mand of the Portuguese fleet. At the time Napier's idea, which was shared by the admiralty and the general public, was that what had been done at Sidon and at Acre was to be repeated at Cronstadt or Helsingfors. But when the admiral got into the Baltic he realised, in view of the frowning casemates of Sveaborg or Cronstadt, or Reval or Bomarsund, that it was not for line-of-battle ships to engage a first-class fortress. What, under the circumstances, ships could do was done. The Russian ports were absolutely sealed; but beyond this most stringent blockade nothing was attempted, though Bomarsund was captured, mainly by a land force of ten thousand men specially sent from France.
The reality fell so far short of what had been expected that everybody asked who was to blame. Napier, in no measured language, laid the blame on the admiralty, for not having supplied him with gunboats, and on his fleet, as very badly manned and still worse disciplined (Earp, freq.; Times, 7 Feb. 1855; Codrington, p. 497). The admiralty and public opinion, on the other hand, laid the blame on Napier himself, on his capricious humour or want of nerve, which—there were people who said—had been destroyed by too liberal and long continued potations of Scotch whisky; while others referred to his own published words: ‘Most men of sixty are too old for dash and enterprise. … When a man's body begins to shake, the mind follows, and he is always the last to find it out’ (The Navy, &c., pp. 73, 100; cf. Edinburgh Review, cxviii. 179 n.).
In July 1855 Sir Charles Wood, then first lord of the admiralty, recommended Napier for the G.C.B. He declined to accept it, and wrote at length to Prince Albert, as grand master of the order, explaining his reasons and stating his grievances. His enemies, real or imaginary, were numerous, and the abusive language which he scattered around continually added to them. In 1855 he was elected M.P. for Southwark, and in and out of parliament devoted himself to denouncing Sir James Graham and the board of admiralty. During the intervals of his attendance in the House of Commons he resided almost entirely at Merchistoun, where he had all along taken great interest in experimental farming, considering himself an authority, more especially on turnips and lambs. He became an admiral on 6 March 1858, and died on 6 Nov. 1860.
The angry and often unseemly quarrels of his later days gave an impression of Napier as much below his real merits as that previously entertained was above them. As a man of action, within a perhaps limited scope, his conduct was often brilliant; but his insolence and ingratitude to Sir Robert Stopford, his selfish insubordination, and his arrogant representation of himself as the hero of the hour, left very bitter memories in the minds of his colleagues.
As a young man, from his very dark complexion, he was often spoken of as Black Charley; and frequently, from the eccentricities of his conduct—many of which are recorded by his stepson—as Mad Charley. His portrait by T. M. Joy [q. v.], now in the Painted Hall at Greenwich, is an admirable likeness, though, as has been frequently pointed out, it makes him look too clean and too well dressed, points on which Napier was notoriously negligent. Another portrait of Napier in naval uniform, by John Simpson, is in the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. A partial observer has described him in 1840 as ‘about fourteen stone, stout and broad built; stoops from a wound in his neck, walks lame from another in his leg, turns out one of his feet, and has a most slouching, slovenly gait; a large round face, with black, bushy eyebrows, a double chin, scraggy, grey, uncurled whiskers and thin hair; wears a superfluity of shirt collar and small neck-handkerchief, always bedaubed with snuff, which he takes in immense quantities; usually his trousers far too short, and wears the ugliest pair of old shoes he can find’ (Elers Napier, ii. 126). As years went on he did not improve, and in November 1854 his appearance on shore at Kiel, in plain clothes, used to excite wonder amounting almost to consternation.
By his wife (d. 19 Dec. 1857) he had issue a son, who died in infancy, and a daughter, married in 1843 to the Rev. Henry Jodrell, rector of Gisleham, in Suffolk. Of his stepchildren, who took the name of Napier, the eldest, Edward Delaval Hungerford Elers Napier, is separately noticed. The second, Charles George, who was with Napier through the Portuguese war, and both then and afterwards was spoken of as an officer of great promise, was captain of the Avenger frigate, and was lost with her on 20 Dec. 1847 (O'Byrne).
