Lord Nelson, On Board the Victory, Watches Over the Mediterranean and the French Fleet at Toulon

He acknowledges news from the manager of the Garrison at Gibraltar, a key provision point for Nelson's Navy, who wrote that their stores were nearly spent.

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After the Treaty of Amiens in 1801, Europe was at peace for 14 months. Many ships in the Royal Navy were at dock and the British returned to their peacetime activities. But across the Channel in France, Napoleon saw the peace as temporary and was planning to neutralize Britain. He realized that...

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Lord Nelson, On Board the Victory, Watches Over the Mediterranean and the French Fleet at Toulon

He acknowledges news from the manager of the Garrison at Gibraltar, a key provision point for Nelson's Navy, who wrote that their stores were nearly spent.

After the Treaty of Amiens in 1801, Europe was at peace for 14 months. Many ships in the Royal Navy were at dock and the British returned to their peacetime activities. But across the Channel in France, Napoleon saw the peace as temporary and was planning to neutralize Britain. He realized that if war broke out again the Royal Navy would blockade French and continental ports as it had done before, and French overseas trade would be crippled. So he planned to invade England with 2000 ships and 200,000 soldiers, and free the seas for French trade and mastery. Napoleon ordered the building of a fleet of invasion barges and his Grande Army was moved to the Pas de Calais area in preparation. However, the fly in the ointment was that to get the French army across safely, the French fleet would need to control the Channel.

Some in Britain had been skeptical of the peace treaty all along, the foremost among them being Horatio, Lord Nelson. He saw the peace as temporary, and with others of the same mind, they developed a strategy, when war resumed, to bottle up the French fleet – principally in the ports of Brest and Toulon.

In May 1803, war broke out again. At this point, Nelson was appointed commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet and given the first-rate HMS Victory as his flagship. He joined her at Portsmouth, where he received orders to sail to Malta and take command of a squadron there before joining the blockade of Toulon.  Nelson arrived off Toulon in July 1803 and spent the next year and a half enforcing the blockade.  

Gibraltar was a crucial English supply point for stores, men, and ships coming to join Nelson off the coast of France.  William Otway was in charge of that dockyard and supply chain, and corresponded with Nelson, alerting him as to the ships and stores arriving at Gibraltar, and others going to join him.  It shows the mastery with which Nelson kept apprised of and managed his assets in the Mediterranean to keep the French at bay.

On January 10, 1804, Nelson received an important notice from Otway, sent by the latter on October 20: the stores at Gibraltar are nearly spent, and he could not guarantee the supplies Nelson needed to keep the French down. Nelson was required to write to London to the Heads of the Navy with an update as far as what he needed to keep his operations going.  As Nelson himself put it, "Commissioner Otway informs me that they are so bare of stores at Gibraltar as to be unable to supply the Ships cruizing in that vicinity who are consequently much distressed for almost every article… as the Admiralty who are aware of force which may be wanted for the service of this Country, consequently the best judges of the necessary stores to be deposited in the magazines at Gibraltar and Malta – the latter place from the Storekeeper's account is equally bare as the former."

The same day, he wrote to Naval Storekeeper at Gibraltar, “Sir, I am to desire you will immediately on the arrival of any of his Majesty's Ships or Vessels at Gibraltar muster their Companies very strictly agreeably to your instructions on that head, and that you will weekly or oftener as it may be deemed necessary muster any Ship or Vessel which may remain there… which you will transmit to me through Commissioner Otway."

Letter Signed, on board the Victory, "Victory at Sea," January 24, 1804, to Commissioner Otway stationed at Gibraltar.  "Sir, I have this day received by the Termagant your two letters of the 20th October last transmitting an account of the arrival and sailing of his Majesty's Ships, Vessels, and Transports to and from Gibraltar, together with the abstract of the musters made of His Majesty's ships at that place." Signed "Nelson and Bronte."  

Just three months later, Nelson would receive a promotion to Vice Admiral of the White and would die heroically at Trafalgar one year later. His successes bought for Britain mastery of the seas for over a century, an extraordinary accomplishment.

A very uncommon letter of Nelson from on board his flagship, the Victory.

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