CH 4 NAVAL MISCELL 15/9/03 1:27 pm Page 149 IV LETTERS FROM VICE-ADMIRAL LORD COLLINGWOOD, 1794–1809 Edited by Captain C. H. H. Owen, RN ‘I know not where Lord Collingwood got his style, but he writes better than any of us,’ said an eminent diplomat of the day.1 Thirty of Collingwood’s letters follow, the originals of which are all in his own hand. Most of the first half were addressed to Edward Collingwood (1734–1806) of Chirton near Newcastle, who was the Admiral’s third cousin, the head of the family and (apart from his own brother) his nearest male relative of the name. Most of the other half were addressed to Walter Spencer-Stanhope (1750–1821), an active Member of Parliament whose wife was Edward Collingwood’s niece and sole heiress.2 The first of the letters describes the battle of the First of June 1794, in which Collingwood commanded the Barfleur. The last was written from his flagship in Port Mahon, Minorca, less than three months before his death in 1810.3 1G. L. Newnham Collingwood, A Selection from the Public and Private Correspondence of Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood (2 vols, 5th edn, London, 1837), p. 124. 2Walter Spencer-Stanhope (1750–1821) of Cannon Hall, near Barnsley, and Horsforth Hall, near Leeds: MP for Carlisle 1775–80, Haslemere 1780–84, Kingston-upon-Hull 1784–90, Cockermouth 1800–1802 and Carlisle 1802–12; friend and supporter of Pitt and close friend of Wilberforce; generally in Opposition after Pitt’s death in 1806. Second Mourner at Collingwood’s funeral. His wife Mary Winifred (1763–1850) was daughter of Thomas Babington Pulleine and Winifred Collingwood (a third cousin of the Adm.’s). 3Two other collections of Collingwood’s letters have been published: (a) G. L. Newnham Collingwood, as above (hereafter ‘N.C. I’ and ‘N.C. II’), originally published 1828. The 5th edn, published in two volumes in 1837, contains 34 additional letters. The private letters are mostly to his wife and father-in-law. The editor was the Adm.’s son-in- law and did not always follow the exact wording of the originals; (b) Edward Hughes (ed.), The Private Correspondence of Admiral Lord Collingwood, NRS vol. 98 (Greenwich, 1957) (hereafter Hughes). Despite the title nearly a third of the letters are on official business. The private letters are mostly to the Adm.’s sisters and his wife’s uncles Sir Edward Blackett, Bart, and Dr Alexander Carlyle. Mrs. A. M. W. Stirling’s The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope (London, 1913), a book not easily found today, contains extracts from some of the letters in this new collection, but with many misquotations and dating errors. 149 CH 4 NAVAL MISCELL 15/9/03 1:27 pm Page 150 150 THE NAVAL MISCELLANY VI Cuthbert Collingwood was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 26 September 1748, eighth child and eldest son of a not very successful merchant. His only formal education was at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle; he left it at the age of 12 to join the Shannon, 28, in the Thames on 28 August 1761 under the command of his maternal cousin Captain Richard Brathwaite.1 Despite almost continuous sea service as a Captain’s Servant, Midshipman and Master’s Mate, he was aged 26 before good service at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775 brought him promotion to Lieutenant. His intimate friendship with Nelson had begun two years earlier [letter 19 below], and on 20 June 1779 he succeeded Nelson as commanding officer of the brig Badger, his and previously Nelson’s first command. They owed their appointments to Sir Peter Parker, the Commander-in-Chief in Jamaica, as so touchingly recalled in Collingwood’s letter [16] written to Sir Peter a few days after Trafalgar. He was promoted to Post-Captain on 22 March 1780. Four other commands, mostly in the West Indies, followed until 1786 when Collingwood returned home to Northumberland for the first time after 25 years of virtually continuous sea service. Apart from a year in command of the frigate Mermaid in the West Indies in 1790–91 at the time of the ‘Spanish Armament’, he remained at home until the outbreak of the war with Revolutionary France in 1793. On 16 June 1791 he was married in Newcastle to Sarah, daughter of John Erasmus Blackett, a well-to-do merchant and mayor of the town that year. The following year they moved to Morpeth where their elder daughter, also Sarah, was born on 28 May 1792 and Mary Patience on 13 August 1793. But in March 1793 he had assumed command of the Prince, 90, at Plymouth. His subsequent career can be traced in the letters that follow and in the explanatory notes. He took part in the battles of 1 June 1794 [1, 2] and Cape St Vincent [4], and was promoted Rear-Admiral in 1799. After nine years of continuous sea service with only occasional brief visits to his home he was enabled by the Peace of Amiens to spend a year with his family, his last sight of them. The resumption of war in 1803 saw his immediate return to sea. In the following year he was promoted Vice-Admiral, and on 21 October 1805 he succeeded Nelson as Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean, an appointment he held until his death at sea four-and-a-half years later. Before Trafalgar Collingwood had had perhaps more experience of the work of blockading than any other senior officer. For very nearly all 1Admiral Richard Brathwaite (1728–1805): Capt. 1761; RA 1790; VA 1793; Adm. 1799, but not employed after 1781. His and Collingwood’s mothers were sisters. CH 4 NAVAL MISCELL 15/9/03 1:27 pm Page 151 LETTERS FROM COLLINGWOOD, 1794–1809 151 the preceding 12 years, apart from the one brief year of peace, he had been off Brest, Cadiz or Toulon, usually on a lee shore, with the principal object of preventing the escape of the enemy fleet intent on an invasion of Ireland or England. With Napoleon’s abandonment of his invasion plans the Mediterranean assumed major strategic importance just as Collingwood took over as Commander-in-Chief. Thwarted in his attempt on England, Napoleon turned his attentions again to the domination of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Ottoman Empire and the route to India. To prevent this the British Mediterranean fleet had to watch three enemy fleets (in Cadiz, Cartagena and Toulon), maintain squadrons in the Adriatic and the Levant, secure the bases of Gibraltar, Malta and Sicily, and protect British trade with the Levant and elsewhere and deny it to the enemy. There was also the need to keep open the sea-route through the Mediterranean to Trieste so that Britain could keep in touch with her Austrian allies. This multitude of tasks required Collingwood not only to operate and administer a fleet of up to 80 ships, including nearly thirty ships of the line, spread from Cadiz to the shores of Turkey and Egypt – ‘as large a fleet as ever was employed from England’1 – but also to conduct ‘political correspondence with the Spaniards, the Turks, the Albanians, the Egyptians, and all the States of Barbary’,2 to which he might have added the kingdoms of Sardinia and Sicily, the Russian Admiral, the Governor of Malta, British ambassadors, generals and consuls and ministers in London. To assist him in these tasks he had the part-time services of his Flag-Captain and the minute staff of his Flag-Lieutenant, his Secretary W. R. Cosway3 and one clerk (increased to two with Admiralty approval in 1808). In his conduct of the fleet he was able to delegate business in the normal way to his subordinate flag officers and captains in the various regions of his Command, but in his political and diplomatic work, as he told his wife, ‘I do everything for myself, and never distract my mind with other people’s opinions. To the credit of any good which happens I may lay claim, and I will never shift upon another the discredit when the result is bad.’4 He was the only servant of the Government in the 1Collingwood to his wife, 9 March 1808, N.C. II, p. 118. 2Same to same, 8 Nov. 1808, N.C. II, p. 287. 3Sir William Richard Cosway (1783–1834): clerk in Plymouth Victualling Office until becoming Collingwood’s ‘clever, amiable Secretary’ in December 1800, a post he held until the Adm.’s death in 1810. At Trafalgar, ‘Mr Cosway was of more use to me than any officer after Clavell’ (the Flag-Lt.) (N.C. I, p. 290). Knighted 1829, killed in accident to the Brighton Coach. There is a monument to him on a hilltop at Bilsington, near Hythe, Kent. 4Collingwood to his wife, 8 Nov. 1808, N.C. II, p. 286. CH 4 NAVAL MISCELL 15/9/03 1:27 pm Page 152 152 THE NAVAL MISCELLANY VI Mediterranean who had responsibilities across the whole area and, since correspondence was so slow and uncertain, he necessarily had to make his own political judgements – for example, the instant support he gave to the Spanish uprising in 1808 [27], and his encouragement to the Turks to make peace with England (‘I have kept open a sort of correspondence with them as the only means they could have of making any proposal to our ministers’ [26]). These were by no means the only occasions when he correctly anticipated government policy, and Thomas Creevey was perhaps not too over-effusive when he wrote that ‘Collingwood alone by his sagacity and decision, his prudence and moderation, sustained the interests of England and eternally defeated the projects of France.