The Life Of Admiral Lord Collingwood [Illustrated Edition]

William Clark Russell

• Publisher: Wagram Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781786255075
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Includes 12 illustrationsThe name of Horatio Nelson still rings across the United Kingdom, and further afield, as a great and gallant naval hero worthy of remembrance through the ages, his statue still stands atop a lofty column in one of the busiest squares in the world. However Nelson was only one of many heroes that fought the French Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, without whom the outcome may have been very different.Never seeking the public acclaim craved by his close friend and comrade Horatio Nelson, Cuthbert Collingwood was one such hero who stood with the great Admiral from the Nile to the former's death at the Battle of Trafalgar. Brave, determined, a great friend to the sailor's under his command, Collingwood was instrumental in defeating the French and he took command of the British Fleet after Trafalgar. Almost never ashore, his constant battles with the French along with exhausting blockade duties drove him into an early grave in 1810.In this excellent biography, penned by noted naval author William Clark Russell the full scope of the exploits, adventures and victories of Admiral Collingwood are recounted in vivid detail.

COLLINGWOOD.

CHAPTER I.

Birth—Family—Education—Moises—Lord Eldon—Goes to Sea—Brathwaite —Old Ships—Old Navigation—Sails for Boston—Bunker’s Hill —Court-Martial—Nelson—West Indies—San Juan Expedition—Shipwreck—Wilfred. Collingwood—Marriage—The Blacketts —Morpeth—With Lord Howe.

CUTHBERT COLLINGWOOD was born in the year 1748 at Newcastle-on-Tyne, in a street called the Side. The house where he first saw the light still stands; it is of brick, three stories high, with a basement; and it was no doubt in its day a genteel, commodious residence. Since Collingwood’s time, however, it has been gutted by fire and put to somewhat base uses—hired for the sale of tobacco, of liquor, of old clothes, and it has, I believe, been a tramps’ lodging-house.

The entry of Collingwood’s baptism in the register of the Church of St. Nicholas at Newcastle-on-Tyne runs thus:

“1748. October 24, Cuthbert, son of Cuthbert Collingwood, Merchant, and Milcah, his wife.”

His family was one of the most ancient in Northumberland. The Collingwoods in their generations lead numbered amongst them Border Chieftains and Cavaliers, Kings’ Commissioners, County Sheriffs and Justices of the Peace.{1} Royalty itself is imported into the genealogy, and the son-in-law of Lord Collingwood boldly introduces us to the Earl of Kent, Joan of Plantagenet, King Edward I., and the Black Prince as ancestors of the Admiral.{2} We shall be going far enough back for all purposes if we start with our hero’s father, Cuthbert Collingwood, who married Milcah, daughter of Reginald Dobson of Barwise, in Westmoreland, and had by her three sons and four or five daughters, Cuthbert being the eldest of the sons.

Mr. Collingwood in his youth was bound apprentice to a Merchant Adventurer and Boothman in Newcastle, and after obtaining his freedom, started in business in that house in the Side where his son, the future admiral, was born. He was unfortunate, and his affairs were wound up. His creditors were distillers, oilmen, soap-boilers, druggists, and so forth, whence the character of his business may be inferred. It was manifestly a hard struggle for the parents, and but for the assistance of friends they must have found it difficult to feed, clothe, and educate their large family. The father died in February 1775, and the property that had been mortgaged for the benefit of the widow, when sold by her, realized nine hundred pounds,{3} so that, as we may see, Cuthbert, when he began his sea career, had little or nothing to expect in the shape of money-help from his home.

Education was happily cheap at Newcastle-on-Tyne in those clays, as it still is. Cuthbert was sent to the Grammar School, the head-master of which was the Reverend Hugh Moises, a person whose fame as a teacher was more than local; for it was related by Lord Eldon that when George III. read Collingwood’s account of the Battle of Trafalgar he expressed surprise that a naval officer should be -able to write so excellent a dispatch; “but,” added the King, “I find he was educated by Moises.”{4} The two Scotts, John and William, afterwards Lords Eldon and Stowell, were amongst Collingwood’s schoolfellows under Moises. No youth ever profited more from his school. His diligence still lingers as a tradition. Probably when he went to sea his Greek and Latin were hove overboard; I find few or no hints of an acquaintance with those languages in his letters; but in general knowledge there was probably not a man in the Service throughout his long career that could have matched him. He loved books, and suffered nothing but his professional duties to interrupt the delight they yielded him. He was perfectly well informed in what may be called polite letters, was a student of everything good in English literature, and had such an art of expressing himself with his pen as brings many of his letters in polish, sweetness of language, and archness of humour, very close to some of the happiest compositions of Addison. His fine taste was the gift of nature, but Moises must claim the merit of cultivating and directing it.

I have been unable to collect any anecdotes of Collingwood’s school-days. Lord Eldon would speak of him as having been “a pretty boy.” “Collingwood,” said the Earl, “at school was a mild boy; he was in the same class as my brother Harry; but he did not then give promise of being the great man he afterwards became; he did not show any remarkable talents then. Lord Collingwood and I,” Lord Eldon told the Hon. Henry Legge soon after the Battle of Trafalgar, “are memorable instances of the blessings to be derived from the country of our birth and the constitution under which we live. He and I were class-fellows at Newcastle. We were placed at that school because neither his father nor mine could afford to place us elsewhere; and now if he returns to this country to take his seat in the House of Lords it will be my duty to express to him, sitting in his place, the thanks of that House (to which neither of us could expect to be elevated) for his eminent services to his country.”{5}

The quality of reserve we find in his manhood he probably possessed as a lad, and it would be heightened in him by the sensitiveness that poverty creates. Yet poverty might have helped him, too, by causing him to be determined in his studies. It was certain that whatever his future was to hold must be of his own manufacture; this the quiet, high-spirited lad would understand, and the perception that made his career noble in after days for valour and for dutifulness, animated him as a lad to the degree of rendering him one of the most resolved, patient, and honest scholars that the old Grammar School of Newcastle ever dismissed into the world.

It is not stated that he exhibited as a lad any marked taste for the sea, though born in a district that has been famous for centuries for its breed of sailors, and that is charged with scores of just such maritime inspirations as would fix the fancies of a boy whose leaning was in any degree oceanwards. A sister of his mother had married Captain, afterwards Admiral, Brathwaite, and no doubt this connection caused Mr. and Mrs. Cuthbert Collingwood to choose the sea as a profession for their son. Brathwaite had entered the naval service in 1743 under the patronage of his relative, Sir Chaloner Ogle, and on the recommendation of Sir Edward Hawke was made lieutenant in 1755. A year later he was promoted Commander, and in the spring of 1761 posted into the Shannon frigate.{6} In a notice of his services, written by himself, dated January 7th, 1806, Collingwood says: “I went into the Navy at a very early period of my life, in the year 1761, in the Shannon, under the protection and care of a kind friend and relation, the late Admiral Brathwaite; to whose regard for me, and to the interest which he took in whatever related to my improvement in nautical knowledge, I owe great obligations.”{7}

He entered as a volunteer. In the memoir published by his son-in-law, it is said that when he first went on board the Shannon be sat crying over his separation from home. The first lieutenant observed him, and “pitying the tender years of the poor child,” addressed a few words of encouragement and kindness to him. The boy was so grateful that he took the officer to his sea-chest and offered him a large piece of plum-cake which his mother had stowed away with his clothes.{8}

For a number of years young Collingwood continued with Brathwaite, first in the Shannon, then in the Gibraltar, and afterwards in the Liverpool. In a narrative of his life, published in 1806, it is stated that he served as midshipman in the Gibraltar in 1766, and as master’s mate in the Liverpool from 1767 to 1772. He was then taken into the Lenox, guard-ship at Portsmouth, commanded by Captain Roddam, who also received his brother Wilfred. Roddam was one of the most seasoned mariners of his day. He was at sea in the Lowestoffe frigate some thirty-six or thirty-seven years before young Collingwood joined the Lenox, had served in expeditions in the West Indies under Vernon, had experienced as a prisoner of war the horrors of a San Domingo jail, and in one fashion or another had seen or suffered pretty nearly everything that entered into the vocation of the sea in those wild, exciting, fighting times.

We may believe that the conversation and recollections of such a man would provide an extraordinary entertainment. The association to the two Collingwoods was, in its way, a liberal marine education. Cuthbert and his Captain were not as yet related; but the spirit of the north country was strong in them both: it must bring them together in a sense of sympathy that would be impossible to the ordinary relations between the commander of a ship of war and his midshipmen. As we think of the lumbering old guard-ship at Portsmouth, the vessels of those distant times rise before the mind’s eye—utterly phantom ships now—the crews, the science, the navigation, the ordnance as ghostly, as completely gone, metaphorically and absolutely, as the Flying Dutchman with her sakers, her poop-lanthorn, and her sprit-topsail. What ponderosity of conformation you find in such craft as young Collingwood was now going to sea in! They floated with the grace of casks, and yet they possessed a certain quality of majesty too, thanks to the embellishment of lines of artillery and to the spacious heights of canvas which, even when on a bowline, and when blowing a single-reef topsail breeze, could scarcely heel them. And the navigation! Hear old Mungo Murray, who was writing but a few years before young Collingwood had strapped a dirk to his hip: “After the latitude is thus found by a good observation, if it agrees with the latitude by the account, it may be presumed that your longitude by account is true; but if there be any considerable difference, it may be feared there will likewise be an error in the longitude; to correct which there can be no certain rule.... If after all this, the observed latitude and that by account do not agree, the only thing that can be done is to let the longitude go as by his account, or make a remark what the longitude would have been, provided the error was in the course, and supposing the distance true.”{9} Is there a nautical Charles Lamb amongst us? There should be as much relish for his palate in the above sentences as ever Elia found in the most felicitous quaintnesses of old Fuller or Burton.

Collingwood remained with Roddam in the Lenox until the latter was relieved in December 1773.{10} In the following February we find our hero aboard the Preston, bound to Boston. The magnificent struggle for independence in North America had begun. The materials for a mighty blaze had been sullenly and obstinately accumulating, and “the insignificant duty of threepence a pound upon tea” was the torch that was to put fire to the heap. On December 18th, 1773, a number of men disguised as Indians had boarded three tea ships lying at Boston and pitched their cargoes overboard. This was followed by the detestable Bill which aimed to extinguish Boston’s privilege as a port—a law that dated the decisive resolution of Parliament to proceed to extremities with the province of Massachusetts Bay; and the Preston—bearing the flag of Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves—with other ships of war, was despatched to Boston to strengthen the naval force in America.

“In 1774,” says Collingwood, in the modest narrative of his career, which I have before quoted from, “I went to Boston with Admiral Graves, and in 1775 was made a lieutenant by him on the day the battle was fought at Bunker’s Hill, where I was with a party of seamen supplying the army with what was necessary for them.” He used to say that he had never witnessed a fiercer struggle.{11} In the darkness of the night, and in wonderful silence, the Yankees, or Provincials, as they were then termed, constructed a small but immensely strong redoubt, with entrenchments and a breastwork, in some parts cannon-proof. Many ships of war floated near, but not a sound of what was going on was heard by them. When the dawn broke and disclosed the almost magical achievement of the night, the guns of the Lively man-of-war—whose people were the first to see what had been done—broke forth in a sort of roar of astonishment. Then followed a heavy and continual fire of cannon, howitzers, and mortars from the ships, from the floating batteries, and from the height of Cop’s Hill. The Americans were bayoneted out of their stronghold at last, but at a fearful cost of life to our side.

Collingwood’s share in this affair of slaughter he himself related, as we have seen. The writer of the Memoir of him in the Naval Chronicle, states that he was promoted to the rank of fourth lieutenant in the Somerset. Nothing is then heard of him until March 1776, when we find him appointed to the Hornet sloop, Captain Haswell, and sailing in her to the West Indies. The conduct of the captain induced a trifling sulkiness of demeanour in Collingwood. He seemed wanting in alacrity, and there appeared a spiritlessness in him that gave offence. In the autumn of 1777, at Port Royal, a court-martial was held upon him; but on every charge he was fully acquitted. The recollection of this unpleasant passage of his life seems to have been present to him ten years later, when he addressed a letter full of beauty and wisdom to a young friend named Lane: “A strict and unwearied attention to your duty,” he says, “and a complaisant and respectful behaviour, not only to your superiors, but to everybody will ensure you their regard; and the reward will surely come, and I hope soon, in the shape of preferment: but if it should not I am sure you have too much good sense to let disappointment sour you. Guard carefully against letting discontent appear in you; it is sorrow to your friends, a triumph to your competitors, and cannot be productive of any good. Conduct yourself so as to deserve the best that can come to you; and the consciousness of your own proper behaviour will keep you in spirits if it should not come.”{12} The whole composition is a masterpiece of grave, touching, all-important advice, the fruits, no doubt, of many a long mood of introspective meditation. •

His close professional association, but not his acquaintance, with Horatio Nelson dates from this period. He tells us in his Memoir that he “had been long before in habits of great friendship” with Nelson. But now begins the story of their intermingled careers. The Lowestoffe, with Nelson on board as a lieutenant, arrived at the station where Collingwood was, and on Nelson being removed, Collingwood succeeded to the vacancy; and when Nelson’s next step was into the Hinchinbrooke, his friend was made commander in the Badger; and on Nelson’s promotion to the Janus, Collingwood was posted into the Hinchinbrooke. The most noticeable feature of his career at this time was the San Juan expedition. The Governor of Jamaica, General Dalling, had projected a scheme for cutting off th...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• PREFACE.
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
• CHAPTER I.
• CHAPTER II.
• CHAPTER III.
• CHAPTER IV.
• CHAPTER V.
• CHAPTER VI.
• CHAPTER VII.
• CHAPTER VIII.
• CHAPTER IX
• CHAPTER X.
• CHAPTER XI.
• CHAPTER XII.