Free Intelligence in War: The Value--And Limitations--Of What the Military Can Learn About the Enemy by John Keegan Page B

Thomas Troubridge was a trusted subordinate, a colleague of twenty-five years and a no-nonsense fighting-ship captain. St. Vincent thought him “the greatest man in that walk the English Navy has ever produced.” A veteran of the Glorious First of June and the Cape St. Vincent battles, his attitude to command was straightforward. “Whenever I see a fellow look as if he was thinking,” he gave as his opinion after the widespread outbreaks of indiscipline in 1797, “I say that’s mutiny.” Taken to see Hamilton and Acton, he came straight to the point. Hamilton recorded, “We did more business in half an hour than should have been done in a week in the official way here . . . Now being informed of the position and strength of the enemy” and having extracted an order from Acton authorising the governors of every Neapolitan port to supply “the King’s ships with all sorts of provisions,” Troubridge “brightened up and seemed perfectly happy.” Putting Acton’s order in his pocket, he departed for the fleet offshore, which he reached on 18 June.
    Fighting is one thing. Intelligence is another. Each requires different qualities, not often found in the same person. The Royal Navy was to rediscover that, on a similar occasion, on 31 May 1916, when a seaman officer asked the wrong question of the intelligence staff on the morning of the Battle of Jutland. The fault then was superciliousness; he disdained to explain why he asked the question he did, not deigning to take the cryptologists into his confidence. Troubridge was not supercilious. He, Hamilton and Acton seem to have got on like a house on fire. His fault was bluntness. He wanted supplies for the ships, almost a naval officer’s first thought. He wanted the freshest news available of the enemy’s whereabouts. Acton’s order ensured the first. Hamilton’s hard information—that the French were going to Malta—supplied the second. No wonder Troubridge departed wreathed in smiles.
    What he should have extracted from Hamilton, and might have done had he not stuck so directly to the point as he saw it to be, was softer news. It might have emerged in speculative or even general conversation, clearly not Troubridge’s strong point. The news was the indication that the French Armament was bound farther afield than Sicily or Malta. On 28 May Acton, whose first language was French (he had been born at Besançon), had told Hamilton that the French ambassador at Naples had told him “that the grand expedition from Toulon . . . was really destined for Egypt.” Hamilton appears to have suspected that he might be dealing with disinformation. As a result, although he minuted Acton’s report to the Foreign Office in London, he did not pass its content on to Troubridge nor put it in writing to Nelson. 10
    WHAT LONDON KNEW
     
    London may indeed have been better informed than Nelson was. The Foreign Office, the Admiralty and the War Office all collected intelligence, from professional agents, consular officials, well-disposed or garrulous travellers and foreign newspapers, among other sources. As early as 24 April Lord Spencer, the Foreign Secretary, had noted the destination of “the Toulon ships” as “Portugal—Naples—Egypt.” Two days later “61’78’71” (the designation of an agent) “believes,” he wrote, “the object to be Egypt incredible as it seems.” Henry Dundas, Secretary of War and a member of the board of the East India Company, was meanwhile telling the Admiralty of news passed by an American recently in France of French plans to invade the Channel Islands, to send an expeditionary force to Ireland (which came about in August), to raise revolution in Naples and Poland (both blows against Austria), but also of a “strange scheme respecting Egypt,” by which 400 French officers were to be sent overland through that country to assist Tipu Sultan against the British in India.
    The Admiralty had its own man in the Toulon Armament’s