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

inland sea’s water-loss due to evaporation. He was at the gateway of the world where he would make his name, and cause the flag of his country to fly above all others.
    Early in April 1777, the Worcester was paid off at Portsmouth and Nelson found himself facing the first major hurdle in his professional career : his examination for lieutenant. By now he had the necessary qualifications to prove that he had been at sea for more than six years (he had, to be exact, done six years, three months, one week and six days since he had first joined the Raisonable in Chatham). His certificates showed him to be over twenty years of age, whereas he was five months under his nineteenth birthday - a fact which must have been well enough known to Comptroller Suckling, who was on the board that examined him. Clarke and M‘Arthur say that the latter purposely concealed his relationship from the other examining captains:
    When his nephew had recovered from his first confusion [at finding his uncle present at the Navy Board interview], his answers were prompt and satisfactory, and indicated the talents he so eminently possessed. The examination ended in a manner very honourable to him; upon which his uncle threw off his reserve, and rising from his seat, introduced his nephew. The examining Captains expressed their surprise at his not having informed them of this before. ‘No,’ replied the independent Comptroller, ‘I did not wish the younker to be favoured, I felt convinced that he would pass a good examination; and you see, gentlemen, I have not been disappointed.’
    The first known extant letter from Nelson follows upon this important event, and is addressed to his brother William, at Christ’s Church College, Cambridge :
    My father arrived in town on Friday evening in tolerable good health; my sister and brother are both well, and desire their love to you. I suppose you have not heard of my arrival in England yet, but we arrived on Thursday week. ... I passed my Degree as Master of Arts on the 9th instant [that is, passed the Lieutenant’s examination], and received my commission on the following day for a fine Frigate of 32 guns. So I am now left in the world to shift for myself, which I hope I shall do, so as to bring credit to myself and friends.
    His manner is formal, his mood elated, but it would be some years before the acquired diction and style of the age would mellow into the ‘personal’ Nelson, one whose emotions leaped out from the thicket of convention.
    He was lucky in his ship, the Lowestoffe , for his captain was William Locker, who had served under Admiral Hawke in the last war and had been wounded in an action with a French privateer, as a result of which he walked with a limp. He was in every sense a very fine example of a sea-officer, who had not let the Navy or anything else deprive him of a sense of humour and love of learning. Nelson was to come to regard him as a father, while he himself was treated like a son. But first of all, before his ‘fine Frigate’ took to the sea, spread her sails and headed west for the Caribbean, Nelson had to learn the other side of the coin that was entailed by the privilege of being a lieutenant.
    One side is easily exemplified by the portrait for which he sat to the Swiss-born Royal Academician John Francis Rigaud, a competent craftsman of his time, who made his living out of just such ‘delineations’ of aspiring officers and middle-class civilians. Nowadays the camera would have captured Nelson’s likeness on passing out from Dartmouth, perhaps, and the portrait have been mounted in a silver frame in some family home for parents to point at proudly and say, ‘That is my son.’ The Rigaud portrait was commissioned by Nelson, undoubtedly with a view to giving it to his father. But it was not completed before he sailed for the West Indies, and in the end, with the rank changed to that of a captain, was given by Nelson to Captain Locker in 1781. The obverse of the