Trafalgar

by Nicholas Best

  Shortly before 7 p.m., Captain Jean Lucas of the Redoutable caught his first glimpse of Nelson’s fleet to starboard:

  The sea was still rough, with a swell setting in from the south-west. The fleet was now steering to the south-south-west. I signalled to the admiral that I could make out a fleet or squadron of the enemy to windward. They did not, to me, seem very far away.

  An hour later, Lucas’s sighting was confirmed to Villeneuve by the brig Argus, which came alongside with a message from Admiral Gravina. The Achille had counted eighteen sail of the line to the south-south-west. The message was followed by another from the Themis, which reckoned the figure was twenty. Whatever the exact total, it was clearly the British fleet, on course for a confrontation with the French.

  It was dark by this time. The British frigates shadowing the combined fleet had orders to signal Villeneuve’s position to Nelson every hour. Two blue lights burning close together meant the French were heading south towards Gibraltar. Three guns fired in rapid succession meant the French were heading west. The British also had orders not to sail too close to the enemy, for fear of scaring them back to Cadiz. But Admiral Gravina, aboard the Principe de Asturias, did not know that:

  We began to observe, at no great distance, glimmers of light. They could only be from the enemy’s frigates, which were positioned midway between the two fleets. At nine o’clock the English squadron made gun signals. From the interval between the flash and bang, they must have been about two miles away from us.

  To Gravina, it looked as if the British were about to attack. He immediately signalled Villeneuve by lantern, urging him to form the fleet into line of battle. There was no time to waste if the British were coming after them.

  Villeneuve was appalled. Two miles! Surely the British were not going to attack in the dark? And yet . . . and yet . . . they had done exactly that at Aboukir, during the Battle of the Nile, and from the landward side. The British seemed capable of anything, with Lord Nelson in command.

  Villeneuve didn’t hesitate. Gravina was right. The whole fleet must form line of battle at once, the three columns merging into one to repel an imminent attack. Villeneuve promptly gave the order, flashed from ship to ship. He followed it immediately with a second order: ‘Branle-bas de combat.’ The command was acknowledged from every ship and the drummers moved swiftly to beat the Generale, the signal for the crews to clear the decks for action.

  CHAPTER 31

  VICTORY AT ULM

  Far away in Bavaria, Napoleon was enjoying one of the most glorious days of his life. Ulm had fallen, with hardly a shot fired. Austrian troops had surrendered in tens of thousands, laying down their arms without a struggle.

  It had been a whirlwind campaign. The Austrians had been wrong-footed from the start and had never recovered. The French had run rings round them – literally. They had encircled Ulm and laid siege to the fortress city while Field Marshal Mack dithered, not knowing what to do. He had tried to fight but had been forced to surrender, outwitted on every front by French speed and cunning.

  Napoleon had been in the thick of it, leading from the front. He had marched ceaselessly among his men, pushing forward with them through mud, rain and snow. He had advanced so rapidly that for eight days in a row he had never once taken off his boots. One night he had shared his quarters with a wounded drummer boy, protecting the child from cold. At the approaches to Ulm, he had stood on a hill exposed to enemy fire and surveyed the city below him. And now the fortress was his, surrendered after a bombardment of less than an hour.

  The negotiations had been completed on 17 October. Field Marshal Mack had secured an eight-day armistice, to give his Russian allies time to come to his aid. Napoleon had consented, knowing the Russians were too far away to be any help (this was not the moment to remind Mack of the twelve-day difference between the old and new calendars, something the Austrians had overlooked in their planning). Mack had agreed to surrender on 25 October if no Russians appeared. In the event, Austrian morale was so low that he was forced to raise the white flag on 19 October, six days early. The formal surrender took place next morning, at the foot of the Michelsberg Heights outside the city.

  Napoleon waited to receive the surrender at the head of his Guards. The Grand Army formed up behind him in a giant semicircle, with fifty cannon trained on the town. Private Coignet of the Grenadiers was standing near the Emperor when the enemy appeared:

  Suddenly we saw an endless column file out of the town and march up towards the Emperor on a plain at the foot of the mountain. All the soldiers had hung their cartridge boxes on their knapsacks, ready to remove them when they reached the disarmament point. They threw their weapons and cartridge boxes on to a pile as they passed. General Mack came at their head to surrender his sword to the Emperor. The Emperor refused to accept it, allowing all the officers to keep their swords and knapsacks. He spent a long time talking to the more senior officers.

  The surrender took well over four hours, as 25,000 men and 2,000 cavalry filed past shamefacedly to lay down their arms. Some were glad it was all over, but most were angry and humiliated at giving up without a fight. They felt badly let down by their leaders. Captain de l’Ort of the Austrian army spoke for many:

  The shame which overwhelms us, the mire which covers us, can never be wiped out. While the battalions were marching past and laying down their arms, Napoleon, in the plainest of uniforms, stood in the centre of a group of his gorgeously arrayed marshals, chatting with Mack and several of our generals, whom he sent for after they had marched past. The Emperor himself was dressed like an ordinary private in a grey overcoat, singed in front and at the elbows, a hat without any distinguishing mark pulled down on his head, his arms behind his back, warming himself at the camp fire. He was talking animatedly and appeared to be in a good mood.

  Napoleon was in more than a good mood. He was ecstatic. He had won the victory every general dreams about. In three brilliant weeks, he had outmanoeuvred the enemy and forced them into submission without even fighting a battle. Napoleon had every reason to feel pleased with himself as Mack’s dejected troops shuffled past.

  ‘I have destroyed the Austrian army simply by keeping them marching,’ he boasted to Josephine. ‘I have taken 60,000 prisoners, captured 120 pieces of cannon, more than ninety flags, and more than thirty generals.’ It was a magnificent achievement, one of the most spectacular triumphs of his career. It was everything Napoleon could have wished for, everything he had ever wanted, except in one crucial particular. It wasn’t London.

  While Napoleon savoured his victory and the Grand Army found shelter in Ulm, the French and Spanish fleets were moving hurriedly to form a line of battle in the dark. The manoeuvre was difficult at the best of times. In the dark, it was almost impossible.

  The ships blundered to and fro, the two windward columns of the battle squadron dropping to leeward to form on the third column, trying to squeeze in wherever they could find a space. There was no moon and the stars were obscured by cloud. French and Spanish ships hailed each other constantly to identify friend or foe. Captain Lucas of the Redoutable, a highly professional French officer, did not enjoy it one bit:

  We were all widely scattered. The ships of the battle squadron and those of the squadron of observation were all mixed up. Another cause of confusion was this. Nearly all the ships had answered the admiral’s signals with flares, which made it impossible to tell which was the flagship. All I could do was follow the other vessels near me, which were closing on some ships to leeward.

  Towards eleven I found myself close to Admiral Gravina who, with four or five ships, was beginning to form his own line of battle. I was challenged and our name demanded, whereupon the Spanish admiral ordered me to take post in his line. I asked permission to lead it and he assented, after which I stood in to station.

  The French and Spanish ships showed a light at each masthead, to indicate their positions. To the British frigates, shadowing them now at a distance of half a gunshot, they loo
ked ‘like a well-lit-up street’, nine miles long. The seventy-four-gun Defence took advantage of the dark to have a closer look:

  We came very near the Combined Fleet without their being able to discern us. While we concealed every light, they continued to exhibit such profusions of theirs, and to make night signals in such abundance, that we seemed at times in the jaws of a mighty host ready to swallow us up. We, however, felt no alarm, being confident that we could fight our way or fly, as occasion required. The former was certainly more congenial to our feelings.

  The French were still heading south, towards Gibraltar. This came as a relief to Lord Nelson, who had feared they might try to steal back to Cadiz under cover of darkness. But they were fully at sea now, committed to their course. The British would have them next day and a battle would ensue.

  Nelson was looking forward to it, convinced the British would capture twenty ships at least. ‘Tomorrow I will do that which will give you young gentlemen something to talk and think about for the rest of your lives,’ he promised his junior officers. But his optimism was tempered with pessimism as to his own chances. ‘I shall not live to know about it myself.’ Nelson was sure he would be killed in the battle. The fortune teller’s prophesy had filled him with foreboding.

  Others did not have time for premonitions. Aboard the frigate Euryalus, midway between the two fleets, Henry Blackwood’s crew had run themselves ragged over the last forty-eight hours, keeping Villeneuve’s ships in sight and reporting their every move to Nelson. It was exhausting for everyone, as Midshipman Hercules Robinson recalled:

  For two days there was not a movement that we did not communicate, till I thought that Blackwood who gave the orders, and Bruce our signal mid, and Soper our signalman, who executed them, must have died of it; and when we had brought the two fleets fairly together, we took our place between the two lines of lights, as a cab might in Regent Street, the watch was called, and Blackwood turned in quietly to wait for the morning.

  Thousands of others followed Blackwood’s example, conserving their strength and getting some rest while they still could. Most fell asleep at once, but many lay awake all night, wondering anxiously what the morning would bring. It was a time of last letters home, for those who could write, of silent prayers for some and private moments of reflection for others. They harboured no illusions as to how it would be when the opposing fleets met next day. Casualties would be high and many of them would be killed. It was the price they had to pay to put a stop to the French. But the hope of every man in the fleet was that it would be someone else who paid, not them. They all wanted to be alive when the battle was over, and still in one piece, if it was humanly possible.

  CHAPTER 32

  ENEMY SAILS OFF TRAFALGAR

  So it came to the morning of 21 October 1805, a day that would live for ever in the minds of those who were there. A day that lives still, in the annals of the Royal Navy.

  There was very little wind as the sky began to lighten. The mist was lifting and the day was promising to be bright. The coast of Spain was a dark mass in the distance, the sun just beginning to reveal itself over a low range of hills that the Moors had named Tarif-al-Ghar. A few miles off the coast, the French and Spanish were still heading southwards, desperate to slip through the Straits of Gibraltar and scatter into the Mediterranean before the British could catch them. They were not in line of battle, as Villeneuve had ordered. They were in no formation at all, just a random collection of ships scurrying south on a heavy swell, looking to avoid a fight if they possibly could.

  Further out to sea, about nine or ten miles away, the British were determined not to let them escape. They had sailed parallel to the French during the night, keeping a good distance between the two fleets so as not to panic the enemy into a retreat. Now, as the sky brightened, they had turned north and were searching the horizon for a first sight of the French, straining for a glimpse of the enemy’s sails against the rays of the rising sun.

  William Robinson, a seaman aboard the Revenge, remembered the moment vividly:

  As the day began to dawn, a man at the topmast-head called out, ‘A sail on the starboard bow,’ and in two or three minutes more he gave another call, that there was more than one sail, for indeed they looked like a forest of masts rising from the ocean, and as the morning got light we could plainly discern them from the deck, and were satisfied it was the enemy.

  Midshipman William Badcock of the Neptune agreed:

  It was my morning watch, I was midshipman of the forecastle, and at the first dawn of day a forest of strange masts was seen to leeward. I ran aft and informed the officer of the watch. The Captain was on deck in a moment, and ere it was well light the signals were flying through the fleet to bear up and form the order of sailing in two columns.

  To Lieutenant Paul Nicolas of the Belleisle, the horizon appeared covered with ships:

  The whole force of the enemy was discovered standing to the southward, distant about nine miles, between us and the coast near Trafalgar. I was awakened by the cheers of the crew and by their rushing up the hatchways to get a glimpse of the hostile fleet. The delight manifested exceeded anything I ever witnessed, surpassing even those gratulations when our native cliffs are descried after a long period of distant service.

  Aboard the Royal Sovereign, Vice-Admiral Collingwood’s servant

  . . . entered the Admiral’s cabin, about daylight, and found him already up and dressing. He asked me if I had seen the French fleet; and on my replying that I had not, he told me to look out at them, adding that, in a very short time, we should see a great deal more of them. I then observed a crowd of ships to leeward; but I could not help looking with still greater interest at the Admiral, who, during all this time, was shaving himself with a composure that quite astonished me.

  Collingwood dressed with particular care that morning, wearing shoes and stockings for the battle instead of his normal leather boots. Later, seeing Lieutenant John Clavell in boots, he advised him to do the same. ‘You had better put on silk stockings, as I have done. If one should get a shot in the leg, they would be so much more manageable for the surgeon.’

  On the deck of the Victory, Nelson too was dressed in silk stockings, with his blue undress coat and four replica decorations on the left breast. Unusually, though, he had not put on his sword for the fight, but had left it behind in his cabin. Shortly before 6 a.m. he gave the order for the fleet to form two columns, preparatory to attacking the enemy. One column of thirteen ships was to be led by Collingwood aboard the Royal Sovereign, the other, of fourteen ships, by Nelson himself. He was in a good mood as he went up to the poop to watch the operation. He told Hardy, his flag-captain, that he would not be satisfied if they captured fewer than twenty of the enemy’s capital ships before the day was out.

  Nelson watched as his fleet formed itself into two columns, just under a mile apart, and turned east towards the French and Spanish. The wind was so light that it would be several hours before they reached them. At 6.40 a.m., he ordered his flag-lieutenant, John Pasco, to hoist the signal ‘Prepare for battle.’ A minute later, the flags had been run up and bosuns’ mates all over the fleet were sounding the call on their pipes, summoning the crews to clear for action.

  It was the order they had all been waiting for. Every man went at once to his allotted task. For the landsmen and others without specialist skills, the first job was to clear away the bulkheads, either securing them to the deckhead above or carrying them down to the hold. The next task was to remove the furniture from the officers’ cabins, and the men’s mess tables and benches. Much of it had been removed the night before, but the remainder was taken away now, either carried down to the hold or thrown overboard if there was no alternative. Everything else followed, that wasn’t needed for the battle. In a few minutes, every deck on every ship had been stripped of unnecessary clutter, leaving a clear view from one end of the vessel to the other. All that remained were the guns, the equipment to serve them and whatever else was requi
red for the fight that lay ahead.

  The skilled men too went to their tasks. In the powder magazines below the waterline, gunners in leather slippers that struck no sparks checked their cartridge bags and prepared them for distribution to the young boys who would carry them up to the gun decks. The powder monkeys were sometimes as young as ten, assisted by women if there were any on the ship. Their job was dangerous because loose gunpowder could easily be ignited by a spark. The fire engines were primed and ready for action, and seamen were positioning leather fire buckets in the centre of every deck, supplemented by water casks at strategic intervals. Nearer the time, they would sluice the decks as well, making sure the woodwork was damp when the action started.

  In the ships’ cockpits, the surgeons laid out their instruments while their assistants cleared the tables, ready for the crude operations that would be performed when the wounded were brought in. The wounded would be left to lie on anchor cables covered with spare sails until their turn came. Without anaesthetics, those due for amputation would be held down by loblolly men while the operation was performed. Afterwards, their ‘wings and limbs’ would be thrown into the large wooden tubs now being hauled into place for the purpose.

  In the carpenters’ storerooms, the carpenters’ mates took down their shot plugs – conical pieces of wood covered in oakum and tallow that would be used to plug cannon-holes in the ships’ sides. Larger holes would be covered with sheets of lead and hide, nailed firmly into place until proper repairs could be made. It was the carpenters’ job also to mend the ship’s wheel and repair the tiller if it was smashed in action.