Roger knew the composition of the French Fleet without having to run his eye down the line of ships. Apart from four frigates and other smaller craft, Brueys had L’Orient, the mightiest ship afloat, with one hundred and twenty guns, three eighties and nine seventy-fours. That made a total of over one thousand guns, in comparison with which the one hundred and seventy-four pieces of artillery that Bonaparte had brought for his land battles were a mere pittance. Roger thought it reasonable to assume that Nelson’s Fleet carried about the same number as the French. That meant that as soon as battle was joined some two thousand cannon would be blazing away as fast as men could load them. Even at only twenty rounds per gun, forty thousand murderous lumps of iron—not to mention innumerable bullets from muskets—would be flying in all directions; and he was in the flagship, to which it was certain that the enthusiastic British would give their very special attention.
He would have felt even gloomier about his chances of survival could he have known of Nelson’s declaration to his Captains, ‘When we do come up with the enemy I’ll not be content with victory. It must be annihilation.’
During the afternoon there was nothing he could do but watch, while officers, marines and sailors bustled about the decks preparing for action. Had Brueys’s Squadron been caught while transporting the Army, it could not possibly have driven off the enemy. Despite the Admiral’s protests, such a mass of equipment—field guns, wagons, crates of saddles for the dismounted cavalry, officers’ baggage, ammunition and other stores—had been stacked on the decks that it would have proved next to impossible for his ships to run out and fight their guns.
In consequence, it had been decided that if the British came upon the armada the French should endeavour to close with and board them, as all Brueys’s ships-of-the-line had at least three hundred and fifty troops packed like sardines in them; it was hoped that they, by sheer weight of numbers, would overwhelm the enemy.
Now, there were no soldiers in the ships; but at least they had been disembarrassed of a great part of their strangling top-hamper, so they could have put to sea and met the British in a battle of manoeuvre. For some while Brueys discussed the possibility with his senior Captains; but the prevailing opinion was that they would do better to remain where they were because the seamanship of the men was so indifferent, and they had neither food nor water aboard for a cruise of more than a few hours.
The northern end of Aboukir Bay, in which the French lay, ended in a hook, on the point of which stood a small castle. From the point a shoal ran out to Aboukir Island and some way beyond it. Brueys’s ships were anchored in a long line behind this protection and, moreover, in the bay itself there were many other shoals and shallows. It was thought most unlikely, therefore, that Nelson would risk bringing his ships into such dangerous waters after dark and, although they had been steadily approaching all through the long, hot afternoon, they still had some distance to cover.
Nevertheless, preparations for action went ahead. Bulkheads were taken down, cannon balls and powder charges brought up, buckets of water placed beside the guns, hoses coupled to pumps ready for fire-fighting, and all the supplies, crates, bales and boxes that remained on deck shifted to the landward sides of the ships because it was taken for granted that no sane Admiral would risk sending his ships into the shallows that lay between the French Fleet and the shore.
As the British rounded the distant point it became possible to assess their strength accurately. There were eleven seventy-fours, one fifty-gun ship and a brig. Then, to the delight of the French, it was seen that one of the seventy-fours had gone aground on the hidden sandspit beyond Aboukir Island, thus making the odds—by this reduced to less than nine hundred guns against over a thousand—still further in their favour.
At about five-thirty the British began to form line of battle, showing that, although twilight would soon be falling, they did intend to attack that night. Majestically, under full sail, they came on in an irregular line, Captain Sam Hood in Zealous and Captain Foley in Goliath striving to outdistance one another for the honour of being the first to enter the battle.
Goliath won and, to Brueys’s horror, came up on the inshore side of his vanguard, followed by four other British seventy-fours. Nelson and his leading Captains had swiftly realised that, as the French ships lay to the wind, there must be at least their own length of water deep enough to keep them afloat when, still at anchor, they swung with their sterns to the shore. Where one seventy-four could swing another could pass without running aground. As the guns of the French ships on the shoreward side lay under piles of impediments, they could not be fired.
After firing a broadside into Guerrier, the ship at the head of the French line, Goliath overshot her and came to anchor opposite the second French ship, Conquérant. But Zealous anchored opposite Guerrier, while Orion, Theseus and Audacious sailed on, pouring broadsides into Guerrier and Conquérant as they passed then concentrating their fire on the next in line; Spartiate, Aquilon and Peuple Souverain.
Nelson’s orders had been to attack the French van and centre, and now he came up in his flagship Vanguard with the remaining six British ships on the seaward side of the French line. Caught between two fires as the sun sank below the horizon, the five enemy ships first to be attacked suffered terrible damage.
The French line was nearly two miles long, and L’Orient was stationed exactly in the centre of its thirteen ships; so little could be seen from her during the first part of the action except dense clouds of smoke. But by seven o’clock it was fully dark and every minute the smoke pall was stabbed by the bright flashes from hundreds of guns. Slowly but inexorably, like a vast burning taper, the smoke and fire spread along the line as ship after ship came into action.
Vanguard was the first ship to anchor outside the enemy line, and Nelson had her brought to within pistol shot of Spartiate, which was being attacked by Theseus on her other side. Even so, the flagship was hard pressed until Minotaur came up and drew the fire of Aquilon, which had also been engaging Vanguard. Meanwhile, losing station owing to the smoke and darkness, Majestic and Bellerophon had got too far ahead. The latter, finding herself opposite L’Orient, took on alone this mighty ship-of-war which had nearly double her own gunpower.
Now, after some five hours of dread anticipation, Roger experienced all the horrors of a great naval battle. While the French Fleet had been convoying Bonaparte’s Fleet of transports to Egypt, Brueys and a number of his senior officers had feared that, discipline being so bad, many of the pressed sailors might, if attacked, refuse to fight at all and seek a false security by hiding themselves below decks. But now those fears were proved ill-founded, largely perhaps because the men realised that their Admiral had a superiority in ships and an even larger superiority in guns and also because the victories of the Army on land had made them feel that they must not disgrace the flag to which their comrades had brought so much glory.
The seamen in all the French ships so far attacked had shown admirable courage, and those in L’Orient proved no exception. With shouts and cheers they laboured at the guns, greatly encouraged by the fact that their part in the battle appeared to be only a single-ship duel with a much inferior enemy. This eager handling of their guns, and L’Orient’s weight of metal, soon began to tell. At the price of comparatively few casualties all three of Bellerophon’s masts were shot away and, to the cheers of the French, she drifted, helpless, out of the battle.
Meanwhile Majestic had attacked Heureux, still further down the line, and had run her jib-boom into the French ship’s rigging. She was also exposed to the fire of Tonnant. Her Captain was killed and she suffered terrible casualties. But her First Lieutenant succeeded in getting her free and continued to fight her with great gallantry, attacking, unsupported, Mercure, the fourth ship from the French rear.
Unable to see what was happening, except in his immediate vicinity by the orange flashes of the guns, Roger now had depression added to his personal fears; for he could judge the progress of t
he battle only by the crushing defeat of Bellerophon. He would have been even more depressed had he known that at about eight o’clock Nelson had been struck on the head just above his old wound by a piece of the chain shot used by the French to cut through enemy ships’ sails and rigging. The metal cut the Admiral’s forehead to the bone, causing a long flap of flesh and a stream of blood to come down over his good eye and blind him completely. Believing that he had received a mortal wound, he sent last messages to his wife and several of his Captains.
Plunged into total darkness, he could not be persuaded, even by his Principal Surgeon, that the wound was only superficial. Yet if he had died then it would have been as he had always wished, for he had hardly been taken to the cockpit when news that victory was assured was brought to him. The ships in the French van, dismasted and with huge, gaping holes in them, had been reduced to corpse-littered hulks. Conquérant had been the first to strike her flag, Guerrier followed at eight-thirty, Aquilon soon after. Spartiate had ceased to fire and Peuple Souverain, having broken from her moorings, had drifted ashore in flames. The French centre— Franklin, L’Orient, Tonnant and Heureux—were now surrounded by a superior concentration of British ships that was pouring broadside after broadside into them and, as the night wore on, must be pounded into surrender.
L’Orient had Alexander on one side of her and Swiftsure on the other. White to the gills, Roger remained on the poop of the flagship, expecting every moment that a cannon ball would cut him in half or take off his head. In the heat of battle Brueys had found no use for him; so he could only stand there with his eyes smarting and half choked by the acrid fumes from the gunpowder. Through gaps in the smoke he caught glimpses of the deck. In places the bulwarks had been shot away; here and there cannon had been overturned. Broken spars and cut ropes fallen from aloft were inextricably mingled with scores of dead and dying. The screams of the wounded rent the air every moment, making the night hideous. There was blood everywhere.
At a little before nine o’clock a longboat not far from Roger caught fire. He had been helping to bandage a wounded sailor. The man suddenly jerked his head forward, spewed blood and died; so Roger let the body fall back. Running to the burning boat, he helped several other men cut her away. When he returned to the poop someone told him that the gallant Brueys had been killed by a cannon ball. Audacious had now joined in the attack on L’Orient; so broadsides from three ships were raking her, while musket balls fired by marines in their fighting tops came whistling down at a sharp angle to take their toll of the exposed French sailors. Her upper decks were now a shambles, nearly all the guns on them having been put out of action, but the greater part of those on her lower decks continued to fire and her surviving officers had no thought of surrender.
Two more of her boats were set alight and extinguished, the fire then started on the poop. While lying inactive in the bay she had been painting ship, and much of the paint on her stern was still wet. The flames caught it and ran quickly up the tarred rigging. An attempt was made to put out the fire, but British cannon balls had destroyed the nearest fire-fighting appliances and rows of water-buckets and were crashing through the stern rails every moment. By half past nine the after part of the poop was well ablaze, lighting up a scene of most appalling carnage and confusion. In the lurid glare of the flames Roger caught sight of Commodore Casabianca. He was lying wounded and near him the deck was burning but his ten-year-old son, who had come on the voyage as a cabin-boy, was clinging to his hand, refusing to leave him.
Suddenly Roger took a decision. Two-thirds of the ship’s company were now either dead or wounded. By a miracle, as it seemed to him, he was one of the remaining third. But his immunity could not last much longer. With Brueys dead and no one knowing any more what his neighbour was doing, why should he remain to be slaughtered? Better to go over the side and take his chance in the water. Stumbling through the blinding smoke, he found one of the poop ladders and slithered down it into the well of the ship.
Tripping over a legless corpse, he was thrown against an overturned gun. Beyond it was a great rent in the bulwark. where the gunport had been. Heaving himself up, he lurched towards it. At that moment a thought struck him. Bonaparte’s despatch!
During the five and a half months since he had left England he had been unable to send home a single report or piece of intelligence of any value. Perhaps even worse in Mr. Pitt’s view, instead of carrying out his instructions to do anything he could to hamper Bonaparte’s success and rise to power he had, in small ways, rendered him many useful services. Here was a chance to make good his apparent negligence and to serve his country to some purpose. It was very probable that in the despatch Bonaparte had not only described his occupation of Cairo but had also informed the Directors of his future intentions.
Swinging round, Roger stepped over the legless body, jumped another, slipped in a pool of blood, fell, picked himself up and made for the entrance under the poop that led to the dead Admiral’s cabin. The passage was in darkness, except for the flickering light of the still-thundering guns. He groped his way along it and into the great stern cabin where, eight hours before, he had been laughing and talking with Brueys and his officers round the big dining table. It was bright as day inside the cabin, for the fire had already caught the woodwork of the stern gallery outside the semi-circle of tall, sloping windows.
Adjacent to the big cabin was a smaller one that Brueys used as an office and in which he had received Roger. As Roger thrust open the door he heard a sudden movement, then saw that a terrified man was crouching in one of the far corners.
He was dressed as a civilian, so Roger guessed him to be either Brueys’s secretary or a super-cargo. The one thing he could not afford was for a Frenchman to be able to identify him afterwards and state that he had made off with the despatch, and there was just a possibility that this man might survive the battle. His own life might be forfeit if he let the man live; so he pulled a pistol from his sash, intending to kill him.
‘What … what are you about to do, monsieur?’ gasped the trembling wretch.
The idea of pistolling a defenceless man in cold blood went horribly against the grain with Roger and a way of making his theft appear a commendable action suddenly occurred to him. With a frown he said, ‘For lurking here like a coward I ought to shoot you. But I fear L’Orient must soon surrender, so I have come here to prevent a despatch that I delivered to Admiral Brueys this afternoon from falling into the hands of the English.’ Then, turning his pistol on the lock of a stout cabinet in which he had seen Brueys put the despatch, he fired it.
The lock was shattered and after a sharp pull the doors of the cabinet came open. Inside there were rows of pigeonholes filled with papers. Roger soon recognised the despatch from its size and unbroken seals. Quickly he undid his tunic, thrust the despatch inside and, without another glance at the poor devil he had spared, left the cabin.
Out on the open deck the scene was even more ghastly than when he had left it, for during the past five minutes the fire on the poop had trebled in size and now had the mizzenmast, with its yards and gear, burning like a huge candle. The fierce light of the flames lit a much greater area of the ship and the writhing figures half obscured by smoke might well have been in Dante’s Inferno. But Roger’s only thought now was to save himself.
Noticing a rope that led out through a gap in the bulwarks, he grabbed it with both hands, gave a quick look to make certain there was no wreckage in the sea below the gap, then sat down, turned on his stomach and thrust himself outward. The rope, having been cut, was not secured to anything on board. In consequence instead of his being able, as he had hoped, to clamber down it, he went hurtling down, hit the bulge of the ship’s side with a most frightful thump, bounced off it and landed with a great splash in the sea.
For what seemed an age he went down, down, down, until he thought that his lungs would burst. But at last he began to rise and surfaced, gasping and gulping. As soon as he had shaken the water from his e
yes, he got his bearings. There, within twenty feet of him, towered the gargantuan L’Orient, many of her lower guns still belching fire and smoke, but her stern now ablaze. Turning, he struck out for the nearest British ship.
She was no great distance away and he was a strong swimmer. In spite of being weighed down by his sodden clothes, he reached her after ten minutes of steady effort. But it was another matter to get aboard her. Had he had the voice of ten men and shouted himself hoarse he would still have been unable to make himself heard above the deafening thunder of the guns. Even if he had, her crew, giving every thought to their duties at their action stations, would not have left them to throw him a rope.
After swimming half round the ship he found himself facing her anchor chain. Gratefully, he grasped and clung to it, praying that, until some chance arose of his getting into the ship, he would not be hit by a stray bulet or flying piece of debris. Fortunately, as it Was the height of summer, the sea was warm; so he stood no risk of having to let go the chain from numbed limbs and hands.
For the next half-hour, from sea-level, he watched the battle. The British ships continued to fire relentlessly on their foe. Fewer and fewer guns from L’Orient replied, and the whole of her stern became a raging furnace. Soon after ten it was evident that orders had been given to abandon ship, as those of her crew who still survived began to jump into the water. At ten-fifteen the flames reached her main magazine and she blew up. The explosion was so terrific that it was heard as far away as Alexandria. Masses of burning debris were shot hundreds of feet into the air, to descend on the decks of the British ships that had brought doom upon her, or to hiss fiercely in the water.
The blast and a great tidal wave wrenched Roger from his hold on the cable. He was again submerged and had to fight his way to the surface. When he came up it was pitch dark and utterly silent. The magnitude of the explosion had so shaken the combatants on both sides that they spontaneously ceased to serve the guns. It was not until nearly ten minutes later that a French ship resumed the battle by again opening fire.
The Sultan's Daughter Page 22