19 - Setting off, April–July 1803

Summary

Rumours that Nelson was to be appointed to command in the iMediterranean began circulating in early March 1803. Even before then, he had been privately anticipating a resumption of hostilities, while loyally maintaining in public the line of the party he supported, under Prime Minister Henry Addington.

However his public support for peace did not prevent him from privately advising Addington about measures to be taken in the event of war. The letter of 25 October 1802 to Addington (344), with its short but very significant enclosure (345), is another significant recent ‘find’. As Nelson explained in his covering letter, his proposal was for ‘the quickest Mode of bringing our naval force into Action’, in order to give ‘an early and knock down blow to our Enemy’. The simple, but utterly ruthless, methods he proposed for mobilising and manning the fleet as speedily as possible were strikingly similar to the methods actually used in the emergency mobilisation of the fleet in April 1803 – what became known as the ‘Hot Press’. This provoked a storm of protest, and we now know that Nelson had anticipated this, saying of his own plan, ‘although it may not be palatable to all at the Moment yet in a Week I expect the whole Country will approve of it’.

By early April Nelson knew that, as he told the Duke of Clarence, ‘the Cabinet had named me for the Command in the Mediterranean and that it might be necessary for me to go out in a frigate and that the Victory should follow’ (347). The question of whether or not he was to have the Victory remained unresolved for weeks and, in the meantime, his other plans began to firm up, including selling off some of his stock at Merton to a neighbouring famer (348), sending his bedding and furniture to Portsmouth (349) and beginning to correspond with his new second in command, Sir Richard Bickerton, who was already out in the Mediterranean (351).

At last, on 18 May, he got afloat but, as his private letter to Addington shows, he still was not sure of the Victory and, in the end, had to leave her behind off Brest (in case his friend William Cornwallis, commanding the Channel Fleet, needed her) and continue his passage to the Mediterranean in the frigate Amphion.