female in a few hours-never yet having made the Boreas her home. I therefore, with pain I assure you, accept your kindness in staying here. Church I have sent back in the Rattler with two Commissions. Mr. Rice, Wallis tells me, does not now wish to go Home. I have sent the Maidstone among the Bahamas, where I hear this Piratical fellow is gone; and not having the smallest official intelligence that any Commanding Officer is coming out, will you turn in your mind about going to Jamaica? If you should suppose there will not be Ships enough on that Station, I will send Rattler with you, and she may proceed from thence with your dispatches for England. I should hope by the time Wallis reaches you, that you will be so much better, that I shall see the Pegasus down here but Sir, let me intreat that you will pursue such plans as Fidge has laid down for the re-establishment of your health, which is the only consideration with me. Should you not think it necessary to take the Rattler to Jamaica, I shall send her to England in a few days after she joins me. I shall, if possible, send you a copy of my letter to Mr. Pitt; but Sir, allow me to say silence on this subject is [the] best mode to be pursued at present. Although every person is talking of it, yet no person knows for a certainty where the blow will fall. I have sent to the Duke of Richmond and Lord Howe what has fallen in their several Departments, and have not forgot Sir Charles Middleton9 about the Vouchers: to Mr. Pitt I have sent everything; and an opinion, which perhaps I may be wrong in doing, that if he is as thoroughly convinced of the Frauds as I am, to pass an Act to prevent their making away with their property from this time, till this business is investigated; or an Exchequer process will do as well. These gentlemen wish to make terms, but only to receive upon what is actually recovered, therefore, if they cannot make good their assertions, they have no advantage, but are for ever ruined: they possess a great deal of shrewd sense. It is not within the bounds of a letter to tell everything, but I will have all the papers ready for your Royal Highness, when I have the honour of seeing you. 8 The Frauds. 1 Vide p. 226, ante. I have been very unwell since we parted: indeed, I attribute it to my frequent excursions to St. John's, to investigate this business. Poor Collingwood's death lowered my spirits. I considered our constitutions as nearly alike. Forbes desires me to present his most humble and dutiful respects. Mrs. Nelson returns her thanks with Miss Herbert1 for your most polite remembrance of them; and be assured, that I am, with the highest respect, Your Royal Highness's most faithful Servant, If your Royal Highness does not come down, I shall sail for English Harbour the moment Rattler returns. TO H. R. H. PRINCE WILLIAM HENRY. [Original in the possession of William Henry Whitehead, Esq.] Sir, Boreas, Nevis, May 8th, 1787. I was yesterday afternoon honoured with your Royal Highness's letter acquainting me that from your state of health your Surgeon had judged it proper you should return to English Harbour. To express my concern, words are too weak; therefore I beg you will believe what I cannot express, but I trust that a few days' rest will perfectly restore your Royal Highness to that health I so ardently wish you. Your Royal Highness having represented to me that Lieutenant Hope wished to exchange out of the Pegasus, I beg leave to acquaint you that I have appointed Lieutenant Stephen George Church, Second Lieutenant of his Majesty's Ship Boreas, to be Third Lieutenant of the Ship under your command. I hope this arrangement will meet with your Royal Highness's approbation. I am much obliged by your information of the irregularities in the Navigation at Grenada. 2 Daughter of the Fresident of Nevis, and Mrs. Nelson's first cousin. She married Andrew Hamilton, Esq., vide p. 218, ante. As soon as I have a Ship to send, I shall order the Trade to that Island to be more strictly attended to. yet I have sent the Maidstone amongst the Bahamas in search of this piratical Vessel under the British Flag. Although as he has only defrauded Foreigners, yet this doing it under our Flag, degrades it; and I conceive it is my duty, and that I am supporting the National honour, in searching out this miscreant, that he may not only be punished for the fraud, but for attempting to disgrace the British Colours. Lieutenant Schomberg: There appears no opportunity of his being tried in these Seas: if your health would permit, I beg leave to submit to your consideration going to America by way of Jamaica, on which Station a Court-Martial can be held, which I believe cannot in America. The Frauds discovered I will take care to have made out by the time I have the honour of seeing you, which I hope will be in a few days. If you think English Harbour a more healthy situation than this Road, I shall instantly join you upon the Rattler's return. His Excellency Sir Thomas Shirley desires me to make his most dutiful respects; and [to say] that if you remain at English Harbour, he shall instantly return to Antigua. I have the honour to remain, &c. HORATIO NELSON. TO COMMODORE ALAN GARDNER. [Transmitted to the Admiralty in his Letter of the 10th July 1787. Vide p. 242, post.] Sir, Boreas, Nevis, May 13th, 1787. Lieutenant Isaac Schomberg, First Lieutenant of his Majesty's Ship Pegasus, having, in his letter dated the 23rd of January last, requested that I would be pleased to order a Court-Martial to be held on him whenever the Service would admit of it, that he might have an opportunity of vindicating his conduct from the unjust accusation which he states his Captain made against him in the Public Order Book of the Ship; I therefore, in order to prevent Lieutenant Schomberg from being again, as set forth in his letter, unjustly accused, ordered him into Arrest, in hopes there would soon have been a sufficient number of Ships on this Station to hold a CourtMartial. But the time of the Pegasus's departure for America drawing near, and no probability of there being any more Ships (at present) on this Station, I have thought it right to order the Pegasus to Jamaica, in order that Lieutenant Schomberg may have the Court-Martial he requested, as I have reason to believe that there are not Ships enough on the American Station to hold a Court, and I conceive it would be highly improper in me to let an Officer go to that Country under Arrest, with my belief of the aforementioned circumstance. Herewith I transmit you Lieutenant Schomberg's letter to me, and a of the order he alludes to. copy In a public letter, a Commander would be wrong to set forth all the reasons which influence his conduct: but as I hope to have your approbation, I take the liberty of mentioning a few circumstances. His Royal Highness will give you an account of Lieutenant Schomberg's conduct, and of his having put him into Arrest for disobedience of orders, &c., and that on Mr. Schomberg's making proper apologies, he forgave him. Indeed, his Royal Highness's narrative is so explicit, that I cannot inform you so fully as that will. His Royal Highness, I can have no doubt, gave the orders alluded to, although Mr. Schomberg might have misunderstood them. I am sure, Sir, you will consider his Royal Highness stands in a very different situation to any other Captain: his conduct will be canvassed by the world, when ours would never be heard of. Mr. Schomberg was our friend Cornwallis's First Lieutenant in the Canada. I can only suppose that he thought the Prince was determined to take the first opportunity of bringing him to a Court-Martial, that he wrote for this for such a trivial matter. Indeed, what leads me to consider that as his motive was, when his Royal Highness told him how wrong he was to write for a Court-Martial on himself, he told him that every Officer who served under him must be broke, and the sooner he was from under his command the better; and that if a Court-Martial acquitted him he would write to quit the Ship. This matter has made the Prince very uneasy, for he says, no person can tell he gave Mr. Schomberg those orders. but himself, and Schomberg denies them. The day the matter happened, his Royal Highness dined in the country, and I attended him. On the road he told me how unpleasant it was that Schomberg would act in that manner when he had only forgiven him a few days before; but he said, in future, if any person committed faults, he would insert it in the Public Order-Book of the Ship, which he did, on this occasion, the next day. On that evening when I returned from dining, I found Mr. Schomberg's letter. I immediately sent for his Royal Highness, and I told him that in his elevated situation in life the world looked more to him than any other person, that Mr. Schomberg had neither more nor less than accused him of putting his name to an untruth: therefore I thought it my duty, although the matter was so trivial, to take Lieutenant Schomberg from under his directions, by suspending him from duty, or it might be said I had left him in that disagreeable situation, merely because he served under the Prince; and that it very much concerned his Royal Highness to show the world he had put his name to nothing but the truth. In order to show my disapprobation of Officers writing for Courts-Martial, to vindicate their conduct for trivial matters, I gave out the enclosed order,3 that others might not fall into the same error. It might soon have risen to such a height, that if a topsail was not thought properly or briskly reefed, 3 Vide p. 210, ante. |