Caribbean (69 page)

“I’m so sorry, Nelson. It’s so dashed unfair.”

“What has caused this embargo against me? If you know, tell me.”

Wrentham drew back, studied his old captain, and asked: “Do you really want to know?”

“I do, I do!”

Before speaking, Wrentham leaned forward and placed his two hands on those of his friend, as if to prevent him from taking violent action when he learned the explanation: “Nelson, you must know that word has circulated through the Admiralty condemning you as a very difficult man.”

Withdrawing his hands with a fierce tug, Nelson cried in great pain: “Difficult? I run my ship in proper style. I bring dignity and efficiency to the navy.”

Having launched this unpleasant discussion, Wrentham did not propose halting in midflight, and in firm tones he ticked off the accumulated complaints: “On your first day in Antigua, remember, you made that other fellow lower his broad pendant, forcibly, as the situation demanded.”

“He had no right to it, Alistair. It was totally against the rules.”

“You also provoked the French at Guadeloupe … could have been an international incident.”

“No Frenchman fails to pay proper respect to a ship I command.”

“Then you continued your warfare against the American smugglers.”

“The Navigation Acts demanded that I chastise them.”

“And chastise you did. Their captains are bringing suit against you in the London courts.”

“Who circulated these charges against me at Admiralty?”

“Admiral Hughes of the Barbados Station. He tells everyone that you are headstrong and difficult.”

“You mean Ninny Hughes? Father of Rosy that he peddled through the fleet? The one who knocked out his own eye while trying to kill a cockroach?”

“The same. I was informed by a friend in high office, Nelson, that you’re never to be given a ship unless the revolutionaries in France stir up trouble.”

Nelson heard this cynical strategy in silence, then, to Wrentham’s surprise, he lifted his coffee cup and held it delicately in the fingers of his right hand, twisting it this way and that. Only then did he control his anger sufficiently to permit speech: “Alistair, it’s been the same in all the navies of the world. In peacetime, what the high command wants is the polished gentleman who can manage a teacup in a lady’s salon, one who can meet the Turkish ambassador, who can keep his decks trim and whitestoned. And never, never do they want a true sailor like me who can command a ship and fight her with the total loyalty of my men. To hell with teacups,” and he dashed the one he held to the floor with a great clatter that brought one of the serving maids running.

“I am so sorry, my girl,” he apologized. “It slipped.”

After the girl returned with another cup, he resumed: “But when the guns begin to roar and the coastline is endangered by some Spanish armada or French expeditionary force, then the navies of the world shout for men like me: ‘Come, save us … Drake, or Hawkins, or Rodney!’ And always we respond, for we have no other occupation but to save the homeland.”

Afraid that he had revealed far more of himself than he intended, he looked rather sheepishly at Wrentham, then placed his hands on those of the young captain: “Alistair, it’s obvious that I envy you your command. I wish it were mine … to have a ship again …” He hesitated, then pressed his hands more tightly: “But you must understand, dear friend, although I envy you, I do not resent you. You have your own career to make, and you’re off to a fine start.” He was quiet for a moment before he concluded: “When France strikes and they call me back to command … maybe the entire battle fleet, I shall want you in charge of my starboard line. I can trust you, because I know you are not concerned only with teacups.”

If Nelson had said generously in London that he did not resent young Wrentham’s good fortune in getting a ship of sixty-four guns, on the lonely ride back to Norfolk he could not prevent a terrible indignation from overwhelming him: Boys! They’re placing boys in command, and we men in our thirties rust in idleness. While the coach
bumped along, he reviewed his miserable situation: Saddled with a wife who grows more complaining each day, responsible for the education of a son not my own, defrauded by her uncle of a legacy I had every right to expect, and deprived of a ship by rumors … Grinding his fist into his knees, he concluded: My life’s in tatters and there’s no hope.

He was therefore in dismal condition when he reached home to find his wife distraught: “Oh, Horace! Two of the most dreadful men banged their way through our front door, demanded to know if I was the wife of the naval officer Nelson, and when I said yes, they thrust these papers at me.”

“What papers?”

“That lawsuit in Antigua. They’ve moved it to London and are demanding forty thousand pounds. Said that if you didn’t pay, you’d rot in prison for the rest of your life.”

In the rage that followed, Nelson did so many seemingly irrational things that his wife and father conspired to send a messenger to London to Captain Alistair Wrentham, whom Nelson had spoken of as the only friend he could trust, and when they learned that the young officer was a lineal member of the Earl of Gore’s family, they had hopes that he might help clear away the confusion that possessed Horace. With a promptness that surprised them, young Wrentham arrived in Norfolk to find that his old commander had packed his belongings and was preparing for a hasty flight to France.

“My God, Horatio! What are you doing?”

To his surprise, Nelson fell upon him with an ardent embrace: “It’s so good to hear that name again, Alistair. Up here they call me Horace. And I really began to think of myself as Horace. But dammit, I’m a sea captain named Horatio, and a good one!”

“But why the packing?”

“Flight.”

“To where?”

“I don’t know. Those scoundrels in Antigua have moved their lawsuit against me to London … forty thousand pounds … prison for life if I don’t pay up.” In a gesture of despair and futility, he cried in his high-pitched voice: “Where would I get forty thousand pounds?”

“Horatio! Be sensible. Government have already promised they’ll defend your suit. You acted in their behalf, even Admiral Hughes admits that.”

“But I face another suit. Remember those men I caught stealing Admiralty funds? Oliver, did you know that I found them in default of more than two million pounds?”

“Governments are never happy with an underling who points out mistakes, even if they run to two million. But you really have no cause to flee.”

“I’m heading for France. I’ll finally master that despicable language against the day I capture some great French ship of war and have to deliver terms to her captain.”

At this bizarre reasoning, Wrentham exploded: “Horatio, you’ll never be happy in France. Let me lay your case before the Admiralty. My grandfather, the earl, does command a hearing.”

Nelson did not seem to hear this assurance as he continued: “What I shall really do, Alistair, is pass through France to St. Petersburg, where I shall offer my services to Catherine of Russia and her fleet.”

This statement was so shocking that Wrentham was rendered speechless, and Nelson continued, with great excitement and much movement of his hands: “Remember that damned Scotsman John Paul, who turned his back on us in the American war, added the name Jones and became their naval hero? Well, when they wouldn’t make him an admiral, which I must say he deserved, for he knew how to fight his ship, he hied himself off to Russia and received a top assignment from the czarina, and so far as I know, is still there. I’d enjoy fighting alongside a man with spirit like that.”

Now Wrentham became angry: “Horatio, you’re no John Paul Jones. The man was as fickle as a spring breeze. Born a Scot, should have fought on our side, offered his services to France, then the American colonies, now Russia … and God knows where next. Maybe Turkey, maybe France again.” He came to stand over Nelson as he delivered his ultimatum: “You’re English, Nelson. Could never be anything else. The lawsuits? I’ll attend to them. For the present, I want you to unpack … and please accept this small gift to help you restore your sense of propriety.”

Having anticipated that Nelson might be in pitiful straits, he had brought with him from his bank in London £200, which he now gave to his former commander. For some moments Nelson just stood there, both hands thrust forward with the notes resting in them. Then he spoke: “The humiliations I’ve known. The endless letters which receive no responses. The appeals to the Admiralty which go unanswered.
The crawling, the scraping, the inability to buy your wife the dresses she merits, the constant taking of money from an old father, the impotence when your married sister needs a little help. I’ve lived in hell these past years, none worse on earth, and if war comes and I get a ship, God help the Frenchman that I go up against, for I shall be all fire and black powder.”

But then his mood changed completely, for he waved the notes in the air and cried: “Ever since they’ve remade me into Farmer Horace, I’ve wanted to buy myself a pony. Never had the money. But if I’m destined to be a farmer and not a naval officer, I want that pony!” Almost joyously he led Wrentham into the village where he had long ago spotted the fine little animal he craved. To the owner’s surprise he cried: “Jacko, me boy, I’ll take her. Here’s a hundred and you can bring me the change when convenient.” And with a satisfaction he had not known for years, he led the beast home, saying truthfully: “If I’m to be a farmer, Alistair, I shall be a good one.”

The prospect of this potentially great sea captain wasting his life as a farmer disgusted Wrentham, and when he further saw the miserable condition in which Nelson lived subservient to his father, and the whining character of Mrs. Nelson, suddenly so much older in appearance and manner, and the ever-present penury, he became so agitated that he was tempted to reveal something about which he should never have spoken and which he would later regret: “Nelson, when you allowed me to visit that great plantation in Jamaica, I met the lovely daughter of the place, nineteen she was and too old for me. But I kept talking about you so much that she said: ‘I’d like to meet your Captain Nelson,’ and it was arranged. I would hurry back to Port Royal with an invitation from her family. They were rich. They loved the navy. And you would visit Trevelyan. But when I reached the fort, you had sailed away … only hours before.”

He bowed his head over the kitchen table, then said: “It all could have been so different. That one would have followed you even into battle.”

Nelson coughed to catch Wrentham’s attention, then said: “Alistair, it is infamous that you should tell me such a story … at such a time,” and he was about to order the young officer from his father’s house when his eye fell upon a chance mix of vegetables left upon the kitchen table in preparation for tomorrow’s stew, and their juxtaposition captivated him.

“Supposing that you and I were facing the French fleet, off Antigua,
say, or in some other ocean, and they were trying to escape us in this formation …” Suddenly the kitchen table was filled with potatoes representing the French fleet and onions the English, and long into the night he revealed the naval strategies he had been devising during his walks through the Norfolk countryside: “You remember what I told you in Port Royal about Admiral Rodney’s bold move at The Saints. He wheeled and brought his full force smack into the middle of the French line. Look at the confusion.” And now the table was filled with a great melee of French potatoes thrown into confusion by English onions.

“But, Alistair! Suppose in the next battle, and there will be one, of that we can be sure, for the French will never let us rest, nor we them … Suppose that this time just as we seem about to repeat Rodney’s strategy, for which the French will certainly be prepared, we suddenly break our attacking fleet into two lines, me here to port, you there to starboard, well separated, and in that formation we slam into the French fleet. What terrible confusion in two quarters. Pairs of ships fighting each other across the entire ocean.”

When Wrentham saw the vast mix of potatoes and onions, he asked: “But how will our two forces maintain contact—for signals, for battle orders?” and Nelson looked at him aghast: “Alistair! On that day of battle when I send you off to starboard, you get no further orders from me. Each ship in your line becomes its own command. You fight your battle, I fight mine.”

“It sounds like chaos.”

“Planned chaos, in which I would expect you and every captain under you to do his duty … his sensible duty.” He ended with a conviction that had grown upon him in recent months: “The French like to lay off and fire at our masts and sails. We like to move in close and rake their decks. In close, Alistair! Always in close!”

Through the long night they moved their fleets back and forth, and when dawn broke they were still at their imaginary battles, the seas red with blood and filled with sinking ships. And before breakfast Wrentham helped his old commander unpack the bags that might otherwise have carried him to Russia.

Captain Alistair Wrentham, in fulfilling every promise he had made at Norfolk, preserved the naval career of his friend. Government did step forward to defend him against the spurious lawsuits; Admiralty
did listen to Wrentham’s impassioned defense of Nelson; and even the French came to his assistance, for in Paris the madmen of the French Revolution kept making such threatening moves that war obviously loomed. Toward the end of January 1793, when spies hurried to London with irrefutable proof that “the entire French fleet seems to be assembling for an attack on our coast,” the Admiralty behaved exactly as Nelson had predicted that day in the coffeehouse: they sent messengers galloping north to inform Captain Horatio Nelson that they wanted him to take immediate command of a major ship of the line.

When the messengers departed, he stood alone in the rectory, not gloating over the triumph he had foreseen nor railing against the injustices he had suffered, but steeling himself for darkened storms he saw ahead: Now comes the test of greatness. I escape from the vale of despond and sail into the clash of battle, and may God strengthen me in my resolve.