TheAt the end of 1774, a newly built ship was launched into the cold water of the Humber River in the northern British city of Hull. Named later Boreasthe ship was one of a series of Mermaid-class frigates – a variant of the 28-gun battleship that was common among the approximately 270 ships that made up the Royal Navy.
After being completed at the Chatham shipyards in October 1775, HMS Boreas saw action in the Caribbean – attacking and capturing French and American ships and taking part in the unsuccessful Battle of Grenada in July 1779.
The captain who took command of Boreas the spring of 1784 had also seen good action. His name was Horatio Nelson, and he would achieve near-mythical status as a British naval hero and winner of the decisive Battle of Trafalgar (see the January 2008 issue of Caribbean Beat).
By the age of 28, Nelson had already served in the Arctic, the East Indies, North America and the Caribbean and had developed a reputation as an intelligent and ambitious officer who was also well connected in the naval hierarchy.
His order i Boreas came with a specific – if somewhat unglamorous – task: to enforce the Navigation Acts (pieces of legislation intended to protect British imperial trade from foreign competition and interference) in and around the Leeward Islands station, a naval base in the British colony of Antigua Caribbean. .
Antigua had a large natural harbor on its southern coast, which provided protection against hurricanes and strategic dominance of the Leeward chain leading to Barbados. It was also a major producer of sugar – based on the inhuman system of plantation slavery – and was a valuable asset of the British Empire.
The economic demands of the Empire had created the Navigation Acts. In simple terms, Britain’s Caribbean colonies were allowed to conduct imports and exports only with Britain itself. But this closed circuit had been interrupted since 1776 by the independence of the United States and the sudden appearance of a new and powerful trading nation in the vicinity of the Caribbean.
NElson’s job was to prevent the British colonies from trading with the US, and this brought him into direct conflict with the colonists themselves, who preferred to deal with their new neighbor rather than distant London. Other British officials, island governors and naval personnel apparently took a quiet attitude towards regular breaches of the Navigation Acts, choosing to maintain friendly relations with local planters and exporters – but Nelson was not inclined to turn a blind eye. .
From the moment he arrived in Antigua in July 1784, he directed the interception of foreign ships – mostly American – that sought to buy sugar from the Leeward Islands and sell goods produced there.
From the beginning, he also hated Antigua – just as the Antiguan colonial elite hated him. Britain was not at war with the US and so American merchants considered the seizure of their assets illegal – and sued him. The merchants of neighboring Nevis supported the Americans, and for a time, Nelson was in danger of arrest and imprisonment.
Aware that his superior officer – Admiral Hughes, based in Barbados – was unlikely to help, Nelson retreated from his official residence to the relative safety of Boreasdocked at the naval base in English Harbour. He refused to compromise, writing in January 1785:
Although I have the honor to command an English Man-of-War, I will never allow myself to be subject to the will of any Governor, nor to co-operate with him in committing unlawful acts … I know the Law of Navigation.
With his rigid sense of duty, Nelson endured rather than enjoyed his stay in the Caribbean. Assaulted by mosquitoes, his cabin infested with vermin, and facing constant indiscipline among his men, he was stricken with a debilitating fever. “English Harbor hates the look of it,” he complained.
But there were also lighter moments. He valued the company of Mary Moutray, the young wife of the Court Commissioner, and was perhaps more than a friend. “Wasn’t it for Mrs. Moutray, who is LOT, LOT good for me, I almost have to hang myself in this hell hole,” he wrote to a confidant.
Things changed when he met Fanny Nisbet, the young widow of a doctor and daughter of a high judge in the colony of Nevis. Nelson met Fanny while visiting her uncle, the President of the Island Council, and may have been attracted by her status as a member of the colonial elite. They corresponded and Nelson confessed his loneliness and frustration:
I am alone in the commanding officer’s house, while my ship is being repaired, and from sunrise to bedtime, I have no human creature to speak to; you will feel a little for me, I think. I didn’t really like being alone. The moment the old ‘Boreas’ is habitable in my cabin, I will fly to her, to avoid the mosquitoes and the melancholy.
The pair were finally married in March 1787, four months before Nelson completed his three-year term of service and returned to Britain. Fanny followed soon after with her son from her first marriage.
HMS Boreas arrived in Portsmouth on 4 July and, according to Desmond Nicholson, curator of the Antigua & Barbuda Dockyard Museum, “Nelson was so ill for this voyage that they sent him a punch of rum for his body in case he died on the voyage. .”
orAfter three years in Antigua, most of it was spent on BoreasNelson can claim success. Legal action taken against him was rejected by the home court, and his uncompromising attitude to breaches of the Navigation Acts was supported by the Admiralty.
The merchants of neighboring Nevis supported the Americans, and for a time Nelson was in danger of arrest and imprisonment
But he had made enemies by questioning what he saw as weakness among his superiors and acting on his instincts. He was seen as a bad man and it took him five years to secure his next command.
He had also overseen improvements to the Antigua Dockyard, notably the Engineers House and Pitch and Tar Store built in 1785. These developments continued until the end of the 18th century and the shipyard was finally abandoned by the Royal Navy in 1889 .Its renovation and transformation into today’s luxury heritage site dates back to the 1950s.
Nelson’s career after the Antigua episode has been widely documented and he remains a symbol of a long-lost British naval supremacy. His views on slavery have been scrutinized and found repugnant, if typical of the era, but he still stands on his column overlooking Trafalgar Square.
Fanny Nisbet’s story was less remarkable. Nelson left her for a high-profile affair with Emma Lady Hamilton. Fanny was distraught, but is said to have remained faithful to her husband’s memory after his death in 1805. She lived until May 1831. (Caribbean Beat published a profile of her and her relationship with Nelson in the July/August 1998 issue.)
As for HMS Boreas the ship was downsized in 1797 to a “sloop ship”, selling supplies of basic items such as clothing and bedding to Navy crews in the Thames Estuary. In 1802, three years before the Trafalgar apotheosis, she was sold at Sheerness – apparently for scrap.
