There is much similarity between a well-designed man-of-war and a well-led group of fighting men. In each case there is one prime consideration—military efficiency. A good ship must be seaworthy, so that she will not be laid up unnecessarily for repairs due to the everyday exigencies of her life as distinguished from the casualties of battle, and thus be unavailable for active duty when she is needed; she must be readily maneuvered in order to respond with the utmost alacrity to the will of her commander; she must be trustworthy, free from defects of design or construction which might cause her to become unexpectedly useless or an actual liability in a combat; she must possess qualities of stamina to resist the shock of conflict; and she must be able to inflict damage upon an opponent. Correspondingly, the personnel of a good military unit must be healthy enough to withstand the ordinary rigors of active duty and not be confined to sick bay when their services are urgently needed; they must be skilled in their tasks, competent to perform them properly with the minimum of direction from the leader; they must have endurance of body and heart for the supreme test of unusual and dangerous exertion; and they must know how to use their weapons. The beauty of a perfect ship is generally recognized; there is equal beauty in the disciplined efficiency produced by find leadership.
Such leadership may be summarized as ability to inspire in others a comprehension of the leader’s will and a desire to fulfill it. This ability Lord Nelson possessed to an extraordinary degree. A deceptively obvious explanation of his genius, isn’t it? So is it obvious to say that a good ship has all the virtues enumerated above, and that the genius of an excellent marine architect is shown by his ability to build them into a ship at will. The result is apparent, but how was it accomplished? Draw upon all the resources at the disposal of the designer and try to create one; go to the psychologist’s storehouse of human traits and aptitudes, help yourself, and try to create another “band of brothers.” You will probably succeed equally well in both enterprises.
However, it is possible, by watching the architect plan a ship, to learn what materials go into its construction, by careful study of his work to discover the governing laws of design, and finally to achieve a passable ship. Still there is missing some factor which causes it to fall short of the masterpiece of the expert who is also an intuitive artist. In like manner, those traits of character which enabled Nelson to become such an outstanding leader of men can be analyzed by close scrutiny of his life until we may say with assurance that they are indispensable to leadership; we may even discover in what proportion they were present and their relative influence upon his relations with others. (It is a truism to remark that they are also present in every personality and susceptible of development through earnest practice.) This knowledge does not assure to us success in handling men at all comparable to that of this superb artist, but it can be very helpful in getting an approximation of his results.
“And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” There is the secret of Nelson’s magnificent leadership. Other estimable qualities he had in abundant measure, and no one can claim that they were a negligible part of his power. Indeed, courage, good judgment, justice, and tact, a thorough knowledge of his profession, perseverance in the indoctrination of his subordinates in his methods, energy in the prosecution of the task at hand, complete self-control whenever the lack of it might endanger success, and common sense, that sense of perspective which at one time manifests itself as a sense of humor, at others as the capacity and willingness to delegate authority to reliable agents—all these are essential attributes if a man is to be entrusted with the management of widespread affairs. To a greater extent than many men who have done great things, Nelson was distinguished by the possession of these traits. But more important and influential than any one of them, perhaps than all combined, was that ready human sympathy and loyalty of his which can most truly be termed love. “Above the principal martial geniuses of the world, Nelson stands out as the only one who led entirely by love instead of ruling through fear.”
Evidence of his sympathetic consideration for others, of his generosity with material aid and encouragement, and of his loyalty to all his associates is so profuse in the anecdotes related of him that it is not difficult to understand why his shipmates, officers, and men, adored him. His treatment of his midshipmen was typical of his attitude toward all about him, and unusual in those days, when contempt for their inexperience and youth was the general sentiment displayed by their superiors. He endeavored to make life on shipboard as pleasant for them as he could manage; they were consistently his guests at dinner or breakfast, when he displayed himself a congenial host, and joined whole-heartedly in their conversation. Whenever an opportunity occurred, he introduced them to the most respected company to be found in the ports of call, in order that they might learn to be at ease in any gathering; he displayed as much solicitude and grief at the injury or death of any of them as at that of friends of long standing. Had they been young sons of his own he could scarcely have been more attentive to their welfare.
All these are general statements of his kindness to a group who sorely wanted considerate treatment. There are specific instances of it which demonstrate more forcibly than any assertions how thoughtful he was of their happiness. One day he observed that a midshipman who was afraid to go aloft was in distress because of that fear and because the first lieutenant showed contempt for it. Nelson thereupon casually suggested to the boy that they race to the maintop, as if that were the most natural pastime in the world. He sent the boy up the easiest way, chose the more difficult for himself, took no notice of the time required for the other to arrive, and then began chatting of commonplace topics until the boy became composed; then, and not until then, did he make a direct comment about how little occasion any one had to fear a climb into the rigging of a ship. Again, after the Battle of the Nile, and during the chase after Le Genereux, he observed a midshipman wince, falter, grow pale when a shot, the first the boy had experienced, went over his head. Thereupon Nelson placed a sympathetic hand upon the midshipman’s shoulder and said too quietly to be overheard by any one else:
You don’t like the music: but Charles the Twelfth ran away from the first shot that he saw fired, and was afterward called “Great” for his bravery, so we will expect great things from you.
Midshipmen were by no means the only recipients of his kindness. He impoverished himself by constant acts of generosity like his gift of $10 to the gardener at Merton for christening robe. It is claimed that no one ever applied to him in vain for assistance; he was liberal with his own time and thought as well as with his purse. Even at great inconvenience to himself he refused to cause worry or distress to another if it were in his power to prevent it.
Lord Nelson, in private life, was remarkable for a demeanor quiet, sedate, and unobtrusive, anxious to give pleasure to everyone about him, by some act of kindness, chiefly to those who seemed to require it most … Those who knew him best would bear witness to his gentleness, kindness, good breeding, and courtesy.
The importance of the individual was no argument to Lord Nelson. He hesitated not at all in ordering the return of the last dispatch boat for England before the anticipated engagement which we know as the Battle of Trafalgar, so that a petty officer’s letter to his wife might be included. Nor was occasional personal antipathy a deterrent to his kindness; in spite of his desperate need for all the weight of metal he could muster against the combined fleet and in direct defiance of Admiralty orders, he allowed Calder to return to England in the Prince of Wales, whose 90 guns were valuable to the Mediterranean Fleet, rather than humiliate him by transferring him to a smaller, more conveniently spared ship.
There were two notable occasions when this consideration for others’ feelings involved great pain for himself. The first of these occurred at Teneriffe. The captain of the Seahorse had his bride on board with him when the storming of the town occurred. Those who were with Nelson on the return wished to stop at that ship to have his arm tended, lest the journey to his own prove fatally long; Nelson refused for fear his injury might be alarming to Mrs. Fremantle in the absence of definite word about her husband. At Trafalgar, as he was being carried below in agony, he concealed his face and decorations by covering them himself with his handkerchief so that the men might not recognize him. What extra anguish this must have cost him we can guess; to undergo additional pain in order to avoid causing sorrow to others is indeed the act of a man who loves his companions more than himself.
As love and loyalty are two conceptions so inseparable in our imaginations that each appears to be but an aspect of the other, so was it with Lord Nelson’s character. His wonderful loyalty marched hand in hand with his humane sympathy throughout his career, making that “one long demonstration of loyalty—loyalty up and more especially of loyalty down.” Never, so far as I have been able to learn, did he fail to shoulder the responsibility for any act of a subordinate, whether it was done in accordance with his orders or upon the other’s initiative. Most especially, any one who became liable to censure because of the unfortunate outcome of an exercise of independent judgment received instant championship from his chief. Such an occasion was the court- martial of Captain Layman for the loss of his sloop; Nelson undertook to defend him from the charge of official carelessness by claiming that true remissness would have consisted in not running any risks upon his assigned station and duty. Again, when the charge of treason was made against the captains under him during the blockade of the Mediterranean ports near Genoa, his response was so prompt, spirited, and insistent that all responsibility for their honorable conduct as well as their military acts be imputed to him, that he succeeded in clearing them completely from a libel which might easily have ended their naval service at once. The confidence which such devoted support from Nelson created in all those entrusted by him with responsibility was an important factor in the morale of his commands.
With equal consistency, Lord Nelson displayed an even rarer loyalty in his refusal to accept for himself credit he thought due others for their accomplishments. This tendency was so pronounced that he even went to the extreme of according to his subordinates praise and commendation for felicitous results which were properly attributable to his own ability and judgment. Immediately after the Battle of the Nile, he sent the following message to all the fleet: “The Admiral desires that they accept his most sincere and cordial thanks for their very gallant behavior in this glorious battle.” In subsequent official comment upon the engagement, he ascribed his victory not to his own consummate tactical insight but to the fact that “I had the happiness to command a band of brothers.” This remark was so typical of Nelson in his relations with his fleet and so descriptive of the ideal toward which he directed his energies that it has come to be accepted as the epitome of his achievements in handling men. Upon hearing of the Penelope’s capture of the last of the French ships to escape him after Nile, the Guillaume Tell, he wrote to Captain Blackwood, whom he had never met, a generous appreciation of his action. After the Battle of Copenhagen, the Mayor of London received from Nelson an expression of the Admiral’s displeasure that no thanks had been awarded to the subordinates for their part: “I affirm that never was the glory of the country upheld by more determined bravery than on that occasion.”
It is perfectly true that without the cooperation and whole-hearted support of his officers and men even the unlimited professional ability of a Nelson would have been of little value in overcoming his opponents, but who would be unwilling or reluctant to serve enthusiastically a man who gave thus freely of his approval and loyalty to all his men?
To detail some of the instances of his loyalty and thoughtfulness for the physical welfare and safety of his personnel either as individuals or as components of the fighting efficiency of the fleet, would be to exceed reason in an article of this scope. It should be sufficient to remark that he assiduous in his prosecution of this phase of his duty.
Closely associated with the quality of love for others may usually be found a nice tact and a deep faith in the good will and competence of those others. Sympathy and tact, loyalty and faith—it is surprising to find the second of each pair missing in a character when the first is present to a noteworthy extent. Nevertheless, there are some persons in whom this anomaly of personality may be discovered. Not so with Lord Nelson; his was a beautifully complete personality, of which each major aspect was rounded out by the existence of its complementary minor traits. His tact was particularly exquisite. Two frequently quoted letter from him to Captain Keats in the unseaworthy Superb demonstrate this trait better than any analysis of reported acts or sayings. At the risk of prolixity, since these letters are so famous as scarcely to need reference, I am quoting them at length; Lord Nelson here speaks for himself more eloquently than can the most gifted interpreter.
Most Private:
My Dear Keats, I felt most exceedingly last night, at finding your friend, Admiral Murray, so exceedingly hurt at some conversation which passed between you and him, about some hammocks. I can most solemnly assure you, that so far from Admiral Murray withholding any stores from the Superb, that he would stretch the point to comply with your wishes, well knowing that in our scanty supplies you would take no more than was absolutely necessary for present use.
The Superb, upon every consideration, whether I consider the value of her captain as an officer, or the importance of preserving her ship’s company, ought to have every comfort which the Service will possibly allow. I have, therefore, desired that Admiral Murray will get from you an account of the number of hammocks wanted to complete the Superb for Channel Service, that I may send to Naples to purchase them: and I again assure you that Admiral Murray would stretch any length which you could desire, to meet your wants and wishes. The situation of First Captain is a very unthankful office, for if there is a deficiency of stores, he must displease probably the whole fleet: for no ship can have her demands complied with. I wish, my dear Keats, you would turn this in your mind, and relieve Admiral Murray from the uneasiness your conversation has given him; for I will venture to say that if he could (or ought to) show a partiality, it would be to the Superb, because her captain husbands the stores in a most exemplary manner. You will readily conceive what I must feel upon this occasion, being truly your most obliged and faithful friend.
Nelson and Bronte
The second of these marvelous letters was written during the chase after Villeneuve to the West Indies. In spite of the utmost endeavor on the part of the captain and crew to drive the Superb at the speed of the balance of the fleet, that ship delayed the entire concourse of vessels. Although himself impatient at the slowness of the pace, Nelson was tactful enough to send Keats the letter from which the following is an extract:
Victory, May 19th, 1805. My dear Keats, I am fearful that you may think that the Superb does not go as fast as I should wish. However that may be (for if we all went ten knots, I should not think it fast enough), yet I would have you be assured that I know and feel that the Superb does all which is possible for a ship to accomplish; and I desire that you will not fret upon the occasion. I hope, and indeed feel confident, that very soon you will help me to secure the Majesteux . . .
“The most brilliant leader that the British Navy ever produced veiled his leadership and sank its functions in his followers.” This comment of the late Admiral Colomb upon a trait which was especially rare in those days is the simplest and tersest description I have ever encountered of Nelson’s great faith in his subordinates. He relied so unconcernedly upon the efficiency and judgment of the captains of the Mediterranean Fleet that he granted them as free scope in the prosecution of their mutual task of containing the French fleet and destroying French communications as was consistent with concentration for the ardently courted battle. And when his final battle appeared imminent, instead of assuming control of the combat, he delegated to another the leadership of that portion of his forces which was expected to decide the outcome, retaining for himself the task of seeing that this other, Admiral Collingwood, should have a free rein in his field of action.
These are but evidence of a trust founded on personal knowledge of the men concerned, not necessarily due to a deep-seated faith in human nature and in the honor and valor of his associates. However, we need not seek far to discover that he did indeed have such a trust in every one under his control. The words inseparable from any thought of Nelson, “England expects that every man will do his duty,” are in themselves proof of this faith, since it was manifestly impossible even for a Nelson to have acquaintance with the reliability of each man. The enthusiasm with which the entire fleet greeted these words was not only a vote of confidence for Nelson himself, but a proud acknowledgment of the Admiral’s faith in his force and a pledge to prove worthy.
To attain and maintain that ascendancy over the hearts and minds of others which is leadership, a man needs courage and self-control, a sense of honor and of justice, in addition to those qualities of love, faith, and tact already discussed. The latter will give him affection, but respect for him must be present if he is to direct the actions of other men.
That Nelson was courageous is unquestionable. He had not only that disregard for physical risk which is commonly regarded as the principal manifestation of a brave nature, but he had also the moral courage to stick to his own decisions based on his estimate of the situation, and to assume all responsibility for his acts. In that day, when the value of initiative was almost unrecognized, and literal obedience to the orders of superiors, whether petty officers or the Admiralty, was strictly required, and the punishment of disobedience was apt to be stringent, this trait was doubly estimable. In self-control, Lord Nelson was not as uniformly splendid. He was apt to be irritable about petty matters, and fretful when crossed. However, in time of emergency he was calm and unruffled, with a self-possession that was inimitable, and even at those times when his impatience at idleness or delay caused him to display annoyance, it was toward things rather than people that he directed his displeasure.
Justice to every one was one of Nelson’s passions. He himself practiced this quality throughout his life, and insisted that it be awarded also by others to those who served under him. His letter to the Mayor of London, already cited as an instance of his loyalty, is a case in point. It angered him that there had been no official recognition of the share in the glory of Copenhagen merited by the entire detachment involved, and he did not hesitate to express his opinion of the oversight. After the Nile, the first lieutenants of the ships engaged were at once promoted to captains, which excluded the first lieutenant of the Culloden. As it had been the misfortune of going aground rather than any lack of zeal on the part of the company that kept the Culloden out of the fray, Lord Nelson considered this unfair discrimination against Lieutenant Troubridge; he took up the cudgels in his behalf with promptitude, and succeeded in gaining the coveted promotion for him.
Devotion to duty is an integral part of honorable conduct, and this was a leit motif of Nelson’s life. He said in his youth, “However services may be received, it is not right for an officer to slacken his zeal for his country”; his dying words were, “Thank God I have done my duty.” History attests the truth of this in the fame accorded his great campaigns and battles. Less well known is the unremitting zeal for his duty he displayed long before he came into the spotlight of public interest. During his cruise in the West Indies in command of the Boreas, he discovered that with the connivance of the civil authorities the navigation acts, intended to protect British commerce and foster a reserve force of merchant seaman upon which the navy could draw in time of national emergency, were being openly broken. He made representations to this effect to his superior, Admiral Hughes, and received for his trouble orders not to interfere with the contraband trade. To a man of Horatio Nelson’s fiber, obedience to an order of that kind was dishonorable and accordingly impossible. Therefore he disregarded it, and proceeded against the illegal trade so energetically and effectively as to stamp it out in the short time he was on the station and cause the substitution of a legitimate trade in British-built bottoms. That he was subsequently vindicated in his course by governmental approval does not minimize the risks he incurred by his actions; he himself was thoroughly aware of the magnitude of those risks, but was fortified in his decision by the knowledge that his true duty to the best interests of his country lay in this case in disobedience to immediate authority.
Lord Nelson felt his own honor involved in that of his country; how highly he valued that may be inferred from the following remarks of his. In one of his few speeches in the House of Lords he said:
I, my Lords, have in different countries seen much of the miseries of war. I am, therefore, in my innermost soul and man of peace, yet I would not for the sake of any peace, however fortunate, consent to sacrifice one jot of England’s honor. Our honor is inseparably combined with our genuine interest. Hitherto there has nothing been known in the continent greater than the fame, untainted honor, the generous public sympathies, high diplomatic influence, the commercial grandeur, the resistless power and the unconquerable valor of the British nation.
We have these words from the prayer he offered on the morning of Trafalgar:
May the Great God Whom I worship grant to my Country and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious victory: and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it: and may humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British Fleet.
Surely this is the sentiment of one to whom honorable conduct is an ever-present ideal.
A man may be so well endowed with all these traits that men love and admire him enough to endure any hardship for his sake and brave any danger at his behest, and yet he may be an utter failure as a successful and effective leader. Unless he known his profession thoroughly and is his profession thoroughly and is able and willing to impart to others that knowledge, or as much of it as is necessary for the accomplishment of the task assigned, unless he has the judgment to apply his knowledge, the common sense to delegate a part of the work to others in order that he may not be swamped with the minutiae of administration to the detriment of the broader phases of his mission, unless finally he has the enthusiasm and energy to apply himself untiringly to that mission, the devotion of his followers is misapplied and wasted. Lord Nelson was eminent in these respects; he was both an inspiring and a remarkably successful leader.
Even as a very young man Lord Nelson possessed an extraordinary grasp of all aspects of the naval profession. At the direction of his uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, he spent two years in a merchantman as a foremast hand, so that he might become thoroughly conversant with the details of handling a sailing vessel under all conditions. Upon the completion of this cruise he was assigned by the same mentor to the duty of patrolling the Thames in the longboats of the Triumph, which Captain Suckling commanded and to which he had contrived to have the young Nelson attached. The experience thus gained was invaluable to him later. Intimate acquaintance with the capacities, limitations, and abilities of sailing ships enabled him to decide at once what tactics could be employed in certain situations and to formulate his own effective variations of the tactics then standard; that confidence in his ability to handle ships safely among rocks and shoals which sprang from prolonged navigation of the Thames, was instrumental in the defeat of the French fleet at Aboukir Bay. His comprehension of the fundamental principles of tactics and strategy was the result of a lifetime of study. Lord Nelson was familiar with Clerk of Eldin’s revolutionary Naval Tactics, which was then despised by most naval officers as the impracticable nonsense of a civilian. While Nelson was yet a very junior captain, Lord Howe, himself a great tactician, remarked that Captain Nelson was a man to be consulted as an authority on questions of tactics. The concentration of a superior force upon the enemy was the object of all his maneuvers and tactical instructions; when he could not bring against his opponent a superior fleet, he endeavored to arrange his attack in such a manner as to deny to part of the enemy the opportunity to participate in the battle until he had brought superior strength against the rest of the hostile fleet and eliminated that from the situation. This was the object of his dispositions at Nile and Trafalgar, and both times he succeeded in reducing the overpowering fleets opposed to him to a point of actual inferiority to his own before the enemy could bring all his ships into the fray. In strategy he proved to be more than a match for Napoleon himself. “Those far- distant, storm-beaten ships upon which the Grand Army never looked were all that stood between it and the dominion of the world.” While all the rest of England was in panic lest the Grand Army’s next object should be the British Isles, Lord Nelson calmly went about his preparations to obstruct and if possible prevent the fulfillment of Napoleon’s intentions as he analyzed them. Had he guessed right once, or even twice, his perspicuity might be credited to good fortune, but the fact that he was never deceived by Napoleon’s elaborate feints cannot be so explained. He cultivated the habit of a detailed estimate of the situation, testing the alternatives open to him against his touchstone, “Is the honor and benefit to our country worth the risk?” When the answer was negative, as it was in the event of his catching Villeneuve on the return lap of the famous race to the West Indies and back, he was not the man to pick a fight. However, when his strategic insight showed him he must take great risks, as at Copenhagen and Trafalgar he dared do so, but exercised his tactical genius to counteract his handicaps. How well he succeeded! Lord Nelson’s uniform success in all his undertakings, except the attempted storming of Teneriffe, when failure was due to the dilatoriness and lack of initiative of a subordinate, attest his professional knowledge and the sober judgement that applied that knowledge to England’s best advantage.
In delegating to Admiral Collingwood entire charge of more than half the fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, Lord Nelson demonstrated his common sense as well as his faith in his second in command. When he directed Captain Blackwood to “Make any use I pleased of his name in ordering any of the sternmost line of battleships to do what struck me as best” he showed again that he realized how impractical it would be for him to attempt to direct the entire fleet in what was for those times an involved tactical arrangement. A little man, a man jealous of his prerogatives, might have tried to retain all control; Nelson had enough common sense to see that any such method spelled defeat, and the perspective to see that if his most valuable officers were competent to relieve him in the emergency of an accident to himself, which was assumed when they were detailed to their commands, they were certainly fit to relieve him of the supervision of the entire action in order that he might give undivided attention to the most difficult task, containing an overwhelming number of the hostile force so that the balance should be an easy adversary for half his own fleet to overcome.
Lord St. Vincent was right; was there ever such an array of lovable traits combined in one man with such unusual professional ability as in the one Nelson?