None other than a Gentleman, as well as a Seaman both in Theory and Practice is qualified to support the Character of a Commission Officer in the Navy.
John Paul Jones (attributed)
When I follow my own head, I am, in general, much more correct in my judgement, than following the opinion of others.
Lord Nelson
THE REALITY OF LATE-EIGHTEENTH–CENTURY NAVAL INTELLIGENCE was that deployed (detached) ship captains and fleet commanders were their own intelligence officers. Two areas of analysis draw forth this concept. First, there was a significant amount of intelligence activity appearing at all levels of governmental and naval operations. Second, there were no naval-intelligence officers, no naval-intelligence staffs, nor even good staffing in general available to the commander.
Indeed, it is very clear that the commander had an enormous breadth of specific responsibility, with virtually no direct officer or enlisted support at his level. While there certainly were other capable commissioned and warrant officers present, they were themselves generalists absorbed by their own demanding duties.
This was well before any great specialization among officers or any established specialized career patterns. Of course, what we now refer to as “staff” officers existed—including physicians, surgeons, chaplains, pursers (ship-level supply)—holding warrants from the Navy Board. “Sea” officers were homogeneous, however. To use modern U.S. Navy parlance, all “line” officers were “unrestricted” in the broadest sense. Holding commissions from the Admiralty, their career training ran mostly to navigation, seamanship, gunnery, and command. Furthermore, every sea officer was just that; with the exception of port admirals, dockyard commanders, a handful of flag officers and captains on specific boards, and a few lieutenants in shore-impressment and signal-station billets, no naval officers served ashore. “In particular,” Capt. Geoffrey Bennett writes, “all commanders-in-chief flew their flags afloat.”1
In any event, every admiral (and every captain, en petit) had to wear many hats concurrently. Depending upon the proximity of his next superior, by default he was to one degree or another his own strategist, diplomat, interpreter, tactician, administrator, disciplinarian, recruiter, personnel manager, communications officer, meteorologist, hydrographer, maintenance officer, engineer, logistician, provisioner, paymaster, and intelligence officer. And not “intelligence officer” by name, of course; the point being that there were no naval intelligence officers in those days. Of the captain’s forty-eight duties, specified by regulation, the closest reference is the one that required him to “keep secret the private signals.”2 Intelligence, even as of 1815, had “not yet really extended to intelligence for wars, and it was not a staff specialty. It was still the case, as with Napoleon, that the chiefs of armies [and fleets] tended to be their own intelligence officers.”3
Truly, the captain (admiral) had to be jack of all trades and, in reality, master of all as well.
THE COMMANDER, above all else in the age of sail, had to be a skillful sailor. It might seem as if that would go without saying; however, it really cannot be emphasized enough. Seafaring was a dangerous profession, and sea life was hard; most sailors would have concurred with the officer who “after eight days and nights of struggle against a gale, eating raw meat for want of fire, exclaimed that ‘a man had better be a fish than a sailor, excepting the little time he is on shore.’ He that would go to sea for pleasure, the proverb had it, would go to hell for a pastime.”4
The commander had to spend an enormous amount of time and effort on seamanship and navigation, for in this era these were by far his greatest challenges. Not only was the acceptable performance of his ship (or fleet) constantly on the line, but more often than not the very survival of the ship(s).5
In our age of powerful nautical engines, tug boats, weather satellites, global-positioning satellites, radar, sonar, and so on, we can be somewhat forgiven if we overlook this point. But the commander of a “powerless” sailing ship (or fleet of sailing ships) had to be, through-and-through, a seaman. Moreover, that seaman was dependent upon three heartless, uncompromising and unforgiving agents—the wind, the tide, and the current, “and over them he has no positive control; he must take them as they come and be ready with his resources.”6
Novelist Patrick O’Brian sums up the problem of the wind very clearly, as Capt. Jack Aubrey harangues his friend Dr. Maturin: “Sometimes I wonder whether you have really grasped that it is the wind alone that moves us. You have often suggested that we should charge to the right or the left as the case may be, just as though we were flaming cavalry, and could go where we chose. . . . You must understand that everything, everything at sea depends on the wind.”7
One has to understand very clearly that at sea, particularly during this period, nothing whatsoever could be guaranteed: “The sea is a stealthy, implacable enemy that gives no quarter.”8 From 1793 to 1805 the Royal Navy lost five ships to enemy action and nineteen to “hazards of the sea.” One of those hazards was running aground on England itself; in 1780 there were only twenty-five lighthouses in Britain, whereas by 1980 there were over twenty-five hundred.9
After all, even when totally calm, the sea has a substantial presence that must be acknowledged. The Atlantic Ocean covers an area of 31.8 million square miles, with an average depth of thirteen thousand feet; and while the Baltic Sea is only 163,000 square miles (and only averages two hundred feet in depth), the Mediterranean Sea is 1.2 million square miles and averages five thousand feet in depth.
The following forcefully illustrates one aspect of the problem. Most readers will know William Bligh as the captain of the Bounty, against whom the famous mutiny occurred in 1789. Whatever the truth may be regarding his leadership skills and general personality, he is universally recognized as an outstanding navigator and a peerless seaman. Yet at the beginning of his doomed voyage in the Bounty, even this master mariner was completely at the mercy of a contrary wind: it took him twenty days until the wind allowed him to move from Deptford to Spithead (approximately two hundred miles along the English coast), and then it was an additional twenty-nine days (after receiving his sailing orders) before a fair wind allowed him to leave Spithead and proceed down the English Channel—“On the 24th [of November] I received from Lord Hood, who commanded at Spithead, my final orders. The wind, which for several days before had been favourable, was now turned directly against us. . . . We made different unsuccessful attempts to get down Channel, but contrary winds and bad weather constantly forced us back to St. Helen’s, or Spithead, until Sunday the 23rd of December, when we sailed with a fair wind.”10
All seamen faced this constant problem. Here are two relevant comments, in 1805, from Lord Nelson: “We crawled thirty-three miles the last twenty-four hours; my only hope is, that the Enemy’s Fleet are near us, and in the same situation,”11 and, from three months earlier, “I cannot get a fair wind, or even a side-wind. Dead foul!—dead foul!”12
Back to 1789. Lieutenant Bligh went on to make a comment about his official clock—issued by the Board of Longitude—that was critical for navigation: “On the 19th of December, the last time of its being examined on shore, it was 1' 52", 5 too fast for mean time, and then losing at the rate of 1", 1 per day; and at this rate I estimate its going when we sailed.”13 Many captains bought one or two more high-quality clocks out of their own pockets, so that they might have a chance at knowing the correct time after months at sea, so that they might have a chance at knowing their correct positions!
Modern navigators, with radar, sonar, and inexpensive global-positioning instruments, may not give this much thought. But navigation, in an era of handmade mechanical time pieces and handmade, handheld optical devices, was a very imprecise science with its own very difficult challenges. The following interlude between Patrick O’Brian’s characters is indicative, though Captain Aubrey makes light of the subject. When told by Aubrey that two recent lunar sightings allowed him to know where they were, Dr. Maturin exclaimed,
“You will never tell me, for all love, that you have been careering over this stormy ocean like a mad bull day and night without knowing where you were? And if you had run violently upon an island . . . where would you have been then, your soul to the Devil?”
“There is dead reckoning, you know,” said Jack mildly.
Many military men, as well as politicians of the time (Napoleon himself being one of the greatest offenders), could not or would not appreciate this issue; so if it is also hard for us two hundred years later, perhaps we can be forgiven. Yet the great Duke of Marlborough, a hundred years earlier, understood the issue very well, “having fought at sea as a young officer onboard the British flagship at the battle of Sole Bay (1672). [He] was wise enough to rebuke those who would have him interfere with the conduct of naval operations in the War of the Spanish Succession, with these words: ‘The Sea Service is not so easily arranged as that of land, there are many more precautions to take, and you and I are not capable of judging them.’”14
The Admiralty board room had a spectacular wind indicator (seen clearly in fig. 1-2), which was there for practicality as the lords commissioners drafted orders. It served another purpose, however, for its very presence “reminded even the least seamanlike politician that everything depended on natural forces, that no officer on active service could neglect the wind strength and direction for a moment.”15
This engraving shows the future emperor as a young general and may indicate his appearance at the time of the Nile campaign.
© National Maritime Museum, London
The reminder did not always work, for many officers felt their orders had been written with no thought whatsoever for the forces of nature. C. S. Forester’s Captain Hornblower certainly had that concern as his ship made landfall on the Pacific coast of Central America: “Only a landsman would have given those opening orders to sail to the Gulf of Fonseca without sighting other land in the Pacific—only a succession of miracles (Hornblower gave himself no credit for sound judgment and good seamanship) had permitted it being carried out.”16 On another occasion, O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey was even more sharp: “It may seem wicked, even blasphemous, to say that my orders might have been written by a parcel of landsmen, accustomed to the regularity of travelling by stage-coach, or by navigation on an inland canal: yet on the other hand some of the Lords are mere landborne politicians . . . who may never [have] been afloat at all—but all that to one side. I have received orders that make no account of wind or tide before this, and so have all other sea-officers. I do not complain.”17
Some Admiralty lords may well have been inexperienced appointees, but the professional sea officers of the Royal Navy were decidedly not: “The quality which above all determined an officer’s fortunes in the Navy, and marked it out from other professions, was his practical ability as a seaman. The capacity, not merely to command and to navigate, but to hand, reef and steer, was the basic requirement for an officer. . . . Other attainments were highly desirable, but this alone was indispensable.”18
Unlike the army and the civil service, where commissions were purchased and political appointments made routine, the navy—facing the perils of the sea in addition to the aggression of the enemy—needed particularly competent people. Skill and experience always headed the list of qualities by which naval officers were judged—criteria not always used ashore: “As late as 1797 . . . a Commissioner of Stamps was appointed because he was the nephew of a duke, and because ‘a natural, constitutional indolence governed him with irresistible sway,’ disabling him from other employment. It is easy to see how dangerous this charitable spirit” would have been in the sea service.19 It cannot be said that politics and “influence” had no role in naval appointments and promotion. In fact, “the decencies of the day required peers to be treated with due deference[,] . . . but the reality was that civilian politicians” and aristocrats were able to exercise only slight control of the system.20
Regardless of how he was promoted, the commander’s skill and flexibility were constantly on call. His responsibility ranged from the very continued existence of his ship to deriving the greatest performance from his ship given any tactical and weather conditions.
THOUGH NOT AS vitally important as seamanship, a number of the other virtues—enumerated at the beginning of this chapter—need to be recognized and developed in a little more detail. Some have a markedly intertwined relationship with intelligence.
A business of commanders, related to both seamanship and intelligence, was that of hydrography and its ancillary arts. Today we take for granted the incredibly detailed knowledge we have of (almost) all parts of the earth, but two hundred years ago accurate information regarding the world’s seas, coasts, winds, weather, and the like was very incomplete. This lack of data was one reason that naval commanders and other mariners were so heavily dependent upon “pilots,” who were men with heavy, practical experience and knowledge of specific geographic areas.
It was only in 1795 that the British Admiralty formally established a Hydrographic Department. Prior to then, it truly was a hit-and-miss business regarding the collection and collation of such information. Horatio Hornblower certainly knew the problem as he approached Central America; he could not depend upon his charts. After all, they had been copied from ones Lord Anson had captured sixty years before, “and everyone knew about Dago charts—and Dago charts submitted to the revision of useless Admiralty draftsmen might be completely unreliable.”21
The navy was always extremely dependent upon individual officers compiling such data from around the world, and then sending it in to London:
At one time, accurate sea and coastal charts were so hard-won and so valuable that they were considered by some nations to be state secrets. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, private Dutch and English engravers published atlases and charts for use at sea.
Following the lead of the French Navy, which established its Depôt des Cartes et Plans in 1720, the Admiralty created the Hydrography Department in 1795 to carry out surveys at sea, to collate authoritative information for its own use and for chart publishers, and to publish its own charts. . . . In 1800 the Hydrography Department published the first Admiralty charts.22
The Admiralty also commissioned a number of surveys. These included Commander Broughton in Japanese and Korean waters, 1795–98; Graeme Spence around the southern coast of England in 1800; Captain Flinders in Australia, 1801–3; Francis Beaufort at the River Plate (between Argentina and Uruguay) in 1807 and at the southern coast of Turkey in 1811–12; and William Smyth in the Adriatic starting in 1811.
But even with an established Hydrographic Department the input from individual officers continued to be critical: “Just as Bligh, even during his desperate open-boat voyage, accurately surveyed parts of the coast of Australia[,] . . . many other hydrographer-seamen contributed valuable small-scale surveys to the mass of information compiled by the Hydrography Department.”23 Thus, many commanders spent considerable effort in collecting this type of “natural” intelligence. The Hydrographic Department often asked for specific help from operational commanders. The following 1805 letter shows a Mr. Dalrymple, first head of the department, asking assistance from the Admiralty secretary: “Sir, Be pleased to lay before their Lordships the chart herewith sent, on which a comparison is made of Captain Bligh’s chart of Dungeness with that by Captain Johnstone. The differences are so great and so important that it seems indispensably necessary to ascertain which is wrong, ‘shallow water’ being expressed in Captain Johnstone’s chart where 7 fathoms are marked in Captain Bligh’s.”24
Jack Aubrey absolutely loved this type of work. During one voyage he and his clerk carried out “a chain of observations, always made at stated intervals: wind direction and strength, estimated current, barometrical pressure, compass variations, humidity, temperature of the air (both wet bulb and dry) and of the sea at given depths together with the salinity at those depths, and the blueness of the sky, a series that was to be carried round the world and communicated to Mr. Humboldt on the one hand and the Royal Society on the other.”25
Lord Nelson always maintained a great interest in this type of work. In 1801 after the Battle of Copenhagen, he sent a coastal plan to Lord St. Vincent that had been drawn by his associate, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart. He wrote that Stewart “is an excellent and indefatigable young man and, depend on it, the rising hope of our Army. As there is no other plan in existence, perhaps you will direct a copy to be lodged in the Hydrographer’s Office.”26
On 19 August 1803, Nelson tasked Capt. John Stuary, in HMS Kent, to the effect that “you will furnish me (for the information of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty) with a particular account of your taking the sounding of some Spanish Ports in these seas during the time you commanded the Termagant.”27 In October 1804, Nelson directed Thomas Atkinson, sailing master of the Victory, to proceed “to the Island of Cabrera . . . for the purpose of ascertaining correctly the soundings and bearings, &c. of the Shoal Rock, which his Majesty’s Ship Excellent struck upon in May last. . . . Survey the said Shoal, taking the most correct soundings on every part of it, and between that and the Isle of Biche, its bearings, and every particular remark necessary to prevent any accident to his Majesty’s Ships in future.”28
And despite the unfortunate personal link Nelson often faced between writing and seasickness, he felt individually committed to such data collection—even as a vice admiral. There are preserved two small books in which he daily entered “in his own hand, the state of the Barometer, Weather, and Wind twice, three times, and occasionally four, five, and even six times in every twenty-four hours, from the 24th of October 1803, to the 13th of May 1805.”29
THE COMMANDER had to be a serious disciplinarian. Whether as a ship’s captain or as an admiral, the discipline of the service was always of major concern. Captains had much more authority than they do now, able to direct a wide range of punishments—including the dreaded flogging—for an equally wide range of offenses.
Famous as a harsh disciplinarian (a flogging captain and a hanging admiral) was Lord St. Vincent. In fact, as a strict officer, St. Vincent had viewed the great fleet mutinies at Spithead and the Nore with even more alarm than he did the French threat. Upon assuming command of the Channel Fleet in 1800, he worked very hard to stamp out anything left from the mutiny using a variety of very effective methods. One method he did not implement, but suggested, was that the Post Office might include in its letter-interception program all mail to and from his ships’ lower decks.30
Nelson hated punishing his men, and particularly detested flogging. However, it was a hard service and he was hard enough to lead it. Note this November 1803 memorandum to all his commanding officers, which he directed be read to all hands in the fleet:
Lord Nelson is very sorry to find that notwithstanding his forgiveness of the men who deserted in Spain, it has failed to have its proper effect.
Therefore Lord Nelson desires that it may be perfectly understood, that if any man be so infamous as to desert from the Service in future, he will not only be brought to a Court-Martial, but that if the sentence should be Death, it will be most assuredly carried into execution.31
Neither captains nor admirals could personally direct capital punishment. However, an admiral could convene a court martial (if he had several captains present to act as judges), the sentences from which could be death—and there was no appeal, as Nelson implies above.
THE COMMANDER’S SKILL as a strategist (here more pertaining to an admiral than a captain) was critical in the days before the radio enabled politicians in a nation’s capital to direct worldwide strategy. Two hundred years ago, with the dismal contemporary communications that have been described in chapter 3, admirals serving overseas “had to have a clear understanding of how sea power should be used to further the conduct of a war so that the final victory might be gained on land; how best to employ their ships for the protection of their country’s and its allies’ maritime trade and in support of their armies, and to prevent the enemy from using the sea for either of these vital purposes.”32
In fact, appalling slowness of communications, between the Admiralty and fleet commanders in chief, rivaled those of the foreign office to diplomats posted abroad. Nelson’s papers are filled with complaints on this issue, not only relative to direct correspondence but also in regard to basic information and general news. All too often, whatever the situation was before the commander left Britain, it had become worse by the time he reached the scene—or if not worse at least far different than when his orders were written.
This certainly was not unique to Nelson. Some five years after Trafalgar, Vice Adm. Lord Collingwood, Nelson’s successor in command of the Mediterranean Fleet, wrote his wife (from his flagship Ocean), “I so seldom hear from England now, that I scarcely know what is going on in the world. I conclude every body is so occupied with Spanish affairs, that they can think of only them.”33
The commander, at all levels, had to be a skillful tactician—a role less dependent upon timely communications with the government. He had to “know not only how to manoeuvre and fight his [ship or] fleet, but how to engage, or avoid action with, the enemy in circumstances that are most favourable to his own [ship or] fleet.”34
FINALLY, THE COMMANDER had to be a diplomat. In overseas stations, admirals as well as detached captains (of whom their were many) often had to
work in harmony with kings and statesmen, governors and generals, of his own country and of its allies. He must negotiate with those of neutral powers; sometimes with those of the enemy. He should know when to threaten, when to plead, when to show the iron hand, when to wear the velvet glove, when to be tolerant of weakness, when to defy a bully’s strength. And in all this he operates in waters more dangerous than those in which his [ship] sails, a sea in which he is more likely to founder. For whilst the successful . . . commander is the man who follows Danton’s advice, “De l’audace, et encore de l’audace, et toujours l’audace,” the diplomatist must remember Talleyrand’s35 counsel, “N’ayez pas de zèle.”36
A remarkable example was Adm. Sir James, Baron de Saumarez (1757–1836), who was a significant contributor to Britain’s ultimate victory when, during his command in the Baltic Sea, from 1808 to 1812, “he not only cleared the Baltic of a hostile Russian fleet, but maintained such amicable relations with Sweden that her ports remained open to British shipping, even though force majeure compelled her to join France’s allies.”37
In fact, after Sweden had to declare war, and the British diplomats had to leave Stockholm, Saumarez effectively became the regional director of political affairs. His flagship (the venerable Victory) became a headquarters of northern resistance to France, “and the skilful diplomacy and personal popularity of the Admiral were a major contributory factor in the development of the alliance against Napoleon in 1812.”38
Sometimes a commander translated his diplomatic analyses directly into naval decisions. For instance, and as previously discussed in chapter 2, with his on-scene knowledge Lord Nelson was amazed at his government’s plan to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet. Note this letter from Nelson to John Gore, captain of HMS Medusa, in October 1804:
Last night I received . . . a copy of Captain Graham Moore’s orders from Admiral Cornwallis, which has filled me with astonishment; but without presuming to set myself in opposition to the Honourable Admiral’s orders, there is a duty which I owe my Country that, although I risk the most precious thing to me in the world—my Commission,—I feel it my duty to give you my full opinion of the line of conduct you ought to pursue on this most extraordinary occasion;
I [cannot] think that England has any wish to go to War unnecessarily with Spain. Therefore, unless you have much weightier reasons than the order of Admiral Cornwallis, or that you receive orders from the Admiralty, it is my most positive directions that neither you, or any Ship under your orders, do molest or interrupt in any manner the lawful commerce of Spain, with whom we are at perfect peace and amity.39
Map 6-1 The Mediterranean Sea Mahan, Life of Nelson
In addition, Nelson’s attempt to walk a very narrow line between the bashaw of Tripoli and the United States is interesting. This letter was written to Lord Hobart, secretary of state for War:
I send you my correspondence with the Bashaw. . . . He is, as usual, most friendly disposed towards us. During the time of Buonaparte’s greatest success in Egypt, [he] gave up to me, as prisoners, the French Consul, and every Frenchman in his Dominions, [and] his Arsenal was always open for the supply of our Ships.
I have not thought it, however, proper to notice the indirect application for gunpowder and grape-shot, on account of his War with the Americans. . . . It might give cause for a discontent on the part of the Americans, which it must be our wish to avoid.40
At other times a commander could become too much a politician and too little a naval officer, degrading his primary role to the detriment of his profession. For example in 1799, while recovering from his wound after the Battle of the Nile, Nelson became overly involved in Neapolitan politics, including seizing and executing persons in rebellion against the Neapolitan government. Moreover, he was formally appointed one of the Neapolitan king’s advisors. “The presence of an officer of a belligerent state on the council of a neutral one was a little odd,” notes Forester, “but Nelson never seemed to appreciate the oddness.”41
Still, as with everything else, the commander was usually totally on his own, making judgments and forming plans in a vacuum. It was often better to be too active than too passive, and British officers for the most part acquitted themselves judiciously, certainly including Nelson. In fact, while 1799 may not have been Nelson’s best year in this regard, his tenure as Mediterranean commander in chief (1803–5) joins Collingwood’s Mediterranean command (1805–10)—and Saumarez’s Baltic command—as examples of extraordinary diplomatic responsibilities being exceptionally well executed. After all, no one knew better than Nelson that “political courage in an Officer abroad is as highly necessary as military courage.”42
Of course, diplomatic activity always meant language and translation problems. Very often the commander had a practical need for personal fluency in at least one foreign language. But all too often, particularly for ship captains, there was no personal fluency, and it was virtually left to chance in that there may or may not be anyone on board with the particular skill required. Nelson was quite aware of this; as a young commander, after the close of the American Revolutionary War, he decided to take advantage of the peace to try to learn French. Writing to Admiralty secretary Philip Stephens on 8 October 1783, he requested that “you will be pleased to move their Lordships to grant me six months’ leave of absence, to go to Lisle, in France, on my private occasions.”43 Indeed, he had no doubt witnessed too many of the awkward scenarios when a British ship, “commanded by an officer who knew no language but his own, captured a prize. (‘Boatswain’s mate, pass the word for any man who can speak French to come aft on the quarter-deck.’) It was even worse when the papers of a foreign vessel needed examination, for a seaman who had picked up some French or Spanish very likely could not read it. Besides, French was an accomplishment expected in high society.”44
However, even after a very earnest start to the project (“He bought Chambaud’s Grammar of the French Tongue, on the title page of which he wrote neatly, ‘Horatio Nelson began to learn the French Language on the first of November, 1783”’),45 Nelson returned to London, for professional and personal reasons, several months later. He never succeeded in learning the language, and was therefore dependent upon interpreters—wherever he could find them—for the rest of his life.
An admiral’s translation problems were more significant and generally required better advance preparation. Often a secretary, chaplain, or even flag lieutenant was selected at least partially on the basis of languages in order to supplement whatever skills (if any) the admiral personally boasted. Sir Hyde Parker’s chaplain in the West Indies and at Copenhagen (“Sir Hyde’s parson-secretary”), the Rev. Alexander John Scott, served the country admirably with remarkable language skills (though Parker acquired his services oblivious to this aspect of his knowledge). Scott also later served Nelson in the Mediterranean as chaplain and secretary; however, Nelson was very aware of Scott’s useful language skills and was always deeply appreciative of his tremendous contributions to both diplomatic and intelligence situations: “Languages were his prey, and to [Nelson], who never attained proficiency in a single one, there was fascination in presenting [him] with a captured French despatch, letter, pamphlet, or foreign newspaper, out of which they would together tear the heart in a few minutes. . . . [Scott] modestly claimed master of no more than eight [languages], and admitted that elementary Danish had taken him three days, and Russian several weeks.”46
One of Patrick O’Brian’s fictional Mediterranean commanders in chief discussed his translation problem: “In principle the Navy writes to foreigners in English; but where I want things done quick I send them unofficial copies in a language they can understand whenever I can. . . . We have clerks for Arabic and Greek: French we can manage for ourselves, and that answers for most other purposes; but. . . . I should give a great deal for a really reliable Turkish translator.”47
For most of his early, shore-based Mediterranean operations as a flag officer, Nelson was dependent upon (his mistress to be) Lady Emma Hamilton and her husband, Ambassador Sir William. In fact, on one occasion shortly after the Battle of the Nile, the ambassador “acted as interpreter during the early stages of an interview which soon degenerated into an altercation, and when he retired, worn out, Lady Hamilton took his place. How difficult their task may be judged from the fact that when the admiral spoke of ‘the rebels’ and [Cardinal Ruffo] spoke of ‘the patriots,’ they were referring to the same body of men.”48
Some commanders, of course, could personally speak other languages and were thus less dependent upon translators. One whose abilities vastly aided his job was Sir James Saumarez, who, like many Channel Islands people, was actually bilingual, speaking both English and French.
This illustration was done by James Northcote (artist) and H. R. Cook (engraver) and was published on 30 November 1808 by Joyce Gold.
© National Maritime Museum, London
WHILE THE ROLE of the commander’s secretary will also be more fully developed in the next chapter, the concept of the commander as administrator is appropriate here. Even in a simpler time, the administration of a ship (or a fleet) required a prodigious amount of paperwork. Captains and admirals were aided by staffs basically either non-existent or, at best, tiny by modern standards.
Lord Nelson’s staff can well serve as an example. In mid-1805, Nelson led the Mediterranean Fleet including thirty-three ships of the line and containing over seventeen thousand men,49 exercising the full authority of a commander in chief. His staff consisted of exactly three people, two of whom had to devote at least some of their time to other duties on board the flagship, HMS Victory. These men were Lt. John Pasco, his flag lieutenant; the previously mentioned Rev. A. J. Scott, his private secretary (who also had collateral responsibility as the ship’s chaplain); and John Scott, secretary (who likewise had collateral responsibilities in the ship’s purser’s office). To further underscore the point, Vice Adm. Lord Collingwood, Nelson’s second in command on board HMS Royal Sovereign, had no staff support at all other than that which was available to him from the ship’s company.50 Rear Adm. the Earl of Northesk and Rear Adm. Thomas Louis, Nelson’s third and fourth in command, were similarly ill served—although the Britannia’s chaplain, Rev. Laurence Halloran, performed some collateral duties as Northesk’s secretary.51 As a result, one cannot be overly surprised to learn that, on 1 October 1805, Nelson noted, “I had been writing seven hours yesterday.”52
Indeed, Nelson was an extraordinarily hard-working administrator. While he never neglected his other duties, and was “generally on deck six or seven hours in the day,”53 he was a phenomenal desk worker and an elegant writer—even though C. S. Forester felt that Nelson’s “letters and orders might have benefited from a fuller formal education; while precise and unequivocal, they lack the literal clarity of Wellington and the exacting vigor of Napoleon’s early writing.”54
Most captains’ and admirals’ correspondence had to be at least workmanlike, if not elegant, though it certainly came to some more naturally than others: “the desk,” said an admiring brother officer of Capt. Sir Thomas Hardy, “was not his forte.”55 Actually, it is somewhat of a marvel that any of them were any good at all; most left whatever early schooling they may have had to go to sea, and many (like Nelson) went to sea at twelve or thirteen. Regardless, the desk was Nelson’s forte, among so many other important things, and “he displayed . . . a gift for administration such as is seldom possessed by men of imagination, a combination which did much to enable such commanders as Caesar and Napoleon to achieve immortal fame.”56
Nelson crowded in considerable desk and deck time, typically working very long days, usually beginning at 5:30 A.M. and “till after 8 o’clock at night, I never relax from business.”57 In this regard he was more balanced than his friend Collingwood, who perhaps focused on administrative issues to the detriment of operational ones. Professor G. J. Marcus was of this opinion, writing that Collingwood’s meticulous attention to detail became obsessive. He once remarked that he very much liked his flagship, the Ville de Paris, “but all ships that sail well and are strong are alike to me; I see little of them, seldom moving from my desk.” “I am ceaselessly writing,” he observed on another occasion, “and the day is not long enough for me to get through my business.”58
The problem of the remarkably small staff is in enormous contrast to the situation 134 years later. In 1939 the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet commander in chief, full admiral Andrew Cunningham, led eleven capital ships and some fifty smaller vessels, containing about 15,500 men. However, counting neither junior officers nor clerical support, nor his attached flag officers (a vice admiral and three rear admirals), his staff included a commodore, two captains, and four commanders. Although he went on to several assignments much larger than the Mediterranean Fleet, eventually becoming an admiral of the fleet and a viscount, Cunningham valued the support of these men so profoundly that he later dedicated his huge autobiography “to my staff in the Mediterranean to whom I owe so much.”59
Rightfully so, Nelson was always impressed by his own workload—even before he became a commander in chief: “My public correspondence besides the business of sixteen Sail-of-the-Line, and all our commerce, is with Petersburg, Constantinople, the Consuls at Smyrna, Egypt, the Turkish and Russian Admirals, Trieste, Vienna, Minorca, Earl St. Vincent and Lord Spencer. This over, what time can I have for private correspondence?”60
Unfortunately for Nelson, his constant desk work took a toll on his fragile constitution, to say nothing of generally aggravating the seasickness to which he was always prone. At one point his friend Captain Ball expressed concern, writing, “I wish he could be prevailed upon to write less, because I am very apprehensive he impairs his health.”61 Right before his Copenhagen campaign he was actually forced to stop writing for a brief period; his “good” eye (the other having lost sight from an earlier wound) “was giving him such trouble that he had been driven to consult the physician to the fleet, who prescribed an operation as soon as possible, meanwhile, no writing, and green shades.”62 Nelson certainly was not alone, either in doing considerable personal writing or suffering because of it. Note this 1797 apology from Lord St. Vincent to Lord Spencer: “My Lord,—A violent inflammation in my eyes and head compels me to make use of the pen of my secretary.”63
Nelson was not a robust person; the workload continuously wore away at his overall health, reaching a crisis during the Trafalgar campaign. In the spring and summer of 1804, Nelson found that the prodigious, incessant desk work he had to do began to erode his physical health and his personal optimism. In fact, after fifteen months in command he began to solicit Whitehall for an interval of leave.
Seven years earlier, Sir Hyde Parker was similarly overloaded—if not quite worn out. As commander in chief of the West Indies station, and with a tiny clerical staff, “Sir Hyde was always kept busy with a great deal of paperwork. . . . There were always many official letters to write—to the Admiralty, Navy Board, Sick and Hurt Board, Pay Office and Victualling Office, among many others. Surveys and reports had to be made on sick ships and sick men; details of prizes captured, requisitions for shot, powder, provisions, masts and spars, rigging and paint—all these had to go through the commander-in-chief.”64 Indeed, on Sunday, 12 February 1797, “Sir Hyde spent the whole day—after Divine Service on board his flagship—dictating and writing letters ‘to the Admiralty and other naval Boards.’”65
It is significant to note that Lord Collingwood, ultimately, was overwhelmed by his work. During the five years he commanded the Mediterranean Fleet, with all the associated responsibilities of that terribly important command, he effectively wore out. He requested to be relieved several times, to no avail, and he literally died on board his flagship. He saw it coming, writing to his sister-in-law, “my fear, my only fear, is that my strength of body, impaired by length of days and weight of years, should unfit me for the arduous duties I have to fulfil. Fourteen or sixteen hours of every day I am employed.”66
It is perhaps useful here to expand the several specific references to writing, for at this time all writing was by hand with pen and ink. Nelson, St. Vincent, and Collingwood all literally meant, in the quotations above, that they personally wrote for several hours per day above and beyond whatever their secretaries might have been doing.
In this time, when one wrote, one used a quill (usually from goose feathers) pen dipped every few strokes into an ink bottle—state of the art since 200 B.C. The metal-dip pen was only developed in 1815, the year this study closes; the fountain pen in 1880; the ball-point pen in 1940 (the ball-point pen was really invented in 1888, but was not broadly used until World War II);67 and the roller-ball pen in 1980. Though an early form of carbon paper was in use as early as 1808, the typewriter was not invented until 1869 (to say nothing of the mimeograph machine, the photocopier, or the word processor!).
As a result, whether you were the king, a secretary of state, an admiral, a captain, or a ship’s clerk, the quality and clarity of your handwriting became a key factor in the efficiency and accuracy of your transmission of information. After the loss of his right arm (courtesy of grapeshot at Tenerife in 1797), and having been right-handed, Nelson’s neatly scripted handwriting became horrendous. Ironically, Nelson himself did not think much of Napoleon’s, handwriting. Some of Bonaparte’s letters were captured after the Battle of the Nile; Nelson commented on this to Lord Spencer in a letter dated 9 August 1798: “I send you a pacquet of intercepted Letters[,] . . . in particular, one from Bounaparte to his brother. He writes such a scrawl, no one not used to it can read; but luckily, we have got a man who has wrote in his Office, to decipher it.”68
Indeed, as one reads the logs of ships or the correspondence of officials which have been transcribed and published, “unintelligible” is a frequent notation in the texts as editors, holding the original documents, have had trouble deciphering them. In fact, King George’s off-and-on relationship with Henry Dundas, who among other things was secretary of state for War from 1794 to 1801, apparently was partially due to Dundas’s penmanship. Sir James Bland Burges, undersecretary of state for Foreign Affairs, claimed that George felt “a mortal antipathy to [Dundas’s] handwriting, which I have heard him, and with great truth, declare to be the worst and most ungentlemanlike he had ever met with. This, by the way, was a curious particularity of our good King; but it was one which operated forcibly on more occasions than one that have fallen within my own observation, to add to the dislike which he might have preconceived against an individual.” King George must have disliked many of his officers and ministers, for clear writing was the exception during this time.69
For the embarked admiral or captain, desk work was complicated by the fact that one generally had no real office in which to work. As a rear admiral during the Nile campaign, Nelson lived in HMS Vanguard’s quarterdeck accommodation: “At night there would only be a thin wooden partition between him and the steering wheel. He would hear the shouted orders of the officer of the watch, the warnings of the lookouts, and be instantly aware of any crisis in the sailing of the ship. It is not surprising that he got little sleep at crucial stages in the campaign.”70 The stern cabin, almost thirty feet across at the widest point, “would be his home, office and headquarters for the next few months. . . . It was divided into three separate cabins, one for sleeping, one as a lobby and perhaps an office and the largest, well-illuminated by the stern windows, where he would dine, receive guests and perhaps relax.”71
Years later, in the Victory, he would work beside the stern windows at a very small desk, without the benefit of drawers, filing cabinets, or book shelves (see fig. 6-3). It is a wonder, to the modern reader, that such enormous administrative requirements could be handled with no dedicated office spaces.
Painted by Charles Lucy and engraved by C. W. Sharp, this portrait shows Nelson before Trafalgar. One can clearly see the small, cluttered desk in the corner of the cabin by the stern windows, It is not much of an office.
© National Maritime Museum, London
But it was done, and Nelson—with no right eye, no right arm, no significant staff, and no office—was one of the best. In fact, when Lord Castlereagh once told him that he did not believe he had in his possession some of Nelson’s earlier dispatches, Lord Nelson offered, if they could not be found, to provide the whole series immediately. He had kept duplicates, with an index.72
Admirals did have one particular benefit in regard to staff work. After 1795, a “captain of the fleet” was authorized for fleets of fifteen ships or more when the Lords of the Admiralty felt it advisable. When authorized and present this officer, also called the “first captain,” above and beyond the flagship’s captain,73 was in some ways the admiral’s chief of staff and acted as a main advisor, particularly in helping regulate the administrative and disciplinary details of the fleet.74 It was a demanding position; Nelson once commented that “the situation of First Captain is certainly a very unthankful office.”75 In contrast, the flagship’s captain, called the “second,” or flag captain, “was generally newly promoted and less experienced than the captains of smaller ships, so custom permitted . . . the admiral to interfere a good deal in the internal management of his flagship.”76
Nelson had Rear Adm. George Murray as his captain of the fleet from May 1803 to August 1805. However, when he returned to the Mediterranean command after leave (in late August 1805), until his death, he was operating without one. In any event, Nelson always remained immersed in the details. Note this line, written to a ship’s captain, in summer 1804: “Your log and weekly account have been delivered me by the Captain of the Fleet. Let them in future be transmitted [directly] to me.”77
Clearly, even when a captain of the fleet was present, an admiral had precious little staff support—neither at the routine, clerical level nor at the senior advisor level. This was an army problem as well—though the army was often better staffed than the navy. As late as 1812, Lt. Gen. the Marquess of Wellington was commanding the bulk of the British Army in the Iberian Peninsula, fighting a series of successful campaigns while simultaneously “acting as his own paymaster general, economic advisor, chief-of-staff, and commissary general.”78
The captain of the fleet was generally “free to make suggestions, put forward plans, and generally offer advice to the admiral.”79 This was the exception for a subordinate, not the rule. The commander was very, very much a “man alone,” isolated from his superiors by geography and from his subordinates by status. C. S. Forester underscored this concept in his fictional writing, particularly in Captain Horatio Hornblower. In fact, there probably “is no one in the modern world that can appreciate the burden” of this isolation.80 A captain led
a solitary existence: although surrounded night and day by scores of men, he lived the life of a recluse. Because of the rigid bulkhead of discipline and tradition he was isolated from his own officers, entertaining them occasionally at his table but otherwise remaining socially aloof.
In addition to this unnatural and enforced solitude the captain bore the sole responsibility for the fighting efficiency, safety and welfare of upwards of seven-score men, and for the ship herself. Combined with the knowledge that one error of judgment or navigation by himself or his officers could wreck his ship and possibly his career, it imposed a great strain on every type of captain.81
Moreover, the customs of the period and of the service were such that commanders could very rarely seek (or even accept) advice or discussion from their subordinates.82 Rank and position demanded more distance and respect than we are used to today. Admirals experienced an even greater solitude than did captains: “The majority of the great admirals were by nature stern and sombre men and for the most part unapproachable to subordinates.”83 Most commanders were very solitary, authoritarian figures working, living, and dining in dignified solitude.84
Indeed, most flag officers wanted active command at sea, particularly overseas, with its significant opportunities and independence. But independence also meant enormous responsibility: “There was no chance to consult one’s superiors, to weigh the advice of wiser and more experienced heads. Issues of war and diplomacy, of life and death turned on an admiral’s unaided decisions, and if there were any who took them lightly, they did so no more after the death of Admiral Byng, shot in 1757 for failure in action.”85
In addition, based upon position, education, experience, and social station, captains and admirals were expected to know all. Indeed, they could hardly not know a great deal, because “to command a frigate needed a minimum of eight to ten years’ training; the captain of a sail of the line needed ten to fifteen. An admiral, even a clever man of the most junior rank, needed several more years. Nelson, unique among them all, went to sea at thirteen and was thirty-nine when he became a rear admiral.”86 While this idea of the senior officer being the most knowledgeable is not a foreign concept in today’s armed forces, it was much more tangible in that era.
In that time—very unlike today—it was possible for the captain to be the most knowledgeable individual on board in all areas of expertise. For one thing, it is an “undeniable fact that in those days a naval officer had less to learn in the technique of his profession than he would have nowadays.”87 (These were also times, however, where many captains felt a strong responsibility, if not absolute duty, to thoroughly know all their men, including names, divisions, watches, ratings, abilities and history.)
Most commanders, including the sometimes liberally minded Nelson, disdained anything resembling a “council of war” as a weakness.88 Actually, Nelson did call one during the Nile campaign—even though he disliked such councils, for he felt they promoted indecision. As he was to comment on another occasion, “If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.”89
O’Brian’s Capt. Jack Aubrey, even more conservative than Nelson, is comfortable with this aspect of solitude: “It was not usual for him to discuss his orders with anyone.”90 In fact, “he had always been a silent captain in the matter of strategy, tactics and the right course of action, and this was not from any theory but because it seemed to him evident that a commander was there to command rather than to ask advice or preside over a committee. He had known captains and admirals call a council of war, and the result had nearly always been a prudent retreat or at any rate an absence of decisive action.”91
All in all, the commander was profoundly alone on board his ship, needing to be jack and master of all trades—as well as the final authority, in all subjects, to all of his subordinates.
Novelist Alexander Kent’s Vice Admiral Broughton would agree, once asking his flag captain to “remind that officer that if I am in such dire distress as to require an opinion of no value, he will be the first to be told.”92 Even the relatively sensitive Horatio Hornblower was of this mold, at one time sparing not even his first lieutenant—who was also his best friend: “Mr. Bush,” said Hornblower spitefully, “I can judge of the situation without the assistance of your comments, profound though they be.”93
Fictional officers aside, real-life Capt. Edward Hamilton of HMS Surprise, famous for retaking HMS Hermione from the Spanish in 1799, was certainly as much of a loner as any: “Hamilton did not discuss his plan with his officers, and that night . . . [he worked alone] in his cabin with the watch and quarter-bills—which listed the name and various tasks of every man in the ship[,] . . . and then wrote out six different sets of instructions.”94 And, of course, Nelson was ever the man alone, writing during the Trafalgar campaign, “I have consulted no man, therefore the whole blame of ignorance in forming my judgement 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.”95
It is not that commanders did not feel loneliness; indeed, after going back to sea and resuming command Nelson once wrote that “to tell you how dreary and uncomfortable the Vanguard appears, is only telling you what it is to go from the pleasantest society to a solitary cell, or from the dearest friends to no friends. I am now perfectly the great man—not a creature near me. From my heart I wish myself the little man again!”96
EACH OF THE FACTORS developed so far in this chapter come strikingly into play as we consider Lord Nelson as British Mediterranean Fleet commander in chief from 1803 to 1805. In this role his task was to blockade or destroy the French and Spanish fleets based at Toulon and Cadiz, to control the sea for the protection of commerce, and to assist the continental allies on shore in the struggle against French hegemony. Additionally, he had to maintain diplomatic relations in and among the many coastal states in his area, detail ships to convoy British trade, maintain close communications with local British diplomats as well as with Whitehall, support friendly forces of various pedigrees in the region, and—of course—gather, analyze, act upon, and/or relay all available intelligence, whether pertinent locally or for ultimate digestion in London.
The Mediterranean situation—for the entire war—was particularly complex. In 1803 Nelson was required to oversee the safety of Malta; work toward the destruction of the French fleet at Toulon; try to protect Naples, Egypt, and Corfu against the French; monitor naval preparations in Spanish ports; try to prevent a junction of French, Spanish, and Dutch ships; protect British, Neapolitan, and Turkish commerce; intercept French ships expected from the West Indies; and monitor French naval activity in Genoa, Leghorn, and other Italian ports.97
His supply and general logistics problems were immense, with virtually no support from Britain. Nelson was always very personally engaged in this business. One may truly consider him his own commissary officer, as evidenced by this letter to Rear Admiral Knight at Gibraltar, from the Victory, on 22 July 1805: “Be so good as to allow the Gun-Brig to bring over to Tetuan 3000 lbs. of onions, which I have desired Mr. Cutforth to put on board her for the Pursers, as I find we shall get no onions for the [crew’s] broth at Tetuan.”98
As commander in chief, Nelson personally handled large quantities of cash—in gold, as a rule—principally to buy food for the fleet in every nook and cranny all around the western Mediterranean. (Of course, he also used cash to pay agents who supplied him with all sorts of political and military information.)99
Nelson’s logistical problems were even more complex than they might have been, because he really had no useful base: “Genoa and Leghorn were in enemy hands; Minorca had reverted to Spain; Naples and Palermo, not to mention Malta and Gibraltar, were too far from Toulon.” Determined to keep his fleet continuously at sea, he wrote, “I have made up my mind never to go into port till after the battle, if they [the French] make me wait a year.” To bring this about, “he organized storeships to bring supplies from Gibraltar and Malta, from the Two Sicilies and Sardinia whose rulers were benevolently neutral to Britain, and from ports in Spain where British gold spoke louder than Madrid’s preoccupation with placating Bonaparte’s demands.”100
Nelson was determined to keep his ships well supplied and on station. Thus, he certainly contributed his share of organization and innovation to a concept of efficient victualling which had been first introduced by Hawke in 1759. This had been recently reestablished by Jervis, Duncan, Cornwallis, and Keith, enabling large fleets to remain on station throughout years of blockade.101
He was further determined to keep his men healthy, which added urgency to his supply challenges. He was personally involved in victualling, for “you will agree with me that it is easier for an Officer to keep men healthy, than for a Physician to cure them.” “Acting on this belief,” Carola Oman notes in her biography of Nelson, “he sent to Malta for sweet oranges and deputed his second-in-command to discover on the spot why all the bread from this quarter should arrive infested with weevils. He wrote to Gibraltar to order more cheese, cocoa, and sugar and less rice. To his chagrin, ship’s companies in general did not much like rice or . . . macaroni.”102
And note the following memorandum, from December 1803, sent to all British ships in the Mediterranean, from “chief medical officer” Lord Nelson: “As a preventive against the effects of disease which the men are subject to . . . a dose of Peruvian-bark, in a preparation of good sound wine or spirits, [should] be given to each man in the morning, previous to his going on shore [to get wood or water], and the same in the evening after his return on board. . . . And on the Ship’s being completed in wood and water, an account of the quantity of wine or spirits issued to the men as above in addition to their allowance, is to be sent to me for my information.”103
THE CHALLENGES present for the at-sea eighteenth-century commander were remarkable. First and foremost, he was very isolated, from both his superiors and his subordinates. Partly because of the remoteness of higher headquarters, and partly because of the relative simplicity of the age, the commander had an incredibly wide range of tasks. He certainly had to be eclectic in his expertise, and he had to be in many ways the most knowledgeable and skillful officer in his command. The variety of duties was amazing, and with little staff support the commanding officer was often the one to handle them. For example, note this remarkably unusual assignment, in September 1804, from Nelson to Capt. Charles M. Schomberg of HMS Madras: “Lord Elgin having requested . . . that I would allow a Ship to call at Cerigo, to bring from thence to Malta some marble antiquities, and as I am perfectly disposed to meet his Lordship’s wishes on this occasion, I am to desire you will send a small Transport to Cerigo . . . for the purpose of receiving the antiquities before-mentioned on board.”104
Above all, a commander had to be decisive, clear-headed, calm, “and equally competent whether manoeuvring his own [ship or fleet] or a foreign diplomat. A skillfully turned phrase might have more effect than a thousand skillfully aimed broadsides.”105 Indeed, commanders had to be, of course, active, meritorious, and bold, but most important, judicious. Perhaps this latter characteristic was really the key, for “meritorious officers were two-a-penny, insanely-brave ones the norm and competent seamanship the result of years of experience at sea.” But there was a real “premium on judgement in complex situations, tact in handling foreigners (allied or neutral) and superiors, and even real diplomatic skills requiring an understanding of higher policy.”106
Finally, the commander had to be a master of his art, for there was truly more art than science to being a naval officer two hundred years ago. This was, of course, always dependent upon “the vagaries of wind and sea and the seamanship, courage and ability of individual captains.” It also depended upon a serious knowledge and understanding of the enemy’s potential, intentions, “strength and weakness in ships, tactics, seamanship, leadership, and courage.”107 And that is the subject of the next chapter.
