The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson Volume I Part 14

Rear-Admiral Nelson, right arm shot off.

Captain Thompson, Leander, slightly.

Captain Freemantle, Seahorse, in the arm.

Lieutenant J. Douglas, ditto, in the hand.

Mr. Waits, Mids.h.i.+pman, Zealous.

In a small Spanish pamphlet, published at Madrid, with a translation of which the author has been most obligingly furnished by Sir John Talbot Dillon, though the account of our loss is so prodigiously exaggerated, as to state the killed to be twenty-two British officers and at least five hundred and sixty-six men, and adding that some accounts even make it eight hundred, there are certainly several interesting particulars which bear every mark of authenticity. The acknowledged loss of the Spaniards, however, said to be only twenty-three killed, and thirty-eight wounded, may be considered as not a little apocryphal.

Indeed, no reliance can be placed on their numerical exactness; for the Fox cutter is a.s.serted, by them, to have contained three hundred and eighty men, instead of one hundred and eighty; and Rear-Admiral Nelson is said to have lost his right arm, when in his boat, and before landing, which obliged him to re-embark on board the Theseus, with the other officers who accompanied him badly wounded, on the 23d, instead of on the 24th.

This pamphlet informs us, that Captain Bowen, of the Terpsich.o.r.e, who was killed, had first proposed the attack of Santa Cruz to Admiral Sir John Jervis; which he represented as very easy, having previously cut out of that bay the Spanish frigate, Prince Ferdinand, from the Philippine Islands. His chief pilot was a Chinese, taken out of his former prize, who was also killed on the present occasion.

Lieutenant Robinson, of the marines, badly wounded, was properly attended in the Spanish hospital. A copy of Captain Thompson's orders had been found on him, by Don Bernardo Collagon; a brave and most gallant Spanish youth, who had, sword in hand, defended his country with great spirit, and was so generous and humane to the unfortunate wounded enemy, that he is said to have actually stripped himself of his s.h.i.+rt to make bandages for the wounds of the English. Great humanity, indeed, was shewn to all the wounded; who were carefully re-embarked, many of them in a dying state, immediately after the capitulation was signed. The Spanish governor generously regaled all the English troops with bread and wine, before they went into their boats, and invited the princ.i.p.al officers to dine with him that day. This, however, they politely declined; fearing some irregularity among their soldiers, from the effects of the wine: but agreed to wait on the governor next day. They accordingly did so: when, instructed by Rear-Admiral Nelson, they offered, in his name, to take charge of the governor's dispatches for the Spanish court; and he thus actually became the first messenger of his own defeat.

In the mean time, he returned thanks to the Spanish governor, for his great care of the sick and wounded, by writing him the following letter; dated on board his majesty's s.h.i.+p Theseus, opposite Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, July 26, 1797.

"SIR,

I cannot take my departure from this island, without returning your excellency my sincerest thanks for your attention towards me, by your humanity in favour of our wounded men in your power, or under your care, and for your generosity towards all our people who were disembarked, which I shall not fail to represent to my sovereign; hoping, also, at a proper time, to a.s.sure your excellency, in person, how truly I am, Sir, your most obedient humble servant,

"Horatio Nelson.

P.S. I request your excellency will do me the honour to admit of a cask of English beer, and a cheese."

"His Excellency, Don Antonio Gutierrez, Commandant General of the Canary Islands."

To this friendly epistle, the Spanish governor immediately returned the following liberal answer--

"Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, 26th July 1797.

"SIR,

With the highest pleasure, I received your esteemed favour, proceeding from your generous and well-disposed mind; since, on my part, I conceive, no laurel is due to him who only fulfils what humanity dictates: and I have done no more, in behalf of the wounded men, as well as others who disembarked; and whom, after all warfare has ceased, I ought to consider as brothers.

"If, in the state to which the uncertain fate of war has led you, it were in my power, or could any thing that this island produces afford the least comfort or aid to you, it would yield me the truest satisfaction: and, I hope, you will admit of a couple of large flasks of Canary wine; which, I believe, is none of the worst that this island produces.

"A personal intercourse will give me great pleasure, when circ.u.mstances permit it, with a person so deserving, and of such distinguished qualifications as you so feelingly indicate.

Meantime, I pray G.o.d to preserve you in his holy keeping; and am, Sir, your most obedient servant,

"Don Antonio Gutierrez.

"P.S. I have received, and highly esteem, the cask of beer, and cheese, which you have done me the favour to send me."

"Rear-Admiral Nelson."

On the 27th of July, there was a solemn Te Deum sung by the Spaniards, in the parochial church of Santa Cruz: that day being the festival of St. Christopher, the tutelary patron of the island; on which an annual thanksgiving is celebrated, as being the identical day when that island was first conquered, three hundred and one years prior to this period.

Such are the chief particulars of the Spanish account, as supplied by Sir John Talbot Dillon's most respectable translation; and which places in a very amiable point of view the characters of the respective commanders.

On comparing the various accounts of this unfortunate expedition, there are certainly some incongruities. In the numerous biographical memoirs of Lord Nelson, either abridged or amplified from that in the Naval Chronicle, it is stated that the rear-admiral "received his wound soon after the detachment had landed." In these, too, it is added that, "while they were pressing on with the usual ardour of British seamen, the shock caused him to fall to the ground; where, for some minutes, he was left to himself, till Lieutenant Nesbit, missing him, had the presence of mind to return: when, after some search in the dark, he at length found his brave father-in-law weltering in his blood on the ground, with his arm shattered, and himself apparently lifeless.

Lieutenant Nesbit, having immediately applied his neck-handkerchief as a tourniquet to the rear-admiral's arm, carried him on his back to the beach; where, with the a.s.sistance of some sailors, he conveyed him into one of the boats, and put off to the Theseus, under a tremendous, though happily ill-directed, fire from the enemy's batteries. The day after the rear-admiral lost his arm," concludes the Naval Chronicle account, "he wrote to Lady Nelson; and, in narrating the foregoing transaction, says--"I know it will add much to your pleasure, on finding that your son Josiah, under G.o.d's providence, was instrumental in saving my life."

On the other hand, it seems remarkable that the Spanish relation of this catastrophe positively p.r.o.nounces him "to have lost his right arm when in his boat, and before landing."

This, too, corresponds with the following short description of that unhappy business; which, without any essential alteration as to facts in it's transit, most a.s.suredly proceeded from the ever to be revered hero's own faithful lips.

The circ.u.mstance of so few boats. .h.i.tting the mole with the rear-admiral, who had appointed it as the general place of landing, after having been baffled in his first design, proved fatal to the enterprise. By landing in the surf, they lost their scaling implements; and Captain Troubridge was not prepared instantly to storm the citadel, before the approach of the Spanish troops, which could only have been carried by a sudden _coup de main_. Rear-Admiral Nelson had only one foot out of the boat, and was in the act of landing on the mole, under a most tremendous fire from the batteries, when his arm was shot nearly off; and he fell back in the boat. At that awful moment, he recollected the injunction of his deceased uncle, on receiving the sword which he had thus been compelled to drop; and, groping at the bottom, speedily recovered it, and firmly grasped it in his remaining hand. He called to his brave companions in arms, who had already landed to storm the mole, and directed them to force the gate of the citadel; a task which, with all their exertion, they found it impossible to accomplish, though they succeeded in spiking several of the guns. At this juncture, Lieutenant Nesbit very humanely took the handkerchief from his neck, and tied it round the shattered arm of his father-in-law, a little above where it had been shot. The boat, in the mean time, was hastening to return on board the Theseus, amidst a most dreadful discharge from the batteries. It soon approached where the Fox cutter had just been sunk by a shot under water; and the unhappy men with which it had been charged, consisting of one hundred and eighty persons, were in the act of struggling for their lives. This was a scene of distress too dreadful to be pa.s.sed, by their humane commander, without at least endeavouring to lessen the extent of the calamity. As many as possible of these poor fellows were instantly taken into the boat; an office of humanity in which the rear-admiral himself eagerly a.s.sisted, with his sole arm, smarting as he then was under the agony occasioned by the recent separation of the other. The corporeal anguish which he now felt, however, was mitigated by the solace he received in thus rescuing a few of his brave fellows from impending destruction; but, alas! the mental horror which he suffered, at beholding some of the n.o.blest of the human race compelled to be forcibly rejected, and abandoned to their wretched fate, through dread of sinking his own overcharged boat, admitted of no alleviation, and inflicted pangs on his heroic heart, to describe which the powers of language are incapable of yielding any adequate expression. Every possible exertion was used to reach the Theseus, with a faint hope of the boat's returning in time to save a few more of these unhappy victims; and, a chair being called for, to accommodate the rear-admiral in getting on board, so impatient was he for the boat's return, that he desired to have only a single rope thrown over the side, which he instantly twisted round his left arm, and was thus hauled up into the s.h.i.+p. It appears, on referring to the account of the drowned, in the list of killed and wounded, &c. that eighty-three only were saved; so that ninety-seven men, including officers, from the different s.h.i.+ps, thus miserably perished!

The rear-admiral, on getting aboard the Theseus, immediately suffered the amputation of his arm; but, some mistake having occurred, in taking up one of the arteries, which is described as having been united with a nerve, by an ingenious French surgeon, he long felt the most excruciating tortures.

The Earl of St. Vincent, in his dispatches to government relative to this expedition, dated on board the Ville de Paris, off Cadiz, August 16, 1797, observes that, though the enterprise had not succeeded, his majesty's arms had acquired a very great degree of l.u.s.tre. "Nothing,"

says his lords.h.i.+p, "from my pen, can add to the eulogy the rear-admiral gives of the gallantry of the officers and men employed under him. I have greatly to lament," continues the n.o.ble earl, "the heavy loss which the country has sustained in the severe wound of Rear-Admiral Nelson, and the death of Captain Richard Bowen, Lieutenant Gibson, and the other brave officers and men who fell in this vigorous and persevering a.s.sault. The moment the rear-admiral joins, it is my intention to send the Seahorse to England with him, the wound Captain Freemantle has received in his arm also requiring change of climate; and I hope, that both of them will live to render important services to their king and country."

Accordingly, after receiving the kindest condolences from the Earl of St. Vincent, and sending into Cadiz the dispatches of the worthy governor of Santa Cruz, he immediately sailed for England.

This affair of Teneriffe, however unfortunate, being the first expedition against a place, the whole of which was undertaken and planned by himself, has been thought worthy of very particular attention. That the plan was not defective in wisdom, the reader has had an opportunity of sufficiently judging, by a perusal of the various preliminary doc.u.ments actually issued on the occasion. The undertaking could only be expected to prove with certainty successful, by a secret and rapid _coup de main_, which should suddenly have obtained possession, in the first place, of the fort on the north-east side of the bay; and, in the second, of the heights by which it was commanded. The primary of these objects was wholly frustrated by the non-arrival of the boats at the place of destination under cover of the night; for, at the dawning of day, the Spaniards having discovered both the forces and their intention, were induced to lose as little time as possible in previously occupying the heights above the fort. Thus, by the delay of the boats, in the first instance, and by waiting, in the second, to consult with the rear-admiral, instead of at once pus.h.i.+ng forward to secure this essential post, the business was completely reduced to a merely forlorn hope; and had better, from that moment, have been entirely abandoned. The exalted mind of the rear-admiral, however, though it felt, there is good reason to believe, the full force of this opinion, being conscious of having received instructions, from his commander in chief, to make a vigorous and spirited attack, and convinced that such attack had not been yet made, could by no means have satisfied itself, had he not at least endeavoured, whatever the risque might prove, to execute, with every effort, the utmost intention of his orders. With a promptness which never failed him, he now directed the troops to be embarked from the sh.o.r.e; having resolved on vigorously attacking the town, and even the citadel itself. This design, however, he ingeniously contrived to cover, by remaining apparently inactive on the 23d, as if he had entirely abandoned his intentions against the place: and, on the 24th, by approaching and anchoring to the northward of the town, and making every apparent disposition for a.s.sailing the heights, he drew the notice of the Spaniards entirely to that quarter; who, consequently, left less invulnerable the objects of his real attention. The design of this meditated a.s.sault was certainly desperate; and so conscious did he feel of it's danger, though nothing could deter him from the attempt, that he has been frequently heard to declare the sensation he experienced, on going over the s.h.i.+p's side, to enter his boat, on the 24th at night, was a full conviction that he should never return. There was, indeed, a hope of success, but it was a faint one, and the evil genius of the expedition again interposed to defeat it. The boats did not keep together, as instructed; they did not all land, as directed, on the mole: and, in consequence, they were stove, by running ash.o.r.e through a raging surf; the ammunition in the men's pouches got wet; and the scaling ladders were either lost, or forgotten in the confusion of the scene. Even those who landed with Captain Troubridge, and whose valour instantly got entire possession of the town, lost the only chance there seems to have remained for successfully storming the citadel, by waiting so long in expectation of the rear-admiral, who had been fatally prevented from landing, and other aids and augmentations, that the Spanish troops gained time to collect, and approach them, from the vicinity, in such force as nothing but the matchless address and intrepidity of British officers, and British men, could possibly have braved and surmounted. That they were extricated, by a daring resolution and determined valour, in Captain Troubridge and Captain Hood, which would have done honour even to Rear-Admiral Nelson himself, is as certain, as that no want of courage prevented, in the smallest degree, the success of the enterprise. There can be no such possible imputation.

By bravery, alone, it was wholly unaccomplishable; it might, possibly, have been effected, but even that is by no means certain, if they had not been deprived of the chief hero's most fertile mental resources, ever rising with the exigency, which his fatal wound had effectually prevented--and which no other man must be censured for not possessing; because, perhaps, no other man ever did possess them in so eminent a degree. Besides, justice demands a due acknowledgment, that those who may rank among the greatest of men, having others at hand whom they consider as still greater than themselves, are to be excused for not hastily relying on their own judgment; though delay should, as it generally does in the operations of war, prove ultimately dangerous. The same persons, left under the necessity of acting for themselves, might be inspired with more confidence in their own ability, and proceed very differently in their operations.

In lamenting that the several trials were not instantly made, which have been suggested as remaining at all practicable, during the critical periods alluded to, due regard must be paid to the opinions of those who had better opportunities of judging from intervening circ.u.mstances. Not, indeed, that it is by any means unusual for the most exalted characters to discover, themselves, after the event, opportunities which might have been seized, and which they have for ever lost, of performing some peculiarly brilliant achievement. This is no disgrace. Of much regret, it may often const.i.tute a subject; of just reproach, never.

By indulging these reflections, there is no other object in contemplation, than that of a.s.sisting to afford an accurate view of the ability which was exerted in this unfortunate enterprise; and thus demonstrating, by a new example, the force of the old observation--that success is not always acquirable, even where it is most merited.

About the middle of September 1797, Sir Horatio Nelson having arrived safely in London, had apartments engaged in Bond Street; where he was attended by Dr. Moseley, the late celebrated Surgeon Cruikshanks, and other gentlemen of the faculty.

It appears that, in consequence of a nerve having been improperly included in one of the ligatures employed for securing a bleeding artery, at the time of the operation--which ligature, according to the customary practice of the French surgeons, was of silk instead of waxed thread--a constant irritation, and perpetual discharge, were kept up; and, the ends of the ligature, hanging out of the wound, being daily pulled, in order to effect their separation, occasioned the severest agony to the heroic sufferer, who had scarcely any intermission of pain, either by night or day. His excellent spirits, however, never deserted him: and, in fact, he had not felt the slightest degree of fever on the occasion; a very unusual circ.u.mstance, after the loss of a limb.

His deserved popularity had already acquired such a height, that the nation might be said to partic.i.p.ate in his sufferings; and he received the most consoling civilities from the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Clarence, and other ill.u.s.trious and n.o.ble characters. Friends flocked around him. His worthy relatives hastened to attend and console him, from the country; and Mr. Bolton, in particular, was his constant companion.

Besides the order of the Bath, and the gold medal, which he had received from his sovereign, in consequence of his important share in the victory of the 14th of February, he had also been presented with the freedom of the city of London in a gold box; and, in the month of October 1797, it was generously resolved, by his majesty, to recompence his services, and ameliorate his sufferings, by granting him a pension of one thousand pounds a year.

The indispensable custom of presenting a memorial to the sovereign, before any such grant can be issued, stating the nature of the services for which it is intended, gave rise to the following very singular recapitulation.

"_To the King's Most Excellent Majesty._

"The Memorial of Sir Horatio Nelson, K.B. and a Rear-Admiral in Your Majesty's Fleet,

"Sheweth--

"That, during the present war, your memorialist has been in four actions with the fleets of the enemy: viz. on the 13th and 14th of March 1795; on the 13th of July 1795; and, on the 14th of February 1797. In three actions in boats, employed in cutting out of harbours; in destroying vessels; and, in taking three towns. Your memorialist has also served on sh.o.r.e, with the army, four months; and commanded the batteries at the sieges of Bastia and Calvi.

That, during the war, he has a.s.sisted at the capture of seven sail of the line, six frigates, four corvettes, and eleven privateers of different sizes; and taken and destroyed near fifty sail of merchant vessels: and, your memorialist has actually been engaged against the enemy upwards of one hundred and twenty times. In which service, your memorialist has lost his right eye and arm, and been severely wounded and bruised in his body; all of which services, and wounds, your memorialist most humbly submits to your majesty's most gracious consideration.

"Horatio Nelson."

The pension thus granted proved highly acceptable: but his wound continued to torment him with unabated violence, till about the latter end of November; when, having one night experienced the unusual refreshment of a sound and lasting sleep, he was, on awaking, astonished to find, that his wound felt nearly free from pain. Impatient to have it examined, he sent for his surgeon; and, to their mutual surprise, the silk instantly came away, at a single touch, without the smallest difficulty. From this hour, the wound began to heal; and, with all that characteristic piety of disposition, and that sincere grat.i.tude to Providence for signal deliverances, which he never failed to profess, he gave the late Reverend Mr. Greville, of St. George's, Hanover Square, the following form of thanksgiving, to be read at that church during the time of divine service--