Admiral the Earl of St. Vincent
THE renown of Nelson is part of the heritage of the world. His deeds, although their full scope and real significance are but little understood, stand out conspicuous among a host of lesser achievements, and have become to mankind the symbol of Great Britain’s maritime power in that tremendous era when it drove the French Revolution back upon itself, stifling its excesses, and so insuring the survival of the beneficent tendencies which for a time seemed wellnigh lost in the madness of the nation.
The appearance of a prodigy like Nelson, however, is not an isolated event, independent of antecedents. It is the result of a happy meeting of genius and opportunity. The hour has come, and the man. Other men have labored, and the hero enters into their labors ; not unjustly, for thereto he also has been appointed by those special gifts which fit him to reap as theirs fitted them to sow. It is of one so related to Nelson that we propose now to give an account, his greatest forerunner, whom it would indeed be a mistake to call his professional father, for two men could hardly be less alike professionally, but, as it were, the adoptive father, who from the first fostered, and to the last gloried in, the genius which he confessed unparalleled. “ It does not become me to make comparisons,” he wrote after Copenhagen; “all agree that there is but one Nelson.” And when the great admiral had been ten years in his grave, he said of an officer’s gallant conduct at the battle of Algiers, “ He seems to have felt Lord Nelson’s eye upon him,” as though no stronger motive could be felt nor higher praise given.
John Jervis was born on the 20th of January, 1734, at Meaford, in Staffordshire. He was intended for his father’s profession, the law; but, by his own account, a disinclination which was probably natural became invincible through the advice of the family coachman. “ Don’t be a lawyer, Master Jacky,” said the old man; “ all lawyers are rogues.” Some time later, his father receiving the appointment of auditor to Greenwich Hospital, the family removed to the neighborhood of London; and there young Jervis, being thrown in contact with ships and seamen, and particularly with a midshipman of his own age, became confirmed in his wish to go to sea. Failing to get his parents’ consent, he ran away towards the close of the year 1747. From this escapade he was brought back; but his father, seeing the uselessness of forcing the lad’s inclinations, finally acquiesced, though it seems likely, from his after conduct, that it was long before he became thoroughly reconciled to the disappointment.
In January, 1748, the future admiral and peer first went afloat in a ship bound to the West Indies. The time was inauspicious for one making the navy his profession. The war of the Austrian succession had just been brought to an end by the Peace of Aixla-Chapelle, and the monotonous discomfort of hard cruising, unrelieved by the excitements of battle or the flush of prize-taking, was the sole prospect of one whose narrow means debarred him from such pleasures as the station afforded and youth naturally prompted him to seek. His pay was little more than twenty pounds a year, and his father had not felt able to give more than that sum towards his original outfit. After being three years on board, practicing a rigid economy scarcely to be expected in one of his years, the lad of sixteen drew a bill upon home for twenty pounds more. It came back dishonored. The latent force of his character was at once aroused. To discharge the debt, he disposed of his pay tickets at a heavy discount ; sold his bed, and for three years slept on the deck ; left the mess to which he belonged, living forward on the allowance of a seaman, and making, mending, and washing his own clothes, to save expense. The incident was singularly adapted to develop and exaggerate his natural characteristics, self-reliance, selfcontrol, stern determination, and, it must be added, the exacting harshness which demanded of others all that he had himself accepted. His experience of suffering and deprivation served, not to enlarge his sympathies, but to intensify his severity.
Upon his naval future, however, the results of this ordeal were wholly good. Unable to pursue pleasure ashore, he stuck to sea-going ships ; and the energies of a singularly resolute mind were devoted to mastering all the details of his profession. After six years in the Caribbean, he returned to England in the autumn of 1754. The troubles between France and Great Britain which issued in the Seven Years’ War had already begun, and Jervis, whose merit commanded immediate recognition from those under whom he served, was at once promoted and employed. He was with Boscawen off the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1755, when that admiral, although peace yet reigned, was ordered to seize the French fleet bearing reinforcements to Quebec. At the same time, Braddock’s unfortunate expedition was miscarrying in the forests of Pittsburg. A year later, Jervis went to the Mediterranean with Admiral Hawke, sent to relieve Byng after the fiasco at Minorca which brought that unhappy commander to trial and to death.
While in the Mediterranean, Jervis was closely associated with Sir Charles Saunders, one of the most distinguished admirals of that generation, upon whom he made so favorable an impression that he was chosen for first lieutenant of the flagship, when Saunders, in 1758, was named to command the fleet to act against Quebec. The gallant and romantic General Wolfe, whose death in the hour of victory saddened the triumph of the conquerors, embarked in the same ship ; and the long passage favored the growth of a close personal intimacy between the two young men, who had been at school together as boys, although the soldier was several years older than the sailor. The relations thus formed and the confidences exchanged are shown by a touching incident recorded by Jervis’s biographer. On the night before the battle on the Heights of Abraham, Wolfe went on board the Porcupine, a small sloop of war to whose command Jervis had meanwhile been promoted, and asked to see him in private. He then said that he was strongly impressed with the feeling that he should fall on the morrow, and therefore wished to entrust to his friend the miniature of the lady, Miss Lowther, to whom he was engaged, and to have from him the promise that, if the foreboding proved true, he would in person deliver to her both the portrait and Wolfe’s own last messages. From the interview the young general departed to achieve his enterprise, to which daring action, brilliant success, and heroic death have given a lustre that time itself has not been able to dim, whose laurels remain green to our own day ; while Jervis, to whose old age was reserved the glory that his comrade reaped in youth, remained behind to discharge his last request, — a painful duty which, upon returning to England, was scrupulously fulfilled.
Although the operations against Quebec depended wholly upon the control of the water by the navy, its influence, as often happens, was so quietly exerted as to draw no attention from the general eye, dazzled by the conspicuous splendor of Wolfe’s conduct. To Jervis had been assigned the distinguished honor of leading the fleet with his little ship, in the advance up river against the fortifications of the place; and it is interesting to note that in this duty he was joined with the afterwards celebrated explorer, James Cook, who, as master of the fleet, had special charge of the pilotage in those untried waters. Wolfe, Cook, and Jervis form a striking trio of names, then unknown, yet closely associated, afterwards to be widely yet diversely renowned.
When the city fell, Commander Jervis was sent to England, probably with dispatches. There he was at once given a ship, and ordered to return with her to North America. Upon her proving leaky, he put in to Plymouth, where, as his mission was urgent, he was directed to take charge of a sloop named the Albany, attached to the Channel fleet, then lying at anchor near by, and to proceed in her. The occasion, trivial in itself, calls for mention as eliciting a mark of that stern decision with which he afterwards met and suppressed mutiny of the most threatening character. The crew of the Albany refused to sail. Jervis had brought with him a few seamen from his late command. These he ordered to cut the cables which held the ship to her anchors, and to loose the foresail. Daunted more, perhaps, by the bearing of the man than by the simple acts, the mutineers submitted, and in twenty - four days, an extraordinarily short passage for that time, the Albany was at New York. Here Jervis was unfortunately delayed, and thus, being prevented from rejoining Sir Charles Saunders, lost the promotion which a British commander in chief could then give to an officer in his own command who had merited his professional approval. It was not until October, 1761, when he was twenty-seven, that Jervis obtained “ post ” rank, — the rank, that is, of full, or post, captain. By the rule of the British navy, an officer up to that rank could be advanced by selection; thenceforth he waited, through the long succession of seniority, for his admiral’s commission. This Jervis did not receive until 1787, when he was fifty-three.
It was as a general officer, as an admiral commanding great fleets, and hearing responsibilities unusually grave through a most critical period of his country’s history, that Jervis made his high and deserved reputation. For this reason, the intervening years, though pregnant with the strong character and distinguished capacity which fitted him for his onerous work, and though by no means devoid of incident, must be hastily sketched. The Treaty of Paris, which in 1763 closed the Seven Years’ War, was followed by twelve years of peace. Then came the American Revolution, bringing in its train hostilities with France and Spain. During the peace, Jervis for nearly four years commanded a frigate in the Mediterranean. It is told that while his ship was at Genoa two Turkish slaves escaped from a Genoese galley, and took refuge in a British boat lying at its mole, wrapping its flag round their persons. Genoese officers took them forcibly from the boat and restored them to their chains. Jervis resented this action, not only as an insult to the British flag, but also as an enforcement of slavery against men under its protection ; and so peremptory was his tone that an apology was made, the two captives were given up on the frigate’s quarter-deck, and the offending officers punished. The captain’s action, however, was not sustained by his own government. It is curious to note that, notwithstanding his course in this case, and although he was not only nominally, but strenuously, a Whig, or Liberal, in political faith, connected by party ties with Fox and his coterie of friends, Jervis was always opposed to the abolition of the slave trade and to the education of the lower orders. Liberty was to him an inherited worship, associated with certain stock beliefs and phrases, but subordination was the true idol of his soul.
In 1775 Captain Jervis commissioned the Foudroyant, of eighty-four guns, a ship captured in 1758 from the French, and thereafter thought to be the finest vessel in the British fleet. To this, her natural superiority, Jervis added a degree of order, discipline, and drill which made her the pride and admiration of the navy. He was forty-one when his pennant first flew from her masthead, and he held the command for eight years, a period covering the full prime of his own maturity, as well as the entire course of the American Revolution. It. was also a period marked for him, professionally, less by distinguished service than by that perfection of military organization, that combination of dignified yet not empty pomp with thorough and instant efficiency, which was so eminently characteristic of all the phases of Jervis’s career, and which, when the rare moments came, was promptly transformed into unhesitating, decisive action. The Foudroyant, in her state and discipline, was the type in miniature of Jervis’s Mediterranean fleet, declared by Nelson to be the finest body of ships he had ever known ; nay, she was the precursor of that regenerate British navy in which Nelson found the instruments of his triumphs. Sixty years later, old officers recalled the feelings of mingled curiosity and awe with which, when sent to her on duty from their own ships, they climbed on hoard the Foudroyant, and from the larboard side of her quarterdeck gazed upon the stern captain, whose qualities were embodied in his vessel and constituted her chief excellences.
During Jervis’s command, the Foudroyant was continuously attached to the Channel fleet, whose duty, as the name implies, was to protect the English Channel and its approaches ; a function which often carried the ships far into the Bay of Biscay. Thus he took a prominent part, in Keppel’s battle off Ushant in 1778, in the movements occasioned by the entrance of the Channel by an overpowering Franco-Spanisli fleet in 1779 and 1781, and in the brilliant relief of Gibraltar by Admiral Howe toward the end of 1782. His most distinguished service, however, was taking, singlehanded, the French seventy-four Pégase, in the spring of the latter year. The capture was effected after an action of fifty minutes, preceded by a chase of twelve hours, running before a half-gale of wind. The Foudroyant was unquestionably superior in battery to her enemy, who, moreover, had but recently been commissioned; but, as has justly been remarked of some of the victories of our own ships over those of the British in the War of 1812, although there was disparity of forces, the precision and rapidity with which the work was done bore testimony to the skill and training of the captain and crew. Single combats, such as this, were rare between vessels of the size of the Foudroyant and Pégase, built to sail and fight in fleets. This one was due to the fact that the speed of the two opponents left the British squadron far astern. The exploit obtained for Jervis a baronetcy and the red ribbon of the Bath.
During the ten years of peace following 1783, Sir John Jervis did not serve afloat, although, from his high repute, he was one of those summoned upon each of the alarms of war that from time to time arose. Throughout this period he sat in Parliament, voting steadily with his party, the Whigs, and supporting Fox in his opposition to measures which seemed to tend towards hostilities with France. When war came, however, he left his seat, ready to aid his country with his sword in the quarrel from which he had sought to keep her.
Jervis’s first service was in the Caribbean Sea, as commander of the naval part of a joint expedition of army and navy to subdue the French West India islands. The operation, although most important and full of exciting and picturesque incident, bears but a small share in his career, and cannot therefore he dwelt upon in so short a sketch as the present. Attended at first by marked and general success, it ended with some severe reverses, occasioned by the force given him being less than he demanded, and than the extent of the work to he done required. A quaintly characteristic story is told of the admiral’s treatment of a lieutenant who at this period sought employment on board his ship. Knowing that he stood high in the old seaman’s favor, the applicant confidently expected his appointment, but, upon opening the “ letter on service,” was stunned to read : —
SIR, — You, having thought fit to take to yourself a wife, are to look for no further attentions from
Your humble servant,
J. JERVIS.
The supposed culprit, guiltless even in thought of this novel misdemeanor, hastened on board, and explained that he abhorred such an offense as much as could the admiral. It then appeared that the letter had been sent to the wrong person. Jervis was himself married at this time ; but his well-regulated affections had run steadily in harness until the mature age of forty-eight, and he saw no reason why other men should depart from so sound a precedent. “ When an officer marries,” he tersely said, “ he is d—d for the service.”
Returning to England in February, 1795, Jervis was in August nominated to command the Mediterranean station, and in November sailed to take up his new duties. At the end of the month, in San Fiorenzo Bay, an anchorage in the north of Corsica, he joined the fleet, which continued under his flag until June, 1799. This was the crowning period of his career. Admirable and striking as had been his previous services, dignified and weighty as were the responsibilities borne by him in the later part of a life prolonged far beyond the span of man. the four years of Jervis’s Mediterranean command stand conspicuous as the time when preparation flowered into achievement, solid, durable, and brilliant. It may be interesting to Americans to note that his age was nearly the same as that of Farragut when the latter assumed the charge in which, after long years of obscure preparation, he also reaped his harvest of glory.
Though distinguished success now awaited him, a period of patient effort, endurance, and disappointment had first to be passed, reproducing in miniature the longer years of faithful service preceding his professional triumphs. Jervis came to the Mediterranean too late for the best interests of England. The year 1795, just ending, was one in which the energies of France, after the fierce rush of the Terror, had flagged almost to collapse. Not only so, but in its course the republic, discouraged by frequent failure, had decided to abandon the control of the sea to its enemy, to keep its great fleets in port, and to confine its efforts to the harassment of British commerce. Two fleet battles had been fought in the Mediterranean in the spring and summer of 1795, in which the British had missed great successes only through the sluggishness of their admiral. “ To say how much we wanted Lord Hood ” (the last commander in chief), wrote Nelson, “ is to ask, ‘Will you have all the French fleet or no battle ? ’ ” To this change of policy in France is mainly to be ascribed the failure of naval achievement with which Macaulay has reproached Pitt’s ministry. Battles cannot be fought if the foe keeps behind his walls.
A still more serious obstacle was thrown in Great Britain’s path at this moment. Jervis’s coming to the Mediterranean coincided with that of Napoleon Bonaparte to the Army of Italy. During 1795, wrote Nelson, if the British fleet had done its duty, the French army could not have moved along the Riviera of Genoa. It failed, and the Austrian general, its ally, also failed to act with vigor. So the year had ended, for the Austrians, with a disastrous defeat and a retreat behind the Apennines. To the Riviera they never returned to receive the coöperation which Jervis stood eager to give. At their first move to cross the mountains, Bonaparte struck, and followed up his blows with such lightning-like rapidity that in thirty days the Austrians were driven back over a hundred miles, behind the Adige ; their chief fortress, Mantua, was blockaded; all northwest Italy, with its seaboard, including Leghorn, was in the power of France; and Naples also had submitted. Jervis, powerless to strike a blow when no enemy was within reach, found his fleet without a friendly port nearer than Gibraltar, while Corsica, upon which alone he depended for anchorage and water, was seething with revolt against the British crown, to which, by its own vote, it had been annexed but two years before.
During the summer, Bonaparte, holding Mantua by the throat, overthrew, one after another, the Austrian forces approaching to its relief. Two French armies, under Jourdan and Moreau, penetrated to the heart of Germany, while Spain, lately the confederate of Great Britain, made an offensive and defensive alliance with France, and sent a fleet of over twenty ships of the line into the Mediterranean. Staggered by these reverses, the British ministry ordered Corsica evacuated and the Mediterranean abandoned. Jervis was cruelly embarrassed. A trusted subordinate of high reputation had been before Cadiz with seven ships of the line, watching a French division in that port. Summoned, in view of the threatening attitude of Spain, to reinforce the main fleet in San Fiorenzo Bay, he lost his head altogether, hurried past Gibraltar without getting supplies, and brought his ships, destitute, to the admiral, already pressed to maintain the vessels then with him. Although there were thirty-five hostile ships in Toulon, and the British had but twenty-two, counting this division, there was nothing to do but to send it back to Gibraltar, with urgent orders to return with all speed. With true military insight and a correct appreciation of the forces opposed to him, Jervis saw the need of fighting the combined enemies then and there.
Unfortunately, the division commander, Admiral Mann, on reaching Gibraltar, became infected with the spirit of discouragement then prevailing in the garrison, called a council of naval captains, and, upon their advice, which could in no wise lessen his own responsibility, decided to return to England. Upon arrival there, he was at once deprived of his command, a step of unquestionable justice, but which could not help Jervis. “We were all eyes, looking westward from the mountain tops,” wrote Collingwood, then a captain in the fleet, “ but we looked in vain. The Spanish fleet, nearly double our number, was cruising almost in view, and our reconnoitring frigates sometimes got among them, while we expected them hourly to be joined by the French fleet.” “I cannot describe to your lordship,” wrote Jervis himself, “ the disappointment my ambition and zeal to serve my country have suffered by this diminution of my force : for had Admiral Mann sailed from Gibraltar on the 10th of October, the day he received my orders, and fulfilled them, I have every reason to believe the Spanish fleet would have been cut to pieces. The extreme disorder and confusion they were observed to be in, by the judicious officers who fell in with them, leave no doubt upon my mind that a fleet so trained and generally well commanded as this is would have made its way through them in every direction.”
Nelson shared this opinion, the accuracy of which was soon to be tested and proved. “ They at home,” wrote he to his wife, “do not know what this fleet is capable of performing ; anything and everything. The fleets of England are equal to meet the world in arms; and of all the fleets I ever saw, I never beheld one, in point of officers and men, equal to Sir John Jervis’s, who is a commander in chief able to lead them to glory.” To a friend he wrote : “ Mann is ordered to come up: we shall then be twenty-two sail of the line such as England hardly ever produced, commanded by an admiral who will not fail to look the enemy in the face, be their force what it may. I suppose it will not be more than thirty-four of the line.”“ The admiral is firm as a rock,” wrote at the same moment the British viceroy of Corsica. Through all doubts and uncertainties he held on steadily, refusing to leave the rendezvous till dire necessity forced him, lest Mann, arriving, should be exposed alone and lost. At last, with starvation staring him in the face if delaying longer, he sailed for Gibraltar, three men living on the rations of one during the passage down.
Mann’s defection had reduced the fleet from twenty-two vessels to fifteen. A series of single accidents still further diminished it. In a violent gale at Gibraltar three ships of the line drove from their anchors. One, the Courageux, stretching over toward the Barbary coast, ran ashore there and was totally wrecked, nearly all her crew perishing. Her captain, a singularly capable seaman named Hallowell, was out of her upon a courtmartial, and it was thought she would not have been lost had he been on board. Another, the Gibraltar, struck so heavily on a reef that she had to be sent to England. Upon being docked, a large piece of rock was found to have penetrated the bottom and stuck fast in the hole. Had it worked out, the ship would have foundered. The third vessel, the Zealous, was less badly hurt, but she had to be left behind in Gibraltar when Jervis, by orders from home, took his fleet to Lisbon. There, in entering the Tagus, a fourth ship was lost on a shoal, so that but eleven remained out of twenty-two. Despite these trials of his constancy, the old man’s temper still continued “steady as a rock.” “ Whether you send me a reinforcement or not,” he wrote to the Admiralty, “ I shall sleep perfectly sound, — not in the Tagus, but at sea; for as soon as the St. George has shifted her topmast, the Captain her bowsprit, and the Blenheim repaired her mainmast, I will go out.” “ Inactivity in the Tagus,” he wrote again, “ will make cowards of us all.”
In quitting the river another vessel took the ground, and had to be left behind. This, however, was the last of the admiral’s trials for that time. A few days later, on the 6th of February, 1797, there joined him a body of five ships of the line, detached from England as soon as the government had been freed from the fear of the invasion of Ireland, which the French had attempted on a large scale in December. On the 13th, Nelson, a host in himself, returned, after an adventurous mission up the Mediterranean. The next day, February 14, Jervis, with his fifteen ships, met a Spanish fleet of twenty-seven some thirty miles from Cape St. Vincent, which has given its name to the battle.
The Spaniards were running for Cadiz, to the east-southeast, — say, across the page from left to right, inclining a little downward, — while Jervis’s fleet was approaching nearly at right angles from the north, or top of the page. It was in two close, compact columns, of seven and eight ships respectively. The Spaniards, on the contrary, were in disorder and dispersed. Six of their ships were far ahead of the others, an interval of nearly eight miles separating the two groups. The weather, which was foggy, cleared gradually. Jervis was walking back and forth on the poop with Hallowell, lately captain of the wrecked Courageux, and he was heard to say, “ A victory is very essential to England at this moment.” As ship after ship of the enemy loomed up through the haze, successive reports were made to him. “ There are eight sail of the line, Sir John.” “ There are twenty sail of the line, Sir John.” “ There are twenty-five of the line, Sir John.” Finally, when the full tale of twenty-seven was made out, the fleet captain remarked on the greatness of the odds. “ Enough of that, sir,” retorted the admiral, intent on that victory which was so essential to England ; “ if there are fifty sail, I will go through them.” This reply so delighted Hallowell, an eccentric man, who, a year later, gave Nelson the coffin made from the mainmast of the Orient, that he patted his august superior on the back. “That’s right, Sir John,” said he, “and, by G—, we’ll give them a d—d good licking! ”
When the weather finally cleared, toward ten A. M., the British were near to the enemy, and heading direct for the gap, which the Spaniards, too late, were trying to close. Almost at the moment of meeting, Jervis formed his two columns into one “ with the utmost celerity ; ” thus doubling the length of the line interposed between the two divisions of the enemy. Soon opened the guns of the leading ship, the Culloden, Captain Troubridge; the reports following one another in regular succession, as though firing a salute by watch. The Culloden’s course led so direct upon a Spanish three-decker that the first lieutenant reported a collision imminent. “ Can’t help it, Griffiths,” replied Troubridge ; “ hardest fend off.” But the Spaniard, in confusion, put his helm up and went clear. By this time the Spanish division on the right, or west, of the British had changed its course and was steering north, parallel but opposite to its foes. As the Culloden went through, the admiral signaled her to put about and follow it. Troubridge, fully expecting this order, obeyed at once ; and Jervis’s signal was scarce unfurled when, by the flapping of the Cudoden’s sails, he saw it was receiving execution. “Look at Troubridge! ” he shouted. “ Does n’t he handle his ship as though the eyes of all England were on him ? I would to God they were, that she might know him as I know him ! ” But here a graver matter drew the admiral’s care. The Spanish division from the left, steering across his path of advance, approached, purposing in appearance to break through the line. The Victory stopped, or, as seamen say, hove to ; and as the Spanish admiral came near within a hundred yards, her broadside rang out, sweeping through the crowded decks and lofty spars a storm of shot, to which, in the relative positions, the foe could not reply. Staggered and crippled, he went about, and the Victory stood on.
Meanwhile, the ships which Troubridge and his followers were pursuing drew toward the tail of the British column, and as they did so made a movement to pass round it, and so join their friends who had just been so severely handled in making the attempt to pass through. But Nelson was in this part of the order, there being but two ships behind him. Now, as far as signals went, he should continue on, and, like the others, follow in due succession behind the Culloden. He saw that if this were done the Spaniards would effect their junction, so he instantly turned his ship toward the rear, out of her place, and threw her alone across the enemy’s advance. It is said that the fleet captain drew Jervis’s attention to this breach of discipline. “ Ay,” replied the old seaman, “ and if ever you offend in the same way, I promise you my forgiveness beforehand.” For a while Nelson took the brunt of the hostile fire from half a dozen ships, but not for long. Soon, Troubridge, his dearest friend, came up with a couple of others; and Collingwood, the close associate of early days, who had the rear ship, was signaled to imitate Nelson’s act. In doing this, he silenced the fire of two enemies; but, wrote Nelson, “ disdaining the parade of taking possession of beaten ships, Captain Collingwood most gallantly pushed on to save his old friend and messmate, who appeared to be in a critical state, being then fired upon by three first-rates and the San Nicolas, eighty.” To get between Nelson’s ship and the San Nicolas, Collingwood had to steer close, passing within ten feet of the latter ; so that, to use bis own expression, " though we did not touch sides, you could not put a bodkin between us.” His fire drove the San Nicolas upon one of the firstrates, the San Josef; and when, continuing on to seek other unbeaten foes, he left the field again clear for Nelson, the latter, by a movement of the helm, grappled the San Nicolas. Incredible as it may appear, the crew of this one British seventy-four carried, sword in hand, both the enemy’s ships, though of far superior force. " Extravagant as the story may seem,’ wrote Nelson, on the quarter-deck of a Spanish first-rate I received the swords of the vanquished Spaniards, which, as I received, I gave to William Fearney, one of my bargemen, who placed them with the greatest sang-froid under his arm.”
Four Spanish ships, two of them of the largest size, were the trophies of this victory; but its moral effect, in demonstrating the relative values of the two navies, and the confidence England could put in men like Jervis, Nelson, and the leading captains, was far greater. The spirit of the nation, depressed by a long series of reverses, revived like a giant refreshed with wine. Jervis had spoken truth when he said a victory was essential to England at that time. The gratitude of the state was shown in the profusion of rewards showered upon the victors. Promotions were liberally distributed; and Jervis himself was created Earl of St. Vincent, with a pension of three thousand pounds per annum.
The rest of the Spaniards, many of them badly crippled, took refuge in Cadiz, and there Jervis, after repairing damages, held them blockaded for two years. During this period was rendered the other most signal service done by him to the state, in suppressing the mutinous spirit among the seamen, which there, as everywhere else in the British navy at that time, sought to overthrow the authority of the officers of the fleet.
The cause of the mutinies of 1797 is not here in question. Suffice it to say that, in their origin, they alleged certain tangible material grievances, which were clearly stated, and, being undeniable, were redressed. The men returned to their duty; but, like a horse that has once taken the bit between his teeth, the restive feeling remained, fermenting in a lot of vicious material which the exigencies of the day had forced the navy to accept. Coinciding in time with the risings in Ireland, 1796-98, there arose between the two movements a certain sympathy, which was fostered by the many Irish, in the fleets, where agents were in communication with the leaders of the United Irishmen on shore.
In the Channel and the North Sea, the seamen took their ships, with few exceptions, out of the hands of the officers. In the former, they dictated their terms ; in the latter, after a month of awful national suspense, they failed: the difference being that in the one case the demands, being reasonable, carried conviction, while in the other, becoming extravagant, the government’s resistance was supported by public opinion. It remained to be seen how the crisis would be met in a fleet so far from home that the issue must depend upon the firmness and judgment of a man of adamant.
The first overt sign of trouble was the appearance of letters addressed to the leading petty officers of the different ships of the Mediterranean fleet. These were detected by a captain, who held on to them, and sent to St. Vincent to ask if they should be delivered. Careful to betray no sign of anxiety, the admiral’s reply was a general signal for a lieutenant from each ship to come to him ; and by them word was sent that all letters should be delivered as addressed, unopened. “ Should any disturbance arise,”he added, the commander in chief will know how to repress it.”
Disturbance soon did arise. Two seamen of the St. George had been condemned to death for an infamous crime. Their shipmates presented a petition, framed in somewhat peremptory terms, for their liberation, on the ground that execution for such an offense would bring disgrace upon all. The admiral refusing to pardon, the occasion was seized to bring mutiny to a head. A plot to take possession of the ship was formed, but was betrayed to the captain. The outburst began with a tumultuous assembling of the crew, evidently, however, mistrustful of their cause. After vainly trying to restore order, the captain and first lieutenant rushed among them, each collaring a ringleader. The rest fell back, weakened, as men of English blood are apt to be by the sense of law-breaking. The culprits were secured, and at once taken to the flagship. A court-martial was ordered for the next day, Saturday ; and as the prisoners were being taken to the court, St. Vincent, with an unfeeling bluntness of speech which characterized him, — a survival of the frank brutality of the last century,— said, " My friends, I hope you are innocent, but if you are guilty make your peace with God ; for, if you are condemned, and there is daylight to hang you, you will die this day.”
They were condemned ; but the trial ended late, and the president of the court told them they should have Sunday to prepare. “ Sir,” said the earl, “ when you passed sentence, your duty was done ; you had no right to say that execution should be delayed ; ” and he fixed it for eight the next morning. One of the junior admirals saw fit to address him a remonstrance upon what he termed a desecration of the Sabbath. Nelson, on the contrary, approved. " Had it been Christmas instead of Sunday,” wrote he, “ I would have hanged them. Who can tell what mischief would have been brewed over a Sunday’s grog ? " Contrary to previous custom, their own shipmates, the partners and followers in their crime, were compelled to hang them, manning the rope by which the condemned were swayed to the yardarm. The admiral, careful to produce impression, ordered that all the ships should hold divine service immediately upon the execution. Accordingly, when the bell struck eight, the fatal gun was fired, the bodies swung with a jerk aloft, tlie church flags were hoisted throughout the fleet, and all went to prayers. Ere yet the ceremony was over, the Spanish gunboats came out from Cadiz and opened fire ; but St. Vincent would not mar the solemnity of the occasion by shortening the service. Gravely it was carried to its end ; but when the flags came down, all boats were ordered manned. The seamen, with nerves tense from the morning’s excitement, gladly hurried into action, and the enemy were forced back into port.
The incident was but one of many, all tinged with dramatic coloring, all betokening smothered passions, which nothing but a nerve at once calm and remorseless could control. But St. Vincent was not content with mere repression. Outwardly, and indeed inwardly, unmoved, he yet unwearyingly so ordered the fleet as to avoid occasions of outbreak. With the imposing moral control exerted by his unflinching steadiness, little trouble was to be apprehended from single ships ; ignorant of what might be hoped from sympathizers elsewhere, but sure of the extreme penalty in case of failure, the movements lacked cohesion, and were easily nipped. Concerted action only was to be feared, and careful measures were taken to remove opportunities. Captains were forbidden to entertain one another at dinner, — the reason, necessarily unavowed, being that the boats from various ships thus assembling gave facilities for transmitting messages and forming plans ; and when ships arrived from England they underwent a moral quarantine, no intercourse with them being permitted until sanctioned by the admiral. When the captain reported to him. his boat, while waiting, was shoved off out of earshot. It is said that on one occasion a seaman in such a boat managed to call to one looking out of a port of the flagship, “ I say, there, what have you fellows been doing out here, while we have been fighting for your beef and pork ? ” To which the other replied, “ You ’d best say nothing at all about that out here, for if old Jarvie hears ye he ’ll have ye dingle-dangle at the yardarm at eight o’clock to-morrow morning.”
St. Vincent rightly believed in the value of forms, and he was careful to employ them in this crisis to enforce the habit of reverence for the insignia of the state and the emblems of military authority. Young lieutenants — for there were young lieutenants in those days — were directed to stand cap in hand before their superiors, and not merely to touch their hats in a careless manner. “ The discipline of the cabin and wardroom officers is the discipline of the fleet,” said the admiral; and savage, almost, were the punishments that fell upon officers who disgraced their cloth. The hoisting of the colors, the symbol of the power of the nation, from which depended his own and that of all the naval hierarchy, was made an august and imposing ceremony. The marine guard, of near a hundred men, was paraded on board every ship of the line. The national anthem was played, the scarletclad guard presented, and all officers and crews stood bareheaded, as the flag rose to the staff with slowly graduated dignity. Lord St. Vincent himself made a point of attending always, and in full uniform, a detail he did not require of other officers. Thus the divinity that hedges kings was, by due observance, associated with those to whom their authority was delegated, and the very atmosphere the seaman breathed was saturated with reverence.
The presence of Lord St. Vincent on these occasions, and in full uniform, gave rise to an amusing skit by one of the lieutenants of the fleet, attributing the homage exacted, not to the flag, but to the great man himself. The sequel has interest as showing a kind of practical humor in which the chief not infrequently sought relief from the grave anxieties which commonly oppressed him. Parodying the Scriptural story of Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image, the squib began : —
1. “ The Earl of St. Vincent, the commander in chief, made an Image of blue and gold, whose height was about five feet seven inches, and the breadth thereof was about twenty inches ” (which we may infer were the proportions of his lordship). “He set it up every ten o’clock A. M. on the quarter-deck of the Ville de Paris, before Cadiz.”
Passing from hand to hand, it can be understood that this effusion, which was characterized throughout by a certain sprightliness, gave more amusement to men familiar with the local surroundings, and welcoming any trifle of fun in the dullness of a blockade, than it does to us. At last it reached the admiral, who knew the author well. Sending for him on some pretext, an hour before the time fixed for a formal dinner to the captains of the fleet, he detained him until the meal was served, and then asked him to share it. All passed off quietly until the cloth was removed, and then the host asked aloud, “ What shall be done to the man whom the commander in chief delights to houor ? ” “ Promote him,” said one of the company. “ Not so,” replied St. Vincent, “ but set him on high among the people. So, Cumby,” addressing the lieutenant, “ do you sit there,” — on a chair previously arranged at some height above the deck, — “and read this paper to the captains assembled.” Mystified, but not yet guessing what was before him, Cumby took his seat, and, opening the paper, saw his own parody. His imploring looks were lost upon the admiral, who sat with his stern quarter - deck gravity unshaken, while the abashed lieutenant, amid the suppressed mirth of his audience, stumbled through his task, until the words were reached, “ Then tlie Earl of St. Vincent was full of fury, and the form of his visage was changed against the poor Captain of the Main-Top,” who had not taken off his hat before the Image of blue and gold. Then a roar of laughter from the head of the table unloosed all tongues, and Cumby’s penance ended in a burst of general merriment. “ Lieutenant Cumby,” said the admiral, when silence was restored, “ you have been found guilty of parodying Holy Writ to bring your commander in chief into disrespect; and the sentence is that you proceed to England at once on three months’ leave of absence, and upon your return report to me to take dinner here again.”
Earl St. Vincent rendered three great services to England. The first was the forming and disciplining the Mediterranean fleet into the perfection that has been mentioned. Into it, thus organized, he breathed a spirit which, taking its rise from the stern commander himself, rested upon a conviction of power, amply justified in the sequel by Cape St. Vincent and the Nile, its two greatest achievements. The second was the winning of the battle of Cape St. Vincent at a most critical political moment. The third was the suppression of mutiny in 1797 and 1798. But, in estimating the man, these great works are not to be considered as isolated from his past and his future. They were the outcome and fruitage of a character naturally strong, developed through long years of patient sustained devotion to the ideals of discipline and professional tone, which in them received realization. Faithful in the least, Jervis, when the time came, was found faithful also in the greatest. Nor was the future confined to his own personal career. Though Jervis must yield to Nelson the rare palm of genius, which he himself cannot claim, yet was the glory of Nelson, from the Nile to Trafalgar, the fair flower that could only have bloomed upon the rugged stalk of Jervis’s navy. Upon him, therefore, Nelson showered expressions of esteem and reverence, amounting at times almost to tenderness, in his early and better days, ere the malign influence of an unworthy passion had set his heart at variance with others, because at strife within itself.
It was poetic justice, then, that allotted to Jervis the arrangement of the responsible expedition which, in 1798, led to the celebrated battle of the Nile, in its lustre and thorough workmanship the gem of all naval exploits. To him it fell to choose for its command his brilliant younger brother, and to winnow for him the flower of his fleet, to form what Nelson after the victory called “his band of brothers. " “ The battle of the Nile,”said the veteran admiral, Lord Howe, “ stands singular in this, that every captain distinguished himself.”The achievement of the battle was Nelson’s own, and Nelson’s only ; but it was fought on Jervis’s station, by a detachment from Jervis’s fleet. He it was who composed the force, and chose for its leader the youngest flag officer in his command. Bitter reclamations were made by the admirals senior to Nelson, but Jervis had one simple sufficient reply, — “ Those who are responsible for measures must have the choice of the men to execute them.”
When St. Vincent, in 1799, quitted the Mediterranean, he had yet nearly a quarter of a century to live. His later years were distinguished by important services, but they embody the same spirit and exemplify the same methods that marked his Mediterranean command. The wretched indiscipline and inadequate military dispositions of the Channel fleet were, in 1800, realized by the Admiralty, which yet knew not how to frame or apply a remedy. St. Vincent was then called to its charge, when he instituted reforms and enforced a system which still afford an admirable strategic study to naval men. In 1801, when Pitt resigned office, he became First Lord of the Admiralty,— the head of naval affairs for the United Kingdom, — and so continued during Addington’s ministry, till 1804. In 1806, at the age of seventy-two, he was again for a short time called to command the Channel fleet; but in 1807 he retired from active service, and the square flag that had so long flown with honor was hauled down forever.
The rest of his life was spent chiefly at his country seat, Rochetts, in Essex, sixteen miles from London. Having a handsome income, though not wealthy, he entertained freely; and his retreat was cheered by frequent visits from his old naval subordinates and political friends. Generous in the use of money, and without children for whom to save, the neighborhood learned to love him as a benefactor. In cases of necessity, his liberality rose to profusion, and he carried into the management of his estate a carelessness he never showed in administering a fleet. It is told that he once undertook to raise a sum by mortgage, in entire forgetfulness of a much larger amount in hank. Far into old age he retained the active habits of his prime. To say that he rose at four, asserts his biographer, would be to understate the case ; he was frequently in the fields at half past two in the early summer dawn of England, — always before his laborers, — and he was not pleased if his male guests did not appear by six. To ladies he was more tolerant. With mind unclouded and unweakened to the last, he retained his interest in public affairs and in the navy, contributing to the conversation which animated his home the judgment of an acute intellect, though one deeply tinged by prejudices inseparable from so strong a character. Thus honored and solaced by the companionship of his friends, he awaited in calm dignity the summons, which came on the 13th of March, 1823. He was two months over eighty-eight when he passed away, the senior admiral of Great Britain.
A. T. Mahan.