IN THE MASTERTON LIBRARY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8519, 27 August 1907, Page 5

IN THE MASTERTON LIBRARY.

(Specially written for the Wairarapa Age.)

No. XV. THE LIFE OF NELSON. —A.T. Mahan, (PART E.)

j On February 23rd, 1797, within fourteen days of the battle of Cape St. Vincent, Admiral Jervis, subsequently created Earl St Vincent,, was again at sea, Nelson, now a Rear-Admiral of the Blue, being with him. This was the time of the great mutiny at the Nore, and striking testimony is afforded to the greatness of Nelson's power of winning over men by an episode that occurred. Nelson's flagship, the "Theseus," was lately from theEnglish Channel and infected with the prevalent insubordination, but the fleet had not been a month at sea. when a paper wa« dropped on the quarter-deck expressing the devotion of the ship's company to their commander, and pledging that the name of the "Theseus" should yet be as renowned as that of the "Captain." Under Nelson, the very idea of mutiny was an absurdity. Moved partly by the necessity for keeping the seamen employed, Jervis attacked Cadez with a view to forcing the Spanish fleet to come out and fight. This attempt failed to attain its object. . Meantime Nelson had been repeatedly urging Jervis to permit him to attack Teneriffe. This Jervis, after considerable hesitation, ultimately agreed to, and Nelson made two successive attacks on July 22nd and 23rd, which failed. While leading a parly ashore from his boat on the occasion of the second attack Nelson had his arm shattered. At the same moment a cutter was sunk, and Nelson refused to retire till he had seen everybody saved that it was possible to save. When at length he did get back he clambered on board unaided and told the surgeon to.get his instruments ready, for he knew he must lose his arm, and the sooner it was off the better. In the light of their subsequent estrangement, it is pleasant to know that Nelson's stepson Nisbet was with him on this occasion, and assisted him by catching him as he fell, binding up the wounded arm at once, and helping him back to the boat. Nelson was shortly after invalided home and suffered a very tedious and painful recovery. While convalescing he heard the rumour that Duncan was about fighting the' battle of Camperdown and stretching out his sound arm he exclaimed, "I would give this other arm to be with Duncan at this moment." The 10th of April, 1798, found Nelson again at sea upon that cruise which was to culminate in the Nile, the first of the three great victories that were planned and executed by Nelson's genius, sole and uncontrolled. That cruise also was to lead him into that temptation to which he succumbed and which sapped the high moral fibre that had been such an enormous sustaining force in t',3 previous stages of his career. "II nor est a Nili" runs, and truly ru.ns the anagram formed from the letters comprising Nelson's name. But with the fame came the temptation. Praise and flatteiy had ever gratified the simple vanity that constituted the one weak spot in our heroe's character. And Nelson, who till now had been true to his wife, fell and fell publicly and permanently before the fulsome adulation of a siren. The Battle of the Nile arose through the French fleet having convoyed Napoleon and his army of 40,000 men to Egypt. Nelson had a long and wearisome pursuit of the French fleet whose movements had been cleverly mastered, but on August Ist ,1798, the enemy was discovered moored in Aboukir Bay, where they were protected by shoal water. The plan of the attuck in this battle, though most interesting on account of the consummate skill and daring displayed, is too complicated to explain here. It must suffice to say that at half-past five on the evening of the Ist of August, 1795, the British fleet, without the aid of local pilots, stood boldly in across the front of the enemy's line, anchored, and engaged them from the shoreward side, and that on the morn • ing of the 2nd August, 1798, the position of the enemy was that, the Orient flagship had blown up, six first-raters had struck their colours, another was a dismantled wreck, three more were ashore, and t two battleships and two frigates managed to escape to sea. During this battle Nelson was severely wounded in the head, but after the wound was bound up he went on deck again. For the victory of the ,Nile Nelson was created Baron Nelson of the Nile, and was granted a pension of £2,000 a year. Five weeks later he arrived in Naples. Naples was overjoyed with the victory, and he was received with the wildest demonstrations of favour. The British Ambassador at the Court of Naples was Sir William Hamilton, the husband of the already notorious Emma Hamilton, destined to become world-famous from her association with the great sailor. She put out from Naples in a boat to meet the "Vanguard," and by a strange irony of fate, the story of the meeting was preserved to posterity by Nelson himself in a letter to his own wife. "The scene in the boat," he wrote, "was terribly" affecting. Up flew her ladyship, and exclaiming 'O God, is it possible?' she fell into my arm more dead than | alive. Tears, however, soon set matters to rights." The history ot Lady Hamilton and of her intimacy with Nelson —so politely glossed over by Sou they —are told by Mahan fairly and in such a manner as to explain what at first sight seems a mystery —how a man of Nelson's greatness of mind, who had already gone so far without yielding to temptation, should suddenly subject himself to any woman, and above all to such a woman as Emma Hamilton.