Footnotes

A major Nelson discovery, dating from the most controversial period of his career. Of the thirty-five orders or memoranda copied into Captain Darby's pocket book from the originals bearing Nelson's signature, only one, that of 24 July 1799, is published by Nicholas Harris Nicolas, Dispatches and Letters of Lord Nelson (iii, pp.420-21; Nicolas also prints a variant of the court martial order of 16 October 1799, his being dated 15 October). None is printed by White, Nelson: New Letters. Similarly, we have traced no publication of the three unsigned memoranda or the seven orders issued on his behalf by his flag captains Hardy and Berry: this volume could be said therefore to add something like forty memoranda and orders to the surviving corpus of Nelson's correspondence. Furthermore, it forms an important adjunct to two volumes that have recently been identified, namely Captain Darby's Pocket Book covering the Nile campaign, and Nelson's 'Public Order Book' for 1798-99. Darby's Nile Pocket Book, which remains in the possession of his descendants, is discussed by Colin White in New Letters, p.207 (with a memorandum of 15 November 1798 printed, p.216). Nelson's 'Public Order Book' for the period from 1 May 1798 to 30 April 1799 is in the British Library, Add MS 30,260; of this White writes: "the discovery...has added to our understanding of how Nelson actually exercised personal command. We now know that he used books such as this to communicate on a daily basis with his captains. The orders read almost like modern e-mails, and with their urgent, almost breathless, style they conjure up a vivid sense of Nelson's presence" (p.206). Only two other such Public Order Books survive, one for the Copenhagen Campaign and one for the Channel Campaign of July-October. The recovery of the present pocket book appears, therefore, to fill a lacuna.

There is no doubt but that this pocket book was kept for Darby himself, bearing as it does his pencilled annotations in several places (compare these with those on the letters to him by Nelson, sold in our Phillips rooms, 9 November 2001, lots 472 and 473). One of the entries (4 October 1799) records a memorandum issued by Darby himself from the Bellerophon, and this has been signed by the pursers (presumably) from the Chichester, Princess Charlotte, Courageux, Santa Dorothea, Bellerophon, and Nancy: in this Darby was conforming to Nelson's own practice (see the page from the Copenhagen Public Order Book illustrated by White, plate 30). The book itself is homemade, rather than having been bought from a stationer, sometimes making use of what appear, from dockets, to have been blank leaves taken from incoming letters; although the entries have been made into it - from the evidence of overruns and the like - after the volume was assembled, rather than its being bound up later. The order followed is generally chronological but not consistently so. In addition to the Nile pocket book, two other letterbooks kept by Darby are recorded by Roger Morris, Guide to British Naval Papers in North America (1994), pp.138-39: one kept in 1794-6 and in the Boston Public Library (MS F Eng 546) and one of 1772-1774, at the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. The originals of his outgoing letters to Nelson in 1799 are in the British Library, Add MSS 34910, 13 and 14.

The period covered by our volume is of peculiar importance, and indeed forms the core of Barry Unsworth's novel Losing Nelson (1999). The months of June and July 1799 - those which our volume covers in greatest detail - saw Nelson's ruthless suppression of the rising in favour of the so-called Parthenopean Republic by Prince Caracciolo, who, as a commodore, had earlier served with Nelson. Caracciolo had been captured ashore on 25 June and was brought aboard Nelson's flagship on the 29th. He was promptly tried by court martial, sentenced to death, and hanged two hours later, at 5pm, from the yardarm of his former ship, La Minerva (for a planned rendezvous at the same hour). Meanwhile the liberal intelligentsia who had supported the Republic were kept under irons in small Mediterranean sailing coasters, know as polaccas (the subject of many memoranda above). In one midshipman's account: "Many, very many, of Italy's beautiful daughters, and those of high rank, have I seen prostrate on our deck, imploring protection... Their graceful forms bent with misery - their dark eyes and clasped hands raised to the Father of all mercy... How could men, possessing human hearts, refrain from flying to their relief? Yet, I am sorry to say, they were placed (without regard to their feelings) in polaccas, under the guidance of young English midshipman, there to let their afflicted hearts break at leisure" (quoted by Tom Pocock, Nelson, Pimlico edition, 1994, p.204). The prisoners had good reason to fear for, as Tom Pocock describes it: "shortly before the return of the King, the first of them had been ferried back to shore for summary trials and the public executions had begun. Some were beheaded, but even more ghastly were the hangings, when the women suffered with the men before huge crowds in the Piazza del Mercato: one by one, the condemned were strung from a huge gibbet while two executioners swung with them; one clutching their legs, another - often a dwarf - clowning on their shoulders to the cheers and laughter of a drunken mob. Many of these were the most sophisticated of the Neapolitan nobility and intelligentsia" (p204). The day-to-day memoranda recorded in Darby's pocket book convey something of this nightmare atmosphere. Possibly the most evocative of these newly-discovered letters is the memorandum circulated to the squadron on the first anniversary of the Battle of the Nile. Many of the ships in Nelson's squadron, not least the Bellerophon herself, had taken part in the battle. From its phrasing, it seems that Nelson was all too well aware of the contrast between this astonishing victory and the wretched business in hand. The memorandum is headed "Battle of the Nile" and dated from the Foudroyant, 1 August 1799: "This being the Anniversary of the Battle of the Nile a Day so glorious to our Country by the noble exertions of British Seamen: The Admiral (that no heart may have cause to be sad on such a Day) requests the Captains of the Squadron will forgive faults committed to this Day & that one half Pint of Wine be given to each Man in the squadron at 6 o'Clock in the evening in order to drink the King's Health". Nelson's own account of the festivities, sent to his wife Fanny, survives among his published correspondence.

Captain Darby's ship, the 74-gun third rate Bellerophon -- known to sailors as 'Billy Ruffian' -- is one of the most famous ships in British history, seen to epitomise the ship-of-the-line of Nelson's time. The year before our book was in use, she had fought under Darby at the Battle of the Nile, suffering the highest casualties of any British ship, after having taken on the gigantic French flagship L'Orient. She was later to take part in the Battle of Trafalgar, and in 1815 win even greater fame as the ship to which Napoleon surrendered after Waterloo. She has recently been the subject of David Cordingly's highly acclaimed Billy Ruffian (2003), where however her service at Naples is passed over in silence.

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