Commodore Nelson in the Mediterranean, 1793-97: Prologue to the Battle of Cape St. Vincent

These events deserve posts on their own merit, and will get them!  But for now, they serve as an introduction to the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, in which Nelson made his mark and rose to become one of the most talked-about officers in the British navy.

 n 1793, Captain Nelson's long period of unemployment ashore in England was ended when he was given command of HMS Agamemnon, a 64-gun battleship, and sent to join Admiral Lord Hood's fleet in the Mediterranean.  The Agamemnon was by no means the greatest ship in the world, but she would become his favourite.  64s were the smallest class of ship that could be classed as a ship-of-the-line, but what they lacked in firepower they made up for in manoeuverability, which suited Nelson's style down to the ground.  He forever remained fond of her crew, many of whom followed him from ship to ship and who he called his 'old Agamemnons'.

HMS Agamemnon

In 1794, he took part in the capture of Corsica, Bastia and Calvi; in Calvi, he was hit in the face by gravel flung up by a shot on the ground, receiving an injury that left him blind in his right eye for the rest of his life.  On the 13th March 1795, with Admiral Hotham's fleet, he fought in the Battle of the Gulf of Genoa, in which he attacked and helped to capture the Ça Ira, and in July he fought with the fleet at the Battle of Hyères Islands.

As a commodore, Nelson asked to be transferred to HMS Captain as the Agamemnon was badly in need of repairs and was sent home to be refit.  He was granted his request, and in June 1796 was involved in the evacuation of Leghorn when the French invaded the town.   In July, he was detached with a small squadron under his command to Italy, to help the Austrian army against the French.  This involved blockading French ports and, with the help of Gilbert Elliot, the British viceroy in Corsica, taking possession of the neutral fort of Porto-Ferrajo on the island of Elba.  This would prevent the French from using it to invade Corsica after taking Leghorn.

He did so well that he won the respect of Admiral John Jervis, who had become commander in chief of the Mediterranean fleet in the Autumn of 1795 - and he was not a man to give respect lightly.  Soon, Nelson became one of Jervis' most trusted subordinates.

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The Carcass and the Polar Bear

In June 1773, a 14-year-old Horatio Nelson joined a ship named HMS Carcass, bound for the Arctic.  Launched in 1759, the Carcass was an 8-gun bomb vessel which, in the year she was launched, took part in a bombardment of Le Havre, a French town on the Channel coast where boats and supplies had been preparing for an invasion of England.  In 1773, an expedition to the Arctic was planned, to see if there was a way to get to the West Indies from the north.  The Carcass, along with another bomb vessel, the Racehorse, were to carry a team including naturalists and astronomers, and were chosen because bomb vessels had particularly strong hulls in order to withstand the recoil from their massive guns (used to bombard ports and buildings rather than fight other ships) so were better able to withstand the pressure of the ice.  Captain Constantine Phipps commanded the expedition from the Racehorse, and Nelson, with help from the influence of his uncle Maurice Suckling, joined the Carcass as coxswain to Captain Skeffington Lutwidge (a fabulous name!)

 

The Carcass with the Racehorse trapped in the ice.

 

However, the expedition didn't get very far before the ships got trapped in ice.  With the help of rowboats, they were pulled free, but got stuck again.  Eventually they made it to Spitsbergen (near Greenland), and while scientific work was carried out, the crew hunted and had a chance to carry out maintenance on the ships.  The environment was beautiful - the rays of the setting sun and the stars were bright, and there was plenty of wildlife including whales, seals, and polar bears.

 

At one point, Nelson decided it would be a good idea to kill one of these bears, and take the skin home as a present for his father.  He set off with a companion, but when they encountered a bear, his musket misfired.  Luckily for him, the bear was on the other side of a chasm but even so, though his companion tried to pull him back, he still started to climb across with the intention of hitting the bear with the butt end of his gun.  Fortunately for him, a gun was fired from one of the ships, and scared the bear away.

 

This is one of the more famous incidents in Nelson's life, but he didn't mention it in his Sketch of my Life, and it wasn't as heroic as this picture makes it seem!

Nelson attacking the polar bear.  In reality, though, he never got this close to it.

Nelson was given command of one of the boats, with four oars and twelve men and, according to his later mini autobiography, A Sketch of my Life, "I prided myself in fancying I could navigate her better than any other boat in the ship."  It was good practice for his confidence, leadership and seamanship skills.

In August the ships got stuck again, and this time it looked as if they would be stuck for the winter.  The crews began to prepare to abandon ship, and put supplies in the boats.  The boats were then pulled by the men across the ice towards the open sea.  But, fortunately, a couple of days later the ice loosened enough for the Carcass and Racehorse to cut through the ice and reach the open sea themselves.  They made it back to England in late September, and Nelson left the Carcass for the Seahorse.

The Carcass didn't have a very long career after that.  In 1778 she was part of an escort of a convoy carrying troops to the West Indies, and she was sold in 1784.

 

Nelson's First Ship: The Raisonnable

HMS Raisonnable was a 64-gun 3rd rate ship-of-the-line.  Launched in 1768, she was commissioned in 1770 under Captain Maurice Suckling because it was thought a war with Spain was imminent.  

Captain Suckling just happened to be Horatio Nelson's uncle.  At the tender age of 12, Nelson begged his uncle to take him on board his ship.  An amused Suckling wondered, 

"What has poor Horace done, who is so weak, that he, above the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea?" 

but nonetheless took the young Nelson on board as a midshipman in April 1771.

Nothing much happened while Nelson was with her, however, and he was long gone to another ship by the time the Raisonnable joined the North American station during the American Revolutionary War, from 1776 - 1780.

On the 2nd April 1801 Nelson, all grown-up, led his own division in the Battle of Copenhagen.  His first ship, Raisonnable (captained by John Dilkes), though present at the battle, did not take part because she was in Admiral Hyde Parker's division which, approaching the action slowly against the wind, didn't reach the fighting in time before Hyde Parker decided they ought to withdraw (a signal which Nelson famously ignored by putting the telescope to his blind right eye and declaring "I really do not see the signal!", and, "I have only one eye, I have a right to be blind sometimes.").

In 1803, while Nelson was Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean, the Raisonnable was in the Channel Fleet commanded by Admiral Cornwallis, blockading the French fleet in Brest.  In 1805, captained by Josias Rowley, she fought in the Battle of Cape Finisterre against the French fleet under Admiral Villeneuve, which had been running from Nelson from the Med to the West Indies and back again to northern Spain. They had been intercepted by Admiral Robert Calder's fleet, including the Raisonnable, but the result was indecisive as Calder failed to push the action, and the French escaped to Cadiz.

And in 1805, the Raisonnable was with Comm. Sir Home Riggs Popham's squadron during the campaign to take Cape Town from the Dutch, and remained in the area until 1810.  Then, in November that year, she was hulked in Chatham and became a receiving ship (used to house new recruits in a harbour before they were assigned to a ship).  She was eventually broken up in 1815.

Nelson's uncle and captain of the Raisonnable, Maurice Suckling.

Merry Christmas :)

Trafalgar: The Aftermath and the Hurricane

As the Battle of Trafalgar came to an end, the victors did not have much time to celebrate, as they worked to take ships and prisoners, and make rough, hurried repairs to make the ships seaworthy, while mourning the loss of their Commander-in-Chief.  But a storm was quickly brewing, which would prove to be devastating and claim more lives and ships than the battle itself.

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I now have a proper website :)

*dramatic drumroll*

Yup, www.admiralnelson.info is now live and has content!  Hurrah!

It's not complete by any means, but I will post here when I update, for anyone who's interested.

Completed content includes an essay-type-thing on who Nelson actually was, a Timeline of the major events in Nelson's life, and a complete write-up of the Battle of Trafalgar, including Nelson's death.

Thus, anyone looking for the follow-up to my previous post, "Death of a Hero part 2/2" can find it at the site. :)

The Death of a Hero part 1/2

On the morning of the 21st of October 1805, the English fleet were in sight of the Combined Fleet of France and Spain.  Following Nelson's tactics, which he had planned long ago and told all his Captains, calling it the 'Nelson Touch', his fleet of 27 ships approached the enemy fleet of 33 in two lines, perpendicular to the enemy's single line.  Nelson insisted on staying at the head of his line, in the Victory - when the captain of another ship tried to pass, thinking to protect his Commander-in-Chief - Nelson hailed him and sent him back.  As always, Nelson was not afraid to lead his fleet from the forefront.

The other line, led by Admiral Collingwood in his ship the Royal Sovereign, met the enemy first.  Half an hour later, the Victory crashed through the enemy line.  The British ships had been instructed not to fire a shot until they had broken the line, to save their energy at a time when most of the shots would not have been effective, so it was a tense approach, particularly with the lack of wind making it painfully slow progress.  Victory was shot at by four enemy ships without being able to reply.  

During this time, Nelson stood on the quarterdeck with Captain Hardy, and his secretary John Scott.  Within minutes, Scott was split in half by a cannon ball, and his body was thrown overboard (his blood stained Nelson's socks - see the picture below in my previous entry about visiting the National Maritime Museum).  Eight marines were killed by a single shot, so Nelson ordered their captain to spread them out more.  Another shot hit the deck between Nelson and Hardy, sending a splinter flying up to hit Hardy's shoe.  After looking at each other to make sure the other wasn't hurt, Nelson commented that he had never seen such courage as in the Victory's crew that day.

Victory about to break the enemy line, by Bill Bishop

As the Victory approached the flagship of the French Admiral, the Bucentaure, it became clear that there was not enough space between it and either the French Redoutable, or the giant four-decked Spanish ship Santisima Trinidad, so one of them would have to be rammed out of the way to allow Victory to pass.  Hardy asked which one, to which Nelson replied that it didn't make any difference, so he should just pick one.  

So Victory collided with the Redoutable, and the momentum carried them both out of the line, locked together.  Victory had taken a lot of damage to her rigging and her wheel was broken, so she was virtually unmanageable.  But now she could get a broadside alongside the Bucentaure, and so the British gunners got to work, their skills, training and discipline far superior to the French.  

Captain Jean-Jacques-Etienne Lucas of the Redoutable

However, knowing that he could never train his crew to a standard of gunnery to match the British, the Captain of the Redoutable, Jean-Jacques-Etienne Lucas, had trained them in musketry and in boarding, aiming to overwhelm the crews of the ships he could get close to that way and take possession of them.  He had some of the finest musketeers in the French navy, and he placed them in the rigging of the Redoutable so they could clear the decks of the Victory from there. 

'The Hero of Trafalgar' by William Hersman Overend

Meanwhile, Nelson continued to pace the Victory's quarterdeck with Hardy by his side, with bullets and splinters flying around them, gun smoke smothering them, amidst the din of gunfire and the screams of the wounded and dying and the smell of gunpowder and blood.  As always, he wore his four orders, like four big glistening stars, on his uniform.  Earlier, an attempt had been made to persuade him not to wear them, for fear that they would stand out like a beacon, attracting the attention of the enemy.  But Nelson would hear nothing of it.  He wanted to be on display, he wanted his resolve to be seen - by the men who served him.  They adored him, and seeing his small, frail, half-mutilated but fully-uniformed frame up on the most exposed part of the ship, calmly and resolutely putting himself in danger, helped to raise their morale and courage so they would fight their hardest for him.  And if that meant putting himself at greater risk, then he did so unflinchingly.

But at 1.15pm, while the crews of the battered ships fought to board each other, Captain Hardy turned to pace back across the quarterdeck, and suddenly realised that his friend was no longer beside him.  He turned, and saw Nelson collapsed, holding himself up with his arm before that crumpled, and then supported by three seamen.  Running to him, Hardy said that he hoped he hadn't been too badly hurt.  Nelson replied,

"They have done for me at last... my backbone has been shot through."

To be continued...

The Fall of Nelson, by Denis Dighton