Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][merged small]

XII

VISCOUNT NELSON

[ocr errors]

HORATIO NELSON, twenty-three years younger than John Jervis, was destined to be closely associated with him, to raise his name, first by direct agency, and then by a sort of reflex action, to the summit of a mountain of fame, reached the flag list only ten years behind him, and entered the House of Peers only one year after him. In a sense, the younger man became the complement of the older, each supplying the other with what was wanting in his character, and their joint action raising the prestige of the British navy to a height not attained by any other military service, and even unlikely to be ever reached again.

Nelson was, like Jervis, not unconnected with the higher society of the kingdom. In both cases the connection was on the mother's side, but so far as titles went, Nelson's connection with them through the Walpoles could be traced further back than Jervis' through the Parkers. On the other hand, the son of a parson in a remote country district had none of those early social advantages which fell to the lot of the older sailor, and accompanied him all through his career.

We do not hear of those financial straits in Nelson's early days, which Lord St. Vincent loved to dwell upon as characteristic of his own, but the fifth son of a country parson could scarcely have been less pinched than the second son of the counsel to the admiralty and auditor of Greenwich Hospital. But if Nelson started in his naval career with advantages inferior to those of his "dear Lord, Our St. Vincent," he was not without what is called "interest" of a high class. high class. His mother's brother was Maurice Suckling, who at the time of Nelson's birth in 1758 had been three years on the captains' list, and had greatly distinguished himself in command of the Dreadnought in the West Indies in 1757. He was appointed to the Raisonnable in 1770, and entered his nephew's name upon her books. Being soon transferred to the command of the Triumph, the guardship of the Medway, he took Nelson with him; but, considering that as one of the "captain's servants," that is, as part of the payment in kind which captains then received, his relative could not learn much seamanship, the uncle put the nephew under the care of a follower of his own, and sent him on a voyage to the West Indies in a merchant ship. This was not exactly the lot which fell to Jervis as midshipman of the flagship on the Jamaica station. Nelson was out of the way of making those very early friends in the navy, who, if the bulk of them are good men in a good position, roll on like a wave all through the service and carry the individual with them. There was for Nelson more of the individual fight and struggle; and when he reached home after this trip he had a sense of antagonism as between himself, a merchant-bred officer-a later form

of the "tarpaulin "-and the pampered strollers on the royal quarter-deck.

But "service interest" was then, as it is now, a stock of excellent quality; and the nephew of a captain of good standing and fair prospects, who was ready to exert himself in his protégé's favour, had things open to him which were not open to the boy who came to sea with no one at his back. We know that Captain Suckling was well thought of, and at least fairly backed, as he was made comptroller of the navy in 1775. This office placed its holder at the head of the navy board, which was to the navy the left arm, when the admiralty was taken as the right. The appointment was by patent under the great seal, and it was usually held by rising captains, who resigned it when they got their flags. Jervis' patron, Sir Charles Saunders, held it; so did Hugh Palliser, afterwards Sir Hugh, and the prosecutor in Keppel's court-martial. While Suckling lived, therefore, and remained Nelson's friend, the nephew's interests were certain to be well looked after, and it would surely be his own fault if his advancement was not rapid. Nelson, on his return to the Triumph, was given some nautical schooling, and also learnt pilotage by a practical method, in charge of a decked long-boat making her way up and down the Thames and Medway on the service of the guardship. In the uncontrollable desire for stirring action and excitement which thus early developed itself, Nelson succeeded in being "lent" to the Carcass, and in her spent the summer of 1773 in the Arctic Regions. So far as it was a new experience, the service may have satisfied the temper of the boy; but the phlegmatic composure of an ice-floe with

the Carcass in its quiet grip must have been violently opposed to the restless longings of the imprisoned midshipman.

Nelson's first regular sea-going man-of-war was the Seahorse, 20-gun frigate. He was appointed towards the close of the year 1773, and sailed in the ship as one of the squadron of Commodore Sir E. Hughes, bound to the East Indies. It must be borne in mind, therefore, that Nelson spent two very precious years in a somewhat broken and unsatisfactory manner; in a manner which would now be considered the worst possible for a youngster, and which any father, knowing the ways of the navy, would avoid like poison if offered for his son. Even the Seahorse was a “small craft"; and when he returned to England in 1776, invalided from his ship for the restoration of his health, he had been brought up for five years as a "smallcraft midshipman." Fifty years ago this title was distinctly one of opprobrium. It denoted a young officer who might be a first-rate seaman, but who had narrow views, whose general education was defective, and who was not prepared to take his place beside the well-ordered ranks whose homes were in the berths of great flagships, and other ships of the line. Unless there was special interest, or special fortune, the midshipman brought up in a small craft had his prospects by so much marred. But even if extraneous circumstances pushed him on, the aroma of the small craft was apt to hang about him. become a man of the world was hindered. years with only very few equals, amongst whom the courtesies of life and manner were lost in familiarity, the small-craft midshipman could not be wholly at his ease

His way to Mingling for

« AnteriorContinuar »