The British navy may well have ceased to count its victories. It is rich
beyond the wildest dreams of success and fame. It may well, rather, on a
culminating day of its history, cast about for the memory of some
reverses to appease the jealous fates which attend the prosperity and
triumphs of a nation. It holds, indeed, the heaviest inheritance that
has ever been entrusted to the courage and fidelity of armed men.
It is too great for mere pride. It should make the seamen of to-day
humble in the secret of their hearts, and indomitable in their unspoken
resolution. In all the records of history there has never been a time
when a victorious fortune has been so faithful to men making war upon the
sea. And it must be confessed that on their part they knew how to be
faithful to their victorious fortune. They were exalted. They were
always watching for her smile; night or day, fair weather or foul, they
waited for her slightest sign with the offering of their stout hearts in
their hands. And for the inspiration of this high constancy they were
indebted to Lord Nelson alone. Whatever earthly affection he abandoned
or grasped, the great Admiral was always, before all, beyond all, a lover
of Fame. He loved her jealously, with an inextinguishable ardour and an
insatiable desire—he loved her with a masterful devotion and an infinite
trustfulness. In the plenitude of his passion he was an exacting lover.
And she never betrayed the greatness of his trust! She attended him to
the end of his life, and he died pressing her last gift (nineteen prizes)
to his heart. “Anchor, Hardy—anchor!” was as much the cry of an ardent
lover as of a consummate seaman. Thus he would hug to his breast the
last gift of Fame.
It was this ardour which made him great. He was a flaming example to the
wooers of glorious fortune. There have been great officers before—Lord
Hood, for instance, whom he himself regarded as the greatest sea officer
England ever had. A long succession of great commanders opened the sea
to the vast range of Nelson’s genius. His time had come; and, after the
great sea officers, the great naval tradition passed into the keeping of
a great man. Not the least glory of the navy is that it understood
Nelson. Lord Hood trusted him. Admiral Keith told him: “We can’t spare
you either as Captain or Admiral.” Earl St. Vincent put into his hands,
untrammelled by orders, a division of his fleet, and Sir Hyde Parker gave
him two more ships at Copenhagen than he had asked for. So much for the
chiefs; the rest of the navy surrendered to him their devoted affection,
trust, and admiration. In return he gave them no less than his own
exalted soul. He breathed into them his own ardour and his own ambition.
In a few short years he revolutionized, not the strategy or tactics of
sea-warfare, but the very conception of victory itself. And this is
genius. In that alone, through the fidelity of his fortune and the power
of his inspiration, he stands unique amongst the leaders of fleets and
sailors. He brought heroism into the line of duty. Verily he is a
terrible ancestor.
And the men of his day loved him. They loved him not only as victorious
armies have loved great commanders; they loved him with a more intimate
feeling as one of themselves. In the words of a contemporary, he had “a
most happy way of gaining the affectionate respect of all who had the
felicity to serve under his command.”
To be so great and to remain so accessible to the affection of one’s
fellow-men is the mark of exceptional humanity. Lord Nelson’s greatness
was very human. It had a moral basis; it needed to feel itself
surrounded by the warm devotion of a band of brothers. He was vain and
tender. The love and admiration which the navy gave him so unreservedly
soothed the restlessness of his professional pride. He trusted them as
much as they trusted him. He was a seaman of seamen. Sir T. B. Martin
states that he never conversed with any officer who had served under
Nelson “without hearing the heartiest expressions of attachment to his
person and admiration of his frank and conciliatory manner to his
subordinates.” And Sir Robert Stopford, who commanded one of the ships
with which Nelson chased to the West Indies a fleet nearly double in
number, says in a letter: “We are half-starved and otherwise
inconvenienced by being so long out of port, but our reward is that we
are with Nelson.”
This heroic spirit of daring and endurance, in which all public and
private differences were sunk throughout the whole fleet, is Lord
Nelson’s great legacy, triply sealed by the victorious impress of the
Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar. This is a legacy whose value the
changes of time cannot affect. The men and the ships he knew how to lead
lovingly to the work of courage and the reward of glory have passed away,
but Nelson’s uplifting touch remains in the standard of achievement he
has set for all time. The principles of strategy may be immutable. It
is certain they have been, and shall be again, disregarded from timidity,
from blindness, through infirmity of purpose. The tactics of great
captains on land and sea can be infinitely discussed. The first object
of tactics is to close with the adversary on terms of the greatest
possible advantage; yet no hard-and-fast rules can be drawn from
experience, for this capital reason, amongst others—that the quality of
the adversary is a variable element in the problem. The tactics of Lord
Nelson have been amply discussed, with much pride and some profit. And
yet, truly, they are already of but archaic interest. A very few years
more and the hazardous difficulties of handling a fleet under canvas
shall have passed beyond the conception of seamen who hold in trust for
their country Lord Nelson’s legacy of heroic spirit. The change in the
character of the ships is too great and too radical. It is good and
proper to study the acts of great men with thoughtful reverence, but
already the precise intention of Lord Nelson’s famous memorandum seems to
lie under that veil which Time throws over the clearest conceptions of
every great art. It must not be forgotten that this was the first time
when Nelson, commanding in chief, had his opponents under way—the first
time and the last. Had he lived, had there been other fleets left to
oppose him, we would, perhaps, have learned something more of his
greatness as a sea officer. Nothing could have been added to his
greatness as a leader. All that can be affirmed is, that on no other day
of his short and glorious career was Lord Nelson more splendidly true to
his genius and to his country’s fortune.