HIS KNOWLEDGE OF NAVAL AFFAIRS.
Some anecdotes related to me by the distinguished officer who conveyed him in the Undaunted to Elba, in 1814, prove the extent, variety, and accuracy of knowledge of Napoleon. On his first arrival on the coast, in company with Sir Neil Campbell, an Austrian and a Russian commissioner, Captain Usher waited upon him, and was invited to dinner. He conversed much on naval affairs, and explained the plan he had once conceived of forming a vast fleet of 160 ships-of-the-line. He asked Captain Usher if he did not think it would have been practicable; and Usher answered, that with the immense means he then commanded, he saw no impossibility in building and manning any number of ships, but his difficulty would have consisted in forming thorough seamen as distinguished from what we call smooth-water sailors. Napoleon replied that he had provided for that also; he had organized exercises for them afloat, not only in harbor, but in smaller vessels near the coast, by which they might have been trained to go through, even in rough weather, the most arduous manœuvres of seamanship, which he enumerated; and he mentioned among them the keeping a ship clear of her anchors in a heavy sea. The Austrian, who suspected Napoleon of talking in general upon subjects he imperfectly understood, acknowledging his own ignorance, asked him the meaning of the term, the nature of the difficulty, and the method of surmounting it. On this the emperor took up two forks, and explained the problem in seamanship, which is not an easy one, in so short, scientific, and practical a way, that Captain Usher assured me he knew none but professional men, and very few of them, who could off-hand have given so perspicuous, seamanlike, and satisfactory solution of the question. Any board of officers would have inferred, from such an exposition, that the person making it had received a naval education, and was a practical seaman. Yet how different were the objects on which the mind of Napoleon must have been long, as well as recently, employed!
On the same voyage, when the propriety of putting into a harbor of Corsica was under discussion, and the want of a pilot urged as an objection, Napoleon described the depth of water, shoals, currents, bearings, and anchorage, with a minuteness which seemed as if he had himself acted in that capacity; and which, on reference to the charts, was found scrupulously accurate. When his cavalry and baggage arrived at Porto Ferrajo, the commander of the transports said that he had been on the point of putting into a creek near Genoa (which he named, but I have forgotten); upon hearing which Napoleon exclaimed, "It is well you did not; it is the worst place in the Mediterranean; you would not have got to sea again for a month or six weeks." He then proceeded to allege reasons for the difficulty, which were quite sufficient if the peculiarities of the little bay were really such as he described; but Captain Usher, having never heard of them during his service in the Mediterranean, suspected that the emperor was mistaken, or had confounded some report he had heard from mariners in his youth. When, however, he mentioned the circumstance many years afterward to Captain Dundas, who had recently cruised in the Gulf of Genoa, that officer confirmed the report of Napoleon in all its particulars, and expressed astonishment at its correctness. "For" (said he), "I thought it a discovery of my own, having ascertained all you have just told me about that creek, by observation and experience."