On the 17th of January the wind at Toulon shifted to north-northwest, with signs of an approaching gale, such as the Gulf of Lyons is noted for. The next morning Villeneuve sent a division to drive away Nelson's lookouts. This duty was imperfectly performed. It should have been done by a frigate squadron strong enough to force them out of sight of the main body, and having orders to rejoin the latter at a distant rendezvous. As it was, the British frigates did not lose touch of the hostile fleet, which sailed that evening. They dogged it late into the night, going at times thirteen knots before the blast of the storm, in order to keep clear of the enemy; and at two in the morning of January 19th, being then in the latitude of Ajaccio, satisfied that the French were steering steadily south-southwest, and under a press of sail, which indicated a mission of importance, they parted company and hastened to Nelson, whom they joined twelve hours later, as already stated.
Nelson needed no time to deliberate. His mind was long before fixed to follow, and there was but one way to do so. The enemy's course, as reported, led to the southern end of Sardinia, after reaching which the wind was fair for Naples, Sicily, and the East. The British ships were moored—two anchors down. At half-past four they were under way, standing in single column for the narrow passage between Biche and Sardinia, the "Victory" leading, each vessel steering by the stern lights of the one ahead of her. At seven P.M. all were clear, and the fleet hauled up along the east coast of Sardinia, which made a lee for them. "At midnight," Nelson notes in his journal, "moderate breezes and clear." During the same hours the untrained squadron of Villeneuve was losing topmasts in the fury of the gale.
The following afternoon,[83] as the British drew out from under the lee of Sardinia, they found the wind blowing a hard gale from south-southwest, which lasted all that night. The fleet could make no way against it, but neither could the French utilize it, unless, which was unlikely, they had got much farther to the southward than Nelson had. When he left Madalena, he had sent a frigate ahead, with orders to round Sardinia by the south and try to get sight or word of the enemy. On the morning of the 22d she rejoined, the fleet having then drifted to fifty miles east of Cape Carbonara, the southeastern point of Sardinia. At 11 A.M. her captain informed Nelson that the afternoon before he had seen a French frigate standing into the Gulf of Cagliari, but, the weather being thick, giving an horizon of only three miles, nothing more had been discovered. The admiral had sent word of the French sailing to Acton at Palermo, and through him to Naples and Malta, Ball being requested to seek for information in every practicable direction. Naples was for the moment safe, as the British squadron stood across any possible road by which the French could approach it.
The gale, hauling gradually to the westward, lasted in its force until the morning of January 25th. During these three days Nelson received no news, but he did much thinking and had made up his mind. The French might be intending to land in Cagliari, to windward of which they had been during these four days that he had been to leeward. With Cagliari, therefore, he must communicate; the Viceroy of Sardinia would know if any landing had been attempted or threatened. If Sardinia was safe, he would next go or send to Palermo for news, and thence push for the Faro of Messina, where he would cover both that important fortress and the approaches to Naples from either side of Sicily. "You will believe my anxiety," he wrote to Acton in Palermo, on the 25th. "I have neither ate, drank, or slept with any comfort since last Sunday" (the 20th). "I am naturally very anxious," he tells Ball, "therefore you must forgive my short letter. We have a dead foul wind and heavy sea. I cannot, for want of frigates, send off this letter." The lack of small cruisers; so often lamented in quieter days, now embarrassed him cruelly. The few he had were dispersed in all directions in search of news, and to communicate with Acton he had to detach one of his fastest ships-of-the-line, the "Leviathan," intending himself to follow her with the fleet to Palermo. At the latter point he could obtain all the intelligence of the common enemy which might have reached any Sicilian port, before he carried out his already formed purpose of chasing to leeward, to the Morea and Egypt. With firm grip, though in agony of mind, he held himself in hand, determined, burning as he was to pursue somewhere, not to yield the advantage of the wind till he had reached a reasonable certainty—as in 1798—that the circumstances justified it. "I hope," he says to Acton, "that the governor of Augusta[84] will not give up the post to the French fleet; but if he does, I shall go in and attack them; for I consider the destruction of the enemy's fleet of so much consequence, that I would gladly have half of mine burnt to effect their destruction. I am in a fever. God send I may find them!" Throughout the long chase which followed, all, so to say, slept on their arms. On the 11th of March he wrote: "Ever since January 21st we have been prepared for battle: not a bulkhead[85] up in the fleet. Night or day, it is my determination not to lose one moment in attacking them."
On the 26th Nelson communicated with Cagliari, and learned that no landing had been attempted in Sardinia. The same day the frigate "Phoebe" rejoined, with information that a French eighty-gun ship had anchored in Ajaccio on the evening of the 19th, dismasted and crippled. Putting these facts together, and in connection with his own movements, he inferred conclusively that either the French had gone back to Toulon in consequence of injuries, or that they had given him the slip, had got round Sicily, and proceeded to the eastward. The latter was improbable, because the westerly gales, as he had noted, could scarcely have allowed them to weather Maritimo[86]; it was not, however, impossible. A return to Toulon was, antecedently, equally improbable, although it proved to be the alternative adopted by Villeneuve. "Although I knew one of the French ships was crippled, yet I considered the character of Bonaparte; and that the orders given by him, on the banks of the Seine, would not take into consideration winds or weather; nor indeed could the accident of three or four ships alter, in my opinion,[87] a destination of importance: therefore such an accident did not weigh in my mind, and I went first to the Morea and then to Egypt." This quotation is especially interesting, as it proves how closely Nelson scanned every known element in a problem, even to the temperament of his opponent; and it also shows the substantial agreement in judgment between him and Napoleon. The latter, Thiers writes, "was sensibly displeased on hearing of this resultless sortie. 'What is to be done,' he said, 'with admirals who allow their spirits to sink, and determine to hasten home at the first damage they receive? All the captains ought to have had sealed orders to meet off the Canary Islands. The damages should have been repaired en route. A few topmasts carried away, some casualties in a gale of wind, were every-day occurrences. But the great evil of our Navy is, that the men who command it are unused to all the risks of command.'"
Still without definite tidings, compelled to act upon his own inferences—for merely doing nothing was action under such circumstances—Nelson reasoned that, if the French had returned, he could not overtake them, and if they had gone east, he had no time to lose before following. He fell back therefore from his windward position to the Straits of Messina, through which the whole squadron beat on the 31st of January—"a thing unprecedented in nautical history," he wrote to the Admiralty, "but although the danger from the rapidity of the current was great, yet so was the object of my pursuit; and I relied with confidence on the zeal and ability of the fleet under my command." The same day, knowing now that Sicily and Naples were not threatened, he despatched six cruisers for intelligence, "in all directions from Tunis to Toulon;" three of them being frigates, which were to rendezvous off the latter port and resume the watch of the French, if found there. A seventh vessel was sent ahead of the squadron to Koron, off which he appeared on the 2d of February, and, still getting no news, went on to Alexandria, where he communicated with the British consul on the 7th. "I beg the boat may not be detained, nor must any communication be had with the officer, so as to put the ship in quarantine. The officer is ordered not to wait more than thirty minutes; for you will readily believe my anxiety to find out the enemy's fleet." No news was to be had; but it was ascertained that Egypt was practically defenceless against any renewed attempts of the French.
Nelson at once started back to the westward. On the 19th of February, twelve days after leaving Alexandria, he was off Malta, and there for the first time received information that the enemy had returned to Toulon in a very crippled state. It was now necessary to regain his station as speedily as possible, and also to resume the operation of victualling the squadron, which had been interrupted at Madalena by the news of the enemy's sailing. The captain left there in charge of the transports had taken them for safety to Malta, in pursuance of the orders left with him, and they would have to be convoyed again to the Gulf of Palmas, which was appointed for their joining. The incident shows at once the forehandedness of Nelson, in that he was able immediately to go on so long a chase, and also the difficulties attendant upon the administration of the fleet. Against the prevailing winds the convoy did not reach Palmas until the 14th of March. The fleet had preceded it there by a week. After a tedious beat, in which eight days were consumed to make the three hundred and fifty miles to windward, Nelson anchored on the 27th of February in Pula Roads, Gulf of Cagliari, just to hold on. "What weather!" wrote he to Bickerton, when the anchor dropped. "Did you ever see such in almost any country? It has forced me to anchor here, in order to prevent being drove to leeward, but I shall go to sea the moment it moderates." Palmas is only forty miles to windward of Pula, but it was not till the 8th of March, after three or four ineffectual efforts, that the squadron got there. "From the 19th of February to this day," wrote Nelson to Ball, "have we been beating, and only now going to anchor here as it blows a gale of wind at northwest. It has been without exception, the very worst weather I have ever seen." Bad as it was, it was but a sample of that he was to meet a month later, in the most wearing episode of his anxious life.
Besides the weary struggle with foul winds and weather, other great disappointments and vexations met Nelson at Palmas. During his absence to the eastward, one despatch vessel had been wrecked off Cadiz and fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, another had been intercepted by the battered French fleet as it approached Toulon, and a convoy, homeward-bound from Malta, had been waylaid, the two small ships of war which formed the escort had been taken, and the merchant ships dispersed. This last misfortune he ascribed unhesitatingly to the division of the command. "It would not have happened, could I have ordered the officer off Cadiz to send ships to protect them." The incident was not without its compensations to one who valued honor above loss, for his two petty cruisers had honored themselves and him by such a desperate resistance, before surrendering to superior force, that the convoy had time to scatter, and most of it escaped. There was reason to fear that the despatch vessel taken off Toulon had mistaken the French fleet for the British, which it had expected to find outside, and that her commander might have had to haul down his flag before getting opportunity to throw the mail-bags overboard. In that case, both public and private letters had gone into the enemy's possession. "I do assure you, my dearest Emma," he wrote Lady Hamilton, "that nothing can be more miserable, or unhappy, than your poor Nelson." Besides the failure to find the French, "You will conceive my disappointment! It is now[88] from November 2nd that I have had a line from England."
A characteristic letter was elicited from Nelson by the loss of the despatch-vessel off Cadiz, the brig "Raven," whose commander, Captain Layman, had gained his cordial professional esteem in the Copenhagen expedition, in connection with which he has already been mentioned. As usual in the case of a wreck, a court-martial was held. This censured the captain, much to Nelson's vexation; the more so because, at his request, Layman had not produced before the court certain orders for the night given by him, the proved neglect of which would have brought a very heavy punishment upon the officer of the watch. In weighing the admiral's words, therefore, allowance may be made for a sense of personal responsibility for the finding of the court; but the letter, which was addressed to the First Lord, contains expressions that are most worthy of attention, not only because illustrative of Nelson's temperament and mode of thought, but also for a point of view too rarely taken in the modern practice, which has grown up in peace.
MY DEAR LORD,—Give me leave to recommend Captain Layman to your kind protection; for, notwithstanding the Court Martial has thought him deserving of censure for his running in with the land, yet, my Lord, allow me to say, that Captain Layman's misfortune was, perhaps, conceiving other people's abilities were equal to his own, which, indeed, very few people's are.