The Boys' Nelson

by Harold Wheeler

On the 11th January 1805 Missiessy, in command at Rochefort, made good his escape, and eventually reached the West Indies. A week after his colleague had left port Villeneuve was also at sea. The great war game had begun. “Our frigates saw part of them all day, and were chased by some of the ships,” Nelson informs Sir John Acton. The Admiral received the report of the enemy’s sailing at Madalena at 3 P.M. on the 19th. Three hours later “the whole fleet was at sea,” steering for the south end of Sardinia, “where I could have little fear but that I should meet them; for, from all I have heard from the captains of the frigates, the enemy must be bound round the south end of Sardinia, but whether to Cagliari, Sicily, the Morea, or Egypt, I am most completely in ignorance.” He warns Acton to be on his guard for Sicily and to send information to Naples. On the 21st a French frigate was discerned off the south end of Sardinia, but became lost in the fog, and a little later Nelson heard that one of the French sail-of-the-line had put in at Ajaccio in a distressed condition. On the 27th he was off Palermo. “One of two things must have happened,” he conjectures, “that either the French fleet must have put back crippled, or that they are gone to the eastward, probably to Egypt, therefore I find no difficulty in pursuing the line of conduct I have adopted. If the enemy have put back crippled, I could never overtake them, and therefore I can do no harm in going to the eastward; and if the enemy are gone to the eastward, I am right.” He sent vessels to call at Elba, San Fiorenzo, Malta, Tunis, Pantellaria, Toro and other places to obtain information. He believed that eleven sail-of-the-line and nine smaller vessels were at sea. “I shall only hope to fall in with them.”

On the 11th February Nelson was still in “total ignorance” regarding the whereabouts of the French fleet, but was more than ever confirmed in his opinion that Egypt was its destination. He had set off for the Morea, and then proceeded to Egypt, but the enemy had eluded him. It was not until he arrived off Malta on the 19th that he received authentic information that the Toulon fleet had put back to port “in a very crippled state.” He himself was able to report that the health of his men was excellent, and “although we have experienced a great deal of bad weather, have received no damage, and not a yard or mast sprung or crippled, or scarcely a sail split.” “I have consulted no man,” he had written to Lord Melville on the anniversary of the battle of Cape St Vincent, “therefore the whole blame in forming my judgment must rest with me. I would allow no man to take from me an atom of my glory had I fallen in with the French fleet, nor do I desire any man to partake of any of the responsibility—all is mine, right or wrong.”

Misfortune had dogged Villeneuve almost from the moment he had left Toulon. After encountering a gale in the Gulf of Lyons his ships were in such a pitiful state that there was no alternative but to return. He complained bitterly, and not without reason, to the Minister of Marine about the wretched condition of the fleet at his disposal. The vessels, according to his report, were built of superannuated or bad materials, and lost masts or sails “at every puff of wind.” In addition they were short-handed, the sailors were inexperienced, and the decks were encumbered with troops. Napoleon, who never appreciated the many difficulties of navigation, let alone of naval warfare, entertained the notion that the Navy could be run with practically as much precision as the Army; conditions of weather he almost contemptuously dismissed as of little account. He abruptly tells Villeneuve the plain unvarnished truth, namely that the great evil of the service “is that the men who command it are unused to all the risks of command.” Almost in despair he asks, “What is to be done with admirals who allow their spirits to sink, and determine to hasten home at the first damage they may receive?”

Villeneuve was not a courageous commander. He hated taking risks. It may be that he realised his own personal limitations to some extent; it is certain that he fully appreciated those of his men and of his ships. The only training-place for sailors is the sea, and such excursions as had been made were as nothing compared to the daily encounters with storm, wind and tide which fell to the lot of the blockading squadron below the horizon.

Such obvious facts appealed to that sense of grim humour which is so essentially characteristic of Nelson. He thoroughly enjoyed his adversary’s discomfiture, and poked fun at Napoleon, his men and his methods, on every possible occasion. “Bonaparte,” he writes to Collingwood on the 13th March, “has often made his brags that our fleet would be worn out by keeping the sea; that his was kept in order and increasing by staying in port; but he now finds, I fancy, if Emperors hear truth, that his fleet suffers more in one night than ours in a year.”

Napoleon, now the Imperial Incarnation of the Revolution, for he had crowned himself Emperor of the French on the 2nd December 1804, was not to be thwarted because his subordinates had failed to bring his giant schemes to a successful issue on two distinct occasions. He was obsessed by a desire to “leap the ditch.” To humble that Island Power which was ever in his way, to strike at the very heart of that England whose wealth was lavished in fostering coalition after coalition, were now his fondest hopes. He thought, talked, and wrote of little else.

While his third plan was more involved than the others, it had the advantage of calling a greater number of ships into service. Villeneuve was to start from Toulon with eleven ships, release the Spanish squadron of six sail-of-the-line under the command of Admiral Gravina, and one French ship, at Cadiz, and then make for Martinique, where he would find Missiessy’s squadron of five sail. In a similar manner the twenty-one ships of Ganteaume’s fleet at Brest were to rally Gourdon’s fifteen vessels at Ferrol and also proceed to the West Indies. Thus no fewer than fifty-nine sail and many smaller vessels would be congregated for the final effort. While Nelson was searching for them, this immense armament, with Ganteaume in supreme command, would recross the Atlantic, appear off Boulogne, and convoy the flotilla to England. It is unnecessary to give the alternative plans furnished to the admirals. To do so would only tend to involve the broad outline of the manœuvre as detailed above and serve no essential purpose.

Spurred on by Napoleon’s displeasure, Villeneuve put to sea on the night of the 30th March 1805, and was sighted “with all sail set” by two British frigates on the following morning. It was not until the 4th April that Nelson, then off Toro, received this useful if vague intelligence, for the frigate which had followed in the tracks of the Toulon fleet had lost sight of the enemy. Her captain “thinks they either bore away to the eastward or steered S.S.W., as they were going when first seen,” Nelson informs the Admiralty. He “covered the Channel from Barbary to Toro with frigates and the fleet” in the hope of discovering them or obtaining reliable information as to their whereabouts. On the 18th April he says, “I am going out of the Mediterranean after the French fleet. It may be thought that I have protected too well Sardinia, Naples, Sicily, the Morea, and Egypt, from the French; but I feel I have done right, and am therefore easy about any fate which may await me for having missed the French fleet. I have left five frigates, besides the sloops, &c., stationed at Malta for the present service of the Mediterranean, and with the Neapolitan squadron will, of course, be fully able to prevent any force the French have left to convoy troops to Sicily.”

Nelson only succeeded in making sixty-five leagues in nine days “owing to very bad weather.” It was not until the 18th April, when Villeneuve had been at sea nearly three weeks, that he had news of the enemy having passed through the Straits on the 8th. “I am proceeding with the fleet under my command as expeditiously as possible to the westward in pursuit of them.” Sir John Orde had so far forgotten or neglected his duty that when Villeneuve made his appearance at Cadiz the commander of the blockading squadron made off without either sending word to Nelson or leaving a frigate to keep in touch with the enemy. Consequently Nelson was still uncertain as to their destination. “The circumstance of their having taken the Spanish ships which were [ready] for sea from Cadiz, satisfies my mind that they are not bound to the West Indies (nor probably the Brazils); but intend forming a junction with the squadron at Ferrol, and pushing direct for Ireland or Brest, as I believe the French have troops on board.” When off Tetuan on the 4th May he rightly observes, “I cannot very properly run to the West Indies without something beyond mere surmise; and if I defer my departure, Jamaica may be lost. Indeed, as they have a month’s start of me, I see no prospect of getting out time enough to prevent much mischief from being done.” Gibraltar Bay was reached on the 6th May, and at 6 P.M., Nelson was making his way through the Gut owing to there being “every appearance of a Levanter coming on.” Off Cape St Vincent he hoped to be met by a frigate from Orde with intelligence of the enemy’s route and also by a frigate from Lisbon. “If nothing is heard of them from Lisbon or from the frigates I may find off Cape St Vincent, I shall probably think the rumours which are spread are true, that their destination is the West Indies, and in that case think it my duty to follow them, or to the Antipodes, should I believe that to be their destination. I shall detach a sloop of war to England from off the Cape, when my mind is made up from either information or the want of it.”

Nelson’s idea as to the destination of the allied fleet was corroborated by Commodore Donald Campbell, a Scotsman who had entered the Portuguese navy. After clearing transports and taking on board sufficient provisions for five months, he set out from Lagos Bay with ten sail-of-the-line and a number of smaller craft on his long chase. “My lot is cast,” he hurriedly informs Ball, “and I am going to the West Indies, where, although I am late, yet chance may have given them a bad passage and me a good one. I must hope the best.”