by Jay Worrall
The lieutenant smiled. “My captain guessed as much,” he said. “He has authorized me to inform you that Orion will be free before noon. Our ship’s boats will be available to transfer you and your crew at that time.”
“Please convey my sincerest thanks,” Charles said. “That will be more than satisfactory.”
As soon as Chatterton had descended over the side, Charles turned to Beechum. “You had better send someone to see that Mr. Bevan is awakened. Tell the cook that I want an especially good breakfast prepared for the crew. There’s no need for him to worry about rations. Afterward, everyone will need to collect their belongings. The injured will require assistance. The whole lot—baggage, crew, prisoners, and wounded— need to be sent up on deck as the time nears.”
“I got it, sir,” Beechum said.
“Oh, yes, one more thing, Isaac,” Charles said. “Find Seaman Dickie Johnson. I would like a word with him.”
At seven bells (had Louisa still had a bell) in the forenoon watch, Charles saw two cutters and a launch cast off from Orion and start across. Louisa had been emptied of everything useful and easily portable. There was surprisingly little of it, and most had already been stowed in their own cutter tethered alongside. Soon the wounded were lowered carefully into Orion’s boats. Then the French mixed in with a number of the crew. When all four craft were full, they pushed off for Saumarez’s seventy-four, then to return for the remainder.
Charles saw Daniel Bevan and asked his friend to accompany him below. The two men went to the main hatchway and started down, Bevan leaning on his crutch and favoring his injured leg, Charles carefully protecting his aching side. The lower deck stood empty and forlorn, the mess tables with their benches bare and unused. This is her heart, Charles thought, the center of my precious, once-lovely ship. Now the space was deathly silent, except for the foot traffic above. There was no wash along her side; not a timber creaked in the gentle sea.
“We’ll go forward,” Charles said.
“Where?” Bevan asked.
“To the galley.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask. It breaks my heart.”
As they passed through the low doorway into the ship’s galley, Charles saw Dickie Johnson sitting on an overturned keg by the stove. Against the wood box lay a carefully arranged pile of tinder and kindling. Johnson rose and touched his forehead.
“Not long now, Dickie,” Charles said. He found another barrel and sat on it. Bevan remained standing.
“You’re going to burn her?” Bevan said.
Charles breathed out. “I can’t let them plunder her,” he said. “I’ll not allow some French officer to walk through her, deciding what to take away.”
Soon they heard the boats returning, and the shuffle of feet and muffled chatter as most of the rest of the crew went over the side. She is officially dead now, Charles thought. His Louisa was empty and lifeless.
“Captain, sir,” Sykes said as he entered the room. “Everyone’s off. There’s only the gig’s crew, and they’re waiting for you alongside.”
“Thank you,” Charles said. He turned to Johnson. “Do your duty.”
AFTERWORD
HISTORY RECORDS THAT ON WEDNESDAY, THE FIRST OF August, 1798, Rear Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson and his thirteen ships of the line discovered a French fleet of similar numbers and superior firepower anchored in a defensive line deep in an obscure bay on a far distant Egyptian coast. Nelson fell upon them immediately in the late afternoon, without waiting for all of his squadron to maneuver into a coordinated formation for attack. The battle that followed, fought throughout the evening and all during the night, in uncharted and shallow waters, resulted in the almost complete annihilation of the French, arguably the most decisive victory ever in the history of war at sea. Eleven of the French warships were sunk, burned, or captured; only two enemy sail of the line and two frigates escaped the bay. Of the flagship L’Orient’s crew of a thousand, sixty survived. Charles Edgemont was never to mention to anyone, or to write in any report, that he had started the fire that resulted in her destruction. Even today, its cause remains a mystery.
News of the triumph at Aboukir Bay, two thousand miles from Gibraltar, did not reach Admiral St. Vincent for almost two months, on the twenty-sixth of September; it did not reach London until early October. In addition to the virtual destruction of the French Mediterranean fleet at the Battle of the Nile (as it came to be known), a veteran army of fifty thousand, commanded by a previously little-remarked-upon General Napoleon Bonaparte, found itself stranded conquerors in a hostile land, presumably with any hopes of threatening English wealth in India diminished. A year later, Bonaparte was to abandon his army and return secretly to France. This expeditionary force, steadily decimated by insurgency and disease, capitulated two years later.
ON FRIDAY, THE third of August, Captain Edgemont was ordered to appear on board the flagship Vanguard.
“You may not stay long,” Vanguard’s flag lieutenant informed him. “The admiral has sustained an injury and is in dire need of rest.”
“Thank you,” the captain replied. The marine sentry opened the door to Nelson’s cabin and allowed him to pass through. Edgemont was distressed to see Admiral Nelson, always frail, slumped in a chair looking pale and weak, with a dressing on his forehead.
“You do not attend well to orders,” the admiral said immediately.
“I do apologize, sir,” Edgemont said. “I was attempting what I thought you would have desired, had you but known the circumstances.”
Nelson seemed to have difficulty focusing his attention. “I suppose,” he said vaguely. “Well, all’s well that ends well. I’ll not submit charges on it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Your frigate, what was her name?”
“Louisa, sir.”
“Louisa, yes, that’s right. I regret she was lost. Her crew and warrants will be distributed around the fleet, of course, to make up for our losses. You and your officers are to be returned to England. I will be sending Orion and some others with our prizes to Gibraltar as soon as they are fit enough to sail.”
“Yes, sir,” Edgemont said.
Admiral Horatio Nelson seemed to sink into lethargy. “It’s all right,” he said distractedly. “I’ve already sent Leander with my dispatches. I met your wife, you know. At Naples, I think.”
Charles Edgemont grew increasingly concerned at his admiral’s mental lapses. Clearly, he had suffered a serious head wound and would require convalescence to repair his constitution. “If you will pardon my saying, sir,” he ventured carefully, “as the French naval forces are no longer a threat, you might consider taking some of the squadron to Naples for repair. Sir William and Lady Hamilton would be delighted to learn of your success. I am sure that your own person would benefit from a period of rest. I know Lady Hamilton in particular speaks highly of you and would cherish your company.”
It was a suggestion that he would long regret. Nelson did take three of his most seriously damaged seventy-fours, Vanguard, Culloden, and Alexander, to Naples, arriving on September 22, 1798. There, Lady Emma Hamilton proved too willing to succor the admiral, the “Hero of the Nile,” as he was to be known, and he was too willing to be succored in the most intimate and personal of ways. The resulting public scandal did much to injure Nelson’s otherwise soaring reputation.
ON TUESDAY, THE fifth of March, 1799, the Admiralty in London approved the purchase into the service of the thirty-six-gun former French national frigate Embuscade, captured off the port of Syracuse the year before. The sums due from the prize court, together with the head-and-gun money for the taking and burning of Félicité earlier that same year, were divided among the officers and crew of Louisa, one quarter of which went to her captain through his prize agent and ultimately into his account at the Bank of Chester. Coincidentally, the sums deposited almost exactly equaled the amount withdrawn by a surprised and pleased Mrs. Charles Edgemont for the construction of a thoroughly modern water mill
in the village of Tattenall, Cheshire.
JAY WORRALL is the author of Sails on the Horizon. Born into a military family and raised as a Quaker, Worrall grew up on a number of continents around the world, in Africa and Europe as well as the United States. During the Vietnam War he worked with refugees in the Central Highlands of that country and afterward taught English in Japan. Later, he worked in developing innovative and humane prison programs, policies, and administrations. He has also been a carpenter. Married and the very proud father of five sons, he currently lives and writes in Pennsylvania.
ALSO BY JAY WORRALL
Sails on the Horizon
This is a work of fiction. Though some characters, incidents,
and dialogues are based on the historical record, the work as
a whole is a product of the author’s imagination.
2007 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Jay Worrall
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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eISBN: 978-0-307-43065-6
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