The Nelson Touch: The Life and Legend of Horatio Nelson

Rating:
Summary: A highly negative view of Nelson
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Continuing the myths
Review: 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.

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

Rating:
Summary: Oh, come on! This IS a good book.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: What's wrong with saying that Nelson was not perfect?
Review: 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.