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George Duff and Nelson did not meet until shortly before Trafalgar. Nonetheless, Duff’s reputation was such that Nelson showed him considerable respect, placing him in positions of responsibility ahead of more senior officers.
Duff was born in 1764 in the small coastal town of Banff in north-east Scotland, and from an early age showed a passion for the sea, once managing to stow away in a merchant ship; fortunately its voyage was short. He entered the Navy at thirteen, sailing with his great uncle, Rear Admiral (later Vice Admiral) Robert Duff, commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean station, in hms Panther. In the next six years, he saw action thirteen times, including (in hms Montagu) the Battle of the Saintes (12 April 1782). Commissioned lieutenant on 15 September 1779, he was promoted commander on 21 September 1790 with the support of his relative, the Earl of Fife, and the jurist and statesman Henry Dundas (later Viscount Melville and First Lord of the Admiralty). His post captaincy followed on 9 February 1793.
By then he was married and a father. He and his ‘childhood sweetheart’, Sophie Dirom, wed in 1791, settling in Castle Street, Edinburgh; their only child, a boy named Norwich, was born in 1792. As captain, Duff successively commanded HM ships Duke, Vengeance, Glenmore and – lastly and fatefully – Mars (74), which he joined in May 1804.
Duff had few complaints about the Mars: he thought her ‘in every respect a very good ship,’ weatherly (able to steer closer to the wind than the average), easy in a sea, responsive to the helm, and a much better sailer ‘than the generality of ships.’ If only he could bring her onto a more even keel, he said, he was sure she would be even better.
Somewhat unusually, he laid down rules of uniform for his men, insisting they be mustered once a week and inspected for cleanliness; and on taking command of the Mars, he set about another kind of uniformity favoured by Scots in the contemporary Royal Navy, introducing as many of his countrymen as possible into the gunroom and wardroom. Having inherited an existing set of officers, this was not as easy as in the Glenmore, where he had had only one rather lonely English lieutenant, but he still managed to bring in seven Scots, including two of his cousins and his son: Norwich joined the ship off Cadiz in 1805, shortly before his thirteenth birthday.
Whenever away from home Duff wrote daily to his wife, but sadly for posterity the letters were routinely destroyed on his return; their quantity seemed too great to keep, and only those from his last voyage survive. Off Cadiz, he was immediately charmed by Nelson, writing on 1 October, ‘I dined with his Lordship yesterday and had a very merry dinner. He certainly is the pleasantest Admiral I ever served under,’ and later added the telling observation that ‘we all wish to do what he likes, without any kind of orders.’ On 4 October, placed in charge of the Inshore Squadron, he became a key part of the chain of communications between the frigates stationed close to Cadiz and the fleet, positioned about fifty miles westward. He recognised the privilege: ‘I have been myself very lucky with most of my Admirals, but . . . even this little detachment is a kind of thing to me, there being so many senior officers to me in the Fleet, as it shows his attention, and wish to bring me forward.’
At 6am on 20 October, Duff sent the signal, ‘I have discovered a strange fleet’ – a standard message, but one whose special meaning under the circumstances was instantly understood – and at 8.32am the frigate Phoebe signalled, ‘The enemy’s ships have put to sea’, meaning that the majority of the Combined Fleet was now out of harbour. At 1.50pm, ‘when there could be no question of their turning back,’ Duff repeated the message to the fleet.
With that, Nelson’s inspired but carefully worked out plan swung into action, and on the morning of 21 October it took visible shape. In Collingwood’s words, it was ‘an impetuous attack in two distinct bodies . . . The weather line he commanded and left the Lee Line totally to my direction.’ This was not entirely true: at 9.41am Nelson signalled the Mars, close behind Collingwood’s Royal Sovereign, to take station astern of the flagship. At 10am, he went further and ordered Duff to ‘Head the larboard column’, repeating the order at 10.45am. But the Mars could not overtake the Royal Sovereign and in fact was third into the battle. ‘The light wind was unfavourable to us,’ wrote Collingwood. ‘I thought it a long time after I got through their line before I found my friends about me: Duff, worthy Duff, was next to me but found a difficulty in getting through for we had to make a kind of S to pass them in the manner they were formed . . . ’.
Meanwhile, in the long slow approach to battle, Duff had grasped the opportunity to write quickly to his ‘dearest Sophia’:
I have just time to tell you we are going into Action with the Combined Fleet. I hope and trust in God that we shall all behave as become us, and that I may yet have the happiness of taking my beloved wife and children in my arms. Norwich is quite well and happy. I have, however, ordered him off the quarter-deck. Yours ever, and most truly . . .
But it was his last letter; he was one of the battle’s fairly early victims. Having endured long-distance fire from four enemy warships, the Mars was directly engaged with two, the Fougeaux and the Pluton, when a broadside came from one or the other and, wrote Midshipman James Robinson (himself, like Duff, a native of Banff), ‘It was then the gallant Captain fell. I saw him fall. His head and neck were taken entirely off his body . . . .’
In a bizarre gesture of defiance, the crew held up his body ‘and gave three cheers to show they were not discouraged,’ then returned to their guns under the command of Duff’s first lieutenant, William Hennah. The corpse lay on deck for the rest of the battle, covered with a Union flag, and afterwards thirteen-year-old Norwich Duff wrote a most touching message on paper that had first been carefully lined in pencil:
My Dear Mama, You cannot possibly imagine how unwilling I am to begin this melancholy letter. However as you must unavoidably hear of the fate of dear Papa, I write these few lines to request you to bear it as patiently as you can. He died like a hero, having gallantly led his ship into action . . .
Apart from Nelson, Duff was one of only two officers to be named by Collingwood in his Trafalgar Dispatch, the other being Captain John Cooke of the Bellerophon, who was also killed in the battle. Duff was buried at sea and a memorial was raised in St Paul’s Cathedral. Sophie Duff had to console herself with her husband’s naval gold medal and a handsome silver vase from the Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund. Norwich Duff remained a professional naval officer all his life and died in the rank of Vice Admiral on 20 April 1862.
SWRH
Type: Monument
Material: Marble
Location: The crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral, London
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