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- IV
Concerning ‘The greatest sailor since the world began.’--
TENNYSON.
In this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the main road,
some by-paths have an enticement not readily to be withstood. Beckoned
by the genius of Nelson I am going to err into such a by-path. If the
reader will keep me company I shall be glad. At the least we can promise
ourselves that pleasure which is wickedly said to be in sinning, for a
literary sin the divergence will be.
Very likely it is no new remark that the inventions of our time have at
last brought about a change in sea warfare in degree corresponding to
the revolution in all warfare effected by the original introduction from
China into Europe of gunpowder. The first European firearm, a clumsy
contrivance, was, as is well known, scouted by no few of the knights as
a base implement, good enough peradventure for weavers too craven to
stand up crossing steel with steel in frank fight. But as ashore
knightly valour, though shorn of its blazonry, did not cease with the
knights, neither on the seas, though nowadays in encounters there a
certain kind of displayed gallantry be fallen out of date as hardly
applicable under changed circumstances, did the nobler qualities of such
naval magnates as Don John of Austria, Doria, Van Tromp, Jean Bart, the
long line of British admirals and the American Decaturs of 1812 become
obsolete with their wooden walls.
Nevertheless, to anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without
being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one
the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson’s _Victory_, seems to float
there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but
also as a poetic reproach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the
_Monitors_ and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads. And this
not altogether because such craft are unsightly, unavoidably lacking the
symmetry and grand lines of the old battle-ships, but equally for other
reasons.
There are some, perhaps, who while not altogether inaccessible to that
poetic reproach just alluded to, may yet on behalf of the new order be
disposed to parry it; and this to the extent of iconoclasm, if need be.
For example, prompted by the sight of the star inserted in the
_Victory’s_ deck designating the spot where the Great Sailor fell, these
martial utilitarians may suggest considerations implying that Nelson’s
ornate publication of his person in battle was not only unnecessary, but
not military, nay, savoured of foolhardiness and vanity. They may add,
too, that at Trafalgar it was in effect nothing less than a challenge to
death; and death came; and that but for his bravado the victorious
admiral might possibly have survived the battle, and so, instead of
having his sagacious dying injunctions overruled by his immediate
successor in command, he himself when the contest was decided might have
brought his shattered fleet to anchor, a proceeding which might have
averted the deplorable loss of life by shipwreck in the elemental
tempest that followed the martial one.
Well, should we set aside the more than disputable point whether for
various reasons it was possible to anchor the fleet, then plausibly
enough the Bethamites of war may urge the above.
But he _might have been_ is but boggy ground to build on. And certainly
in foresight as to the larger issue of an encounter, and anxious
preparations for it--buoying the deadly way and mapping it out, as at
Copenhagen--few commanders have been so painstakingly circumspect as
this reckless declarer of his person in fight.
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