Trafalgar

by Nicholas Best

  Order was hastily restored before Galiano could challenge Magon to a duel. But the Spanish were so touchy by now that a chance remark by Villeneuve triggered another confrontation. Admiral Gravina, normally an even-tempered man, told Villeneuve that only a madman would think of sailing at the moment. ‘Do you not see, sir, that the barometer is falling?’

  ‘It is not the glass that is falling,’ Villeneuve replied, ‘but the courage of certain persons.’

  Stung, Gravina retorted that the Spanish had been in the forefront against Calder and were ready to sail tomorrow, if necessary. But the technically minded Commodore Cosma de Churruca pointed out that the barometer was indeed falling, which confirmed the imminent arrival of the October gales. It was only common sense to let the gales scatter the British. In Churruca’s view, the Spanish would be better off altogether without the French. ‘Did we not see at Finisterre, the French fleet standing idly by, doing nothing as the San Rafael and Firme were captured? Making no attempt to rescue them?’

  More blood boiled. The French took a while to calm down. When discussions were finally resumed, a compromise was reached. The fleet would not sail at once, but would move down to the harbour mouth, ready to leave as soon as the weather improved. They would wait for the British to divide their forces – as they would have to when their supplies ran low – and then sail immediately. In the meantime, the officers wanted it placed on record ‘that the vessels of both nations are for the most part badly equipped, that a portion of the crews have never been trained at sea, and that, in short, the fleet is in no state to carry out the duties allotted to it’.

  After that, the council of war broke up. The Spanish bowed stiffly to Villeneuve as they left, departing with the air of men who knew they were doomed. Villeneuve himself wrote to Decrès that the Spanish were ‘quite incapable of meeting the enemy’, but would put to sea anyway, as ordered. So would the French. Under Villeneuve’s command, thirty-three ships of the line would begin moving down to the harbour mouth next day to wait for a favourable wind.

  CHAPTER 28

  NELSON’S MEMORANDUM

  The Spanish were right about the weather. It deteriorated sharply on 10 October and remained intermittently bad for another week. There was no chance of the fleet putting to sea for the time being. All they could do was sit at anchor and wait.

  Outside the harbour, Nelson continued his preparations for their reception. His own force was not yet fully assembled because new ships were arriving every day. They came in ones and twos, rather than a great forest of sails, so that the French lookouts would notice nothing untoward. Nelson did not have as many ships as Villeneuve imagined. He was only too aware that the odds would be stacked against him when the French did finally come out to fight. On 8 October, he calculated that:

  I have thirty-six sail of the line looking me in the face. Unfortunately, there is a strip of land between us, but it is believed they will come to sea in a few days. The sooner the better. I don’t like to have these things upon my mind; and if I see my way through the fiery ordeal, I shall go home and rest for the winter.

  Later that day, Nelson penned a memorandum outlining his strategy for the fight. He based his figures on the hope that the British fleet would have been considerably reinforced before it took place:

  Thinking it almost impossible to bring a Fleet of forty Sail of the Line into a Line of Battle in variable winds, thick weather and other circumstances which must occur, without such a loss of time that the opportunity would probably be lost of bringing the Enemy to Battle in such a manner as to make the business decisive.

  I have therefore made up my mind to keep the fleet in that position of sailing . . . placing the fleet in two Lines of Sixteen Ships each with an advanced Squadron of Eight . . . which will always make if wanted a Line of Twenty-four Sail, on which ever Line the Commander in Chief may direct . . .

  This was the strategy Nelson had discussed with Captain Keats in the garden at Merton: a two-pronged attack, flexible as required, driving straight at the enemy’s centre and cutting Villeneuve’s line into three, each isolated from the others. If Villeneuve was in the middle section, he would be rapidly overwhelmed. The rearguard too would be destroyed before the leading ships could return to help. By the time the leading French ships had managed to turn round, the British would be ready to deal with them as well, annihilating the whole enemy fleet at a stroke. It was a brilliant idea, very radical for its time, and very dangerous too. Nothing of the kind had ever been attempted before, but it would be wonderful if it worked.

  The memorandum ran to several pages, with a copy for every captain in the British fleet. Nelson’s secretary laboured far into the night to ensure that they all went out next day. The French and Spanish were ‘all but out of the harbour’, according to British lookouts. Nelson’s captains needed time to study the plan before the enemy put to sea.

  Nelson had two frigates watching Cadiz, ready to warn him the moment the enemy emerged. His own ship was fifty miles away, out of Villeneuve’s sight. A string of signal ships kept Nelson in touch with events on shore. They had orders to fire guns at three-minute intervals as soon as Villeneuve emerged, or rockets from the masthead at night. Speedy frigates were best for such work, but the British were so short of frigates that Nelson was using ships of the line as well. By his own calculation, he needed at least eight frigates and three brigs to serve his fleet properly. At the moment he only had two such vessels.

  Otherwise, though, Nelson was as ready for battle as he could be. He had ordered those ships that had not already done so to paint their lower masts yellow, to distinguish them from the enemy’s black ones in the fog and smoke. He had earlier painted three parallel yellow strakes along the Victory’s hull as well, level with the gunports. The port hatches were painted black, giving a chequerboard effect when they were closed. Other captains had been doing the same, at their own expense, to emulate the Victory. It made their ships look stylish and smart, boosting everyone’s morale.

  Nelson’s main concern, as he waited for Villeneuve, was to keep his fleet properly fed and watered. The Spanish had been right in predicting that resupply would be a problem. The British fleet needed a minimum of 800 bullocks every month, which could only come from the Moroccan port of Tetuan, across the Strait from Gibraltar. They needed fresh water and vegetables as well, in prodigious quantities. One of Nelson’s first actions on joining the fleet had been to detach a substantial number of ships under Rear-Admiral Thomas Louis to fetch more water from Gibraltar. With a battle in the offing, however, Louis was loath to reduce Nelson’s fighting strength at such a crucial time.

  ‘You are sending us away, my Lord. The enemy will come out, and we shall have no share in the battle.’

  ‘My dear Louis,’ Nelson soothed him, ‘I have no other means of keeping my Fleet complete in provisions and water, but by sending them in detachments to Gibraltar. The enemy will come out, and we shall fight them; but there will be time for you to get back first. I look upon Canopus as my right hand, and I send you first to ensure your being here to help beat them.’

  Louis wished he could believe it. So did his flag-captain, Frank Austen, whose sister Jane later mentioned the Canopus in her novel Mansfield Park. Austen had sailed all the way to the West Indies and back in pursuit of Villeneuve. He didn’t want to miss the dénouement now, as he told his fiancée:

  Having borne our share in a tedious chace [sic] and anxious blockade, it would be mortifying indeed to find ourselves at last thrown out of any credit or emolument which would result from an action. Such, I hope, will not be our lot.

  Like Captain Wentworth in Persuasion, Frank Austen needed prize money to get married. He was hoping to make his fortune when Villeneuve came out of harbour. He knew he was never going to make it on a dull supply run to Gibraltar.

  A thousand miles away, Napoleon’s troops had long since crossed the Rhine and were pushing deep into Bavaria, heading for Ulm. One column had advanced into the Black Forest, promp
ting Field Marshal Mack to send Austrian troops forward to meet them. The rest of Napoleon’s army had rapidly bypassed the forest and was advancing on Ulm from the north and east, threatening the Austrians’ rear. They reached the Danube on 7 October, two days ahead of schedule. Crossing the river in pouring rain, they pressed on southwards, hurrying to close the gap and encircle the Austrians before Field Marshal Mack realised what was happening.

  Mack enjoyed a fine reputation in Austria, but he was not a distinguished commander. ‘Let not General Mack be employed, for I know him to be a rascal, a scoundrel and a coward,’ Lord Nelson had warned two months earlier. He knew Mack from Naples, where he had once witnessed an exercise in which Mack managed to surround his own troops instead of the enemy.

  Napoleon was not impressed by Mack either. He had met him when the Austrian was a prisoner of war in 1800:

  Mack is one of the most mediocre men I have ever come across. He is presumptuous, conceited, and considers himself equal to anything. I hope one day he will find himself up against one of our good generals. That would open his eyes. He is one of the least able of men, and unlucky as well.

  Mack thought the main French thrust was coming through the Black Forest. He hadn’t expected Napoleon to cross the river in his rear. He had sent to the Tyrol for reinforcements, but they had been intercepted by the French. With the net rapidly closing, Mack faced a stark choice. He could counter-attack in an attempt to wrest the initiative back from the enemy He could stand his ground, holding the defences at Ulm until the Russians arrived. Or he could retreat to the Tyrol, leading his army back to the safety of the mountains before it was annihilated by Napoleon.

  He was considering these options when word reached him from behind enemy lines – a spy had overheard French troops discussing a British invasion of Boulogne. There was trouble in Paris as well, apparently, where people were rioting in protest at the cost of the war. It was all just hearsay, but Mack was happy to believe it. If the British were in Boulogne, Napoleon would be forced to retreat at once to protect his own rear. His troops would have to pass Ulm on their way home. Mack decided to stand his ground there, ready to harry the French as they went by and pursue them relentlessly back to their own borders.

  At Merton, Emma Hamilton was missing Nelson. The house seemed empty without him. She couldn’t bear it on her own, with only her mother and daughter for company. A few days after Nelson’s departure, Emma left, too, and went to stay with William Nelson and his family at Canterbury.

  Emma and William were hardly boon companions. He was a stuffy clergyman, concerned with the proprieties and his own advancement. She was his brother’s mistress, with an illegitimate daughter and a racy past. But it suited both to see each other. Emma wanted to replace Lady Nelson in the family’s affections. William Nelson wanted to inherit his brother’s title, which he would so long as his brother remained with Emma, who could not bear him legitimate children. To that end, William was happy to keep in with Emma and invite her to stay with his family in the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral.

  Canterbury itself was a dull town as a rule, but livelier than usual at the moment. It had been a haven for refugees from Dover during the invasion scare. Now it was full of soldiers, officers from smart regiments adding tone to the town’s social life. The Royal Horse Guards had been stationed at Canterbury for a while (it was troopers from the Blues who had given Lady Hester Stanhope such a fright at Ramsgate). There were officers from all the Foot Guards regiments as well, and volunteers from the local gentry. Among them was Edward Austen, another of Jane Austen’s brothers, who commanded the volunteers on his Godmersham estate. Jane herself was staying with him that September and had attended balls in Canterbury during Race Week.

  The Austen family and the Nelsons had acquaintances in common, but moved in different circles. William Nelson lived with his wife and children in a pretty house beside the cathedral, known today as Linacre. It was there that Emma Hamilton arrived at the end of September, for a stay with her lover’s family. She felt the need for moral support at a difficult time. She wanted to be with Nelson’s flesh and blood as they all fretted together about what was happening at sea.

  It was not Emma’s first visit to Canterbury. She had sung a duet in the cathedral on a previous occasion and embarrassed William by drinking all the champagne in the house. This time, though, her behaviour was more muted. She prayed in the cathedral every morning and received a stream of visitors in the Nelsons’ drawing room. People dropped in every day to pay their respects and enquire discreetly after the events at sea. Emma’s information came straight from Lord Nelson, better than anything they could read in the newspapers.

  Her own letters to Nelson were full of love and admiration, and chat about their daughter Horatia, who thought Nelson was her godfather:

  My dearest life, we are just come from church, for I am so fond of the Church Service and the cannons [sic] are so civil, we have every day a fine anthem for me. Yesterday Mr, Mrs & Miss Harrison, Mrs Bridges, Marquis of Douglas and General Thornton and Mr Baker the Member dined with us. The Dr gave a good dinner and Mariana dressed the macaroni and curry, so all went off well . . .

  My dear girl writes every day in Miss Conner’s letter & I am so pleased with her. My heart is broke away from her but I have now had her so long at Merton that my heart cannot bear to be without her. You will be even fonder of her when you return. She says ‘I love my dear dear godpapa, but Mrs Gibson told me he kill’d all the people, and I was afraid’. Dearest angel she is! Oh, Nelson, how I love her, but how do I idolize you – the dearest husband of my heart you are all in this world to your Emma – may God send you victory and home soon to your Emma, Horatia and Paradise Merton for when you are there it will be Paradise. My own Nelson may God prosper you and preserve you for the sake of your affectionate Emma.

  In Deal, fifteen miles down the road, the American inventor Robert Fulton was putting the finishing touches to his latest batch of torpedoes. He was sure they would work better now than they had at Boulogne, and he had obtained permission to blow up a captured brig to show how effective they could be if they were handled properly.

  The demonstration was scheduled for 15 October. Fulton spent the previous day rehearsing two boat crews, each towing a torpedo underwater. The torpedoes were joined by an eighty-foot rope that was supposed to wrap itself around the target ship’s anchor cable. The tide would then carry the torpedoes under the target’s hull. A few minutes later, if the firing mechanism worked, the torpedoes would explode and the Dorothea would sink to the bottom.

  A large and sceptical audience gathered on the beach between Deal and Walmer to watch the demonstration. Fulton had been hoping the Prime Minister would be there, but Pitt had been called back to London on business. Some very senior naval officers attended instead, most of them convinced the experiment would fail. One announced that he would feel perfectly safe having dinner aboard the Dorothea with Fulton’s torpedoes coming towards him.

  But his cynicism was misplaced, as Fulton happily recorded:

  At forty minutes past four, the boats rowed towards the brig, and the Torpedoes were thrown into the water; the tide carried them, as before described, under the bottom of the brig, where, at the expiration of eighteen minutes, the explosion seemed to raise her bodily about six feet; she separated in the middle, and the two ends went down; in twenty seconds nothing was to be seen of her except floating fragments; the pumps and foremast were blown out of her; the fore-topsail-yard was thrown up to the crosstrees; the fore chain plates, with their bolts, were torn from her sides; the mizen-chainplates and shrouds being stronger than those of the foremast, or the shock being more forward than aft, the mizenmast was broke off in two places; these discoveries were made by means of the pieces which were found afloat.

  It was a brilliant performance, a great triumph for Fulton. The experiment had worked perfectly. He could hardly have wished for a more exhilarating result.

  But the admirals were horrified. T
orpedoes were all very well if they were used against the French, but they could also be turned against the British – ‘a mode of war which they who commanded the seas did not want, and which if successful would deprive them of it’. The admirals were worried about the wider implications of Fulton’s dreadful machines. In the sinking of the Dorothea, they had seen the future of naval warfare. They did not like it one bit.

  CHAPTER 29

  WAITING FOR THE ENEMY

  Down in Cadiz, the Spanish too were unhappy. Ill fed, unpaid, cooped up on board ship, they had been kept awake night after night, waiting sleeplessly at their guns for a British attack that never came. Most of them had been forced into the navy against their will and knew they were going to be massacred as soon as they set sail. They were growing more restless every day.

  There had already been a mutiny aboard the San Juan. The soldiers had refused to obey their orders and threatened to shoot their officers. The situation had only just been saved by Commodore Churruca, who had made a personal appeal to the mutineers’ loyalty. A few had been swayed by his oratory, but most had stood firm against him. Churruca had promptly had the ringleaders arrested at gunpoint. They had been taken ashore in chains, but Churruca had used his influence to save them from the death penalty. The other mutineers had been separated and reassigned to different ships.

  It had been a narrow escape, nevertheless. They could not afford any more trouble. The whole fleet needed to sail as soon as possible, to take the men’s minds off their grievances. All this waiting around in harbour was doing nobody any good.

  No one realised it more than Villeneuve. He had more reason than most to put to sea, because Napoleon was about to dismiss him. Vice-Admiral François Rosily was on his way to Cadiz, bearing dispatches from the Emperor. Rosily’s orders were to remove Villeneuve and take command of the fleet himself. Villeneuve had a shrewd suspicion that something of the sort was about to happen because his friend Denis Decrès had given him a broad hint to put to sea at the first opportunity. The sooner he put to sea, the lesser his chance of being humiliatingly relieved of his command on the eve of battle. Villeneuve was all for sailing at once.