The Boys' Nelson. Harold Wheeler
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by some companions to visit the graveyard unattended at night. As a token of good faith he was to bring a twig from a certain yew tree at the south-west corner of All Saints’ Church. The uncanny task was successfully accomplished. From thenceforth he was a hero, as he deserved to be.
A further instance of Nelson’s early lack of fear is afforded us. His master at North Walsham was particularly proud of a certain pear-tree, and his scholars were equally covetous of the delicious fruit which it bore. Each preferred the other in the task of picking any of the pears because of the speedy retribution which they knew would follow. One night Horatio volunteered the task. His friends tied several sheets together and lowered him from the dormitory to the garden. He swarmed up the tree, secured the forbidden and therefore much prized fruit, and was hauled up again. On distributing the booty, he justified his action in his own mind by assuring the recipients that he had only taken the pears “because every other boy was afraid.” Few hours passed before the schoolmaster found that his tree had been plundered. It redounds to the credit of the boys that they refused to “split” on their comrade, although it is said that a tempting reward was offered for the discovery of the culprit.
One winter morning Horatio and his brother William set out for school on their ponies. They had not gone very far before they found the snow so deep as to be almost impassable. They returned to the Parsonage and told their father of the great drifts. He persuaded them to try again, adding that he left it to their honour not to turn back unless it was absolutely necessary.
The snow was falling in heavy flakes when they made their second attempt. William’s heart soon failed him. He suggested that they had sufficient reason to return. Horatio was as adamant. “Father left it to our honour. We must go forward,” he replied, and in due course they arrived at the school.
William, who was the elder by seventeen months, had the greatest affection and esteem for his brother. In later years he was his constant correspondent, and after Horatio’s death he was created Earl Nelson of Trafalgar. Like his father and grandfather, William became a clergyman, in which profession he rose to the dignity of Prebendary and Vice Dean of Canterbury.
It was during the Christmas vacation of 1770 that Nelson casually picked up a newspaper and read of Captain Maurice Suckling’s appointment to the Raisonnable, a ship of sixty-four guns. The announcement seems to have had an instant effect upon Horatio. “Oh, William,” he exclaimed to his brother, who was standing near, “do, do write to father, and tell him that I want to go to sea with uncle!”
The Rev. Edmund Nelson was staying at Bath owing to ill-health. When he received his son’s letter he was inclined to dismiss the proposition as a mere boyish whim. On thinking it over a little more carefully he decided that perhaps the youngster really desired what he asked, and he accordingly consulted his brother-in-law on the matter. The officer replied in the easy-going manner of sailors, “Well, let him come and have his head knocked off by the first cannon-ball—that will provide for him.” He was afraid Horatio would never be able to stand the rough-and-ready life, but he had the good sense to know that there is nothing like putting a theory to a practical test.
The Navy was not then the skilfully-organised machine it has since become. It was one of the privileges of a captain that he might take two or three lads to sea with him as midshipmen or to serve in some subordinate position. Captain Suckling accordingly sent for Horatio, and we find his name on the ship’s books under date of the 1st January 1771. The Raisonnable was then anchored in the Medway.
The lad’s father accompanied his twelve-year-old son as far as London, put him into the Chatham stagecoach, and then left him to his own resources. It was neither a pleasant journey in the rambling old carriage, nor were the streets of Chatham particularly inviting when he set foot in them. Nobody met the adventurer, and for some time he wandered about until he met an officer who directed him to the ship which was to be his temporary home. When he was safely on board it was to find that his uncle had not arrived.4
The Raisonnable was one of the vessels commissioned when hostilities between Great Britain and Spain appeared imminent owing to trouble respecting the Falkland Islands, a group in the South Atlantic. In 1770 Spain had insulted the British colonists there by compelling the garrison at Fort Egmont to lower their flag. The matter was settled amicably, for the all-sufficient reason that Spain did not feel strong enough to come to blows with Great Britain unless she was assisted by France, and as the support of that Power was not forthcoming, she climbed down. Consequently Nelson was not introduced to the horrors of naval warfare at this early stage, and the cannon-ball which his uncle prophesied would knock off the lad’s head did not leave the cannon’s mouth.
When the Raisonnable was paid off Captain Suckling was given command of the guard-ship Triumph (74), stationed in the Medway, and recognising that no good could come to his nephew by staying on such a vessel, he secured a position for him shortly afterwards in a merchant ship bound for the West Indies. This was not a difficult matter, because the Master was John Rathbone, who had served with Suckling on the Dreadnought during part of the Seven Years’ War, that great struggle in which Louis XV. of France had been forced to cede Canada to Great Britain.
Nelson seems to have enjoyed the experience. In a sketch of his life, which he wrote several years later for the Naval Chronicle, he says:
“From this voyage I returned to the Triumph at Chatham in July 1772; and, if I did not improve in my education, I returned a practical seaman, with a horror of the Royal Navy, and with a saying, then constant with the seamen, ‘Aft the most honour, forward the better man!’ It was many weeks before I got in the least reconciled to a man-of-war, so deep was the prejudice rooted; and what pains were taken to instil this erroneous principle in a young mind! However, as my ambition was to be a seaman, it was always held out as a reward, that if I attended well to my navigation, I should go in the cutter and decked longboat, which was attached to the commanding officer’s ship at Chatham. Thus by degrees I became a good pilot, for vessels of that description, from Chatham to the Tower of London, down the Swin, and to the North Foreland; and confident of myself amongst rocks and sands, which has many times since been of the very greatest comfort to me. In this way I was trained, till the expedition towards the North Pole was fitted out; when, although no boys were allowed to go in the ships (as of no use), yet nothing could prevent my using every interest to go with Captain Lutwidge in the Carcass; and, as I fancied I was to fill a man’s place, I begged I might be his coxswain: which, finding my ardent desire for going with him, Captain Lutwidge complied with, and has continued the strictest friendship to this moment. Lord Mulgrave, who I then first knew, continued his kindest friendship and regard to the last moment of his life. When the boats were fitted out to quit the two ships blocked up in the ice, I exerted myself to have the command of a four-oared cutter raised upon, which was given me, with twelve men; and I prided myself in fancying I could navigate her better than any other boat in the ship.”
In this cold, matter-of-fact way, Nelson dismisses a phase of his life fraught with peril and adventure. When the majority, if not all, of his former school-fellows were reading of the doings of gallant seamen and brave soldiers he was undergoing actual experiences. The expedition in question had been suggested by the Royal Society, and was commanded by Captain Constantine John Phipps, eldest son of Lord Mulgrave. The Racehorse and Carcass, heavy ships known as bombs because they mounted one or more mortars for use in bombardments when on ordinary service, sailed from the Nore on the 4th June 1773. All went well until the 31st July, when the ice closed upon the vessels, and further progress became impossible.
“The following day,” says Colonel J. M. Tucker in his “Life and Naval Memoirs of Lord Nelson,” “there was not the smallest opening, the ships were within less than two lengths of each other. The ice, which the day before had been flat, and almost level with the water’s edge, was now in many places forced higher than the mainyard by the pieces squeezing together. A day of thick fog followed; it was succeeded by clear weather; but the passage by which the ships had entered from the westward was closed, and no open water was in sight, either in that or any other quarter. By the pilot’s advice, the men were set to cut a passage and warp5 through the small openings to the westward. They sawed through pieces
A Chippendale arm-chair, which was given to Nelson by his great grandfather, was presented by the boy to Mrs Luckins, his nurse, when he left home to join the Navy. It appeared in an auction room so recently as 1908.
In other words, tow the vessels.