battle of the Nile.

Sea Power

Nelson is remembered for the battles he fought, and for the tactics he used which made the best use of the high morale he inspired in the officers and men of his ships. To a considerable extent because of Nelson’s successes, great battles came to be regarded as so self-evidently the means of winning wars that they virtually became an end in themselves. When in 1902 the Admiralty prepared a ‘Memorandum on Sea-Power and the Principles Involved’ for the Imperial Conference, they advised the Dominion leaders that:

To any naval Power the destruction of the fleet of the enemy must always be the great object aimed at…. In the foregoing remarks the word defence does not appear. It is omitted advisedly, because the primary object of the British Navy is not to defend anything, but to attack the fleets of the enemy, and, by defeating them, to afford protection to British Dominions, supplies and commerce. This is the ultimate aim.³⁷

Great victories can be sterile, however, or even counter-productive – the Pyrrhic victory of classical times. The task of the fleets Nelson commanded was fundamentally that of supporting the foreign policy of the British government in peace and war. If war could not be avoided it had to be won, but battles were only a means to that end. As battlefleet commander on detached service, Nelson was well aware, as the Prussian General Von Clausewitz was to write a few years after Nelson’s death, that ‘war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means’.³⁸

During the eighteenth century the French navy had gradually developed a strategic modus operandi that largely sought to avoid battle. The task of French fleets was to mount enough of a threat that invasion of France became a difficult operation, and to maintain contact with French garrisons in America and Asia. Generally, these purposes could be undertaken while avoiding battle. Besides those defensive necessities, the French navy had a tradition of supporting the efforts of privateers who sought to make a profit out of naval war. This objective could be served by the maintenance of forces ‘in being’, safe in defended harbours. Because they might sortie at any time, Britain was obliged to keep her fleets in tactical formations ready for battle. Offensive use of the French navy to escort troop carriers, for invasion of the British Isles or other states, posed a greater risk of battle. There was always the hope, however, that clever deployments might enable the navy to evade British defences. This was Napoleon’s intention when he took an army to invade Egypt in 1798, and during the following years when he sought to concentrate Franco-Spanish naval forces for the invasion of England. His commanders were under instruction to avoid battle unless the odds were very much in their favour.

The incentive to avoid battle was great because France, although a richer country than Britain, had to devote resources to the defence of her borders with continental neighbours. The French navy never had the same claim on the treasury as did the British navy. Furthermore, the fact that pre-revolutionary France did not give political power to the bourgeoisie ensured that they were unwilling to pay the taxes needed to support a fleet capable of seeking a quick decision in battle. Navies are capital-intensive institutions, and depended more on a money economy than did unmechanised armies. The revolution changed the political structure of France, but a partnership between commerce and government could not be created instantly. When Napoleon came to power he employed the French navy in a traditional strategy of manoeuvre while avoiding battle unless circumstances were ideal.

The naval potential of Britain was greater than was that of France for several reasons. Perhaps most important was the respected position commercial interests held in British society, unlike the situation in absolutist France. The partnership between businessmen, the aristocracy and government meant that there was more money in circulation in Britain even though its total economy was smaller than was that of France. The important role of the House of Commons in British government, and the presence of trading interests in the House, meant that it was easier for British administrations to raise tax revenue to pay for the navy which benefited all, but especially the monied interests. In the middle of the eighteenth century Parliament was even willing to permit the administration to run a debt for the maintenance of the navy, which periodically Parliament was asked to pay off. In effect, Parliament was willing to trust the administration with a blank cheque for the support of the navy.

The trading community in Britain supported the largest mercantile marine in the world, with the largest number of sailors. This made it possible for Britain to maintain in wartime the largest fleet. The availability of sailors was the true test of the capacity of a nation to keep a fleet at sea. In the Seven Years War Britain had been able to raise 84,770 sailors to man about 129 ships of the line, and in the following decades those numbers were used as benchmarks of the total naval effort of which Britain was capable.³⁹ In 1795 the British battle fleet listed 123 ships of the line, and in 1805 that number had been pushed up to 135, but to do so conditions of service were made so hard that it led to the 1797 general mutiny at the fleet anchorages of Spithead and the Nore.⁴⁰

The principal restraint on Britain’s capacity to man her fleet was the means of recruitment. Britons cherished the personal liberties that had been established over the centuries. As a consequence, they were not willing to see the development of a methodical system of conscription. The result, perversely, was that wartime recruitment was left on the basis of medieval concepts of compulsory service, which by the eighteenth century was only enforced on professional sailors. These were still held to have an obligation to provide their services to the Crown in time of war. The Crown enforced this obligation by the rugged means of the impressment service. Popular commanders like Nelson were often able to fill their ships’ crew lists with volunteers from their own districts, but, where dependence had to be placed on the press, recruitment was grossly inefficient. The benchmark provided by the Seven Years War indicated that the British were unlikely to be able to man more than thirty-nine ships of the line at the end of the first year of mobilisation. At the outbreak of war there was a danger that the French, who did have a system of conscription established by Colbert at the end of the seventeenth century, would be able to get their fleet to sea sooner.

Ultimately, if they could avoid defeat in the first months, the British could always keep a significantly larger fleet at sea than could the French. But when France was allied with Spain, as she was for much of the eighteenth century, or when France controlled the fleets of the Netherlands and Italy as she did under Napoleon, the pressure on British naval resources became more demanding. In 1795 there were 512,000 tons of ships in the Royal Navy, 284,000 in the French Marine, and 264,000 in the Spanish navy. The smaller navies totalled 565,000 tons, of which the largest was the Russian navy with 140,000 in the Baltic and 42,000 in the Black Sea. At the time of Trafalgar, the Royal Navy had 569,000 tons of shipping, the French Marine 182,000, the Spanish navy 139,000, and the smaller navies totalled 465,000 tons.

Britain had a greater need for cruisers, which in the eighteenth century was a term used to identify older and smaller warships stationed at focal points in the sea lanes to protect merchant shipping, and to deny the sea to enemy ships and for convoy of trade. Accordingly, the figures for total tonnage are not an adequate measure of the ability of the Royal Navy to contain the Franco-Spanish battlefleet. In 1760 Britain had had a battlefleet 3 per cent larger than that of France and Spain combined, but in the American Revolutionary War France and Spain were able to build up a battlefleet strength nominally 44 per cent larger than that of the British navy, and for a while even dominated the English Channel. In 1790 they still had a 34 per cent combined superiority. Spain was unable to build any more ships of the line after 1797, however, and French construction did not keep up with that in Britain. At the time of Trafalgar the French could put to sea only forty-four ships of the line, and Spain only thirty, provided they could be manned. The 135 ships of the line Britain was then able to put to sea outnumbered the combined battlefleet to such an extent that the chance that the Franco-Spanish commanders would be able to defeat an isolated British squadron was small. For that matter, Nelson expressed his belief that the British must inevitably win such an encounter strategically, even if they lost it tactically, because they could afford to take much heavier losses.

The surprise declaration of war the British Government made in 1803, putting an end to the brief and hostile Peace of Amiens, was important to the relative naval strength Britain was able to command in the following years because British cruisers were able to sweep up the French merchant marine. An important part of the pool of French seamen was denied to the French navy. Because the relative weakness of the French navy made it necessary to avoid encounters with the British except under ideal conditions, it could not give the inexperienced replacement men enough sea time to develop their skills. In comparison with the French, however, Spanish ships were far worse off for skilled seamen. The Spanish mercantile marine employed less that 6,000 seamen on seagoing vessels, but the navy needed in the order of 90,000 men.⁴¹ The ships of which the complements ranged from 606 to 1,113 men were only able to put to sea with crews of landsmen and soldiers stiffened by sixty or at most eighty experienced seamen.

The French and Spanish navies had different loyalties and different strategic objectives. The extent of the Spanish empire meant that her alliance was nearly as much a liability as it was an asset for France, apart from the money that Spain was able to contribute to the common cause, and the diversion of British energies which occurred when campaigns were launched to seize Spanish resources.⁴² It was the Spanish strategic objective of keeping the scene of naval conflict well away from their empire that led to the 1779 Franco-Spanish deployment to the Channel, where they heavily outnumbered the British but were so poorly co-ordinated that they were more a danger to themselves than to Britain. The people of Devon and Cornwall stopped eating fish because of the number of dead bodies that were thrown overboard from the combined fleet.

In 1803, Admiral Don Frederico Gravina, who was then ambassador to Paris, made it clear to Napoleon that the Spanish navy did not want to become locked up in Brest as it had between 1799 and the Peace of Amiens. His secret instructions were based on the need to have forces available to protect the Spanish coast, and on the cold fact that it was not in the interest of Spain that England should be invaded.⁴³ Napoleon did not allow his plans to be affected by Gravina’s representations, but two years later Gravina commanded the Spanish forces in the campaign leading to Trafalgar. His influence over the French commander, Admiral Villeneuve, may have been important in ensuring that, in fact, the combined fleet did not sail for Brest.

The principal incentive for the British to seek decisive battles with the French and Spanish fleets was that, ultimately, they did have to be able to defeat at sea any invasion attempt escorted by a battlefleet. The British army was too small to defeat an invasion in force once it was ashore. That which might have to be faced in the end might as well be faced at the onset.

The other strategic motive for seeking battle was that Britain’s capacity to influence events on the continent depended largely upon the effectiveness of their fleet, both in the defence of trade and in the capacity to provide support for allies. If British forces were contained by Franco-Spanish squadrons maintaining fleets-in-being in defended harbours, few resources would be available for more offensive pursuit of British foreign policy.

Britain’s Naval Strategy

The most important reason for Britain maintaining a navy was to prevent invasion from the continent. The Trafalgar campaign, which ended in Nelson’s last and greatest battle, had started as a classic effort at power projection. Napoleon was frustrated in his conquest of Europe by the continued resistance of Britain and determined to take it off the map by invasion. To do so, he concentrated soldiers in the northern departments of France, built landing craft, and attempted to deploy French, Spanish and Dutch naval forces so that they could support a crossing of the short sea route to southern England. The British Government constructed coastal defences, notably the famous Martello Towers, to make it difficult for the soldiers to get ashore, but the principal defence against invasion was recognised to be the effective counteraction of the Royal Navy.

Chart of the Strait and Bay of Gibraltar. ‘Gibraltar, the Calpe of the Ancients, is situated in the province of Andalusia in Spain, and is the strongest fortification in Europe. It has been in the possession of the English since the year 1704’. From The Naval Chronicle.

Next in importance to the defence of British shores, was the defence of Britain’s allies. The inability of the small British economy to support an army on the scale of that of France, Spain or Austria meant that alliances with one or more continental military powers were an essential defensive requirement. It was necessary to ensure that the French could not concentrate their efforts upon building naval forces. The classic expression of this concern, that ‘France will outdo us at sea, when they have nothing to fear by land’, had been made by the Duke of Newcastle in 1749.⁴⁴ The armies of her allies were important to Britain’s naval defences.

Over the course of the century it had been learnt that the best way for London to acquire influence in central and eastern Europe, in order to construct alliances which could preoccupy French military planners, was by acquiring a dominant position in the naval affairs of the Mediterranean. In the Mediterranean area, where roads were long and difficult, or non-existant, naval forces possessed the greatest influence through their capacity to convoy troop ships. The acquisition of Gibraltar in 1704 gave the fleet a forward base that made possible year-round deployment into the Mediterranean. The mobility this provided for the small British army, and for the armies of the smaller Mediterranean states with which Britain might be allied, put a significant political lever into British hands. French, Spanish and Austrian interests converged in the area. In the wars at the beginning of the eighteenth century London, by deploying a fleet to the Mediterranean coast of France, had tied down large French armies far away from the decisive theatres in Germany and Flanders. The capacity of the British Mediterranean fleet to provide protection for allies threatened by seaborne attack was even more important.

British governments were aware of the need to support the prestige of the Royal Navy by reacting to any use of naval power by other states that might undermine Britain’s role of naval arbiter. The mobilisation of 1770 in response to a Spanish attack on British interests in the Falkland Islands, which was the occasion for Nelson’s first joining the navy, was primarily motivated by the need to protect the reputation of Britain’s naval power.⁴⁵ The circumstances of that crisis were as much concerned with the affairs of the Mediterranean as they were with those of the South Atlantic. In 1790 Spain was warned off interference in British interests in Vancouver Island, and for the same reason.

When in 1796, after the defeat of the Royalist uprising in Toulon, the decision was taken to withdraw the British fleet from the Mediterranean, the effect on British affairs in the region was most unfortunate. The defection of Austria from the first coalition against France followed. The damage done to British interests began to be repaired in 1798 when the deployment of a squadron under Nelson defeated the French at the Nile putting an end to Napoleon’s ability to determine events by moving a French army about the Mediterranean. The consequence was that Turkey concluded an understanding with Britain. Turkish and British armies were transported to Egypt, and eventually the army that Napoleon had abandoned there to its fate was defeated. The Kingdom of Naples threw off its restraint, and openly returned to hostilities with France. In December Russia concluded an alliance with Britain, and extended her protection to Naples. In 1799 a joint Turkish and Russian army expelled the French from Corfu and a Russian army of 6,000 was left as a garrison. Austria adhered to this second coalition against France. The ambition of the Russians to acquire their own naval footing in the Mediterranean, however, complicated Anglo-Russian relations in the 1800s, as indeed it had in the 1760s under Catherine the Great.

Gibraltar was an inadequate base for the Royal Navy because of its distance from Toulon, because of the prevailing northerly winds and the current through the Straits into the Mediterranean, and because the harbour was open to attack by Spanish gunboats. A British squadron based on Port Mahon in Minorca had commanded the western Mediterranean in the mid-eighteenth century, but Minorca was lost in the American War, and was not again available for British use until it was captured by Captain John Duckworth in late 1798. It was returned again to Spain at the Peace of Amiens in 1802. Naples provided supplies for the Royal Navy from time to time, but was vulnerable to the French army in northern Italy. The only really secure base which could provide distant support for the ships watching Toulon, and also block French ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean, was Malta. This island with its superbly fortified harbour had been captured by Napoleon on his way to Egypt in 1798, and was subsequently taken from its French garrison after a prolonged siege. The desire of the mad Tsar Paul to obtain Malta was a contributing factor to the Baltic crisis in 1801. The Addington Ministry agreed as part of the 1802 peace treaty with France that Malta should be returned to the Order of St John which Napoleon had driven out, but backed out of the commitment when it became apparent that Napoleon did not intend to honour the spirit of the treaty. Britain declared war on France, and Pitt, who was returned to power, refused to cede Malta to Russia even when Tsar Alexander I made that a condition for accession to the third coalition against Napoleon. Alexander only changed his mind in July 1805 because he was insulted by Napoleon’s proclaiming himself an Emperor, and alarmed by his seizure of Genoa.

The British refusal of the Russian demand was based on a concern that the Russian navy would not be able to contain the French Mediterranean fleet, and was consistent with the long-standing reluctance to share naval power with Russia. Russia and Britain were so far able to cooperate, however, that a joint military force was deployed to Naples at the time of Trafalgar to provide security against a French army that had occupied Taranto.

Naval control of the Baltic was no less important than was a commanding naval position in the Mediterranean, because of the continuing need for naval building materials from the north. Long before the end of the eighteenth century, the domestic British supply of timber had become inadequate. The need to import the great trees which were used to make masts and yards was older still. The best foreign source of supply for timber, masts, and for tar, hemp, canvas, and iron for fastenings, anchors and guns, was from the states around the Baltic. Efforts had been made periodically to develop North American sources of supply, but only in the case of masts had this been successful. France and Spain were very nearly as dependent on Baltic sources for naval stores as was Britain.

The objectives of British naval control of the Baltic trade were to deny to their enemies access to naval building material, and to ensure that British dockyards would be well supplied at a reasonable price. Before the development in the nineteenth century of the idea that neutrals had an obligation to act impartially, and to avoid destabilising the balance of power, these objectives were practically speaking the two sides of the same coin. The same naval operation could deny the enemy access to supply, and ensure British supply. At the same time, the work of the British cruisers also helped to ensure that British trade was profitable enough to pay for the supply. This last, the purely mercantilist objective of using force to dominate trade, was as important as was the blockade of French dockyards.

In the eighteenth century blockade operations were rarely able to deny an enemy access to strategically important cargoes, and instead concentrated on making a profit by seizing enemy ships and cargoes for their monetary value. The profit made from the sale of prizes, and from carrying on the trade that the enemy lost through late delivery and increased costs, was strategically important because the wealth gained could be extracted in taxes and used to support the war effort. The chances of enemy shipping being able to run a blockade were good enough to limit strategic value of attempting to block supplies of most of the materials used for military purposes, let alone block consumer goods. Only when efforts were narrowly focused on a few harbours, and on heavy cargoes that could not be transported by land, was there much prospect of preventing supplies getting through. In this respect, geography gave Britain an important advantage over the French. Naval stores were so bulky and so heavy that they could only reach their destinations by sea. When the Royal Navy was strong enough, as it had been following the battle of Quiberon Bay in the Seven Years War, it was able to impede the repair of the French fleet by cruises along the Normandy and Brittany coasts. Victuals for the fleet at Brest also had to be shipped by sea, because Breton farms could not supply the needs. Napoleon solved the problem of bringing supplies from central France by building canals, but naval stores from the Baltic continued to be sent by sea close by British naval harbours.

The ability of the Royal Navy to intercept the flow of naval stores from the Baltic was dependent upon the balance of power. Generally, the masts, timber, hemp and tar were freighted in neutral merchantmen. Although British interpretation of international law asserted the right of a belligerent to seize enemy-owned cargo carried in neutral bottoms, the Baltic neutrals did not acknowledge that right, and resisted when they could.⁴⁶

In the seventeenth century the British had had to fight to prevent the Dutch intercepting supplies to British dockyards, but the French did not enjoy a similarly powerful geographic position. Arrangements to convoy the cargoes of naval stores to England were well established, and there was little prospect of French privateers being able to intercept more than a small proportion of them.⁴⁷ It was a usual practice for French privateers to ransom their captives while they were still at sea so that they could continue their voyage. Furthermore, traditional French interpretation of international law protected neutral vessels carrying enemy-owned cargo. What London had to worry about was not the strangulation of supply so much as the prospect that the neutral Balts would drive up the price of naval stores to a degree which threatened Britain’s ability to pay, and at the same time facilitate the armament of the French and Spanish fleets.

Apart from the blockade of naval stores, maritime control of the Baltic had important offensive as well as defensive implications. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Britain was not able to use her commanding position at sea to threaten the French Republic and Empire, except to support with limited success the independence of the smaller nations of Europe. It was only because of the economic pressure which a naval power could exert that the British Government was able to avoid a strategic stalemate. Napoleon was scathing about British subsidies which were paid to continental states to support their belligerence against France, but armaments cost vast amounts of money. Without the wealth Britain earned from overseas trade, it is doubtful whether Austria, Russia or Prussia would have been able to support the expense of resisting French power, or been induced to make the attempt. In 1804 the annual revenue of the British treasury was £40 million from which a subsidy was agreed with Austria and Russia of £1.25 million for every 100,000 soldiers put in the field against Napoleon.

Wealth earned in trade, and paid as customs dues and income taxes, was also vital to the capacity of the British Government to keep its own fleet at sea. Timber merchants, victuallers, and all the commercial concerns that were needed to sustain the navy were willing to supply their goods on the credit of Navy Board bills, but their faith in eventual repayment was based on the responsibility of government, and on their belief that the navy would hold its own.

Despite the growth of the idea in the last half of the eighteenth century that free trade was in the general interest, ‘mercantilism’, the use of tariffs and other controls to restrict the profitability of rivals’ access to international markets, was still a prevailing economic doctrine. Mercantilism had an obvious strategic role in wartime when the relative wealth of nations, not their absolute wealth, was all-important. Britain, because of her commanding leadership in the industrial revolution, had products that could hold their own in any market. In effect, a successful campaign against enemy trade by Royal Navy cruisers and by British privateers served to funnel money into the pockets of the British merchants and British insurers. The English were all the more successful at this game in the eighteenth century because the London insurance market had learnt how to make a good profit out of insuring ships and cargoes in wartime, even extending their services to enemy merchants who paid the large premiums made necessary by the activity of British privateers and the Royal Navy. British interpretation of the laws of war permitted the arrest of neutral merchant ships if they were carrying enemy-owned cargoes, or cargoes that in peacetime the enemy would only permit their own nationals to carry.

The 1793 statute ‘more effectively to prevent, during the War, all Traitorous Correspondence with, or Aid or Assistance being given to, His Majesty’s Enemies’ cut off enemy access to British insurance.⁴⁸ This reduced the war profits made in the City of London, but also strengthened the ability of the Navy to deny the enemy strategic cargoes.

The Baltic states might have had little reason to wish French arms to triumph, but neither did they wish Britain to have the ability to determine to whom and at what price they could sell their commodities. British mercantilism was in conflict with that of the Baltic states, which had very deep roots. British merchants had established strong connections with the primary producers, which tended to foil any attempts by the suppliers to push prices up to a level which could affect the ability of the British navy to keep the sea in sufficient numbers. However, there was a long history of Baltic states exploiting their geography and naval forces to profit from wars fought by their neighbours. For nearly three centuries Denmark had collected a toll on trade passing the fortress of Elsinore to or from the North Sea.

To be able to profit from the wars of their neighbours, the Balts needed to be able to confront force with force. In the American Revolutionary War, under the leadership of Tsarina Catherine the Great, a League of Armed Neutrality was brought together to resist British naval and mercantile control. The objectives of the League were those of self-interest. The new idea of free trade was used as justification for a strictly mercantilist purpose.

So great had been the threat, that the British Government declared war on the Netherlands in 1780 to pre-empt their intended joining of the League. The Netherlands suffered severely in consequence, but Britain was at such a disadvantage during the American War that the Royal Navy had not possessed the power to make effective the strategy of sea control in the face of Baltic resistance. Prussia had also joined the neutral League, Austria and Russia had concluded an alliance, and Britain had had to accept on face value the ‘naturalization’ of Dutch ships under Prussian and Austrian flags. In 1780, only 671 Prussian ships passed the Sound, but in 1781 the number rose to 1,507. The measure of Britain’s failure is that between 1778 and September 1782 Riga exported 996 masts to Britain, 868 to France (with an additional twenty-nine sent via Genoa), 405 to Spain, and 1,855 to the Netherlands, only 600 of which were on the account of the Dutch navy.⁴⁹ The rest were probably reshipped to French ports.

In the war against the French Revolution and Bonapartism, London was determined not to let the Baltic situation again get out of hand. Britain could not afford to let France have free access to naval stores, and had to ensure that her own supply was safe, and that her trade was profitable. Royal Navy enforcement of the blockade of supplies to the French dockyards led to a clash with a Swedish convoy in January 1798, and when in December 1799 a Danish frigate tried to prevent the search of a Danish convoy, shots were fired. This was followed by a more serious action in July 1800 when a Danish frigate and her convoy were captured after a violent exchange.⁵⁰ The Danish Government, dominated by Count Bernstorff, demanded satisfaction, and the British Government sent a fleet to the Sound to underline its determination to enforce its sea control. The Danish court appealed to the mad Tsar Paul for support. It was to crush this threat that a British fleet was sent to Copenhagen, in 1801. Nelson commanded the detachment that destroyed the navy of Denmark.

Tsar Alexander I tried to stipulate in 1803 that the British surrender their concept of maritime law before Russia would join the coalition against Napoleon, but Pitt refused to concede the point. In 1812, American resentment at British arrest of neutral shipping to manipulate trade was to lead to the United States declaring war on Britain. The strategic reality, however, was that it was only because of Britain’s successful pursuit of mercantilism that Napoleon’s conquest of Europe was eventually reversed. Free trade was the growing economic policy of peace, but mercantilism was the necessary strategy for naval war.

Britain’s naval strategy could not concentrate entirely on European waters. The French empire at the end of the eighteenth century was a small remnant of what it had been when Nelson was born during the Seven Years War. Accordingly, the wars of the French Revolution and Empire were largely fought in European waters. The importance of overseas trade to Britain’s war effort remained considerable, however. Sugar from the West Indies, furs from Canada, tea, spices, silk and porcelain from Asia all provided British merchants with stock in trade which ultimately provided the taxes that supported the war effort. Accordingly, the British navy, as well as guarding Britain’s shores against invasion, and dominating the naval affairs of the Mediterranean and Baltic, had to ensure the safe passage of trade convoys from across the Atlantic, and from Asia. Fortunately, the same deployments that contained French and Spanish naval threats to home waters also served to minimise the scale of threat overseas.

Operational Strategy

The operational strategy of the Royal Navy to guard against invasion, to protect her allies from invasion, and to control trade, had been developed over the century. The hinge of the entire strategy was the Channel Fleet based on the anchorage at Spithead, off Portsmouth, with a detachment based on Plymouth and known as the Western Squadron. Unless the French were able to concentrate a decisively superior force, no French admiral could take the risk of entering the Channel before the prevailing southwesterly winds and with an undefeated Western Squadron behind them. Until the establishment of a permanent blockade force off Brest in 1800 the usual practice was to hold the Channel Fleet ready at anchor in a safe harbour where it would not be subjected to damage from weather, and its crews would be less subject to ill health brought on by poor food and water. The danger of the French sailing had to be accepted, and in any case no close blockade could prevent them getting out of Brest in the immediate aftermath of a westerly or southwesterly gale during which a blockading force would have to seek sea room. The admirals who commanded the Channel Fleet during the early years of the Revolutionary War, Howe and Bridport, favoured keeping the fleet as far east as Spithead where it could be supplied easily.

The disadvantage of Spithead was that it could be very difficult to take the squadron down Channel should the Brest fleet move to the westward, as it did in 1796 to support a landing in Ireland, or to the southward to co-operate with the Spaniards, to cross the Atlantic, or to enter the Mediterranean. This difficulty was especially significant as, resources being limited, the Channel Fleet had to be treated as a strategic reserve from which detachments could be made to counter detachments from the French Atlantic Fleet at Brest, or from the other French dockyards in the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean. It was, as Admiral Lord Barham, First Lord of the Admiralty put it, ‘the mainspring from which all offensive operations must proceed.’⁵¹ During the American Revolutionary War, it had been very difficult to react in a timely manner. The strategic problems in the war against revolutionary and imperial France were less intractable, but still sufficiently demanding.

John Bull, that stout and portly personification of Britain, is depicted in a contemporary cartoon keeping a close eye on the French fleet in Brest.

(Cartoon published by Robert Middlemore)

In consequence, when Admiral the Earl St Vincent was made First Lord of the Admiralty in 1800 he applied the experience he had gained keeping the Mediterranean Squadron on station off the Spanish dockyard at Cadiz to the problem in the Channel, and established a close blockade of Brest. The Channel Fleet was stationed off Ushant with frigates and support units close to the entrances of the Rade and with Plymouth and Torbay available for refuge in heavy weather. Admiral William Cornwallis was in command during the Trafalgar campaign of 1805, operating from Torbay and Plymouth with Portsmouth to leeward for a main supply and repair base.

The French navy was dispersed to four dockyards in metropolitan France, at Brest, Lorient, Rochefort and Toulon, with ships deployed to protect French interests in the West Indies and the Indian Ocean. These squadrons had considerable value in the containment of British resources, and for supporting privateer action against trade, but separately they could not risk action unless the British forces offshore should be reduced by storm or accident. The Spanish navy in European waters depended on Cartagena in the Mediterranean, Cadiz at the southwest corner of Spain, and Ferrol at the northwest, and always had a sizeable detachment in the West Indies and South America. By stationing blockading forces close to these ports, and dominating the maritime communications between, the Royal Navy was able to keep on top of the aggressive use of French and Spanish naval forces.

The Royal Navy’s most important overseas command was the Mediterranean Squadron. The acquisition of Gibraltar had made it possible for British ships to remain in the Mediterranean for extended periods, but Gibraltar was not well placed for supporting a blockade of Toulon because of the prevailing northeasterly and northwesterly winds. Minorca was preferable, and several times during the century Britain held Port Mahon as a forward base. Nelson, however, did not have the use of Port Mahon which had been returned to Spain as part of the peace settlement after the American Revolutionary War. Instead he had to use the undeveloped Magdalena anchorage in northern Sardinia. From this station he maintained a distant watch on Toulon, hoping to entice the French fleet out to sea where he expected to be able to defeat it.

When the Toulon fleet did come out, it was a problem to discover where it had gone. In 1798 it went to Egypt; in 1805 it went to the West Indies. It was standing orders for squadrons deployed outside home waters that, if the forces they were watching managed to escape, they were to concentrate on the Western Squadron, or later on the Channel Fleet off Ushant. In 1798, however, Nelson decided that the French must have gone to Egypt, and took the risk of going there himself. In 1805 he concluded that they had gone to the West Indies and again took the risk of following them. He then had to follow them back, consumed with anxiety that they might get to Ushant ahead of him, join with the Brest squadron, and defeat Admiral Cornwallis commanding the Channel Fleet. In making his judgements, Nelson was able to depend on over a century of collective service experience about the effect of terrestrial geography, meteorological and hydrographic conditions on the potential movement of fleets.

To guard against the threat of invasion during the campaigns of 1804 and 1805, the Royal Navy deployed flotillas along the Channel coast. These ensured that no sudden assault could be attempted without heavy support. They were given close cover by a squadron of frigates and a few ships of the line based on the Downs, the roads to seaward of the white cliffs of Dover, the Nore command in the mouth of the Thames, and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. Another cruiser squadron was based on the Channel Islands where it was to windward of the embarkation ports during the prevailing southwesterlies. The Channel Fleet off Ushant provided the ultimate muscle.

Nelson – the Diplomat Sailor

British foreign policy in the late eighteenth century was controlled by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and to the extent that foreign policy could be said to be ‘made’ in London, it was made collectively by the Ministry acting in the King’s name, and with King George III exercising some influence. Throughout Europe were stationed British envoys who were the agents of the Secretary of State. For practical reasons, however, naval commanders often had to take great responsibility for developing and supporting British policy. Communications were so poor that in peacetime it would take up to a month for letters to pass between London and the Mediterranean, and in wartime when the French mail service could not be used and letters had to be diverted over the Alps and through Germany, or take their chances of a fair wind for a passage by sea around Spain, they could take much longer. A detached naval commander at a foreign court, such as was Nelson at the Court of Naples after the battle of the Nile, had to undertake the task of coordinating naval and diplomatic action, and work to develop the policies of Britain’s allies along safe and useful lines. After the battle of Copenhagen Nelson played a vital role in putting an end to the hostile policies of Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. It was his victories at the Nile and Copenhagen that made his diplomacy influencial.

Nelson died of his wounds during the battle of Trafalgar. It was others who profited from that victory, and had to exploit it. Nelson’s last great battle reduced the naval forces available to Napoleon to such an extent that he was unable to dictate the course of European history by continuing to threaten invasion of Britain. Neither could he extend his control of the Mediterranean although he was able to overrun Naples from the land. Operationally, it freed the Royal Navy for other tasks, the most fundamental of which was the defence of trade. Strategically, this operational freedom at sea ensured that British trade would be able to pay for the subsidised armies that ultimately defeated Napoleon.