Trafalgar

by Nicholas Best

  At sea, the Pickle had spent four hours becalmed, her sails quite useless without a breath of wind. In desperation, Lieutenant Lapenotiere set his men to work on the sweeps – huge three – or four-man oars – to propel the ship forward. They were urged on by acting Second Master George Almy, one of two Americans in the crew from Newport, Rhode Island. Most of their efforts went into keeping the ship pointing in the right direction, ready for the wind when it came. The work was back-breaking. The Pickle desperately needed to reach England, but however hard she tried, she seemed only to be treading water, going nowhere at all.

  The wind picked up eventually and continued sporadically throughout the following night. The Pickle made progress again, coming in slowly past the Scilly Isles towards Cornwall. At 2 a.m. on 4 November, she spotted the lighthouse on Lizard Head, nine miles away on the port bow. A few hours later, she was approaching Falmouth Bay in the early-morning light. By 10 a.m. she had heaved to and was dropping anchor in the shadow of Pendennis Castle.

  Lapenotiere was rowed ashore at once. He was dressed in his best uniform, carrying Collingwood’s dispatches in a pouch. London lay 266 miles away, a journey of twenty-two stages by post chaise. The trip usually took a week, but Lapenotiere needed to do it much quicker than that if he was to get there before Captain Sykes of the Nautilus. He could probably arrive by the following night if he drove non-stop all the way.

  Hiring a coach, Lapenotiere set off immediately. Within a few minutes, he had left Falmouth behind and was on his way to Truro with the Trafalgar dispatches safely in his possession.

  CHAPTER 44

  A NATION IN MOURNING

  From Truro, Lapenotiere continued to Bodmin, and from there to Launceston, Okehampton and Crockernwell. His coach rattled onwards for the rest of that day and all of the following night. By lunchtime next day, he was only an hour ahead of Sykes, as a bystander later reported from Dorchester:

  Yesterday about Noon, two officers of the navy came through this Town, following each other, at about an hour’s Space of Time, in two Post-Chaises and four Horses to each, from the Westward; the first reported that he brought good News of great Importance, and the second, that his Dispatches contained the best and most capital News that the Nation ever experienced.

  The way ahead lay through Salisbury and Andover towards Basingstoke and Hertford Bridge. By late afternoon, Lapenotiere had passed through Bagshot and was on his way to Staines. Night had fallen again by the time he reached Hounslow – Guy Fawkes Night, a time of bonfires for the children and fireworks in the dark. London lay in front of him now, the capital wreathed in a coal fog as his coach sped forward along the turnpike.

  The fog was so thick by the time Lapenotiere reached the outskirts that the traffic had slowed to a crawl and drivers were struggling to find a way through the gloom. Some of them had dismounted and were walking at their horses’ heads to feel for the road. Others were knocking on doors to ask where they were. For Lapenotiere, sitting in frustration on his dispatches, the delay was intolerable. Even on this last lap, so close to the finishing line, the weather still seemed to be conspiring against him.

  It was already midnight when he passed Kensington and pushed on towards Knightsbridge and Hyde Park Corner. By I a.m. he had reached Whitehall at last and was turning into the Admiralty forecourt, still ahead of Captain Sykes. Weary and travel-stained after a thirty-seven-hour journey, Lapenotiere presented himself to the night porter with his dispatches. He was taken upstairs immediately and shown to the board room, where the secretary William Marsden was just finishing work for the night.

  Lapenotiere did not stand on ceremony. ‘Sir, we have gained a great victory, but we have lost Lord Nelson.’

  Shocked, Marsden listened briefly to Lapenotiere’s story. Then he went to tell Lord Barham. The First Lord had a bedroom somewhere in the building, but Marsden wasn’t sure exactly where. He found it after a while and went in. Barham was awake in an instant, listening intently to the news. He got out of bed and began issuing a stream of instructions as to what should be done now.

  The first task was to make several copies of Collingwood’s dispatches. One was rushed across the parade ground to Downing Street, where the Prime Minister had just gone to bed after writing a letter to Nelson. William Pitt was perfectly accustomed to being woken in the middle of the night with momentous news. He usually managed to go back to sleep again afterwards, but not this time. Pitt was so shaken by Nelson’s death that he couldn’t sleep any more. He decided to get up instead, even though it was still only 3 a.m.

  Another copy of the dispatches went to the king at Windsor. It was getting on for 7 a.m. by the time the Admiralty messenger reached the castle. King George was so dumbstruck that he couldn’t speak for five minutes. His wife and daughters burst into tears. It was some considerable time before they had recovered sufficiently to go to St George’s Chapel and give thanks for the victory. Later, the Staffordshire Militia paraded in Little Park and fired three volleys in celebration, although what kind of victory they were celebrating with Nelson dead, no one was quite sure.

  Guns were fired in London also, at Hyde Park and the Tower. Emma Hamilton heard them far away at Merton, where she lay sick in bed. ‘I think I hear the Tower guns,’ she told Susannah Bolton. ‘Some victory perhaps in Germany, to retrieve the credit lost by Mack.’

  ‘Perhaps it may be news from my brother,’ said Susannah.

  ‘Impossible, surely. There is not time.’

  Five minutes later, a coach drew up at the door. The servants announced Captain John Whitby from the Admiralty.

  ‘Show him in directly,’ said Emma.

  Whitby was ashen-faced, not looking forward to this at all. ‘We have gained a great victory,’ he told Emma faintly.

  ‘Never mind your victory.’ Emma wanted to hear from Nelson. ‘My letters, give me my letters.’

  Whitby didn’t answer. His eyes were full of tears.

  Emma understood at once. ‘I believe I gave one scream and fell back, and for ten hours after I could neither speak nor shed a tear – days have passed on, and I know not how they end or begin – nor how I am to bear my future existence.’

  In Canterbury, William Nelson was equally distraught. He heard the news from Mr Bristow, owner of the reading room on the Parade. To spare him the indignity of learning about it in a public place, Bristow came to tell Nelson in person. He found him just inside the cathedral gate and broke the news as gently as he could. Nelson still took it badly, crying freely and wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. It was a while before he managed to pull himself together again and turn back towards his house to tell his family.

  In London, the news cast a gloom over the whole city. The Admiralty was besieged from early morning, as were the newspaper offices. A London Gazette Extraordinary was rushed into print, giving full details of Collingwood’s dispatches. The victory was glorious, a magnificent triumph for the Royal Navy, but it wasn’t the victory that the public wanted to know about as they crowded round for more news. It was Lord Nelson. Nothing else seemed to matter, with the nation’s favourite son snatched from them at the moment of triumph.

  ‘Mingled pride and consternation’ was the universal reaction, according to Lady Elizabeth Hervey She was at the Admiralty that morning, watching the crowds pressing for more information.

  As we came away, there was a vast rush of people, but all silent, or a murmur of respect and sorrow; some of the common people saying, ‘It is bad news if Nelson is killed,’ yet they knew that twenty ships had been taken. A man at the turnpike gate said to Sir Ellis, who was going through, ‘Sir, have you heard the bad news? We have taken twenty ships from the enemy, but Lord Nelson is killed!’

  According to The Times:

  There was not a man who did not think that the life of the Hero of the Nile was too great a price for the capture and destruction of twenty sail of French and Spanish men of war. No ebullitions of popular transport, no demonstrations of public joy, marked this great and impo
rtant event. The honest and manly feeling of the people appeared as it should have done: they felt an inward satisfaction at the triumph of their favourite arms; they mourned with all the sincerity and poignancy of domestic grief their Hero slain.

  The victory was duly celebrated, but with little overt enthusiasm. People’s hearts were not in it as they went through the motions. Church bells rang to announce the news, but their peals alternated with the solemn, muffled toll of mourning to indicate that all was not well. Candles were placed in windows, and houses were half-heartedly illuminated, but the lights were often removed again after a while because nobody felt like cheering, as Lord Malmesbury observed:

  I never saw so little public joy. The illumination seemed dim and as it were half-clouded by the desire of expressing the mixture of contending feelings; every common person in the streets speaking first of their sorrow for him, and then of the victory.

  Within hours, thousands of people were wearing cockades with Nelson’s name on, or else black crepe scarves of mourning. Shop windows were draped in black and shrines erected in Nelson’s honour – medallions bearing his image, coloured lamps spelling out his name, clusters of laurels and oak branches ‘sacred to the memory of the immortal Nelson’. All the main public buildings were lit up in his honour – the Admiralty, Treasury, Royal Exchange, Mansion House, Bank of England – and many commercial buildings as well. At Covent Garden, the theatre was adorned with a huge ‘N’ picked out with violet lamps and topped by an anchor lit up with red. In a hasty addition to the published programme, the cast finished their performance with a spirited rendering of ‘Rule, Britannia’, sung against a naval backdrop while a portrait of Nelson descended from the clouds. Not to be outdone, the German theatre erected a giant transparency of Britannia with a lion at her side, holding up an image of Nelson and the legend ‘Victorious Nelson, I will avenge thy death’.

  All over the country, it was the same as the news spread. In every marketplace, the victory was formally announced by the local mayor, to be greeted by a stunned silence as the price became clear. There were guns and fireworks across the land, but mourning and sadness too. Even the little children understood that something dreadful had happened and remembered the day for the rest of their lives.

  Abroad, too, the news was met with widespread dismay. In Jamaica, a funeral pyre forty-seven feet high was erected at Kingston, one foot for every year of Nelson’s life. Forty-seven guns were fired and forty-seven rockets soared into the sky as Jamaica’s governor saluted the man who had delivered the island from Villeneuve’s fleet. Off Denmark, within sight of Hamlet’s castle, ‘all the ships in the road of Elsineur fired three discharges in celebration of the victory off Cadiz. Immediately afterwards their flags were lowered and three minute-guns fired, on account of the death of Lord Nelson’. And at Boulogne, where the French had recently been so complacent about Ulm, it was the turn of the British to present their compliments and announce a great victory. Sir Sidney Smith delivered a copy of the Gazette to the French coast containing full details of Trafalgar. He apologised for sending it in an unmanned boat, but observed acidly ‘that the last flag of truce he sent in, the officer was very honourably detained’.

  The news reached Napoleon on 18 November. He was at Znaim in Moravia, just sitting down to a meal, when Marshal Berthier put the dispatch in his hand. By some accounts, Napoleon immediately flew into a rage. By others, he reacted with uncharacteristic calm, saying nothing about it and displaying no visible emotion. Whatever the truth, he penned a note to Admiral Decrès demanding more information about the battle. ‘All this makes no difference to my plans,’ he announced defiantly. ‘I am annoyed that all is not ready yet. They must start without delay.’

  To Berthier, however, he privately expressed a wish that the American Paul Jones was still alive, in whom France might have had an admiral to match Nelson. And he was in a much fouler mood next morning, noticeably sullen and angry as he spurred his horse to an unnecessary gallop. The news was kept from the Grand Army at first, but they found out soon enough from Russian and Austrian prisoners only too eager to let them know. The Austrians in particular were delighted to see the French humiliated after the debacle at Ulm.

  Yet it didn’t really matter any more. The invasion of England was no longer Napoleon’s prime concern. His aim now was to complete the rout of the alliance that had begun at Ulm. He did so two weeks later, when he caught up with the Austrians and Russians in a muddy field near ‘a poor little thatched village, with an old castle’. The village’s name was Austerlitz.

  While Napoleon pursued the Austrians, Villeneuve was being taken to England as a prisoner. He and Captain Magendie arrived off Spithead on 29 November and were put ashore at Gosport. They walked up through the town and were escorted to the Crown Inn for the night. Villeneuve seemed ‘melancholy, but not despondent’, according to a local journalist. By next morning, however, he was feeling thoroughly depressed, so ill with spasms that a doctor had to be called. The two Frenchmen were taken to Bishop’s Waltham at first, but transferred later to more suitable accommodation at Sonning, near Reading. Villeneuve stayed there as the guest of Henry Addington and was later visited by William Pitt.

  At the Reading depot, the two Frenchmen were joined by Captain Lucas of the Redoutable and Captain Infernet of the Intrépide. All four gave their parole not to escape and were allowed a substantial measure of freedom in return. They were treated with sympathy by the locals as they strolled unhappily through the town. The gentry in particular went out of their way to be hospitable. Captain Lucas was in great demand after his exploits at Trafalgar and soon found himself swamped with invitations to London, where he was a big success at parties. Infernet went to London as well and was looked after by Jane Codrington, wife of the Orion’s captain. She did her best for him but found her guest rather uncouth, more at home on the poop of a warship than in a London drawing room.

  Other French prisoners arrived throughout December, aboard ships coming home for repair. Collingwood had wanted to leave them all at Gibraltar, to be exchanged for British prisoners in France, but Napoleon disliked exchanges and his officials had no authority to agree a deal. As a result, the French were brought to England instead. The officers gave their parole and were interned in small country towns across the south and midlands. The ordinary sailors were separated from their shipmates to prevent trouble and then dispersed to Portchester Castle and other prisons, or else incarcerated aboard the prison hulks in the harbours. Thousands of them remained there for years.

  Among the later arrivals was Rear-Admiral Dumanoir. He had escaped capture at Trafalgar by leading his squadron away from the battle and continuing south towards Gibraltar, but had subsequently doubled back in the darkness and headed for Rochefort instead. A few days after the battle, his crippled ships ran into another British squadron and were unable to escape. They took 750 casualties before surrendering. Dumanoir was brought to Britain, but did not join Villeneuve and the other senior officers at Reading. As well as fleeing Trafalgar and firing on Lucas’s ship by mistake, he was suspected of firing on several Spanish ships after they had surrendered and would not have been welcome at Reading. He was interned at Tiverton instead.

  Nelson was coming home as well, making slow progress in his damaged flagship. It wasn’t until 4 December that the Victory arrived off the Isle of Wight. She waited there six days before being ordered up to the Thames, where Nelson’s body was to be delivered to the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich.

  The orders came as a relief to Surgeon Beatty, faced with the task of keeping Nelson in a good state of preservation for the funeral. He had been hoping for some professional help when he reached Portsmouth, but none had been forthcoming. Beatty had twice renewed the brandy in Nelson’s cask on the journey home, but was unsure of what he was doing. En route to the Thames, therefore, he opened the cask again and was relieved to find that Nelson’s body was still in good condition, although his bowels were beginning to putrefy. Beatty removed
them before they could corrupt the rest of the body. He extracted the fatal musket ball as well and found it embedded with gold lace from Nelson’s epaulette. Then he wrapped Nelson’s remains in cotton bandages and replaced them in a leaden coffin filled with brandy and a solution of camphor and myrrh.

  The Victory proceeded slowly along the coast and was forced to anchor at Dover for five days until the weather improved. Every ship she encountered gave her a cheer. To the irritation of the Victory’s crew, she was inundated with sightseers at Sheerness, wanting to inspect the damage. ‘We scarce have room to move the ship is so full of Nobility coming down from London to see the ship looking at shot holes,’ complained one of her crew.

  An old shipmate of Nelson’s came aboard as well, bringing Nelson’s preferred coffin with him, the one made out of wood salvaged from the Orient. Nelson’s face had swollen up by now, but a hard rub with a napkin restored him to a semblance of his normal self. He was dressed in a shirt, stockings, small clothes, waistcoat, neck cloth and nightcap before being placed in the new coffin, which was then enclosed in a leaden outer coffin and soldered up immediately. The ensemble was transferred to the yacht Chatham for the remainder of the journey to Greenwich. All the forts and ships along the way fired their minute-guns and flew their flags at half-mast as Nelson’s body sailed past.

  The yacht reached Greenwich on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. The Royal Naval Hospital’s governor wanted the body to remain aboard the Chatham until after Christmas, but was advised that everyone in London would insist on coming to inspect it. A crowd of sightseers was already forming. They dispersed after being told that Nelson’s body would not be landed until the following Thursday. As soon as they had gone, the coffin was carried ashore under cover of darkness and taken to the Hospital, where it was to lie in the Painted Hall for a few days before the funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral.