MY DEAR KEATS,—I am fearful that you may think that the Superb does not go so fast as I could wish. However that may be, (for if we all went ten knots, I should not think it fast enough,) yet I would have you be assured that I know and feel that the Superb does all which is possible for a ship to accomplish; and I desire that you will not fret upon the occasion.... Whatever may happen, believe me ever, my dear Keats, your most obliged and sincere friend,
NELSON AND BRONTE.
A week seems to have elapsed before he could get a suitable opportunity for sending this, and he then, on the 27th of May, added: "Our passage, although not very quick, has been far from a bad one;" and he thought that they would gain fourteen days upon the allies. The actual gain was ten, the latter being thirty-four days from Cadiz to Martinique, the British twenty-four to Barbadoes. The enemy were therefore three weeks in the West Indies before Nelson arrived; but in that time they neither accomplished nor undertook anything but the recapture of Diamond Rock, a precipitous islet off the south end of Martinique, which the British had held for some time, to the great annoyance of the main island.
Reaching Barbadoes on the afternoon of June 4th, Nelson found that the day before information had been received from General Brereton, commanding the troops at Santa Lucia, that the allied fleets had passed there, going south, during the night of May 28-29. The intelligence was so circumstantial that it compelled respect, coming from the quarter it did. "There is not a doubt in any of the Admirals' or Generals' minds," wrote Nelson to the Admiralty, in the despatch announcing his arrival, "but that Tobago and Trinidada are the enemy's objects." Nelson himself was sceptical,—the improbability seemed great to his sound military perceptions; but, confident as he was in his own conclusions in dilemmas, his mind was too sane and well balanced to refuse direct and credible evidence. Summing up the situation with lamentations, six weeks later, he said to Davison: "When I follow my own head, I am, in general, much more correct in my judgment, than following the opinion of others. I resisted the opinion of General Brereton's information till it would have been the height of presumption to have carried my disbelief further. I could not, in the face of generals and admirals, go N.W., when it was apparently clear that the enemy had gone south." His purpose had been not to anchor, but to pick up such ships-of-the-line as he found there,—two seventy-fours,[101] as it turned out,—and to proceed with them to Martinique, which he naturally assumed to be the enemy's headquarters. As it was, receiving a pressing request from the commanding general at Barbadoes to let him accompany the fleet with two thousand troops, he anchored in Carlisle Bay at 5 P.M. At half-past nine the next morning he was again under way for Trinidad. Some curious misunderstandings maintained this mistaken impression as to the enemy's actions, until communication with Trinidad was had on the evening of June 7th. It was found then that no hostile force had appeared, although the British fleet for a moment had been believed to be such.
Nelson at once started north again. A report reached him that a second squadron, of fourteen French and Spanish ships from Ferrol, had arrived at Martinique. He said frankly that he thought this very doubtful, but added proudly: "Powerful as their force may be, they shall not with impunity make any great attacks. Mine is compact, theirs must be unwieldy, and although a very pretty fiddle, I don't believe that either Gravina or Villeneuve know how to play upon it." On the 9th he for the first time got accurate information. An official letter from Dominica[102] announced that eighteen ships-of-the-line, with smaller vessels, had passed there on the 6th of June. But for the false tidings which on the 4th had led him, first to pause, and then to take a wrong direction, Nelson argued, and not unjustly, that he would have overtaken them at this point, a bare hundred miles from Barbadoes. "But for wrong information, I should have fought the battle on June 6th where Rodney fought his." The famous victory of the latter was immediately north of Dominica, by which name it is known in French naval history. "There would have been no occasion for opinions," wrote Nelson wrathfully, as he thought of his long anxieties, and the narrow margin by which he failed, "had not General Brereton sent his damned intelligence from St. Lucia; nor would I have received it to have acted by it, but that I was assured that his information was very correct. It has almost broke my heart, but I must not despair." It was hard to have borne so much, and then to miss success from such a cause. "Brereton's wrong information could not be doubted," he told his intimates, "and by following it, I lost the opportunity of fighting the enemy." "What a race I have run after these fellows; but God is just, and I may be repaid for all my moments of anxiety."
When Villeneuve, with his ill-trained and sickly[103] fleet, left Martinique on the 4th of June, he had, of course, no knowledge of Nelson's approach. Nearly up to that date it was not known, even in London, where the latter had gone. A frigate had reached the French admiral on the 29th of May, with orders from Napoleon to make some attempts against the British islands during the time he was awaiting the Brest squadron. For this reason he sailed, and just outside the harbor was joined by two ships from France, raising his force to twenty of the line. He steered north, intending to gain to windward, and thence return upon Barbadoes, his first proposed conquest. On the 8th of June, off Antigua, were captured fourteen British merchant-ships, which had imprudently put to sea from that island. From these Villeneuve got a report that Nelson had arrived with fourteen ships-of-the-line, to which his imagination added five he believed to be at Barbadoes. He decided at once to return to Europe, abandoning all his projects against the British possessions. Transferring hastily a number of troops to frigates, as garrisons for the French islands, he sailed the next day for the northward to gain the westerly winds which prevail in the higher latitudes. Of the forty days he was to remain in the West Indies—reduced to thirty-five by subsequent instructions—only twenty-six had passed. Whatever else might result in the future, Nelson was justified in claiming that his pursuit, effected under such discouragements, had driven the enemy out of the West Indies, saved the islands, and, as he added, two hundred sail of sugar ships. Only extreme imprudence, he fairly maintained, was responsible for the loss of the fourteen from Antigua.
Nelson himself was off Antigua on the 12th of June, exactly one week after he left Barbadoes. There he received all the information that has just been mentioned as to the enemy's movements. A rapid decision was necessary, if he might hope yet to overtake his fortune, and to baffle finally the objects of the allies, whatever they might be. "I must be satisfied they have bent their course for Europe before I push after them, which will be to the Straits' mouth;" but later in the same day he has learned that they were standing to the northward when last seen, and had sent back their troops to Guadaloupe, therefore, "I hope to sail in the morning after them for the Straits' mouth." That night the troops were landed, and a brig of war, the "Curieux," was despatched to England with word of his intentions. At the same time, while believing the allies were bound back to the Mediterranean, he recognized that it was possible they might be going farther north, to one of the Biscay ports, and consequently took measures to notify the commanding officer off Ferrol to be on his guard. The frigate charged with this communication was kept with the fleet until the 19th, by which time he had obtained at sea additional and more precise knowledge of Villeneuve's direction. This important warning was duly received, and in advance of the enemy's appearance, by the admiral for whom it was intended.
In taking this second decision, to abandon the West Indies once more to themselves, as a month before he had abandoned the Mediterranean, Nelson had to rely only upon his own natural sagacity and practised judgment. "I hear all, and even feel obliged, for all is meant as kindness to me, that I should get at them. In this diversity of opinions I may as well follow my own, which is, that the Spaniards are gone to the Havannah, and that the French will either stand for Cadiz or Toulon—I feel most inclined to the latter place; and then they may fancy that they will get to Egypt without any interruption." "So far from being infallible, like the Pope, I believe my opinions to be very fallible, and therefore I may be mistaken that the enemy's fleet has gone to Europe; but I cannot bring myself to think otherwise, notwithstanding the variety of opinions which different people of good judgment form."
Still, as before, his judgments, if rapid, are not precipitate. Though characterized by even more of insight than of reasoning, no conditions are left out of sight, nor, as he declared, was a deaf ear turned to any suggestion. Upon the whole, one is more struck by the accuracy of the inferences than by the antecedent processes as summarized by himself; yet the weight of evidence will be found on the side he espouses. Erroneous in particulars, the general conclusions upon which he bases his future course are justified, not only by the results now known to us, but to impartial review of their probability at the moment. Most impressive of all, however, is the strength of conviction, which lifts him from the plane of doubt, where unaided reason alone would leave him, to that of unhesitating action, incapable of looking backward. In the most complete presentation of all his views, the one he wished brought before the Prime Minister, if his conduct on this momentous occasion were called in question, he ends thus: "My opinion is firm as a rock, that some cause, orders, or inability to perform any service in these seas, has made them resolve to proceed direct for Europe, sending the Spanish ships to the Havannah." It is such conviction, in which opinion rather possesses a man than is possessed by him, that exalts genius above talent, and imbues faith with a power which reason has not in her gift.
There were among his conclusions certain ones which placed Nelson's mind, however fretted by disappointment, at ease concerning any future harm the enemy might be able to do. Another wreath of laurel, which seemed almost within his grasp, had indeed evaded him, and no man felt more keenly such a loss; but he was reasonably sure that, if Villeneuve were gone to Europe, he could not outstrip pursuit by long enough to do much harm. The harassing fear, which he had borne through the long beat down the Mediterranean and the retarded voyage to Martinique, had now disappeared. Going out he had gained ten days upon the allies; they had only five days' start of him in the return. He recognized, moreover, the great significance of their inactivity during the three weeks they had the Windward Islands, if not all the West Indies, defenceless before them. "If they were not able to make an attack for three weeks after their arrival, they could not hope for greater success after our means of resistance increased, and their means of offence were diminished." If this consideration, on the one hand, showed the improbability of their proceeding against Jamaica, after Nelson's coming, when they had not ventured before, it gave also an inkling of their probable efficiency for immediate action in Europe. "They will not give me credit for quitting the West Indies for a month to come;" therefore it was unlikely that they would think it necessary to proceed at once upon their next enterprise, after reaching port. "I must not despair of getting up with them before they enter the Straits," he writes Elliot. "At least, they will have no time to carry any of their future plans into execution, and do harm to any of the countries under my charge." If his thirst for glory was unslaked, his fears of disaster had disappeared.