Customer Reviews

The Nelson Touch: The Life and Legend of Horatio Nelson

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Horatio Nelson remains the greatest fighting admiral, bar none, in the history of naval warfare. But you'd never know it from reading journalist Terry Coleman's new book.

While Coleman has commendably explored many primary and early sources in building his portrait of Nelson, the result is brutally one-sided. Coleman's Nelson doesn't have the Nelson Touch, he puts the touch on everyone, stealing his tactics and victories and good publicity from everyone in sight. Coleman suggests that Nelson didn't capture the San Josef at Cape St. Vincent, that his victory at the Nile was apparently an accident, that Copenhagen was an illusion, and he wisely says as little as possible about the smashing victory at Trafalgar that both crowned and ended Nelson's career.

Coleman is particularly harsh in judging Nelson's behavior at Naples following the victory at the Nile, especially in regards to the execution of Caracciolo and Nelson's treatment of republican refugees after the restoration of the monarchy there. Indeed, this was Nelson's darkest hour. His actions remain so startling that I personally have always suspected that he suffered a brain injury at the Nile that affected his judgment and behavior. Coleman's opinions are fairly well justified by the evidence presented here and elsewhere.

Coleman's conclusions about Nelson's relationship with Lady Hamilton also prove to be of interest. He presents good evidence that their sexual relationship began a great deal later than usually suspected. His portrait of Lady Nelson is balanced and compassionate.

In his treatment of Nelson's family, Coleman has an absolute field day with Nelson's utterly worthless brother William, a not over-bright churchman who felt that the purpose of his brother's life was to use his influence to get him the best-paying job possible in the Church of England. This is one of the high points of Coleman's work; Nelson's family has usually been slighted in biographies of the admiral, and they were, with the exception of Nelson's likable father, a group of grasping, whining losers.

Where Coleman's biography truly falls short is in its emphasis on Nelson's faults. Coleman never fails to point out any of Nelson's human frailties. Nelson was indeed arrogant, self-centered, and sure of himself to an almost hilarious degree. He also was obviously a man deeply admired and loved by many of his contemporaries, and in this entire book you will search almost in vain for the human, charming, likable Nelson, just as you will have a hard time finding the brilliant tactician who was the terror of the Spanish, French, and Danish, the complex man whose religious faith was deep and unbending and who at the same time abandoned his wife. Coleman also enjoys pointing out how many of the officers Nelson promoted never rose above lieutenant; interestingly, he has nothing to say about the successful ones like Hoste.

I find it disturbing when an author's research is visibly faulty, as it leaves other portions of the book in question. For example, on page 356 of the hardcover edition, Coleman refers to the San Josef as a "fine 80," in other words an 80 gun ship. I am looking right now at the Admiralty draft of the San Josef (fortunately for naval historians the Royal Navy took the lines off of almost every enemy ship they captured), and the San Josef is in fact a three decker 112 gun first rate. Coleman also refers to the "only remaining frigates," the USS Constitution and the Constellation. The Constellation is not a frigate, being a sloop built just before the Civil War, and there are at least two British frigates that survive from just after Nelson's time, the Unicorn and the Trincomalee.

While Coleman has done a useful service in pointing out some of Nelson's faults, which admittedly many of the more hagiographic biographers have not, this revisionist biography is deeply flawed by its one-dimensional portrayal of a wonderfully complex, imperfect, deeply human man.

Terry Coleman's biography of Nelson, while well written and entertaining, suffers greatly from the author's lack of research into his subject. So much has been written about Nelson and so much material is available to the true researcher, that it's a shame that Mr. Coleman didn't take advantage of it. It seems that much of his research came from reading other authors' not-well-researched books on Nelson and disregarded scholarly papers on the subject. The result is the continuation of many of the Neslonian myths. For example, Coleman portrays Nelson as a strict disciplinarian, whereas research into discipline records of the Royal Navy clearly demonstrates that Nelson was no more prone to discipline his men than the average captain of his day. In fact Nelson himself wrote of the need to treat men well, give them good living and working conditions and take care of their health. Coleman's treatment of the Battle of St. Vincent again underlines his lack of basic research and he continues the myth of Nelson's supposed disobedience to orders by wearing out of the line on his own accord. Very elementary research into the involved ships'logbooks (easily obtainable through the Public Record Office)clearly shows that Admiral Jervis ordered the fleet to tack at 12:50 p.m. and the log of Nelson's ship acknowledges receipt of that signal and the subsequent tack at 1:00 pm. The opportunity to explode a long-standing myth was missed. As pointed out by another reviewer, Coleman erroneously describes the San Josef as an 80-gun ship. While Coleman offers some interesting insight into the goings-on in Naples, many serious readers of naval history must take it with a grain of salt, given the author's elementary errors of fact elsewhere in the book

I don't think reviewers and critics are being entirely fair to Mr Coleman. This book is carefully researched, sound, and well written. So what's the problem?

I think Nelson's more ardent fans hate the fact that Coleman has done to the admiral what historian Alan Schom did to Napoleon: de-mythologise him. Present him as a human, not a demi-god.

Now, I confess that Nelson's among my own favorite heroes from history. And I simply loved Joel Hayward's "For God and Glory: Lord Nelson and his way of War", which may well be the best book on Nelson's combat and leadership abilities and techniques written in several decades.

So you would think, then, that I would be offended by Coleman's potrayal of Nelson. But I'm not. You see, humans aren't entirely good. Except maybe for Christ, Bhudda, Muhammad, Mother Theresa, etc. We are both good and bad. Nelson, even in Coleman's book, was mostly good, and only sometimes vain, silly, brutal, wicked, etc.

Is it unfair to say that. Of course not. And Coleman certainly does not present Nelson as a monster like Stalin.

I encourage readers to read this book, AND those by Carola Oman, Colin White, Tom Pocock and Joel Hayward. These are the best Nelson books, and will give all-round fair treatments of a flawed by nonetheless great Englishman.

I don't feel outraged that Coleman's treatment of Nelson is harsh. Why make Nelson something he wasn't: a saint.

Coleman has written a highly negative biography of Nelson that stresses Nelson's faults while ignoring his accomplishments. Coleman believes that Nelson was engaged in war crimes at Naples since he decieved the rebels with a truce and than slaughtered them. Also Nelson bluffed his way to victory at Coopenhagen by overstating his strength to the Danish king in order to achieve a truce. Finally Coleman is critical of the way that Nelson treated his first wife with his affair with Emma Hamilton. Even though this is a highly negative biography of Nelson it is highly readable.

I notice that Joel Hayward's new book also points out Nelson's flaws as a warrior and as a captain and as an officer. Maybe Hayward wrote it all in a more balance way, and with more context, but he still said similar things to Mr Coleman. Yet Coleman seems to have been singled out for criticism for merely showing that Nelson was human and used his legal disciplinary rights more often than we assumed. Big deal. He was a great admiral but just a man.

If I were to select one line from The Nelson Touch which sums up Terry Coleman's effort, it would be this frank assessment by Lord Minto, a close Nelson friend: "He [Nelson] is in many ways a really great man, in others a baby.", for this is the book's raison d'ętre. Nelson was a fearless and principled loyalist who, as might be expected, possessed an ample store of vanity left unmoderated by his socially grasping mistress, Emma Hamilton. Like most great men, Nelson possessed great flaws, but his selfless courage in battle is beyond doubt. He was nearly ruined professionally by his unapologetic tryst with the married Emma and the republican debacle in Naples, but the continuing specter of a victorious Napolean erased the prominence, if not the memory, of his more noticeable sins.

The Nelson Touch is by no means hagiography. It can be an unsparing account of the admiral's faults. The sea battles could stand a better telling and the maps leave much to be desired, but the book is, by any measure, intriguing. If The Nelson Touch provokes anything in the reader, it provokes the desire to read a less critical account. It is human nature to want heroes unblemished. Aware of his defects, I'd like to know more of his worth. 4 stars.

As others have said, Mr Coleman goes out of his way to demystify Lord Nelson in this book; indeed even to go far toward the other side of his legend and present him as a much more human character, suffering from a large ego and power hungry for more and faster self promotions than most people believe. The very first chapter calls out predecessor biographers as falling for the propoganda that was put out at the time of Nelson's death at Trafalgar and producing haphazard facts based on sloppy research. Mr Coleman, who has a journalistic background,I understand, claims to use all available documents including letters in and among senior British Navy personnel, personal letters between Nelson's relatives including between he and his wife, etc. And to give him credit, he includes a lengthy bibliography to support his depiction for those that may want to check his sources.

But Coleman doesn't "trash" Nelson. He takes pains to also point out instances where Nelson backed underlings despite risking his own reputation and he is shown several times taking care of his crew and foregoing standard punishments for his men such as flogging or hanging. That's not to say that he never did that but rather he seems to have taken into account all angles of a situation before issuing orders. There is no doubt that Nelson had one of the largest impacts on the history of sea warfare that we know. And there is no doubt that he achieved some remarkable successes. This book however spends less time on the military engagements and more on the motivation of the man himself. After all, a sea captain/admiral who gave up eyesight in one eye, lost one arm, incurred a possible skull fracture, and ultimately gave his life in the name of doing his duty, is certainly to be admired. Surely his bravery is beyond question. Nor does Coleman question it other than to suggest his bravery was unnecessarily foolhardy. His death at Trafalgar, for example, seems as if it could easily have been avoided. I've read biographies of other great military men and it seems that trait is a common thread whether we are talking about Nelson, or Custer, or Crazy Horse.

So I'm sure Nelson worshippers will prefer other "more positive" accounts of Nelson's life and career but this one worked fine for me.

Novelist and historian Terry Coleman's "The Nelson Touch" may be regarded as the first of the three great biographies of Admiral Nelson published in the first decade of the 21st Century. However, in stark contrast to John Sugden's monumental two volume work (The second volume is in preparation, covering the period from 1797 to 1805, when Nelson had his greatest triumphs and defeats.) and Roger Knight's biography published last year, Coleman's extensively researched tome reads more like a negative "Cliff Notes" review of the admiral's life, focusing on Nelson's career in the 1790s and 1800s, devoting as much time to the great British admiral's flaws as well as his successes. Indeed, I suspect that the title "The Nelson Touch" is a bit misleading, since Coleman doesn't dwell much on those facets of Nelson's personality which made him into an inspirational naval commander well respected - if not loved - by his celebrated "band of brothers" such as Captains Berry, Hallowell, Hardy and Hoste, and Admirals Collingwood and Hood. Speaking of which, to my utter amazement, there is not much for the reader to discern regarding Nelson's strong ties to fellow officers such as Captains Berry and Hardy and especially, Admiral Collingwood. Only Rear Admiral Troubridge is discussed at any length, and it is more from the perspective of Nelson's perceived rivalry with Troubridge dating from the latter's appointment to the Admiralty in 1801, than the close comradeship which had developed while serving together in the Mediterranean Sea during the 1790s.

Yet Coleman's negative appraisal of Nelson's life and career is important for two major reasons. First it demonstrates convincingly how disastrous Nelson's conduct was at Naples in 1799, condoning acts which would be charitably described as running counter to the spirit, if not the actual letter, of dignified conduct against the enemy; in other words, Nelson acted as a war criminal. How, you might ask? He abrogated a treaty signed by one of his subordinates and representatives of Naples's Republican government and misled defending Neapolitan and French troops holding out in impregnable forts near the city who had been guaranteed safe conduct to Toulon, but instead, found themselves sent via safe conduct only to the gallows. He also arranges for the summary execution of the Neapolitan naval officer in charge of the city's defense, who had become a close colleague and friend of Nelson's, before switching his loyalty to the Republican government. Coleman also delves deeply into Nelson's relationship with Emma Hamilton, demonstrating how it evolved slowly into a passionate love affair, beginning innocently enough via Emma's diplomatic work on behalf of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies's Bourbon royal family. At any rate, Coleman's fine scholarship puts to rest any notion that theirs was love at first sight. Despite my own misgivings regarding Coleman's coverage, I still strongly recommend this book as an excellent biography of Admiral Nelson, especially in its coverage of Nelson's actions at Naples and his love affair with Emma Hamilton.

I admire _The Nelson Touch_ in the way that, Nelson-like, author Terry Coleman ties up alongside and lets the broadsides rip at his subject from the get-go:

"Nelson was a paramount naval genius and natural born predator, and those who look to find a saint besides will miss the man. The strength of mind is everywhere obvious. He knew he was right, and in action was daring and direct. His originality asserts itself again and again, and so does his quixotic generosity. But in private life, as in war, he was ruthless whenever he had to be, and he could be pitiless. He was a fanatic for duty, at times beyond all sense, and a royalist so infatuated with the divine right of kings that he began to see himself, in revolutionary times, as the instrument of God. This made him a good hater. He hated the American rebels of the thirteen colonies, and the harmless liberal rebels against the Bourbon king of Naples, as unforgivingly as he hated the revolutionary French and then Napoleon."

That's the first paragraph from page one, and in excellent journalistic style, Coleman, having layed out his thesis, succintly expands upon it in the next 343 pages (a very small number of pages relative to most modern biographies.) Coleman does not discuss Nelson's military strategy to a great extent. Nor does he fill in the many gaps in the historical record with generalized discussions of the social milieu of the time; for example, little is known about Nelson's boyhood, and Coleman does not have any sections that choose to draw in sources about what it might have been like from contemporary accounts of other persons of the same period. The author does not bother filling in the vast background story of the sociopolitical upheavals of the time, and approaches Nelson's life with a certain expectation of familiarity on the part of the reader of its general outline. Far from detracting from its subject matter, the relative tautness and focus of this approach make it one of the most readable biographies I've encountered in recent years.

What Coleman does rather superbly is go back to truly original source material on Nelson, and more or less reconstruct a portrait of the man he was. The surviving primary material, in the form of Nelson's letters and those few letters to Nelson which survive, are meticulously examined. Any contradictions and inconsistencies are investigated, the factual basis often being compared to subsequent distortions. This book might be labeled 'revisionist' because of Coleman's insistence on unraveling the origins of the many myths and distortions that have developed over the centuries concerning Nelson; however, my impression is more that Coleman simply tries to get at the truth of the matter under the layers of hogwash without any agenda per se. If that results in a revision in the general public understanding of Nelson, that's where the chips have fallen.

A constant theme of the book is deconstructing the myth, the legend, the hagiography that's been built up around Nelson since his death. Indeed, Coleman manages to convey that it was Nelson's very nature that started building up the legend in the first place. It remains dubious about the extent to which Nelson's military acumen was or was not responsible for victories at St. Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, but there's no doubt that Nelson thought that Nelson was responsible almost wholly for those victories. (Nelson was quite fond of referring to himself in the third person.) And the tenor of the times was ripe for mythologizing a hero, particularly in a Britain that was in such dire straits in its continental struggle and in fear of popular uprisings.

Nelson's strange sojourn as a sort of minister of war cum loose-cannon warlord supporting the King of Naples is given a great deal of attention. It's a sorry episode where Nelson's reactionary political leanings, love of royalty, desire for self-aggrandizement, and failure to obey his superiors combined in a rather nasty and bloody counter-revolution. The current controversy about whether Nelson's unilateral abrogation of a treaty, which resulted in the execution of several hundred prisoners who had been promised safe conduct by the British, is discussed in significantly greater detail than Nelson's fleet exploits. I came at this book without any sense of national pride (or disgust, as some contemporary Italian scholars have because of the incident, to the point of calling Nelson a war criminal) in the Nelson legend, but with considerable familiarity with his military record, and as such I found this material very interesting.

What I do find somewhat missing in Coleman's account is an explanation of 'The Nelson Touch' that so inspired his contemporaries (at least the ones who didn't hate his guts). Nelson cheerfully explains it about himself in laying out his battle plans for Trafalgar, but as Coleman notes, there are zero accounts from his captains about the same meeting at which Nelson describes himself so glowingly. Was the 'Touch' an invention? If it was real, what was it about Nelson's personal qualities that made him an inspirational leader? This subject is not addressed, leading one to the conclusion that it perhaps might have been a contemporary invention of the glory-seeking Nelson and his acolytes. I don't know this to be so, but this is not the book that explores those issues. And, as noted, there is little in the way of revisionism in looking at the claims of Nelson's military genius, which are certainly overstated in many other sources and which is taken as a given by Coleman.

One item of particular note: Coleman does a superb job of looking at the visual record of Nelson in terms of the contemporary portraits done of him during his lifetime. Often in biographies the illustrations are unremarked upon by the author, almost afterthoughts. Coleman treats these, too, as primary sources, and this greatly enlivens the text.

Regardless of how one approaches Nelson as man or legend prior to reading this book, this is an excellent modern biography that rehumanizes him, and well recommended.