“God, what a terrible sight!” said Brenton to Delancey.
“Appalling, sir. It doesn’t look as if they can ever bring the fire under control.”
“Not now. You have to stop it before it begins, and even with a well-trained crew you can still fail. Look what happened to the Queen Charlotte, and that began with no more than some hay for the livestock! The officers did their best and even managed to flood the lower deck. What they didn’t manage to flood was the magazine. . . . The wretched Spaniards will be mostly untrained. They will have unused cartridges beside every gun, lighted matches for each gun captain, no water bucket at hand and no habit of instantly obeying orders. As for their boats, the Superb probably smashed the lot with her first treble-shotted broadside. I could wish it were over quickly.”
Looking aft at the two burning ships Delancey echoed the wish. They were among the finest ships afloat, and were probably the biggest and most well designed, built and equipped; but battles are not won by ship-wrights. They are won by disciplined bodies of men, by rules and safety precautions, by habituation to an exact drill, by doing everything quickly but correctly, by remembering what you have been taught and doing what you are told.
In the opposite direction, Delancey saw that the other enemy ships had disappeared into the darkness. They might outnumber their opponents—no, they were merely on equal terms now—but their one idea was to escape. Or was that unfair? They were under orders. Delancey added to his notes: “Midnight, other enemy ships out of sight.”
In the immediate area there was light enough to see and the Admiral used it to make some signals; first to the Superb and Calpé to remain with the prize, Saint-Antoine: second, to the remainder of the Squadron, to make sail after the flagship. “We’ll aim to intercept them,” said Sir James, “before they can reach Cadiz.” Delancey knew that the plan could not succeed. Cadiz might be no more than thirty miles away; even with a fitful wind the enemy should be nearing harbour by daybreak. The battle was over.
There was a dazzling flash, as of lightning, and then a deafening crack of thunder. Delancey covered his eyes for an instant, opening them in time to see the Real-Carlos blown apart. There was a mushroom effect as spars and ropes were thrown upwards in a cloud of smoke. Her sides bulged outwards, her guns crashing through her ports. A minute later she was gone, save for some debris in the water, and Delancey suspected that any survivors would have been killed by the concussion; a few, he thought, might have escaped earlier, perhaps to the Saint-Antoine.
“Poor devils!” exclaimed Philip Dumaresq. He was not looking towards where the Real-Carlos had been. He was staring at the San-Hermenegilde, and he was evidently feeling sick. Nearly a thousand men had just died but another thousand had yet to go, still fighting the fire and knowing by now exactly what their fate was to be. By the light of the flames he could see that a few men had jumped overboard and were swimming towards the wreckage of the Real-Carlos. They had perhaps the best chance of any provided they were good swimmers, but what when their ship blew up? There were no boats near them and how could there be?
Turning once more to his notes, Delancey added: “At fifteen minutes past midnight the Real-Carlos blew up and sank.” He wondered for a moment whether she had flown an Admiral’s flag? He thought not. Then he remembered that Spanish flag-officers always moved to a frigate when in presence of the enemy. The idea was that a battle could be more easily controlled by someone not actually involved in it; a reasonable notion except in so far as it meant sacrificing the force of example. Anyway, it was the Spanish custom. Vice-Admiral Moreno would not, therefore, have been on board. He would be half-way to Cadiz by now in the Sabrina, if that was the ship’s name, and thinking himself lucky to be alive.
Reflecting on the enemy’s losses, it struck him that the flagship had sustained no losses at all and had not so far been under fire. There was always something fantastic about war, the odd way in which some people were killed, the strange way in which others escaped. He tried to think of past instances of men knocked down by the wind of a shot, of his own appearance in a duel. . . . Never had he known the minutes pass so slowly. . . .
At last it came. There was another dazzling flash, another tremendous crack of thunder, and the San-Hermenegilde was gone in her turn. This time Delancey noticed the effect of the blast on the Caesar herself—a thump on the ship’s hull, as if she had been hit by a giant hammer. The previous explosion must have had the same effect but he couldn’t think why he had hardly noticed it. There was a difference this time, though, in that the flash was followed by darkness. There was no other burning ship to throw light on the scene where another thousand men had died. Now there would be boats from the Superb and the Saint-Antoine but he doubted whether there was much they could do. As for himself, his only response was to add a laconic note to his rough log: “At half an hour after midnight the San-Hermenegilde blew up and sank.”
By the 13th Sir James Saumarez was on his way back to Gibraltar and to a hero’s welcome. That day Delancey dined in the wardroom of the Caesar and was interested to compare notes with the other officers. It was the first formal dinner he had attended since joining the flagship. The bulkheads had been replaced, the table recovered from the hold, a clean tablecloth laid, the servants were all smartly dressed and the officers had all slept and washed and shaved.
“Last night,” said the second lieutenant, “was my first real sleep for about a week. I was never so tired in my life!”
“Never mind,” replied the captain of marines. “You have now been in a naval battle and may be regarded as a hero for ever.”
“But isn’t it absurd?” exclaimed Dumaresq, “I’ve been in a dozen minor actions, being lucky to have come out alive. They count for nothing, however, beside a general engagement. We have won a victory and our Admiral will be made a Knight of the Bath, an honour he has earned ten times over. There may be other promotions—” (he coloured a little in saying this) “and we shall be told what fine fellows we are. But what have we done? Our total service has been to fire two broadsides into a wretched ship which did not reply for the good reason that she had already struck. We did not fire or receive another shot, let alone suffer any damage or loss. We have been as safe as if we had been at Spithead!”
“Our achievement was not in fighting,” said the purser, “but in having the ship ready for battle. We were nearly dead from fatigue before we left harbour.”
“All you say is true,” Delancey admitted, looking at Dumaresq, “but it applies to the squadron as a whole. All the fighting was done by two ships, the Superb and the Venerable. The Superb’s chief effort was in capturing the Saint-Antoine, which took about thirty minutes. By sheer luck she induced those two Spanish three-deckers to destroy each other, an almost unbelievable business which took place before our eyes! And there you have the whole of our victory, the work of one seventy-four. As for the Venerable, she was fairly beaten by her opponent. But for our presence she might have been taken.”
“She left the Formidable in poor shape, though,” objected the second lieutenant.
“Of course she did, but the fact remains that our victory was gained by one ship.”
“The French will claim the victory for themselves,” complained the captain of marines. “They’ll describe the Venerable as wrecked, a fair equivalent for the Saint-Antoine and explain that the two Spanish ships were lost following a collision with each other.”
“They can say what they like,” said Delancey. “The fact remains that they did not offer to fight us. With a vastly superior force they still made their run to Cadiz. That is why I judge that they were really defeated on the 6th. After this subsequent affair that combined squadron is no longer fit for battle at all. Their morale is gone and each ally will be blaming the other. We can blockade Cadiz now with a couple of ships and I’ll wager that they stay at anchor.”
“So perhaps we deserve a hero’s welcome after all,” concluded Dumaresq. “It is certainly what we are going to have!”<
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The setting of Gibraltar lends itself to drama, with galleries for the public and a place for the orchestra. When Sir James’s squadron sailed into harbour on the 14th the ramparts were again lined with cheering spectators and the band on the pierhead was again playing “Britons, strike home!”—or had it (as Midshipman Brock suggested) been playing that continuously since the day they sailed? Anyway, their return was triumphant and the Saint-Antoine was the trophy for display.
There was more than one opinion about that prize, Sir James describing her as a fine ship and likely to be fit for service in less than a fortnight and some others (Delancey among them) were convinced that she was good for nothing. It was a time for celebration, however, and not for argument. On the day after the squadron’s return the royal standard was hoisted and the shore batteries fired a victory salute.
That night the fortress was illuminated—all this to annoy the Spaniards—and extra grog issued to all the seamen and marines. Next day the Governor gave a banquet and there were subsequent dinners given by each regiment with a certain rivalry apparent between the commanding officers’ wives. As for Delancey, he said good-bye to his messmates on board the Caesar and was formally thanked by the Admiral.
“I am more than grateful for your help, Delancey, but you must forgive me if I do not mention you in my dispatch. If I reported that you had served on board as a volunteer you might be promoted but Dumaresq would not. As he more than deserves this recognition, I trust you will understand. I shall also ask for the promotion of the first lieutenants of the Superb and Venerable, both very worthy officers. You are deserving of promotion to post-rank and I have said as much in a letter to Lord Keith.
“I am sending Dumaresq to England in the Calpé, bearing my dispatch to the Admiralty. Your promotion is recommended in a separate letter to their Lordships. I wish you to understand that you have a friend in the service and that I shall not forget the way you came to my help: as one Guernseyman helping another. You will have heard, no doubt, that there is talk of peace being made. Should this come about, I shall look forward to meeting you again in St Peter Port.”
Delancey was genuinely grateful for this offer of patronage. He knew by now that the automatic promotion of first lieutenants after a successful engagement was the end to many a naval career. The complimentary promotion meant an improvement in half-pay but carried with it no certainty of employment. Half those promoted after the Battle of Camperdown were still on the beach, or so he had been told, and likely to remain there, being men without interest or protection.
There was no reason to suppose that the first lieutenants of the Superb or Venerable would fare any better. What were their names, now? Samuel Jackson, he remembered, and James Lilli-crap. What influence would there be behind someone called Jackson? What noble family was ever called Lillicrap? Such men were better off as lieutenants, secure of employment for as long as they were useful and not without some chance of making prize-money
Dumaresq had better prospects, not because of his promotion but because he had the friendship of Sir James Saumarez. His own prospects were now almost on that level. He was not a follower in the sense that young Brock was a follower, someone for whose career the Admiral had assumed responsibility following a promise made to the boy’s father, but he had been acknowledged as a neighbour and protégé. Saumarez was certainly going to be in high repute for the rest of the year. Any favour he asked of Lord St Vincent was likely to be granted. The only dark cloud on the horizon was this talk of peace. He could only hope that nothing would come of it.
Delancey returned to the Merlin with a sense of homecoming. She was a fine little ship, well officered, well maintained and ready for anything. She was not a legend, as the Speedy had been before her recent capture, nor was her commander a lord: but she was nothing to be ashamed of.
He had met Lord Cochrane ashore and liked him better than he had at first, recognising at the same time that his liking might not be shared by more senior officers. Cochrane had a good opinion of himself, that was undeniable, but he had tremendous vitality and enthusiasm. He was not as conscious of social position as Dundas tended to be, possibly because his own was so assured, and he seemed to have forgotten Delancey’s refusal to join with him in the hunt for L’Espoir. They had a glass of wine together and parted as friends.
Delancey realised, of course, that he himself would never be given the opportunities which Cochrane had demanded (or usurped), but he was conscious of having done well enough to deserve Lord Keith’s favour. He had played his part in the fall of Malta and at the Battle of Algeciras and his name was no longer entirely unknown. Among those who congratulated him was Mrs Hardwick, who told him that Souraya had settled down very well in an English household and was well liked by everyone.
On the day after he resumed command of the Merlin, Delancey was invited to a ball given by officers of the Royal Artillery. The notice was short and Delancey rather suspected that he was taking the place of some other officer whose plans had been changed. He accepted, however, taking no offence, and enjoyed the party. He was the predestined partner, he found, for a young lady called Marianne Wetherby, whose soldier husband was on duty during the early part of the evening. Marianne was young, vivacious and pretty, so much so that her husband deserted his post before the proper time, reclaimed her with a few curt words of thanks and left Delancey without a partner. His immediate problem—whether to go or stay—was solved for him by the belated arrival of Sir James Saumarez who greeted him in the hall.
“Glad to see you, Delancey. I hoped you would be here. I want you to meet my cousin, Colonel Saumarez, who has recently joined the Governor’s staff.” The Colonel had evidently arrived after Sir James, who now made a little speech for his benefit.
“I know that you watched our first battle, Tom. After it had been joined you may have noticed a sloop going into action without any invitation from me. Well, here is the commander of that ship, an officer for whom I foresee a distinguished career.”
“Honoured to meet you,” said the Colonel. “You played a gallant part, sir, in the recent engagement. Allow me to present you to my wife, Mrs Saumarez, and also to my younger daughter, Miss Julia Saumarez.”
Delancey bowed to the ladies and was received with unusual friendliness.
“I was myself a witness of your noble conduct!” cried Mrs Saumarez, “and Julia was beside me. I remember how she clasped her hands and said ‘Well done!’”
“But I am a mercenary warrior and ask a reward,” replied Delancey with another bow. “I ask Miss Saumarez to be my partner in the next dance.” This offer was accepted willingly with a smile from the mother and a little curtsey from the daughter. Delancey found himself re-entering the ballroom as one of the Admiral’s party and one in high favour with the rest.
He had certainly wasted no time in exploiting the situation, which resulted from the Admiral’s late arrival and which found the other officers already provided with partners. He made himself useful in fetching chairs and ordering refreshment and presently took the floor with Miss Julia, a lovely fair-haired young girl. She was very shy and he worked hard to interest or amuse her, being finally recompensed by a fleeting smile. She blushed enchantingly and her fair curls fell on the whitest shoulders. Her arms and figure were unbelievably delicate and her manner was at once friendly and restrained. He had never been in company with so pretty a girl and he was quick to ask for the privilege of taking her into supper. She assented shyly and he resigned her, temporarily, to a young Major Paget of the Second Regiment of Foot, who looked all too prosperous and eligible.
While she danced with other men he talked with Mrs Saumarez and expressed his admiration for the Admiral, whose victory must earn him still higher honours. As he talked he looked across the floor at Julia whose back was turned towards him while she listened to what was probably a funny story from a Captain of Engineers. He made at that moment a discovery which was unknown, he thought, to the rest of the world. A pretty girl is still
pretty when her face is unseen. She betrays in every movement, in the slightest gesture, that she knows herself to be pretty, clinching the impression by the way she pats her hair into place.
Mrs Saumarez caught his look of admiration and told him how popular Julia had always been. “She has no great fortune,” she added in fairness, “for ours is a poorer branch of the family, but I don’t suppose she will be unmarried for long. We hesitated at first over bringing her to Gibraltar in time of war but all the talk is of peace.” That Delancey should take Julia into supper was warmly accepted by her mother who thus allowed the progress of a friendship. That the girl’s parents should seem to encourage his suit seemed to Delancey too good to be true. It was all happening too quickly to be believed but Delancey had already fallen in love.
There was no way in which he could keep Julia to himself but Delancey could at least make it clear that he was not interested in any other girl. So he kept off the dance floor and presently found himself in conversation with a young diplomatist called Tarleton, who took a cynical view of the peace negotiations.
“What worries me,” he explained, “is that the victories of Lord Nelson, Lord Keith and now of Sir James Saumarez should lead to a peace treaty in which Malta may be lost to us.”
“Are you serious, sir?”
“Never more so. Nothing is yet agreed, you’ll understand, but the terms under discussion imply our returning the island to the Knights of Malta. There have been protests, of course, but my fear is that we shall lose in negotiation what we won in battle.”
“But that is absurd. The Knights are discredited and impoverished. The Order has had no useful function for at least a hundred years.”
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