Nelson (51 page)

For in the spring he learned that Whitehall had fully endorsed the actions of Messrs Nelson and Collingwood, and expected Shirley to support them. In fact, Lord Sydney had already been primed by alarming rumours of the falsification of ship registers in the West Indian islands, and on 8 January he had written to the various governors calling upon them to investigate. The charges were denied, but Sydney was convinced the navigation laws were being flouted, and, when the correspondence about the
Mediator
’s dispute at St John’s in December reached him, weighed in manfully. On 9 April Sydney wrote forcefully to Governor Shirley. He upheld Collingwood’s stand without reservation and flatly ordered the governor to give the navy every support. Later still, Shirley was instructed to defend Nelson against the suits of outraged merchants at public expense.
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Shirley had insight, but he was no crusader and had no intention of rocking the boat within sight of retirement and the baronetcy his sights were set upon. Shelving his doubts, the old officer toed the line obediently, and handed the palm of victory to the impudent young gentleman commanding the
Boreas
.

Captain Nelson may have been a growing pup of twenty-six, but he had conjured almighty allies and wielded moral outrage like a cutlass.

He was no saint, of course, and even indulged in a level of corruption himself. The illicit perks of his trade were not unused. For example, even as he lambasted crooked officials he wilfully carried his absent brother William on the books of the
Boreas
, garnering unearned wages as a naval chaplain. William had actually left the ship before the end of September 1784, but the musters had him at his post until 4 October 1786, except for two months of alleged absence in 1785. ‘You will accumulate a fortune if you proceed this way,’ Nelson wrote to the beneficiary. ‘You shall give me a horse, however.’ The essential difference between the minor fraud practised by Nelson, and the grosser malpractices of the West Indian officials, was not purely one of extent. For by Nelson’s lights the latter were putting private gain before duty and the common good. They were subverting policies designed, however inadequately, to protect Britain and its empire. Horatio was often wrong-headed and intemperate, but to his credit he never put financial profit before public duty. The existence of William’s name on the musters of the
Boreas
did not, as far as the captain knew, inhibit the service.
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That sense of moral rectitude urgently drove young Nelson forward, imparting purpose, importance and sanctimoniousness. He was a champion of the people, beset by grubby profiteers and powerful protectors, and he would neither be corrupted nor swayed by argument or threat. The impetuosity and ingenuity of his attack swept Sir Thomas Shirley aside, but even more did it defeat Admiral Hughes.

Sir Richard’s position was more humiliating than Shirley’s. He might have been a middle-aged baronet, knight of the realm, and what was more to the point a rear admiral and commander-in-chief, but he had lost control of cleverer juniors. He had seen his orders discarded and the official command structure ignored. It was usual for captains to send their reports and supporting papers to their commanding officers, who used their discretion to judge what needed to be forwarded to the Admiralty. In its turn the Admiralty would communicate, if necessary, with other government departments or with ministers. But from February 1785 Nelson began forwarding material about the navigation laws directly to London, and furnishing Hughes with copies. It was not only discourteous to the admiral, but also rather insulting,
since it implied that he could not be trusted to handle matters satisfactorily. It confirmed both his irrelevance and unworthiness.

Even more embarrassing were Sir Richard’s meetings with island officials and merchants, meetings that absorbed much of the time of a commander-in-chief. The admiral was uncommonly civil on such occasions, pleasing of address and immensely likeable at the dinner table or in the ballroom, but when people complained to him about the doings of Nelson and the Collingwoods he had no remedy. He was demeaned by his impotence, a somewhat pathetic figure, a commander-in-chief unable to command. He could only prevaricate unconvincingly and duck out of the way as fast as possible. He should either have backed Nelson or suspended him, but he shrank from both alternatives. They involved confrontation, and Sir Richard was not good at confrontations. Nor was he willing to stick his neck out on an uncertain issue. It was not until 10 May that the Admiralty sent Hughes a copy of the latest act of Parliament on the subject of the navigation laws.

The truth was that the significance of these laws had completely eluded him, and they did not appear in his correspondence with the Admiralty until May 1785. His indifference and indecision left a vacuum for Nelson and the Collingwoods to fill. While he kept out of the way in Barbados or made a social round of the islands with his chattering wife and man-hunting daughter, they wrenched policy from his grasp and turned the navigation laws into the burning issue of the day. Nelson lost all respect for his superior. Hughes was, he told Locker, ‘a fiddler; therefore, as his time is taken up tuning that instrument, you will consequently expect the squadron is cursedly out of tune’.
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By February 1785 Nelson had effectively taken control of the naval affairs of the Leeward Islands from both the governor and the admiral, and squared up for a straight fight with the illegal traders. His course was a bold one, for the final position of the British government was still unclear at that time, and most of the squadron continued to languish behind Admiral Hughes. The majority of the planters, merchants, lawyers and civil servants were also against him, and his only important support had come from the Collingwoods, officers even more junior than himself. Yet Nelson did not hesitate. Indeed, he raised the stakes to meet the challenge head-on.

The offensive ‘young gentleman’ of the
Boreas
was ever more incensed by the corruption and deception being uncovered.

April saw Wilfred Collingwood back at St Kitts, where some of the grossest frauds were practised. He apprehended a ship named
The Friends
there. Ostensibly she was registered in Cork, Ireland, in 1779, but Collingwood found that the ship was really the newly built
Polly
of Boston, and that her register and the articles signed by her crew were forgeries.
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Yet for a while Nelson’s attack on such abuses brought him little but travail. His admiral was usually conspicuous by his absence, while customs officers often refused to cooperate, declaring that they were not answerable to naval officers for their conduct. Merchants and planters signified their disapproval by shutting Nelson out of polite society. Every ill-natured report about him was eagerly circulated.

On 19 March he intercepted an American brig threatening to enter Basseterre road in St Kitts, and was informed by her master that the ship was sinking and needed to dock. Nelson suspected it was a ruse to get into the protective clutches of the customs officials, and ordered the ship to anchor offshore, forbidding it to communicate with the shore. Nelson’s carpenter, with an officer and men, boarded the brig to look for damage. She was in a poor state, so Nelson’s men helped at the pumps throughout the night, and the next morning the brig was moved into a safe anchorage. To his chagrin, Nelson soon heard that, from one end of the island to the other, he was being charged with cruelty, and that it was being said he had tried to send the brig back to sea in a sinking condition. Nelson felt marked by the stain upon his humanity, and made the first of several reports to the home secretary, explaining that the ‘character of an officer is his greatest treasure. To lower that is to wound him irreparably.’ Inside he enclosed a copy of General Dalling’s flattering tribute to him, written in 1780 in a letter to Lord George Germain.
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At first Nelson’s policy was to warn foreign ships away, but it was abundantly clear that more stringent measures were needed. Ships turned away came back as soon as the coast was clear, and some officials abetted their evasions. The degree of official obstruction encountered by Nelson and his allies varied. As the government’s pressure to enforce the navigation laws increased, more of its servants toed the line. In St John’s, Antigua, for example, where the governor’s
influence was gradually applied, the collector of customs was concerned to establish his integrity. Though differences in the interpretation of the law remained, he assured Collingwood of the
Mediator
that it was his ‘wish to give every information that can in any shape prove the attention paid at this office to the laws of trade’. But in some of the other islands the opposition was stubborn, and Nelson found officials who were significantly indifferent to the unloading of illegal cargoes.
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As the spring advanced and the contraband trade continued, Nelson judged it time to act more decisively. Warnings were going unheeded. So, without consulting Hughes, he issued an ultimatum: any vessels found trading in breach of the navigation laws after 1 May 1785 would be seized and confiscated as legitimate prize. The traders were threatened with the entire loss of ships and cargoes.

In customs houses and shipping offices throughout the islands the deadline provoked amusement. It was absurd, people said. No captain would dare to seize merchant ships for fear of incurring crippling damages in lawsuits. They risked ruin in the courts. Surely, Nelson’s law would die at birth.

Almost immediately – on 2 May, the day after the deadline expired – the ultimatum was tested. Nelson discovered the schooner
Eclipse
hovering inshore near St Kitts. She was under English colours, but tried to flee when the
Boreas
appeared, and Nelson brought her master and mate aboard. He questioned them separately to prevent the two squaring their stories, and discovered that the schooner was really the
Amity
of Philadelphia and that the master, like the ship, was masquerading under an alias. Two registers were found on the vessel, and her crew was American to a man. The following day Nelson sent her into the local vice-admiralty court for trial. It was the first seizure since the war and created a sensation in St Kitts.
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But Nelson had not finished. He heard that four heavily laden American brigs, the
Fairview
,
George and Jane
,
Hercules
and
Nancy Pleasants
, had slipped into the roadstead at Nevis to trade under what were called ‘island colours’ – a white flag bearing a red cross. Horatio picked up a crown lawyer at St Kitts and sent his boats to investigate. All four vessels were arrested on 19–20 May. Marines were put aboard to secure the prizes, which were turned over to the vice-admiralty court of Nevis at the earliest opportunity. Nelson might have felt on stronger ground in Nevis, for he was on unusually good terms with the president of the council, John Richardson Herbert.
Herbert admitted that Nelson was a threat to his commercial enterprises, but he recognised a man of principle in the little captain and rather liked him.

Nelson would need whatever goodwill he could get. He had backed his words with actions, and shaken the mercantile community, and five ships were awaiting unprecedented trials. But they had yet to be condemned, and if Nelson failed his campaign would be in ruins, and possibly his reputation and fortune also. The encounters that lay ahead would be decisive, but they would not be fought on the familiar if restless sea that was Nelson’s element. Instead, enterprising lawyers would fence across the floors of sultry island courtrooms.

The days that followed were difficult and dangerous for the captain of the
Boreas
. At St Kitts, where the trial of the
Eclipse
was imminent, the signs were bad. The defendants were hiring the best counsel in the islands, while Nelson’s natural allies wavered. Admiral Hughes arrived at Nevis on 23 May, but did not associate too closely with his besieged subordinate. He neither condemned nor supported Horatio’s conduct, but warned him that if he persisted he could get into a scrape. The crown’s advocate, Abraham Charles Adye, who was presenting Nelson’s case, also began to get cold feet. A member of the island council that advised Governor Shirley, he knew the damage a strict enforcement of the navigation laws might cause, and in January had helped compose a petition praying for a relaxation of the acts. But although Adye did his duty and argued Nelson’s case despite personal misgivings, he warned that the seizures might be declared unlawful because Nelson had not been deputed to act by the customs. Evidently defence lawyers were citing an act of 1765 to contend that ships could only be seized at sea with the authorisation of the commissioner of customs. Nelson had not acted at the behest of the customs service, which he considered corrupt, and had independently taken the prizes on behalf of the king and the navy. Things therefore looked black.
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The trial took place on 23 May and Nelson attended personally. He could see that Adye was faltering and intervened to speak for himself. Though young and certainly no orator, and pitted against experienced lawyers, Horatio emerged victorious in a bruising contest. The judge dismissed the claim that the navy lacked the right of seize and the vessel was condemned.

Even Hughes suddenly seemed to catch Nelson’s spirit. He started speaking up for his officers and two days after Nelson’s victory forwarded Wilfred Collingwood’s complaints about
The Friends
to the Admiralty. Hughes now spoke strongly of the use of phoney registers, the attempts of masters to hide the nationalities of their crews and the way some foreign traders were depositing their goods on the Dutch island of St Eustatius so that British merchants could collect.
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