NELSON’S SURGEON Arthur William Devis, The Death of Nelson (National Maritime Museum) Nelson’s Surgeon William Beatty, Naval Medicine, and the Battle of Trafalgar LAURENCE BROCKLISS JOHN CARDWELL and MICHAEL MOSS 1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # Laurence Brockliss, John Cardwell, and Michael Moss 2005 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–928742–2 978–0–19–928742–0 13579108642 To Alison, Lynne, and Stella This page intentionally left blank Preface For more than twenty years, from 1793 to 1815, Britain was at war with France and her allies, the long years of conflict punctuated only by the short peace negotiated at Amiens in 1802 and the temporary restoration of the Bourbons in 1814. According to the rhetoric of the politicians, this began as a war to defend our national way of life against the irreligious and demagogic principles of the French revolutionaries and became a struggle to free the peoples of Europe from the tyrannical grip of Napoleon. To more reflective historians it has been seen as the culmination of a conflict that had lasted a hundred years between Britain and France to decide the mastery of the world. Regardless of its cause, this was a war which Britain ultimately won, thereby establishing her status for most of the nineteenth century as the world’s only superpower. Among the many victories over the enemy at sea, none has been accorded a greater significance than the Battle of Trafalgar fought off Cadiz against the combined fleets of France and Spain on 21 October 1805, which purportedly saved the United Kingdom from the threat of invasion and gave her dominion of the seas. The daring tactics of the British fleet’s commanding officer, Admiral Lord Nelson, and his death at the moment of victory have also ensured that no other battle in the long war, then or since, has so fired the public imagination. London’s Trafalgar Square, a number of Nelson’s columns dotted about the country, and the preservation of the admiral’s flagship, HMS Victory, at Portsmouth bear powerful witness to the continued belief that the battle was a defining moment in the nation’s history. This book is a professional biography of one of the countless unsung heroes of the British fleet at Trafalgar. William Beatty was the chief surgeon on board Nelson’s flagship. During the battle he remained confined for many hours below the waterline in the dark, hot, airless, and swaying cockpit, attending to the continual stream of wounded and dying while the cannon roared overhead. In the course of a long afternoon he and his two assistant surgeons, aided by other non-combatants, treated 100 of the Victory’s approximately 820 crew. By the time darkness fell he had seen his best friend, who had been mortally wounded in the fight, expire in front of his eyes, then nursed the dying Nelson through his agony. Throughout the ordeal he remained calmly in control, clamping, probing, sawing, and bandaging. He viii Preface ended the day by preserving the admiral’s body, so that it could be brought back to England. Beatty was 32. Although he had been in the navy since 1791, this was the first major action he had served in. Trafalgar was his baptism by fire. Unlike most of the officers and crew of the Victory, Beatty has not com- pletely slipped from the historical memory. After Trafalgar he went on to have a distinguished career in the naval medical service and eventually became physician to Greenwich Hospital in 1822. An FRS, a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, and a knight of the realm, when he died in 1842 he was a figure of importance in the world of London medicine, who inevitably, like many of those involved in the great sea battle, received a short notice at the end of the nineteenth century in the Dictionary of National Biography. Beatty’s physical likeness, too, has survived, captured on canvas in several publicly displayed portraits and historical reconstructions. In Arthur Devis’s famous Death of Nelson, painted in 1806–7, the surgeon is the fresh- faced, dark-haired young man on the right of the picture taking the dying hero’s pulse. In the weeks after the victory Nelson came to be seen as a Christlike figure, saviour of the nation, if not the world. In Devis’s painting Beatty hovers over the prostrate hero, like Mary Magdalene over the body of Christ in paintings of the Deposition (see the Frontispiece). Nonetheless, William Beatty remains a cardboard and largely neglected figure. Unlike some army and navy surgeons who served during the wars, he left no autobiography or account of his experiences. Nor, unlike others, was he accorded a detailed biographical notice in the press when he died. Nor, too, since he was always a bachelor, was his memory honoured by his sons and daughters in a published eulogy. There is not even a gravestone, for Beatty was buried in an unmarked tomb in a vault in Kensal Green cemetery. All that the public knows of the man is his public life. The notices in both the original and Oxford Dictionary of National Biography merely cite the main milestones of his naval career: they contain several errors and say nothing about his background, training, or personality. The official Victory website, which lists the nationality of all the officers and men on board the ship at Trafalgar, calls him Scottish, presumably on the strength of his surname: in fact he hailed from Londonderry. In some accounts of the battle Beatty is even confused with the chaplain, Alexander John Scott, who was one of Nelson’s secretaries.1 1 To confuse matters, Nelson’s other secretary was John Scott, who was killed early on in the battle. http://www.hms-victory.com (Feb. 2005). Preface ix In this bicentennial year of the Battle of Trafalgar the public will inevitably be deluged with a plethora of books, TV programmes, and exhibitions devoted to the lives and loves of Lord Nelson and his famous victory. The battle will be fought and refought in an attempt to understand why the allies in their more powerful ships were so easily defeated, and historians will argue over the significance of the British victory and Nelson’s standing among the great commanders. Were the British gunners so much better trained than their rivals? Was Nelson’s opposite number, Admiral Villeneuve, an incompetent, as the French believe? Did Trafalgar really ensure that Napoleon could not invade England? Did the battle successfully clear the seas of enemy warships for the rest of the French war? Was Nelson a naval genius, or a lucky gambler? These and other questions deserve to be put and analysed, as we celebrate a great moment in the history of Britain and the British Empire or pick over the rags of a national myth—depending on our point of view. But in the age of the common man, and in the midst of another war where ordinary young men and women have once more been sent to fight, supposedly, in defence of our national security, it seems right to give proper space on the public stage to some of the lesser actors in the battle, who obeyed Nelson’s final signal and did their duty. In choosing to write a professional biography about a naval surgeon, we intend not only to bring to life the medical career of an unsung hero but also to ensure that the naval medical service receives its proper due in any assessment of the Trafalgar campaign. The battle was won in part because the crews of the British fleet were healthier than their foes, and in consequence could fire broadsides and manoeuvre their ships more quickly. In the course of the war the navy had at last begun to win the fight against disease, owing to the new emphasis placed on hygiene and prophylaxis. While many of Villeneuve’s sailors were ill and weak, Nelson commanded crews which were healthy and fit, thanks in particular to the conquest of scurvy through regularly drinking lemon juice and eating onions.