Adventures in the Fog

Periodically, we’ve noted instances where actual events enter naval fiction set during the Age of Sail will little more than the names of people and ships changed. Sometimes the actual events are toned down for the novel because of the implausibility of the real event, such as Cochrane taking El Gamo or Nelson using one Spanish first rate as a bridge to board and take a second first rate.

Another incident ties together Midshipman Horatio Hornblower, Lieutenant Lord Ramage, and Commodore Horatio Nelson. Fog and the Spanish Fleet.

In the short story, Hornblower, the Duchess, and the Devil, which is included in C. S. Forester’s Mr. Midhipman Hornblower, Hornblower, commanding a prize en route to England, finds himself enshrouded in fog, a fog which also includes the Spanish fleet and is subsequently captured and imprisoned at the fortress at Ferrol. In Dudley Pope’s Ramage, Lieutenant Lord Ramage, commanding the cutter HMS Kathleen, finds himself in the same unpleasant circumstances. He however, evades imprisonment, gains key intelligence on the Spanish fleet then in port in Cartagena, and is able to warn Admiral Sir John Jervis of their intentions.

The real story is just as strange.

Calvi

Following the loss of Toulon to the French Army, the British Navy fell back towards Italy. Part of the strategy required Corsica to be wrested from French control. The British Navy contributed men and artillery toward the effort. One of th most energetic officers in the operation was Captain Horatio Hornblower.

On 10 July 1794 while conducting siege operations against Calvi, a French cannonball struck the merlon of the battery from which Nelson was observing the British bombardment. The stone splintered, some of it striking Nelson in the right eye. The medical certificate from the surgeon reads:

These are to Certify that Captain Horatio Nelson of his Majesty’s Ship Agamemnon, now serving on Shore at the Siege of Calvi, was on the 10th day of July last, wounded in the face and right eye, much injured by stones or splinters, struck by shot from the Enemy. There were several small lacerations about the face; and his eye so materially injured, that in my opinion, he will never recover the perfect use of it again.

W. Chambers,
Surgeon to the Forces in
the Mediterranean.

Calvi, August 12th, 1794.

There is an interesting account of Nelson’s actions during this campaign here.

A King’s Commander

A King’s Commander covers the year 1794 in the life and career of Dewey Lambdin’s naval hero, Alan Lewrie.

Lewrie finishes commissioning his new command, HMS Jester, the former French corvette Sans Culotte captured by Lewrie in HMS Cockerel, in Portsmouth in preparation for assignment to the Mediterranean under his patron Admiral Lord Samuel Hood. Enroute they run afoul of a small French squadron and are pursued, saved only by stumbling onto Admiral Howe’s fleet engaged in the Glorious First of June.

Major spoilers follow.