The man we love to love
Tom Pocock
THE PURSUIT OF VICTORY: THE LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENT OF HORATIO NELSON by Roger Knight Allen Lane / Penguin, £30, pp. 874, ISBN 0713996196 ✆ £26 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 The life and death of Nelson grip the imagination, not just because of the bicentenary of Trafalgar but because more is known about him than any other major figure in British history. He was a tireless correspondent, writing for hours with his left hand letters that would be kept in their hundreds because he was famous in his lifetime. These illuminate the complicated, contradictory character that continues to entice biographers, whether revisionists, hagiographers, bodice-rippers, amateur psychoanalysts, spinners of rattling good yarns, or serious historians, amongst the last being Roger Knight.
As the author was for many years deputy director and chief curator of the National Maritime Museum and is now professor of naval history at Greenwich University, he could be expected to command access to the more obscure sources of Nelsoniana, as seems to be borne out by some 300 pages of notes at the back of his hefty book.
However, anyone conversant with the story may first note omissions rather than fresh inclusions. There are no stories about boyhood pluck and the fight with the polar bear is dismissed, there being no written record; the mystical experience while recovering from malaria is not mentioned, presumably for the same reason; even the telescope clapped to the blind eye at Copenhagen is discarded as ‘a myth’. More surprisingly, there is no account of Nelson’s disastrous foray into politics at Emma Hamilton’s urging.
But just as one misses a familiar Nelson story, the strength of the author’s scholarly rigour becomes apparent. The subtitle of his book stresses Nelson’s achievement and he never loses sight of that. Knight is assessing and analysing the achievement of one naval officer. He takes us through the career and the development of the character, starting with the young Nelson benefiting from a well-placed uncle in the navy but socially insecure and chippy. The most controversial time in Nelson’s life was the week when he oversaw the extinction of the republican revolution in Naples. This is usually seen in black and white: either Nelson was cruel and vengeful, tearing up the agreed amnesty and allowing atrocities to follow; or he was acting within the law on behalf of an ally at a dangerous time when prompt action was essential. Knight balances these views: Nelson was within the law but was ‘still instinctively a frigate captain’, believing that control could only be restored by immediate, harsh discipline. He continues, ‘Nelson applied a quarterdeck train of thought to a situation that required political judgment and clear-headedness’ to take what should have been ‘measures that were legally correct, morally sound and politically possible’.
Indeed, he had, when commanding a frigate, flogged a quarter of her crew. Even the Victory, in which he died, was known as ‘a flogging ship’, although discipline was the direct responsibility of Captain Hardy, who was to order six seamen — two Welshmen, an Irishman, a Dutchman and two Americans — to be given 36 lashes each for ‘contempt and disobedience’ when the ship arrived at Gibraltar a few days after Trafalgar. Flogging was, however, generally accepted as the only means to exercise discipline in a crowded ship at sea.
There was, writes Knight, an echo of Nelson ‘at his most impatient and ruthless’ in his treatment of his wife:
Once he had made up his mind that his future happiness lay with Emma Hamilton, he took every social risk to achieve it; but, although he provided for Fanny with generosity ... his personal relations with her after his decision were without sentiment, even savage.
He includes poignant letters from Fanny Nelson to Alexander Davison (confidant to Nelson, Emma Hamilton and herself) which were bought by the National Maritime Museum at Sotheby’s’ remarkable sale of Nelsoniana three years ago.
Other fresh material shows that Nelson came to accept the newfangled weaponry — rockets and primitive torpedoes — promoted by the maverick Sir Sidney Smith, whom he had chosen to command his inshore squadron before Trafalgar, for a surprise attack on the enemy fleet in Cadiz in Pearl Harbor style. Nelson had disdained such gadgetry but, when he heard that they were due to arrive off Cadiz, he confided to one of this captains, ‘Keep all this to yourself, for officers will talk and there is no occasion to put the enemy on their guard.’ Knight sees Nelson as ‘a driven, flawed, tough-spirited man of exceptional intelligence and talent’ and his command of strategy, tactics and the loyalty of those he led was masterly. He lists the ‘supreme decisions’ to take calculated risks off Cape St Vincent (leaving the line without orders to attack single-handed), Aboukir (attacking the enemy fleet at anchor in an unfamiliar bay at sunset), Copenhagen (arranging a ceasefire as a decisive ruse de guerre) and Cape Trafalgar (attacking in two vulnerable lines ahead): ‘Any one of these decisions would have gained him naval immortality.’ It was naval power, of course, that was the only British defence against Napoleon and was to be the foundation of a century of global supremacy.
This is a magnificent biography, taut with almost naval discipline, yet intensely readable. Even so, it confirms a thought to comfort aspiring biographers, that there can never be a definitive biography of Nelson. They will always be attempted because, as the London hostess Lady Bessborough remarked at the time, ‘Nelson was the only person I ever saw who excited real enthusiasm in the English.’
Previous page
