#BTColumn – Who Lord Nelson really was

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today.

by David Comissiong

Viscount Horatio Nelson, a famed British Admiral, was killed in action in the “Battle of Trafalgar” – a naval battle between a British fleet commanded by Nelson and a combined French and Spanish fleet which took place off Cape Trafalgar (on the southern coast of Spain) on 21st October 1805.

The British fleet won a decisive victory in the Battle of Trafalgar. This was an outcome which ensured British naval supremacy for the rest of the Napoleonic Wars – a series of major conflicts pitting the imperialistic and slavery-supporting French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, against an array of European powers led by the equally imperialistic and slavery-supporting British Empire, as both sides fought for supremacy in Europe and in the areas of the world that had been colonised by the European nations.

At the time of his death, Admiral Nelson’s lifetime “accomplishments” were as follows:

(1)  As a young sailor, he served aboard the ships of the British merchant company of Hibbert, Purrier and Horton – a London based merchant and shipping business which was extensively involved in the slave trade during the late 18th century – as they plied their trade between Britain and its West Indian colonies (1771-1772).

(2)  He served in the British navy in the East Indies during the First Anglo-Maratha War (1775-1782), where he played a role in supporting Britain’s imperialistic East India Company in its war against the Maratha Empire of India.

(3) Between 1777 and 1783, he served the British navy in the West Indies, where he protected British shipping, and helped to prosecute Britain’s War against the 13 American colonies that had declared their independence of Britain.

Nelson helped to capture a number of American ships, as well as ships belonging to France – the ally of the 13 colonies in the American Revolution. He was also engaged in attacking Spanish colonial possessions in the region.

(4) In 1784, Nelson received command of the frigate HMS Boreas, with the assignment to enforce the Navigation Acts in the vicinity of Antigua. The Navigation Acts sought to establish a British monopoly of all trade with the West Indian colonies – in the interest of Britain – and were unpopular with both the Americans (who had won their War of Independence) and with the West Indian colonists. He enforced the Navigation Acts between 1784 and 1787, thereby imposing hardships on the West Indian colonies.

(5) While Nelson was in the Caribbean, he developed an affinity with the slave owners there. He believed that the colonies’ economies relied heavily on the Atlantic slave trade, and he attempted to use his influence to thwart the abolition movement in Britain.  He was a close friend of Simon Taylor, one of Jamaica’s most notorious slave owners.

(6) When, in 1793, Britain and France went to war against each other in the Napoleonic War, Nelson was pressed back into service and served the British Navy in the Mediterranean, where he engaged in hostilities with French forces and with Spain – France’s ally. Nelson won a major naval battle against France in the 1798 “Battle of the Nile” and was rewarded with the aristocratic title of “Baron Nelson of the Nile”.

(7) In 1799, Nelson played an infamous role in permitting the hanging of Admiral Francesco Caracciolo of Naples, as well as permitting the execution of many French Jacobins that he had taken prisoner during a successful battle to recapture Naples from French forces.

(8) In 1801, he prevailed against a Danish fleet in the Battle of Copenhagen. (Tired of British ships imposing a blockade against French trade and stopping and searching their merchant ships, the Russian, Prussian, Danish and Swedish governments had formed an alliance to break the blockade. The British navy – commanded by Nelson – attacked and defeated the Danish fleet at Copenhagen.)

(9) In 1803, a fresh outbreak of war occurred between Britain and France, and Nelson was appointed commander-in-chief of the British Fleet and returned to the Mediterranean, where he set out in pursuit of the French fleet under Admiral Villeneuve.  Nelson chased the French fleet from the Mediterranean to the West Indies, but failed to engage it.

(10) In 1805, while Nelson pursued the French fleet in the Caribbean during the months before the Battle of Trafalgar, he wrote a pro-slavery letter to his good friend, Simon Taylor of Jamaica.

Nelson expressed his opposition to William Wilberforce and the abolitionists in this letter. The letter appeared in William Cobbett’s Political Register on 21 February 1807, while Parliament debated abolition of the slave trade. Cobbett sympathised with slave holders like Simon Taylor, hated Wilberforce and opposed the abolition of the slave trade. It seems likely that Taylor provided Cobbett with a copy of this letter in an effort to mobilise the reputation of the recently deceased Lord Nelson behind the pro-slavery cause as part of a last ditch effort to halt the progress of the Abolition Bill.

It is clear from the foregoing that Lord Nelson was, first and foremost, a British imperialist – a military man who was committed to the mission of constructing and defending the British Empire. (Barbados, it should be noted, was a colonial possession within that Empire.) It is also clear that Lord Nelson supported and protected the system of slavery-based colonial production and the trans-Atlantic slave trade upon which it depended. Indeed, he was a good friend and supporter of the West Indian slave-owning class, and in fact married a Nevisian representative of that class.

The 19th century German-born explorer and historian, Robert H. Schomburgk, recorded the story of the erecting of the Lord Nelson statue in Bridgetown, Barbados in his “History of Barbados” as follows:

“The official news of Lord Nelson’s victory and death reached Barbados on the 20th of December 1805. On the 23rd of December, there was a brilliant illumination to celebrate the great victory and a funeral sermon was preached on the 5th of January following, in St. Michael’s church, on the death
of the hero.

“A subscription was entered into for the erection of a statue to his memory in some conspicuous part of Bridgetown, and upwards of ₤2, 300 was subscribed in the course of a few weeks.  The committee appointed for the execution of this plan had purchased “the Green” for £1,050, towards which sum the Legislature contributed £500. On this place, which was to be called Trafalgar Square, the statue was to be erected.

The statue was placed on the pedestal as early as two o’clock in the morning of the 22nd of March 1813. A large body of troops, under the command of Major-General Stehlein, took up their station in the square at ten o’clock, and soon after Sir George Beckwith and Admiral Laforey entered the square in procession, accompanied by the clergy, and the civil, military and naval authorities of the island.

Two lieutenants of the navy, who had been in the action of Trafalgar, unveiled the statue, under the cheers of the assembled multitude, and a general salute of ordnance from St. Anne’s and the men-of-war in the bay.”

Both the British and the local white, slavery and Empire-upholding elite attached the greatest of significance to the erecting of this statue to Lord Nelson in the heart of Bridgetown in the year 1813.

They understood, only too well, what Admiral Nelson and the values that he represented meant for the maintenance of the world they had built for themselves.

Three years later, in 1816, Barbados experienced the “Bussa Rebellion” – a Rebellion that was designed by our enslaved ancestors to destroy the evil system of slavery and Empire that Lord Nelson was committed to, and dedicated his life to upholding and defending.

Now that the time has come to “decommission” the Lord Nelson statue – to strip it of any laudatory or celebratory connotations – and to consign it to the Barbados Museum as an important historical artefact that helps us to document this painful but important component of our history, it is appropriate that the governmental and civil society leadership of our evolved and progressive, democratic 21st century nation treat this act of “decommissioning” with the solemnity and seriousness that it deserves.

By making and carrying out this decision to remove the Nelson Statue from its place of prominence in the heart of Bridgetown, and installing it in our Museum as a historical artefact, we Barbadians are making a very profound statement about how far we have evolved as a nation and a people; about the “Mirror Image” that we now have of ourselves; and about the type of progressive, humane, emancipatory values that we subscribe to and intend to hold aloft.

David Comissiong is Barbados’ Ambassador to Caricom.