1805

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Capitaine Drinkwater, mon amiral . . .’

  ‘Ah, Captain . . .’ Villeneuve addressed him. ‘I do not wish to dishonour you, but what do you interpret from those signals to the west?’ He held out a night-glass and Drinkwater was aware of his anxiety. It was clearly Villeneuve’s besetting sin in the eyes of his subordinates.

  He could see nothing at first and then he focused the telescope and saw pin-points of light and the graceful arc of a rocket trail. ‘British frigates, signalling, sir.’ That much must be obvious to Villeneuve.

  But he was saved from further embarrassment by a burst of rockets shooting aloft from the direction of the Principe de Asturias. From the sudden flurry of activity and the repetition of the Spanish admiral’s name, Drinkwater gathered Gravina was signalling the presence of enemy ships even closer than the two cruisers Drinkwater could see on the horizon. Bucentaure’s quarterdeck came to sudden and furious activity. Her own rockets roared skywards in pairs and the order was given to go to general quarters and clear for action. Other admirals in the Combined Fleet set up their night signals. The repeating frigates to leeward joined in a visual spectacle better suited to a victory parade than the escape of a hunted fleet, Drinkwater thought, as he was hustled below.

  ‘Branle-bas-de-combat!’ officers were roaring at the hatchways and the drummers were beating the rantan opening the Générale. The Bucentaure burst into a noisy and spontaneous life, lent a nightmare quality as her people surged on deck and to their stations in the gun-decks, lowering the bulkheads that obstructed the long batteries of heavy artillery that gleamed dully from the fitful lights of the swinging battle lanterns. Drinkwater did not fight the tide of humanity but waited, observing the activity. The noise was deafening, but otherwise the men knew their places and, although not as fast as the ruthlessly trained crew of a British seventy-four, Bucentaure’s eighty cannon were soon ready for action. Drinkwater made his way below.

  The messing area of the orlop that formed a tiny square of courtyard outside his and the other warrant officers’ cabins had been transformed. A number of chests had been pulled into its centre and covered with a piece of sail. A separate chest supported the instrument cases of the Bucentaure’s two surgeons. The senior of these two men, Charles Masson, had treated Drinkwater with some consideration and addressed him in English, which he spoke quite well. Drinkwater had come to like the man and, as he retired to his cabin in search of Gillespy, he nodded at him.

  ‘It has come to the time of battle, then, m’sieur?’ Masson tested the edge of a curette and looked up at the English captain standing stooped and cock-headed under the low beams.

  ‘Soon, now, I think, M’sieur Masson, soon . . .’

  Chapter 21

  21 October 1805

  Trafalgar

  Nathaniel Drinkwater lay unsleeping through the long October night. He was tormented by the thought of the hours to come, of how he might have been preparing the Thunderer for action. Alone, without the necessity of reassuring the now sleeping Gillespy or the disturbance of Bucentaure’s people who stood at their quarters throughout the small hours, he reflected on his ill-fortune. Such a mischance as his capture had happened in a trice to sea-officers; it was one of the perils of the profession; but this reflection did not make it any easier to bear as he lay inactive in a borrowed cot aboard the enemy flagship. There was nothing he could do except await the outcome of events.

  Even these were by no means certain. Gravina’s signals of the previous evening had obviously been those of panic. No British cruisers had come close, but those distant rockets seen by Drinkwater meant that the Combined Fleet was being shadowed. The response of the French and Spanish admirals in throwing out rocket signals themselves had undoubtedly attracted the attention of Blackwood’s watch-dogs. Connecting Blackwood’s Inshore Squadron with the main fleet, Nelson would have look-out ships at intervals, and these would pass on Blackwood’s messages. God grant that Nelson had seen them and that he would come up before Villeneuve slipped through the Gut of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean.

  Drinkwater did not like to contemplate too closely what might happen to himself. He had to summon up all his reserves of fortitude and rehearse for his own comfort all the argument he had put to little Gillespy as guaranteeing their safety. But they did not reassure him. The worst aspect of his plight was his inability to influence events. Never in his life had he been so passive. The sea-service had placed a continual series of demands upon his skill and experience so that, although he was a victim of events, he had always had a chance of fighting back. To perish in the attempt was one thing; to be annihilated without being able to lift a finger struck him as being particularly hard to bear.

  Some time in the night the Bucentaure’s company were stood down from their stations. Drinkwater heard them come below and his gloom increased. To a man used from boyhood to living on board ship he had no difficulty in gauging their mood. They were grim, filled with a mixture of anxiety and hope. They were also unusually subdued and few settled to sleep. Drinkwater tried to judge the course that the Bucentaure was sailing on. He could feel a low ground swell gently lifting and rolling the ship. That would not significantly have altered its direction since he had observed it the previous evening. He felt it coming up almost abeam, but lifting the starboard quarter first: Villeneuve was edging away towards the Strait.

  He must have slept, for he was startled by the drums again rappelling the Générale and the petty officers crying ‘Branle-bas-de-combat!’ at the hatchways. The orlop emptied of men and then others came down, the sinister denizens of this area of perpetual night: Surgeon Masson, his assistants and mates. Shortly after this a light and playful rattle of a snare drum and the tweeting of fifes could be heard. Cries of ‘Vive le Commandant!’ and ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ were shouted by Bucentaure’s company as Villeneuve and his suite toured the ship. A sentry came half-way down the orlop ladder and announced something to the surgeon.

  ‘What is the news, M’sieur Masson?’ Drinkwater asked.

  ‘One of our frigates has signalled the enemy is in sight.’

  ‘Ah . . . d’you hear that, Mr Gillespy?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The boy was pale, but he managed a brave smile. ‘Do you think that will be the Euryalus, sir, or the main body of the fleet?’

  ‘To be candid, Mr Gillespy, I do not know.’

  The boy nodded and swallowed. ‘Do you know, sir, that Euryalus was slain in a wood when gathering intelligence for the Trojans?’

  ‘No, Mr Gillespy, I’m afraid I did not know that.’ The arcane fact surprised Drinkwater and then he reflected that the boy might make a better academic than a sea-officer.

  ‘The Trojans were defeated, sir . . .’ Gillespy pointed out, as if seeking some parallel with present events.

  ‘Come, sir, that is no way to talk . . . Why, what of Antigone? Who the devil was she?’

  ‘The daughter of Oedipus and and Jocasta, sir. She buried the body of her brother after her uncle had ordered it to be left exposed and he had her bricked up behind a wall . . .’

  ‘Enough of that, Mr Gillespy.’ He fell silent. It was true that his own Antigone might as well be bricked up, stuck, as she was, with Louis off Gibraltar. If the Combined Fleet got through the Strait unmolested it would come upon the lone Antigone cruising to the eastward watching the eastern horizon for Salcedo! He groaned aloud, ‘Oh, God damn it!’

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’ Gillespy came forward solicitously, but drew back at the sight of the captain’s set face.

  ‘Perfectly, Mr Gillespy,’ Drinkwater said grimly, ‘I am damning my ill-fortune.’

  ‘I’m hungry, sir,’ Gillespy said after a little, but this feeble appeal was lost in a sudden canting of the Bucentaure. Drinkwater strained to hear orders on deck but it was impossible as the hull creaked about them and the constant wash of the sea beyond the ship’s side shut out any noise from the upper deck.

  ‘We’re wearing . . . God damn it, we’re wearing,
Mr Gillespy . . . yes, yes certainly we are . . . wait . . . see, we’re steady again . . .’ He gauged the way the hull reacted to the swell. It rolled them from the other side now, the larboard side. They were heading north and the rush of water past the hull was much less than it had been the day before. Either they had reduced sail or the wind had dropped significantly.

  ‘What does it mean, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ snapped Drinkwater, trying to answer that very question himself. ‘Either that Louis has appeared ahead of the Combined Fleet, or that Villeneuve has abandoned his intention and wishes to return to Cadiz . . . in which case I judge that the answer to your question is that our friends have sighted the main body of Lord Nelson’s fleet.’ As he spoke, Drinkwater’s voice increased in strength with mounting conviction.

  ‘By God!’ he added, knowing Villeneuve’s vacillation, ‘that must be the explanation.’ He smiled at the boy. ‘I think you will have something to tell your grandchildren, my boy!’

  Half an hour later Lieutenant Guillet appeared. He wore full dress uniform and was formally polite.

  ‘Capitaine Drinkwater, I am ordered by His Excellency Vice-Admiral Villeneuve to remind you of your parole and the courtesy done you by permitting you to keep your sword. It is also necessary that I ask you that you will do nothing during the action to prejudice this ship. Without these assurances I ’ave orders to confine you in irons.’ It was a rehearsed speech and he could see the hand of Magendie as well as the courtliness of Villeneuve.

  ‘Lieutenant Guillet, it would dishonour both myself and my country if I was not to conform to your request. I assure you that both myself and my midshipman will do nothing to interfere with the Bucentaure. Will you convey my compliments to His Excellency and I thank you for your kind attentions to us and wish you good fortune in the hours ahead.’

  They exchanged bows and Guillet departed. The forenoon dragged on. Drinkwater wrote in his journal and comforted the starving Gillespy. A strange silence hung over the groaning fabric of the warship, permeating down through her decks and hatchways. Even the men awaiting the arrival of the wounded in the orlop talked among themselves in whispers. About mid-morning they heard a muffled shout, drowned immediately in a terrific rumbling sound that startled them after the long and heavy silence.

  ‘Running out the guns,’ Drinkwater explained to Gillespy.

  ‘Captaine, will you come to the deck at once . . .’ It was Guillet, his appearance hurried and breathless.

  Drinkwater rose and put on his hat. He turned to Gillespy. ‘Remain here, Mr Gillespy. You are in no circumstances to leave the orlop.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Drinkwater followed Guillet up through the lower gun-deck. It was flooded by shafts of sunshine coming in through the open gun-ports. Every cannon was run out and the crews squatted expectantly round them, one or two peering through at the approaching British. Lieutenants and aspirants paced along their divisions and a murmur ran up and down the guns. Guillet and Drinkwater emerged on deck and Guillet led him directly to where Villeneuve, Magendie and Prigny were staring westwards. His heart beating furiously, Drinkwater followed the direction of their telescopes.

  Under a sky of blue and over an almost calm sea furrowed by a ponderous swell from the westward, the British fleet came down on the Combined Fleet in two loose groups, prevented from getting into any regular formation by the lightness of the westerly breeze. Drinkwater looked briefly round him to see the Franco–Spanish ships in almost as much disorder. The decision to wear, though two hours old, had thrown them into a confusion from which it would take them some time to recover. Instead of a single line with the frigates to leeward and Gravina’s crucial detachment slightly to weather, the whole armada was a loose crescent, bowed away from the advancing British towards the distant blue outline of Cape Trafalgar on the horizon. The line had vast gaps in it, astern of the Bucentaure for instance, and in places the ships had bunched two and three abreast.

  He turned his attention to the British again at the same time as Villeneuve lowered his glass and noticed his arrival. ‘Ah, Captain Drinkwater. I desire your opinion as to the leading ships . . .’ He handed Drinkwater his glass.

  Drinkwater focused the telescope and the image leapt into the lenses with unbelievable clarity. The two groups of British ships were led by three-deckers. These ships were going to receive the brunt of the fire of several broadsides before they could retaliate and Drinkwater sensed a certain elation amongst the officers on Bucentaure’s quarterdeck. They came on like a row of skittles, one behind the other. Knock the end one over and it would take them all down.

  As he watched, flags soared up to the mastheads and out to the yardarms of the leading British ships. Between the two groups he could see the frigates Naiad, Euryalus, Siruis and Phoebe, a cutter and schooner, standing by to repeat signals or tow a wounded battleship out of the line.

  ‘Well, Captain?’ Villeneuve was reminding him he was a prisoner and had been asked a question. He looked again at the leading ships. They had every stitch of sail set, their studding sails winged out on the booms, their slack sheets trailing in the water. The swell made the great ships pitch gently as they came on, their hulls black and yellow barred, their decorated figureheads bright with paintwork. The southern group was further advanced than the northern column. He closed the telescope with a snap.

  ‘The southern column is led by Royal Soveriegn, Your Excellency, flagship of Vice-Admiral Collingwood . . .’

  ‘And Nelson?’ Villeneuve’s eagerness betrayed his anxiety.

  ‘There, sir,’ Drinkwater pointed with Villeneuve’s telescope, the brass instrument gleaming in the sunshine, ‘there is Victory, leading the northern column and bearing the flag of Lord Nelson.’

  Villeneuve’s hand was extended for his glass, but his eyes never left the black and yellow hull of Victory. As Drinkwater watched, the ship astern of Victory seemed to edge out of line, as if making to overtake. Then he saw her sails shake and she disappeared from view behind the flagship again. ‘She seems to be supported by the Téméraire,’ he added, ‘of ninety-eight guns.’

  Bucentaure’s officers studied the menacing approach of the silent British ships. All along her own decks animated chatter had broken out. He noticed there was no check put to this and the men seemed in high spirits now that action was inevitable. Aware that at any moment he would be ordered below, he again looked round. The gap astern was a yawning invitation to the British, and Drinkwater’s practised eye soon reckoned that Victory was heading for that gap. Collingwood, he judged, would strike the allied line well astern of the Bucentaure, somewhere about the position of the funereal black hull of the Spanish 112-gun Santa Ana with her scarlet figurehead of the saint. Ahead of the Bucentaure the mighty Santissima Trinidad, with her hull of red and white ribbands, seemed to wait placidly for the onslaught of the heretic fleet, a great wooden cross hanging over her stern beneath the red and gold ensign of Spain.

  ‘Nelson attacks as I said he would, Captain,’ Villeneuve remarked in English. And added, as his glass raked the following ships crowding down astern of their leaders, ‘It is not that Nelson leads, but that every captain thinks he is Nelson . . .’ Then, in his own tongue and in a tone of anguish he said, ‘Où est Gravina?’

  Drinkwater realised the import of the remark, forgotten in the excitement of watching the British fleet approach. By wearing to the northward, Villeneuve had reversed his order of sailing. The van was led by Dumanoir now. Instead of commanding a detached squadron to windward, Gravina was tailing on the end of the immense line. Villeneuve’s counterstroke was destroyed!

  Drinkwater’s eyes met those of the French Commander-in-Chief, then Villeneuve looked away; Magendie was speaking impatiently to him and at that moment smoke belched from a ship well astern of Bucentaure. The rolling concussion of a broadside came over the water towards them as white plumes rose around the Royal Sovereign. Collingwood had shifted his flag from the sluggish Dreadnought to the swif
t and newly coppered Royal Sovereign as soon as she had come out from England. Now that speed carried her into battle ahead of her consorts and her chief. Soon other ships were trying the range along with the Fougeuex, smoke and flame belched from the side of the Santa Ana, and still the Royal Sovereign came on, her guns silent, her defiance expressed by the hoisting of additional colours in her rigging.

  Drinkwater turned his attention to the other column. Much nearer now, Victory could be seen clearly, her lower fore-sheets trailing in the water as the lightness of the breeze wafted her down on the waiting Bucentaure.

  Magendie barked something and Guillet tugged at Drinkwater’s sleeve. He followed Guillet to the companionway. As he left the deck he heard the bells of several ships strikes the quadruple double ring of noon.

  ‘Tirez!’

  As Drinkwater passed the lower gun-deck, Lieutenant Fournier gave the order to one of Bucentaure’s 24-pounder cannon. It rumbled inboard with the recoil after the explosion of discharge, snatching at its breeching while its crew ministered to it, stuffing sponge, cartridge wad and ball into its smoking muzzle. The lieutenant leaned forward, peering through the gun-port to see where the ranging shot had fallen, and Drinkwater knew he was aiming at Victory. The first coils of white powder smoke drifted innocently around the beams of the deck above and its acrid smell was pungent.