‘My older brother became the clergyman our family wanted, so I was free to become a sailor. I went to sea at thirteen and first sailed in this Caribbean at fourteen. I came back later, so I know these waters. When I was fifteen, or maybe still fourteen, I went to the Arctic. Great exploration, that one.’
‘Is that when you fought the polar bear?’ Alistair Wrentham asked, for drawings of Nelson in mortal combat with a huge white bear had circulated. Since he was often asked about this incident, Nelson was meticulous in his answer: ‘Thomas Flood and I, he was fourteen too, we’d left the Cargass to go exploring on our own. We were on an ice pack not too far from the ship when a huge polar bear roared up behind us, and he might have killed me had not Captain Lutwidge shouted a warning.’
‘Is that when you turned to fight the bear?’ Alistair asked.
‘Fight? I wouldn’t say that. I’d been walking with an oar, a piece of wood maybe, and I did try to fend him off. But fight? No.’
‘How were you saved?’
‘The captain of our ship saw the peril we were in and ordered a cannon to be fired. The noise terrified Flood and me, but it also frightened the bear, and off he ran.’
‘What did the captain say when you came aboard?’
To this question, Nelson would always reply honestly: ‘Never again were we to go exploring on our own.’
At other times he told how, while still only a lad of seventeen, he had sailed to India: ‘The great ports, the strange people, we saw them all. We fought the pirates and protected the merchant ships.’ Then he would grow silent, and after a while tell his listeners: ‘The fever trapped me and I would have died had not a wonderful man, Captain Pigot, James Pigot, and remember that name, taken me under his protective wing and saved my life.’ Here, when talking with fellow sailors, he would invariably stop, look at each one, and say: ‘There is nothing on earth or sea that is finer than the tested friendship of comrades in arms. On the battlefield, in political fighting and especially at sea, we are propped up by the bravery of the man who shares our dangers. I’m here today only because of Captain James Pigot.’
At night, especially when a tropic moon flooded the old fort with a silvery light and mysterious shadows, the young captain liked to gather about him a group of established officers and young midshipmen, plus any ordinary sailors who showed an interest, and instruct them in military matters, especially the handling of ships in times of war. But he was insistent that they first appreciate the significance of their present work in the Caribbean:
‘This elegant sea has always lain close to the heart of Europe, because whatever happens in one arena determines what happens in the other. Suppose a war is fought only on land in Europe, when the peace treaty is written, its terms decide whether Spain, France, Holland or England will own this Caribbean island or that, and nothing we can do out here changes the matter.
‘But also, when our navies clash at sea out here, they determine what happens on land in Europe. Why, you ask, when our islands are so small and their countries so large? Because we grow sugar, one of the most valuable substances on earth, and Europe waxes rich when we ship our sugar and molasses and rum to the homelands. Jamaica, that brooding island over there which we protect with this fort, provides the money which keeps England alive. The ships we sail in are built with Jamaican money.
‘France the same way. Their small island of St.-Domingue just a few days’ sail north of that mountain is the richest land in the world. If we could cut navigation between St.-Domingue and Rochefort, we’d strangle the French fleet, because it’s the sugar riches of the Caribbean that keeps the homeland functioning. Gentlemen, you are serving in a sea of tremendous importance to England.’
But in these night meetings, which many men would remember in later years, Nelson also spoke of naval strategy, for his agile brain was perpetually speculating on new procedures which might give English ships even a slight advantage in the battle against the French:
‘Always remember that just a few years ago, in 1782, the fate of England was decided off the island of All Saints, when our Admiral Rodney met the entire French battle fleet under De Grasse. Always before in such an engagement, the two fleets disposed themselves in line ahead, broadside on, with cannon blazing all the while. Do you know what Rodney did?’
Midshipman Wrentham did know, but before he could speak, Nelson placed a restraining hand on his knee, because he did not want the effect of his narration to be spoiled:
‘He opened the engagement with his fleet in line ahead, as always, like dancers in a set formation, but halfway down he turned the line ninety degrees and dashed boldly right at the middle of the French line, smashed the French ships head-on, broke through their line, and caused havoc. He created a whole new method of war at sea.
‘Let us suppose that you nine men are the French ships, we’ll be the English. Form lines as in the old days. Pass, pass, guns booming. Bang, bang, bang! Now here we break the rules and smash! Right into the middle of the French line. See the confusion. See how we can chop and chivvy the bewildered French ships. Another victory for England.’
‘Please, sir,’ Midshipman Wrentham said. ‘My father taught me that now we must always say Great Britain,’ to which Nelson replied: ‘Your father’s right. Scotland and Wales and Ireland are fine lands with stout sons, but remember that our ships are built by English workmen using English oak and are manned by English sailors, none better in the world, and if we ever fail our duty, the less important parts of Great Britain sink with us. We are England, the heart of Great Britain, and never forget it.’
There was one revealing incident in Nelson’s career about which he never spoke himself, and he refrained, not through modesty, a virtue he did not have, but rather because when Midshipman Wrentham told the story in his boyish enthusiasm, Nelson came off the greater hero:
‘Last year we sailed out of Port Royal to punish the privateers from the rebellious American colonies … they were trying to trade with our islands … Captain Nelson called them “arrogant swine.” We had many great chases and sank two of them.
‘But the last time we didn’t have to sink their ship, because our gunners really hammered them and they were glad to surrender, I can tell you, and bring their insolent flag down. But now a problem. The seas were so choppy that sailors near me asked: “Can we possibly row a small boat from our ship to theirs and deliver a boarding crew to take possession?”
‘I was sure it could be done, so I jumped in early, and I expected the first lieutenant to jump down beside me, but when he saw the violence of the sea and the waters so high, he became timid and cried: “No small boat can get to there from here,” and he refused to join us.
‘Now Captain Locker dashed up: “Why aren’t you boarding her?” and he became so angry, seeing us down there in our small boat without a leader that he shouted scornfully: “Have I no officer brave enough to board that prize?” and he made as if to jump down with us, but at that moment Lieutenant Nelson, he wasn’t captain yet, leaped forward, restrained the captain, and cried: “It’s my turn now. And if I fail, then it will be yours.” And down he leaped, and off we went through the great seas that tossed us about like a cork in an agitated basin. Finally we reached the American and Nelson climbed aboard, with me right behind, and I heard him shout: “Lieutenant Horatio Nelson, officer of His Majesty King George Third and commander of this vessel.” And let me tell you, when the cargo from that capture was sold in Jamaica, we all profited richly.’
Other stories were told, there in the fort as the Englishmen awaited the attack that never came, and all attested to the bravery of Nelson but also to his stubbornness and his determination to do things his way, but always clearly within the rules of the British navy and obedient to the time-honored laws of the sea. Poor performance he would not tolerate in men serving under him, even though they might often be twenty years older than himself, nor would he silently suffer incompetence in his superiors. If the latter flagged in their duty, he was quick
to reprimand them.
For the moment, in the old fort at Port Royal he bided his time, preoccupied with other concerns. As a young man entering his twenties he was of course interested in women. Avidly he sought a wife who would support him emotionally in his naval career, so with his fellow officers, all junior to himself and like him unmarried, he conducted long and amazingly frank discussions regarding the type of young woman who might be suitable. And often in these discussions he would lay out his two basic rules for a navy marriage: ‘First, an officer is only half a man if he lacks a wife and children, so get married. Second, he must pick that wife with extreme caution, for she must be his firm support and not the cause of his downfall.’ He was sometimes reluctant, when speaking in public, about revealing his two final rules, for he applied them particularly to himself: ‘Third, the woman I pick must be rich, so that I can cut a responsible figure among my equals. Fourth, she must come from an important family whose members can help me gain promotions. And I’m sure that somewhere in this world there is a young woman who fulfills those requirements.’ Then he quickly added: ‘And it would help if she hates the French, as we must do when engaging them in battle.’
When a listener asked if he expected to be fighting the French for the rest of his life, he snapped: ‘What other enemy could there be?’ Quickly he corrected himself: ‘Enemies we have aplenty, but none so valiant at sea as the French. They’re the immortal foe.’ As he uttered these words he was looking out upon the sea in which his great predecessor Drake had said precisely the same about the Spanish and in which his successors would affirm their undying enmity to the Germans. Same sea, same ships of oak and iron and steel, same men of Devon and Sussex and Norfolk, same enemy under different names, same islands to defend, and same young fellows wondering in the long watches of the night whom they would marry.
Of his four requirements, it was the third which gave him the most difficulty—that his wife be rich. As the sixth of eleven children born to an impecunious Norfolk clergyman, he was inordinately afraid of poverty and obsessively concerned with money. This made him a shameful fortune hunter, willing to marry almost anyone if she brought him both a sufficient dowry and relatives who would give a forward push to his naval career, so he refrained from telling his young associates the real reason why he had avoided marriage with the various young charmers he had tentatively wooed.
In each case he tormented himself with ugly questions: How much will her parents give her? Will she inherit their wealth when they die? How soon could one expect them to die? Will she prove a careful custodian of the few funds we will have? And the most terrifying question of all: Suppose when this appointment ends I am not given a ship and am left ashore with only a hundred pounds a year? Could she possibly live with a naval officer on half-pay and with no prospects? And when the answers to this barrage of rhetorical questions proved adverse, as they always did, he fled the young woman, grieved over their separation, and stumbled like the amorous sailor he was into another infatuation doomed to a similar end.
This terrible preoccupation with money revealed itself only when he was thinking of his matrimonial problems. When free to think about himself in his role as a fighting man, he invariably ignored personal gain, as Admiral Digby reported on Nelson’s having been offered the New York Station: ‘I greeted him with “Good fortune, Lieutenant Nelson. You are come on a fine station for capturing prize money,” and he astounded me by snapping: “Yes, sir, but the Caribbean is the station for gaining honor.” ’
And it was honor, fame, glory that Horatio Nelson sought. Indeed, he was so hungry for these accouterments to a naval career that as a boy he pleaded, badgered and groveled for assignments to fighting ships, and as a man, suffered untold humiliations in begging his superiors for an appointment to this or that larger ship. And if he was finally given one with 28 guns, he connived to get one with 64 and as soon as he boarded that ship he started machinations to get one with 74. But he was no fool chasing only greater size, for when he dined aboard the Spanish monster Concepción with her 112 guns, he was not overawed, for he saw quickly that whereas ‘the Dons may make fine ships, they cannot seem to make the men to staff them. Long may they remain in their present state!’
As Nelson grew older he also grew more bold, and occasionally statements came tumbling out revealing his positive lust for glory. One night at the fortress in Port Royal he thought, while staring at the marvelous bay where the old town had vanished beneath the waves: How awful it would be to die before one had had his chance at glory! And next day he began writing a torrent of letters to his superiors, begging them for promotions, assignments to better posts, commands of this fine ship or that. Shameless in his ambition, he was also honing himself mercilessly in those attributes of leadership which would entitle him to command, if opportunity ever came.
Since he could find no white heiress to fit his requirements on Jamaica, he was forced to seek temporary companionship from among the lively beauties of no means who clustered about Fort Charles, and Jamaican legend would always insist that in his loneliness he found warm consolation in the arms of three different girls of high color. Their names are not recorded, for they were not deemed worthy of remembrance, being half-breeds, as the local gentry called them contemptuously, but the little houses near the fort in which they lived could be pointed out, especially in those later years when the name Nelson was engraved in golden letters in the hearts of Englishmen.
‘That’s the wee house where Captain Nelson lived with his dark beauty,’ the locals would say, and in time the three little houses lent a touch of humanity to the stories about the austere young captain who fretted in idleness awaiting a French attack on Port Royal.
Among the troops who monitored their captain’s amatory behavior with closest attention was Midshipman Alistair Wrentham, sixteen at the time and just beginning to experience the compelling fascination that a pretty girl can exert upon a young sailor. He was not yet brave enough to consider approaching one of the half-caste girls, and since he knew no other, he spent his time wandering about the ruins of Port Royal and standing on the inner shore of the island, trying to catch a glimpse of the houses that had sunk beneath the waves when the earthquake struck. Others could see them, or so they claimed, but not he; however, one afternoon when he commandeered a small boat and went prowling offshore, he did spot the battered remains of a ship that had sunk at that distant time, and when he hurried back to the fort to announce his discovery, Captain Nelson himself wanted to be taken out to see the marvel, and in a kind of celebration he asked his dark lady friend to pack a basket of bread and cheese and dried meat, and he brought along a bottle of wine.
It was a gala afternoon, with Wrentham proud to be showing Nelson a matter connected with the sea, but the young fellow was deflated when Nelson peered closely below the waves and said: ‘That ship, that style of ship I mean, can’t be more than a dozen years old,’ and when they rowed ashore to ascertain when the sinking had taken place, old-timers who had been watching them chuckled: ‘We know what you was thinkin’, the earthquake and all. That’n sunk ten years ago, caught in one of our hurricanes with her caulkin’ already worked loose. Went down like that.’ So instead of receiving praise for his acuity as a sailor, even Nelson laughed at Alistair, not insultingly but with the implied caution: Look more carefully next time.
Wrentham’s attention was diverted from such matters when two servants from Trevelyan, the famous sugar plantation in the center of the island, came with a carriage to the spot on the big island opposite Port Royal, launched a small skiff and sailed over to the fort: ‘We bring a message to Midshipman Wrentham,’ the men said, one white, one black, and when he stepped forward they turned to address Captain Nelson: ‘The Pembrokes who own our plantation are close friends of the Wrenthams on All Saints, and our master seeks permission to entertain the young man for six or seven days.’ When they looked inquiringly at Nelson, he nodded briskly and said: ‘Fine young man. Ready for promotion soon. On your way.
’ But as Alistair was about to leave the fort, Nelson overtook him and cautioned: ‘Not seven days, five, because I may soon be moved to another station and I’d like to see you again before I leave.’
The servants sailed their skiff westward the short distance to where their carriage waited and then drove at a steady gait northwestward to Spanish Town, the stately capital of the island which still retained reminders of when Spain owned Jamaica. Wrentham, charmed by his first view of the interior of the island he had speculated upon so often while serving guard duty at the fort, hoped that the men would halt there for the night, but they pressed on, taking a narrow but colorful road that led north along the banks of a tumbling stream, first with the stream on the left, then a ford and the stream on the right. Tall trees lined the way, with birds weaving in and out of the lower branches and calling to one another as if to proclaim the coming of Alistair Wrentham into the realm of the great sugar plantations.
When they broke out of the leafy trail and into the broad expanse of handsome fields where the sugarcanes grew, the men explained: ‘Trevelyan ain’t the biggest plantation. The one we’re passin’ now is, off to the right. Croome it’s called, and it’s enormous. But ours is richer … better soil … better kept, too.’ And when they reached that spot at which, years ago, Sir Hugh Pembroke used to stop to survey his principality, they saw roughly the same: ‘Yonder atop the hill, the windmills, sails flappin’. Below, the crusher where the oxen take the place of the breeze. See the little stone ribbon comin’ down the hill to them small buildin’s? Thass the channel brings the juice down to be cooked into sugar. And over there the most precious spot of all. Thass where we makes the black rum folks like so well, Trevelyan, and when you’re a man, don’t drink nothin’ else. ‘Cause real men drinks Trevelyan.’