Chapter 4

by Herman Melville

　　Concerning "The greatest sailor since our world began."TennysonIn this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the mainroad, some by-paths have an enticement not readily to be withstood. I amgoing to err into such a by-path. If the reader will keep me company Ishall be glad. At the least we can promise ourselves that pleasure whichis wickedly said to be in sinning, for a literary sin the divergencewill be.Very likely it is no new remark that the inventions of our time haveat last brought about a change in sea-warfare in degree corresponding tothe revolution in all warfare effected by the original introduction fromChina into Europe of gunpowder. The first European fire-arm, a clumsycontrivance, was, as is well known, scouted by no few of the knights asa base implement, good enough peradventure for weavers too craven tostand up crossing steel with steel in frank fight. But as ashore,knightly valor, tho' shorn of its blazonry, did not cease with theknights, neither on the seas, though nowadays in encounters there acertain kind of displayed gallantry be fallen out of date as hardlyapplicable under changed circumstances, did the nobler qualities of suchnaval magnates as Don John of Austria, Doria, Van Tromp, Jean Bart, thelong line of British Admirals and the American Decaturs of 1812 becomeobsolete with their wooden walls.Nevertheless, to anybody who can hold the Present at its worthwithout being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to suchan one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems tofloat there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible,but also as a poetic reproach, softened by its picturesqueness, to theMonitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads. And thisnot altogether because such craft are unsightly, unavoidably lacking thesymmetry and grand lines of the old battle-ships, but equally for otherreasons.There are some, perhaps, who while not altogether inaccessible tothat poetic reproach just alluded to, may yet on behalf of the neworder, be disposed to parry it; and this to the extent of iconoclasm, ifneed be. For example, prompted by the sight of the star inserted in theVictory's quarter-deck designating the spot where the Great Sailorfell, these martial utilitarians may suggest considerations implyingthat Nelson's ornate publication of his person in battle was not onlyunnecessary, but not military, nay, savored of foolhardiness and vanity.They may add, too, that at Trafalgar it was in effect nothing less thana challenge to death; and death came; and that but for his bravado thevictorious Admiral might possibly have survived the battle; and so,instead of having his sagacious dying injunctions overruled by hisimmediate successor in command, he himself, when the contest wasdecided, might have brought his shattered fleet to anchor, a proceedingwhich might have averted the deplorable loss of life by shipwreck in theelemental tempest that followed the martial one.Well, should we set aside the more disputable point whether forvarious reasons it was possible to anchor the fleet, then plausiblyenough the Benthamites of war may urge the above.But the might-have-been is but boggy ground to build on. And,certainly, in foresight as to the larger issue of an encounter, andanxious preparations for it -- buoying the deadly way and mapping itout, as at Copenhagen -- few commanders have been so painstakinglycircumspect as this same reckless declarer of his person in fight.Personal prudence even when dictated by quite other than selfishconsiderations surely is no special virtue in a military man; while anexcessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honestsense of duty, is the first. If the name Wellington is not so much ofa trumpet to the blood as the simpler name Nelson, the reason for thismay perhaps be inferred from the above. Alfred in his funeral ode on thevictor of Waterloo ventures not to call him the greatest soldier of alltime, tho' in the same ode he invokes Nelson as "the greatest sailorsince our world began."At Trafalgar, Nelson, on the brink of opening the fight, sat downand wrote his last brief will and testament. If under the presentimentof the most magnificent of all victories to be crowned by his ownglorious death, a sort of priestly motive led him to dress his person inthe jewelled vouchers of his own shining deeds; if thus to have adornedhimself for the altar and the sacrifice were indeed vainglory, thenaffectation and fustian is each more heroic line in the great epics anddramas, since in such lines the poet but embodies in verse thoseexaltations of sentiment that a nature like Nelson, the opportunitybeing given, vitalizes into acts.