Timothy!’
Indeed, the white linen, with high stock and flaring waistcoat, were nearer grey than any other shade. His breeches, also, were dingy and creased, some creases showing streaks of ingrained black. The gold buttons were dark with verdigris, while the gold collar and the edgings and lapels were dull and yellow-green. Despite everything that Tim could do, the signs and smell of mould were everywhere.
‘My hat is lamentable,’ he said. ‘Tim, it is a drowned cat, but blue and ginger. It is lamentable.’
His shoes were almost gone, but Nelson noticed, when he walked – unaided – out to make farewells, that they were in a better state that most. His navy men had given up the struggle and gone barefoot some time before, and most of the soldiers were in the same state now. Most were bare from knee to sole, and their tunics and breeches would have shamed a tramp.
Colonel Polson had formed up a guard of honour, but everybody knew speed was essential. The captain must stay upright, must not collapse. He accepted a dispatch to take to Colonel Kemble, whose own had spoken of reinforcements now arrived at the river entrance, and made brief goodbyes to Despard and his fellow officers, then to his sailors and the soldiers of the Hinchinbrook.
‘Farewell,’ said Colonel Polson. ‘You will do great things in your new command, sir. And I promise you, I will send you news the moment that the castle falls. Row fast, men – or my despatches will reach Greytown first!
For Hastie, speed was not a problem anymore. The waters of the Rio San Juan were high and racing, too high for the earlier rapids to threaten damage to their keel or bilges. A good time for the up trip was now considered to be about two weeks, but Nelson’s journey down took a bare three days. Hastie’s problem was only Nelson’s health.
‘The first day he spent in sleeping,’ Tim wrote to Sarah. ‘It was, in some ways, almost a joy to watch. The racing water and the swift breezes made the rainfall almost bearable, and the mosquitoes gave us quits. To see his white face not covered with those biting, sucking monsters was balm to my soul. The tarpaulins in the boat gave more protection, also, than his tent, in that water hits them and runs off instead of bursting through as fog. I cannot say that he was dry, but he was dryer than he’d been for many days. I began to dare to hope that he might indeed pull through.’
Nelson did pull through, although the cheering that greeted him when he reached the pool at Greytown was not long-lived. He was recognized while far from the bank because of his uniform – indeed as formal and impressive from afar as it was meant to be to frighten off the enemy – but closer to, that uniform became more like a ghastly joke.
‘He was a skeleton,’ wrote Hastie. ‘The woodcut of Death himself on a broadside ballad, because I swear to you his head was but a skull. No wig, his hair has grown back sparse and straggled, the ginger bleached to near albino. It would have made your heart break, cariad . And then he stood up in the stern, and would not be helped at all to go on shore. Cuthbert Collingwood was there to greet him, and the two of them shed tears. Two brave men, Sarah, and they cried. It was a most affecting sight.’
One of the reasons Collingwood cried, Tim Hastie found out soon, was the state of Nelson’s frigate and her crew. The Hinchinbrook had to be pumped for many hours every day, but the teredo worms were destroying her timber faster than it could be caulked. Unlike the frigate Parker had offered Nelson as a replacement, Hinchinbrook was sheathed with wood, not sheets of copper.
‘As for her people,’ Tim confided to his journal, ‘there are few words to describe the horror they have undergone. When Nelson signed across command, the normal joy in such transactions was hollow as a drum.’
In fact, it turned out later, of the two hundred or so of Nelson’s original crew in the Hinchinbrook, only
Indeed, the white linen, with high stock and flaring waistcoat, were nearer grey than any other shade. His breeches, also, were dingy and creased, some creases showing streaks of ingrained black. The gold buttons were dark with verdigris, while the gold collar and the edgings and lapels were dull and yellow-green. Despite everything that Tim could do, the signs and smell of mould were everywhere.
‘My hat is lamentable,’ he said. ‘Tim, it is a drowned cat, but blue and ginger. It is lamentable.’
His shoes were almost gone, but Nelson noticed, when he walked – unaided – out to make farewells, that they were in a better state that most. His navy men had given up the struggle and gone barefoot some time before, and most of the soldiers were in the same state now. Most were bare from knee to sole, and their tunics and breeches would have shamed a tramp.
Colonel Polson had formed up a guard of honour, but everybody knew speed was essential. The captain must stay upright, must not collapse. He accepted a dispatch to take to Colonel Kemble, whose own had spoken of reinforcements now arrived at the river entrance, and made brief goodbyes to Despard and his fellow officers, then to his sailors and the soldiers of the Hinchinbrook.
‘Farewell,’ said Colonel Polson. ‘You will do great things in your new command, sir. And I promise you, I will send you news the moment that the castle falls. Row fast, men – or my despatches will reach Greytown first!
For Hastie, speed was not a problem anymore. The waters of the Rio San Juan were high and racing, too high for the earlier rapids to threaten damage to their keel or bilges. A good time for the up trip was now considered to be about two weeks, but Nelson’s journey down took a bare three days. Hastie’s problem was only Nelson’s health.
‘The first day he spent in sleeping,’ Tim wrote to Sarah. ‘It was, in some ways, almost a joy to watch. The racing water and the swift breezes made the rainfall almost bearable, and the mosquitoes gave us quits. To see his white face not covered with those biting, sucking monsters was balm to my soul. The tarpaulins in the boat gave more protection, also, than his tent, in that water hits them and runs off instead of bursting through as fog. I cannot say that he was dry, but he was dryer than he’d been for many days. I began to dare to hope that he might indeed pull through.’
Nelson did pull through, although the cheering that greeted him when he reached the pool at Greytown was not long-lived. He was recognized while far from the bank because of his uniform – indeed as formal and impressive from afar as it was meant to be to frighten off the enemy – but closer to, that uniform became more like a ghastly joke.
‘He was a skeleton,’ wrote Hastie. ‘The woodcut of Death himself on a broadside ballad, because I swear to you his head was but a skull. No wig, his hair has grown back sparse and straggled, the ginger bleached to near albino. It would have made your heart break, cariad . And then he stood up in the stern, and would not be helped at all to go on shore. Cuthbert Collingwood was there to greet him, and the two of them shed tears. Two brave men, Sarah, and they cried. It was a most affecting sight.’
One of the reasons Collingwood cried, Tim Hastie found out soon, was the state of Nelson’s frigate and her crew. The Hinchinbrook had to be pumped for many hours every day, but the teredo worms were destroying her timber faster than it could be caulked. Unlike the frigate Parker had offered Nelson as a replacement, Hinchinbrook was sheathed with wood, not sheets of copper.
‘As for her people,’ Tim confided to his journal, ‘there are few words to describe the horror they have undergone. When Nelson signed across command, the normal joy in such transactions was hollow as a drum.’
In fact, it turned out later, of the two hundred or so of Nelson’s original crew in the Hinchinbrook, only
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