Read Online Intelligence in War: The Value--And Limitations--Of What the Military Can Learn About the Enemy by John Keegan - Free Book Online Page B

valued advisers.
    Vanguard
at once undertook repairs, using some of its own spare spars and others sent from
Alexander
and
Orion
to replace its lost lower, top and topgallant masts. After four days it was ready to sail. Next day, 24 May, a Marseilles vessel was encountered. It told that Napoleon’s fleet—which had been outside the track of the storm—had left Toulon on 19 May but gave no indication as to its destination.
    Nelson therefore decided to retrace his course rather than press on into the uncertainties of the wider Mediterranean. He had lost touch with his three accompanying frigates during the great gale. He had not yet made contact with the squadron St. Vincent had allotted him. His judgement was that prudence demanded a return to his starting point, where he could concentrate his forces, gather in his frigates and gain fresh intelligence of the enemy’s movements. By 3 June he was back off Toulon, where on 5 June the brig
Mutine
appeared, bearing news that Troubridge’s squadron of ten men-of-war would soon join. The
Mutine
was commanded by Thomas Hardy, of “Kiss me, Hardy” at Trafalgar, already a favourite of Nelson. His information brought reassurance. On 7 June, Troubridge appeared. Nelson’s command now numbered thirteen 74s and a 50, quite enough to defeat the French if they could be found. To find the French, however, Nelson needed frigates. Where had the frigates gone?
    Terpsichore, Emerald
and
Bonne Citoyenne
had been scattered by the storm that dismasted
Vanguard
.
Bonne Citoyenne
had sent down her topgallant masts and ridden out the storm; she was a weatherly little ship, much admired for her sailing qualities.
Terpsichore
had also struck her topgallants and eventually her topmasts also, after three of her foremast shrouds had broken. She was alone for two days, 20–21 May, during the height of the storm but found
Bonne Citoyenne
again in the afternoon of the 22nd. Both were then well south of Toulon.
Emerald
had been driven even farther south, but also east, so far away from her two sister frigates that early in the morning of 21 May she caught a glimpse of
Vanguard
off Corsica in her dismasted state. She was not in a position to render assistance, and the two ships lost each other in the tumult.
    Emerald
’s captain, Thomas Waller, then decided, as the weather abated, to head towards the coast of Spain, in the hope of picking up prizes, desirable in themselves, but also to gather information from them. Without luck; although he intercepted two merchantmen, he got no news of either Nelson’s or Bonaparte’s whereabouts. On 31 May, however, he fell in with another British frigate,
Alcmene,
commanded by Captain George Hope, which St. Vincent had sent after Nelson on 12 May. It was in company with
Terpsichore
and
Bonne Citoyenne,
which it had met two days earlier. They had told Captain Hope of the great storm but had, of course, no news of Nelson. Captain Waller went aboard
Alcmene,
told Hope of his sighting of the dismasted
Vanguard
and thus set in train a sequence of events which was to deprive Nelson of his scouting group for the next two and a half months.
    Nelson had left instructions for his frigates to obey in the event of their separation from the flagship. That was a common and sensible eighteenth-century precaution designed, in the absence of anything but spoken or visual communication, to allow contact to be re-established by designating a rendezvous. His instructions laid down that, if lost, they were to cruise on a line west to east and back again, due south of Toulon to within 60 to 90 miles of Cap St. Sebastian near Barcelona. When, “not having heard from me for ten days, to return to Gibraltar.” The scheme should have worked. Hope in
Alcmene
began to work the patrol line on 23 May, sailing back and forth on latitude 42 degrees 20 minutes north as instructed. He continued to do so after
Terpsichore
and
Bonne Citoyenne
joined. Had he kept on until 3 June, only one day more