heroism, charisma and tactical genius with very human faults, including what may be regarded as a loose approach to ‘traditional family values’. As the bicentenary of Trafalgar approaches, the one naval hero whose name remains generally familiar will doubtless become once again a household word.
Dr Tracy’s book is not a ‘mere biography’, nor is it hagiography. Nelson’s Battles is the vehicle for a study of the nature and conduct of war at sea during the first true ‘World War’ and it will stand as a most useful reference work for anyone who wishes to look beyond the man and his achievements. It is also an eminently suitable book for the lay reader or beginner in naval history, for scholarship is combined with a deft narrative style and nicely chosen contemporary comments by acquaintances and participants in the battles.
It is sometimes difficult to remember in these days of rapid change, 200 years after Nelson’s battles, that the essentials of sea warfare had not changed a great deal during the 200 years which preceded them. Wooden ships were still propelled by scarcely predictable natural forces, the main weapon was still loaded from the same awkward direction (and engagement ranges were, if anything, rather shorter), while the commanders’ control of fleet engagements were as limited as their communications. Yet Nelson’s generation brought something different and transformed the formal, stately but often sterile dance of a battle under sail into a shocking brawl. These captains had what might nowadays be known as the ‘killer instinct’ and, loosed from the shackles of the rigid line by admirals such as Nelson and his mentor, John Jervis, they probed for and exploited weakness with a ferocity which they transmitted to their officers and men and which repeatedly overwhelmed their opponents.
For a captain of a ship of the line serving with a main fleet opportunity came seldom – there were barely a dozen major actions between 1793 and 1805 – but not just promotion and prize money beckoned those who distinguished themselves: perhaps for the first time in an external war, there was the genuine dislike of an enemy for the sake of his ideology. Nelson acted as a touchstone, for service alongside and later under his command seldom attracted anything but success – the Tenerife and Boulogne enterprises were notable exceptions. Altogether, over a hundred captains served with or for him in eleven actions afloat, three of these – Thomas Fremantle, Robert Miller and Thomas Foley – serving with him on five occasions. Some of them, like Philip Durham, Henry Digby and James Gore, had already distinguished themselves in a dozen successful actions apiece in the nursery of great seamen, the continuous blockade of the coast of France, before promotion to 74s and allocation to Nelson’s command.
Whether these men were familiar with his ways or they came to him as accomplished fighting seamen, Nelson provided inspiration and leadership which filtered down to the lower deck, where prize money and promotion counted for little and ideology was limited to the efforts of the United Irishmen to provoke mutiny. The disturbances which affected the Mediterranean Fleet did not affect the outcome of the Tenerife expedition and the battle of the Nile was won by a squadron including four ships which had, at the least, displayed what St Vincent described as ‘ill humour’ just a year before. Mutiny, the evils of ‘the Press’ and the social shortcomings of life between decks make more attractive popular reading than the seamanship and gunnery drills instilled into the ordinary sailors to create and perpetuate such a fearsome fighting machine.
His premature death, during the battle which is often regarded as England’s finest nineteenth-century hour, turned high competence and charisma into legend. In the years after his death, Nelson came to represent, to the general public, the general superiority, if not invincibility, of the Royal Navy and its men – in which the sense of pride was so strong that one well-known tragedian could get away with dancing the hornpipe in ‘King Lear’ because in his salad days he had been a sailor under Nelson at the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar!
How the hero would have fared in the post-Trafalgar era of undeniable maritime superiority stands open to question, but this is not something which Nicholas Tracy attempts to guess. The man should be remembered by his battles and these are worthily described.
David Brown
VICE ADMIRAL Horatio Lord Nelson was a hero from the time of his first great victory at the battle of the Nile in 1798. He was mobbed wherever he went, and showered with titles and orders of chivalry by the powerful, presentation swords by his brother officers, and gifts of money by Parliament and the East India Company. He is probably the only admiral whose name is known to the general public, and not only in Britain. Hero status was richly deserved and arduously earned. He was, and continues to be, honoured by the Royal Navy because he was a master of his profession. He set the highest standards for performance, and his consummate leadership transformed the way the profession went about its business. In 1797, in justification for the receipt of a pension, he wrote
That, during the present war, your Memorialist has been in four actions with the fleets of the enemy, viz. on the 13th and 14th of March 1795; on the 13th July 1795; and on the 14th of February 1797; in three actions with frigates; in six engagements against batteries; in ten actions in boats employed in cutting out of harbours; in destroying vessels, and in taking three towns. Your Memorialist has also served on shore with the army four months, and commanded the batteries at the sieges of Bastia and Calvi. That during the war, he has assisted at the capture of seven sail of the line, six frigates, four corvettes, and eleven privateers of different sizes; and taken and destroyed near fifty sail of merchant vessels; and your Memorialist has actually been engaged against the enemy upwards of ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TIMES. In which service your Memorialist has lost his right eye and arm, and been severely wounded and bruised in his body. All of which services and wounds your Memorialist must humbly submit to your Majesty’s most gracious consideration.1
Woodcut of the stern of Queen Charlotte, a 100-gun ship of the line, and the most potent manifestation of seapower in the age of sail. She was Howe’s flagship at the battle of the Glorious First of June, 1796.
In the next eight years he was to fight and win his three great victories at the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar. He was devoted to his duty to a degree which may be hard for the late twentieth century to understand. His devotion to his friends, and they to him, awake easier echoes and ensure his continuing popularity.
Over one hundred years after his death, the Admiralty thought it important at the eve of the First World War to order a study of the tactics Nelson had employed at Trafalgar.2 The Admiral’s art was developing faster during Nelson’s early years than at any time since the mid-seventeenth century when the line of battle was first introduced. The Seven Years War and the War of the American Revolution stimulated the development of new ideas about the most effective use of naval materiel, making tactics more technical, but also more flexible. Experience, developments in ship design and signalling, and the perfection of drill, transformed naval methods. Nelson became a master of them.
His victories, however, were not simply the fruits of technical prowess. No less important was his ability to judge the capacity of his enemy, and most important of all was his ability to lead his men. Following Nelson’s victory in the battle of the Nile, Admiral Lord Howe, who had himself done so much to develop British naval tactics and team work, remarked to Sir Edward Berry ‘that it stood unparalleled, and singular, in this instance, that every captain distinguished himself.’3 Nelson himself referred to them as a ‘band of brothers’, and the Nelsonic band of brothers
