The Boys' Nelson. Harold Wheeler
the Badger brig; and was first sent to protect the Mosquito shore, and the Bay of Honduras, from the depredations of the American privateers. Whilst on this service, I gained so much the affections of the settlers, that they unanimously voted me their thanks, and expressed their regret on my leaving them; entrusting to me to describe to Sir Peter Parker and Sir John Dalling their situation, should a war with Spain break out. Whilst I commanded this brig, H.M.S. Glasgow, Captain Thomas Lloyd, came into Montego Bay, Jamaica, where the Badger was laying: in two hours afterwards she took fire by a cask of rum; and Captain Lloyd will tell you, that it was owing to my exertions, joined to his, that her whole crew were rescued from the flames.”
This stirring incident merits a more detailed description than the bare facts which Nelson chose to set forth. The crew was in a panic when he and his men set foot on the deck of the doomed vessel, and by almost superhuman exertions managed to throw all the gunpowder in the magazine overboard before the flames reached it. He also ordered that the loaded cannon should be directed upward, so that when they exploded, owing to the intense heat, no damage would result. Thus early in his career did Nelson show that he was not at a loss when the unusual and unexpected happened. In a letter to Captain Locker, who was ill, the young officer describes the fate of the Glasgow as “a most shocking sight; and had it happened half an hour later, in all probability a great many people would have been lost.” He also notes that the company of the derelict were falling ill very fast owing to the constant tropical rains to which the men were exposed, there being no room for them on the Badger.
“On 11 June, 1779,” Nelson continues, “I was made post into the Hinchinbrook. When, being at sea, and Count d’Estaing arriving at Hispaniola (Haïti) with a very large fleet and army from Martinique, an attack on Jamaica was expected. In this critical state, I was by both admiral and general entrusted with the command of the batteries at Port Royal; and I need not say, as the defence of this place was the key to the port of the whole naval force, the town of Kingston, and Spanish Town, it was the most important post in the whole island.”
D’Estaing’s fleet consisted of twenty-two sail-of-the-line, excluding transports and privateers which had attached themselves to him, and it was commonly reported that he had no fewer than 20,000 troops on board. Nelson, as noted above, was now Post-Captain, and although he had no occasion to prove his ability as a commander of land batteries, he seems to have taken kindly to the situation. In a letter to his friend Captain Parker, dated the 12th August 1779, he states that “Jamaica is turned upside down since you left it,” and furnishes particulars of the measures made for the defence of the island. “You must not be surprised to hear of my learning to speak French,” he remarks as a humorous aside.
To help to achieve the downfall of the wily d’Estaing was not to fall to Nelson’s lot. That worthy hastened to Savannah, which was attacked by troops under General Lincoln and himself. They were routed by the British lines, whereupon d’Estaing sailed away.
Great Britain was now at war with Spain, which had thrown in her lot with France, and was soon to feel the effects of the Armed Neutrality, consisting of Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and Prussia. They resented England’s right to search neutral ships, with the result that the latter Power could not retain her supremacy at sea, a cause of Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown and the consequent loss of the American Colonies. In January 1780 it was resolved to make an attempt to take the important post of Fort San Juan, on the river of that name. This would materially aid the British to secure the city of Granada, on Lake Nicaragua, and to sever the communications of the enemy between their northern and southern dominions. The idea originated with Dalling, Governor of Jamaica, to whom history has scarcely done justice. The naval force was entrusted to Nelson, the command of the troops to Captain John Polson.
The soldiers at the disposal of the intrepid adventurers were a mere handful, scarcely 500 in all, but perhaps that fact added the necessary spice of danger. Nelson left his ship, and “carried troops in boats one hundred miles up a river, which none but Spaniards since the time of the buccaneers had ever ascended,” to use his own words. He “boarded” an outpost of the enemy, situated on an island in the river; “made batteries, and afterwards fought them, and was a principal cause of our success.” When the miniature expedition arrived at Fort San Juan the rainy season had commenced, bringing malaria in its train. Nelson was all for making an immediate attack, but Polson ruled the slower, and perhaps surer, method of erecting batteries and so forth, in which Nelson lent a willing hand. “I want words to express the obligations I owe to Captain Nelson,” Polson told Governor Dalling. “He was the first on every service, whether by day or night. There was not a gun fired but was pointed by him, or by Captain Despard, Chief Engineer.” Fever played havoc with the men; of the 200 sailors of the Hinchinbrook, no fewer than “eighty-seven took to their beds in one night; and of the two hundred, one hundred and forty-five were buried in mine and Captain Collingwood’s9 time: and I believe very few, not more than ten, survived of that ship’s crew; a proof how necessary expedition is in those climates.” Nelson’s own health was undermined by dysentery. A few hours before the Spanish flag gave place to the Union Jack he left the region of the fort in order to join the Janus (44 guns), of which he had been given command. The ship being stationed at Jamaica, he was taken to Port Royal in a sloop. Here he met with a good and tender-hearted friend in Lady Parker, the wife of Sir Peter Parker, Commander-in-Chief at Jamaica, but he gained so little in strength that he was compelled to ask leave of absence and leave the West Indies for England. Had he stayed it is improbable that he could have rendered useful service while in such a low condition. The expedition eventually ended in failure. He sailed on the 4th September 1780 in the Lion, commanded by Captain the Hon. William Cornwallis, a younger son of Earl Cornwallis, who acted the part of nurse to the patient’s entire satisfaction, and cemented a friendship which lasted until Nelson’s death.
Having to resign the Janus probably caused Nelson more torture than his physical suffering, for he was intensely ambitious. It is stated that when he arrived in England he would not proceed to Bath to drink the waters until he had been conveyed to the Admiralty to beg for another vessel. “This they readily promised me,” he observed in a humorous way, “thinking it not possible for me to live.” At Bath he stayed with Mr Spry, an apothecary, who resided at 2 Pierrepont Street; his medical adviser was Dr Woodward.
On the 23rd January 1781 Nelson was able to inform Captain Locker that he was “now upon the mending hand,” although he had been “obliged to be carried to and from bed, with the most excruciating tortures.” Some three weeks later further progress was reported; “My health, thank God, is very near perfectly restored; and I have the perfect use of all my limbs, except my left arm, which I can hardly tell what is the matter with it. From the shoulder to my fingers’ ends are as if half dead; but the surgeon and doctors give me hopes it will all go off. I most sincerely wish to be employed, and hope it will not be long.”
Again the flicker of ambition is evident, always a good sign in a patient. “I never was so well in health that I can remember,” he writes on the 5th March. On Monday of the following week he began his return journey to London. Unfortunately his progress was intermittent. He had “good” days and “bad” days. Two months later we find Nelson telling his beloved brother William that he has entirely lost the use of his left arm and nearly of his left leg and thigh. However, the surgeon who was attending him gave him hopes of recovery, “when I will certainly come into Norfolk, and spend my time there till I am employed.”
At this period Nelson did not have to eat out his heart in chagrin and disappointment owing to neglect as some of our modern naval officers have had to do. In August 1781, when his health had improved, he was given command of the Albemarle, a frigate of 28 guns, and on the 23rd of that month he hoisted his pennant at Woolwich. The appearance of the little vessel pleased him considerably, his officers and men even more so, as his letters abundantly testify. “My quarter-deck is filled, much to my satisfaction, with very genteel young men and seamen”; “I have an exceeding good ship’s company. Not a man or officer in her I would wish to change”; “I am perfectly satisfied with both officers and ship’s company. All my marines are likewise old standers,” are some of his remarks to correspondents. We must not imagine that Nelson necessarily had a pattern-ship and a pattern-crew because
Nelson’s successor and friend.