Admiral Cornwallis and Unpublished Nelson Letters
The Life and Letters of Admiral Cornwallis. By G. Corn- wallis-West. (Holden. 30s.) TIIE Life of Admiral Cornwallis has been unwritten till now, but a lucky discovery of his papers has enabled Major Corn- wallis-Wrest to write it with excellent effect. As the publishers point out upon the dust-cover, only a trivial circumstance prevented Cornwallis from being in command, instead of Nelson, at the Battle of Trafalgar, but they go a little too far in assuming that only this trifle prevented Cornwallis from being "the winner." That is to leave out of account the famous" Nelson touch "—the plan which Nelson disclosed to his officers Just before the battle, and which seemed to them so certain of success that it brought tears of joy to their eyes. It is strange, by the way, how much doubt there was for a great many years about Nelson's order of battle. Less than twenty years ago an investigation proved that the official model of the battle had been quite wrongly constructed and the position of all the ships had to be changed into conformity with the" Nelson touch." Although we cannot say for certain that Cornwallis would have won the Battle of Trafalgar, we know now from Nelson's new letters that it was Cornwallis who instilled into him the doctrine of always searching out and destroying the enemy. Cornwallis spent twenty-five years in fighting the French, and it was he who conducted , thsr blockade of Brest. We learn that the project of sending fire-ships into the harbour never went further than the stage of discussion.
Nobody who wants to know what the conditions of service in a man-of-war were like during the French Wars and the American War of Independence ought to miss this book. ' Billy Blue," as Cornwallis was called, was a great character —a straightforward, honourable man, fearless in the presence of the enemy and fearless in expressing his opinions to the Admiralty. His letters were discovered by Major Cornwallis- West in 1898. They had been handed down to the author together with the old home of Cornwallis, although the families of Cornwallis and West are not blood relations. The letters reveal the fatherly affection which Cornwallis had for one of his young flag-officers named Whitby. When Cornwallis retired to the house he had built at Lymington, Whitby and his young wife lived with him, and it was to Mrs. Whitby that Cornwallis left all his property. Mrs. Whitby was the grandmother of the author. The correspondence of Corn- wallis from the time that he went to sea shows what a happy circle his family was. Those were the days of unblushing favouritism, and the Whig influence of the Cornwallis family was invaluable to a boy who could look only to patronage for advancement. His father gave him some mundane, but no doubt shrewd, advice about "keeping company with captains." One wonders what a boy in the gun room or ward room of to-day would make of such advice when he contemplated the Olympian detachment of his captain ! Cornwallis's mother took the precaution of pointing out that it was much more worthy to rise by one's own merits, but having recorded that excellent precept she worked harder than any of the relations to procure the boy's promotion by favouritism. Indeed, she carried the matter so far that her son had ultimately to protest that she was causing him embarrassment. In one way and another Cornwallis became a post-captain at the early age of twenty-one.
We cannot do more than indicate a few points in the book which seem to have the greatest historical value. We note that in the American War British naval officers had the same trouble in convoying merchantmen that was experienced by the Navy in the Great War. The merchant vessels would not keep position ; they were self-confident and regarded the whole system as something of a nuisance. And as the relations between the Navy and the merchant service were much less friendly than they are nowadays, some of Cornwallis's squabbles with the masters were distinctly bitter. The practice of certain merchant vessels in flying Navy pendants to which they were not entitled caused him particular annoyance.
Cornwallis took part in Rodney's famous victory of April lath, 1782. Every reader of history knows that that victory turned English depression into optimism, but there might have been a very different feeling if Cornwallis's opinion of the victory had been general. He said that Rodney had the French completely at his mercy and could have destroyed them utterly, yet he tamely allowed them to escape without an attempt at pursuit. In dispraise of this victory he wrote some satirical verses, which are extremely bad doggerel but leave us in no doubt as to what he thought of Rodney. One of his chief points was that as the British ships were copper-sheathed, and the French were not, pursuit would have been especially easy. On December 30th, 1804, Nelson wrote from on board the 'Victory' to "My dear friend," as he always called Cornwallis, and expressed sentiments which may have remained in his mind since 1782. He wrote of Cornwallis's "full share" in the fighting of many years and "in obtaining the greatest victory—if it had been followed up—that our country ever saw." This is mild criticism compared with Cornwallis's fierce doggerel, but the conclusion is the same. In this letter Nelson declares that it was Cornwallis who taught him "that we could always beat a Frenchman if we fought him long enough."
In 1788 we find Nelson rather hipped because Cornwallis has neglected to name him for employment. Apparently Cornwallis had supposed that Nelson, who was living at home with his wife, did not wish to be disturbed. He little knew ! One of the strangest things in the book is a letter from Nelson in 1798 just after the Battle of the Nile. "Believe me, my dear friend," he wrote, "I see but little real happiness for me on this side of the grave, and when it shall please God to call me I shall go with pleasure." This was written when Nelson was apparently basking in the smiles of Lady Hamilton. Perhaps, after all, Comwallis's criticism of Rodney ought to be tempered by the reflection that even Nelson himself was not immune from expert disparagement. Whitby, writing to Cornwallis in 1804, says of Nelson : "He does not cruise upon his rendezvous. I have repeatedly known him from a week to three weeks, and even for months, unfound by ships sent to reconnoitre." Similarly, Cornwallis writes of Lord Howe and Barrington that they are "comfortable and strong in their elbow chairs but feeble when tossed in the Bay of Biscay."
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