Nelson: The Essential Hero

Nelson: The Essential Hero by Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford Read Free Book Online

Book: Nelson: The Essential Hero by Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford Read Free Book Online
Authors: Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford
of angle as his body sagged from one side to the other when the frigate came about and headed off on her new tack. Often he had fevers and the clinging sweat that went with them, delirium even, and on one occasion a vision which he was later convinced proved the turning point in his life. He had been in a deep trough of depression, a dark night of the soul where everything seemed against him - his illness, his lack of real influence, and the insurmountable obstacles that seemed to lie in his way. ‘I could discover no means of reaching the object of my ambition. After a long and gloomy reverie, in which I almost wished myself overboard, a sudden glow of patriotism was kindled within me, and presented my king and country as my patron. My mind exulted in the idea. “Well then,” I exclaimed, “I will be a hero, and confiding in Providence, I will brave every danger.” ’ As he was often to tell Captain Hardy in later years, he saw suspended before him a ‘radiant orb’ ever urging him onwards. He was not quite eighteen.

CHAPTER FOUR - Lieutenant
    The midshipman who had lain so sick and despondent in his bunk during the long voyage home was to find that his star was indeed with him. During his absence, Captain Suckling had been appointed Comptroller of the Navy. Since this office entailed control of all naval shipbuilding, repairs, and manning of the fleet, it was in many respects a position almost comparable to that of the First Lord of the Admiralty. Despite much that has been said to the contrary, Nelson’s advancement - at least in his early days - can be largely ascribed to influence. True, if he had not shown himself competent and zealous not even influence would have prevailed, but he had much to thank his dead mother for having come from the Sucklings (with the shadow of the Walpoles at their backs).
    Two days after the Dolphin paid off at Woolwich, on 24 September 1776, the convalescent midshipman was ordered by Admiral Sir James Douglas, who was in command at Portsmouth, to report aboard the 64-gun Worcester as acting lieutenant. Captain Mark Robinson, who was in command, received his new officer with enthusiasm and was pleased to find out on their first voyage down to Gibraltar that young Nelson was competent to take the deck and be in charge of the watch. There can be no doubt that those two years in the East Indies had taught him a great deal.
    The Worcester was employed on convoy duties, the War of American Independence having broken out the year before and, although France had not yet declared herself ranged with the revolutionary colonists, there could be no doubt in anybody’s mind that she would do so in the very near future - in which case every British merchantman at sea would be at hazard. As Admiral Lord Charles Beresford commented: ‘A weapon was being silently and steadily forged to strike the British Empire down. The French dockyards were reorganised till Brest had 3,000 shipwrights against our insignificant 800 at Portsmouth. Line-of-battle ships were built with astounding celerity, till the Pegase was laid down, launched, and actually at sea within eighty days.’ France, recovered from the disasters of the Seven Years War, was determined to attack her old antagonist as soon as opportunity offered. And the revolt of the colonists provided it. It was not only in the rapid construction of new ships that the French excelled, but in the training of their officers and men. Furthermore, they produced the most beautifully proportioned, fastest and best-armed ships in the world. It is significant that so many of the most famous ‘British’ men-of-war were, in fact, ships captured from the French.
    While Nelson was at sea on convoy-duty, bound for Gibraltar, the shipyards of Spain were almost as busy as those of France. Mindful of old wars and unavenged defeats, the Spaniards were fighting to close the gap of sea-power. They succeeded to such an extent that by 1779 they could muster 62

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