AN ASPECT OF NELSON.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 8 August 1924, Page 3

AN ASPECT OF NELSON.

HIS UNORTHODOX METHODS. (By "Barnacle” in Auckland Star). Nelson did not merely defeat hi? enemy; he anihilated him, and it was this fact, his power of producing overwhelming victory, his utter indifference to all accepted naval traditions ano naval tactics, winch, made of him such, an outstanding figure among man;, other truly great captains. To us, look ing back on those iar-awav days, it is not easy to visualise the personality of a- man capable of breaking tlirougi. the hoary traditions of a service at conservative as the navy of those days. And it is in this capacity so target; lies the secret of his greatness. The Admiralty instructions were such as t< make complete victory almost impossible ; Nelson, with amazing moral courage, jettisoned these methods. Nc. other British, sea-captain has ever inflicted such cataclysmic defeats as those of the .Nile and Trafalgaf. As we all know, at the Nile, of 13 battleships, only two, the Generanx and Guillaume Tell, escaped, and even the; were taken shortly afteirwards; thus with one sweep he wiped out a it*''entire navy and in so doing lmfrocmed Napoleon and his army m Egypt. At Trafalgar—27 English battleship; against 33 of the combined French and Spanish navies—he c-aptured o; destroyed 18. These figures are stupendous and convey an idea of the meaning of the term “Nelson Touch” : in short, his great fighting principle of enfolding a portion of his enemy’s fleet within the crushing fire of hi; own, leaving him free to deal with the disorganised remainder at his leisure ; in fact, the direct opposite of the tactics pursued up to his time. BATTLE OF THE, NILE. Again, as we. all know, at the Nile. Admiral Brueys awaited his onslaught lying at anchor protected, as he tnought, by shoal waters. The French we.re splendid artillerists, but poor seamen, and this disposition giving them the opportunity of a straight out artillery duel gave them their best chance. But, Nelson argued, if there is .room for those fellows to swing to their anchors there must be room for some of my lot to pass inside and anchor head and stern. And this was Rruey’s undoing; as one will apply a pair of pincers, and nip off a long tail, Nelson enveloped the head of the unlucky Frenchman’s line and knocked it into barrel staves. The rest of hi; ships were, of course, helpless to assist. At Trafalgar it was the same, both he and Co-llingwood cutting off generous “helping” of the pie presented —the enemy lay hove, to —and similarly knocking their “helpings” to nieces.

Nelson had no time or use for navat formalism or any game of long bowls. For many years the navy had been; armed with long guns on the lowei decks effective up to 2000 yards, but Nelson relied principally on cannonades, short, flumpy" guns, howitzers in fact. These were light and handy, permitting rapid fire, and were effective enough at the range at which he fought, j which was as near as he could get—it not closer. Apparently his idea of a thoroughly satisfactory scrap was one the end of which - was to takt his enemy off-hand by boarding. A characteristic example of his method occurred at St. Vincent; he was only t. captain then. In the thick of the fight he ran his ship, the Captain, 74, aboard a Spanish three-decker—which also happened to be lying foul of a sister Spanish ship. On the principle of “making hay while the sun shines,' be boarded and took two Spaniards iu succession. So many surrelndered 6words had to be gathered on this occasion that lie passed them over to one of -his barge men, who, following his captain round, nonchalantly tucked the blades of the proud Dons under hi; arm as Nelson received them. There is something very humorous about this incident reminiscent of the palmy days of Drake and Grenville on the Spanish Alain. THE ‘ ‘THR OAV-B'AC'K. ’ > In a sense, Nelson, flourishing in the formal and decorous days of George 111., may he called a knight-errant; his methods were more in keeping with the Elizabethan heroes than man no.y of the; latter end of the. Eighteenth Century; il : he had Tived in the days oi Queen Bess he would have been the most glorious buccaneer (if them all. For instance, Drake, was dispatched hv the Queen to reconnoitre the coasts ol Spain, but was told, woman-like, not to unnecessarily annoy Philip, tinman who had asked her to marry him. In his tiny ship Bonadventuire he but;, into Cadiz Roads, and, with a fix-it aggregating 6000 tons, smashes up 12,000 tons of the Spanish King’s warships, destroys immense stores, and, with his ships laden with plunder, calmly sails away to the Azores m search of the carrack San Felipe, tde largest merchantman then afloat, and the private property of Philip, worth, with her cargo, a million of money. , Adding her to his “bag” he jogs away homeward well satisfied with his “roconnaisance.” (He felt less satisfied when the Queen and Burleigh had done with him. so historians say). Just so would Nelson have probably carried out the duty; but it is impossible to imagine the .Jervises, Parkers, Collingwoods, and Keppels of these later days—good men though they were —carrying out such a venture. And so we see him at sunset, instantly taking every risk of uncharted channels and approaching night, fooling his way into Aboukir Bay in the face of a redoubtable antagonist. As Newbolt sings of Hawke at Quiheron Bay:— “He took the foe for pilot, and the cannon’s glare for light.” surrounding and utterly smashing Bruey's fleet lviug in supposedly safe waters; or again at Copenhagen, spending the night previous to the battle in an open boat, prodding round with a long pole and sounding with his leadline, searching for a channel, setting buoys and marks, and then in the 'morning sailing his heavy battleships in the teeth of a brave enemy and a heavy cannonade through waters so terribly treacherous—and -succeeding, too. There is something humorous- about this.also. Sir Hvdv- Parker, the Com-mandei-in-Chiof. in the offing, first admonishing his lieutenant, if he found it too lint to hold him. to draw off. the old sea-dog finally raking the initiative and hoisting the permission signal to withdraw (it was not a command, as has often been said) and Nelson, his voting knight-errant with the glass at his blind eye, saving: “I really can’t see it.” Drake would have said that too.