The hero with a hundred faults

The Duke of Wellington once bumped into Nelson in a minister’s anteroom. Nelson had no idea who Wellington was (it was before he was famous), and at first Nelson talked entirely about himself, and in a style so vain and silly that Wellington was disgusted. Then Nelson briefly left the room, checked out Wellington’s identity, and returned to talk as one officer to another in a way that Wellington found altogether fascinating.

There were two sides to Nelson. The most brilliant naval commander of all time was also a shameless self-publicist and the spoiled celebrity lover of Emma Hamilton. Perhaps these contradictions are what make him endlessly fascinating to biographers. The bicentenary of the battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) comes around next year, and the first of the new crop of Nelson books is already filling bookshops. The weightiest of these is the major new biography by John Sugden. As a naval historian, Sugden is mainly concerned with Nelson the sailor — a driven man, supremely self-confident, opportunistic and capable of taking calculated risks of an extraordinary kind.

Consider Nelson’s behaviour at the battle of Cape St Vincent, when he was still a commodore. As the British fleet advanced in formation towards the Spanish, Nelson suddenly broke out of line, and, defying orders, sailed alone straight towards the Spanish fleet. His ship, the Captain, opened fire on the Spanish flagship, a gigantic vessel far bigger than Nelson’s, and for good measure he also engaged two other Spanish battleships. This suicidal manoeuvre succeeded in deflecting the Spanish fleet, but the Captain was shot to bits. Instead of limping out of the battle, Nelson then ordered his wrecked ship to ram a far bigger Spanish ship and, heedless of the blood pouring from a horrible wound in his stomach, himself led the boarding party which leapt onto the enemy ship.