1805

by Richard Woodman

  Drinkwater descended into the orlop and made his way back, where he was greeted by a ring of expectant faces. Masson and his staff as well as Gillespy awaited news from the upper world.

  ‘M’sieur Masson, the allied fleets of France and Spain are being attacked by a British fleet under Lord Nelson . . .’

  He heard the name ‘Nelson’ repeated as men looked at one another, and then all hell broke loose above them.

  For the next hours the world was an immensity of noise. The stygian darkness of the orlop, pitifully lit with its faint lanterns whose flames struggled in the foul air, became in its own way an extension of hell. But it was the aural senses that suffered the worst assault. Despite twenty-six years in the Royal Navy, Nathanel Drinkwater had never before experienced the ear-splitting horror of a sustained action in a ship larger than a frigate; never been subjected to the rolling waves of blasting concussion that reverberated in the confined space of a gun-deck and down into the orlop below. The guns belching their lethal projectiles leapt back on their carriages with an increasing eagerness as they heated up. They became like things with a life of their own. The shouts of their captains and the aspirants and officers who controlled them became nothing more than howls of servitude as the iron monsters spat smoke, fire and iron into the enemy. The stench of powder permeated the orlop, itself full of shuddering air, its shadows a-tremble from the vibrating lantern hooks as the Bucentuare flexed and quivered in response to her own violence. This was the moment for which she had been called into being, to resist force with force and pit iron against iron in a ruthless carnage of cacophonous death.

  Initially the men stationed in the orlop had nothing to do. The surgeon and his mates waited for the first of the wounded to come down, the gunner and his staff peered from their shot and powder rooms, waiting for the first of the boys requiring more cartridges and shot. So far Bucentaure had shivered only from the discharge of her own guns. In his imagination Drinkwater saw Victory looming ever larger as she made for that yawning gap astern of the French flagship. He tried to recall the two ships that were trying to fill it and thought that they should have been the Neptune and the Spanish San Leandro, but they were both to leeward, he remembered, and only Lucas in the Redoubtable was in direct line astern of the Bucentaure. Drinkwater felt a sympathy for Villeneuve. Gravina had let him down and now he went almost unsupported into action with a ship heavier than his own. Bucentaure was a new ship and Victory fifty years old, but the added elevation of her third gun-deck would make her a formidable opponent.

  And then Drinkwater heard the most terrible sound of his life. The concussion was felt through the entire body rather than heard with the ears alone, a distant noise above the thunder of Bucentaure’s cannon, a strange mixture of sounds that had about it the tinkle of imploding glass and the noise of a million bees driving down wind on the back of a hurricane. The whole of Bucentaure trembled, men standing were jerked slightly and the bees were followed by the whoosh and crash, the splintering, jarring shock of impact, as musket balls and double- and triple-shotted guns raked the whole length of the Bucentaure. It was over in a few seconds as Victory crossed their stern, pouring the pent-up fury of her hitherto silent guns through the Bucentaure’s stern galleries and along her gun-decks, knocking men over like ninepins. It took cannon off their carriages too, for above their heads they heard the crash of guns hitting the deck, but by this time the orlop had its own terrible part to play.

  As the first wave of that raking broadside receded, Drinkwater released Gillespy whom he found himself clasping protectively. He could not stand idle and tore off his coat as the first wounded were stretched upon the canvas of the operating ‘table’.

  ‘Come, Mr Gillespy, come; let us do something in the name of humanity to say we were not idle when brave men did their duty.’

  Ghostly pale, Gillespy came forward and held the arm of a man while Masson excised a splinter from his shoulder and shoved him roughly aside. It took four men to hold some of the wounded who were filling the space like a human flood so that for a second Drinkwater imagined they might drown under the press of bloody bodies that seemed to inundate them. Men screamed or whimpered or stared hollow-eyed. Pain robbed them of the last protest as their lives drained out into the stinking bilge beneath them.

  ‘It is important we operate fast,’ Masson shouted, the sweat pouring from him as he wiped a smear of blood across his forehead. ‘Not him, Captain, he is too much gone . . . this man . . . ah, a leg . . . we must cut here . . .’ The knife bit into the flesh, its passage marked by a line of blood, and Masson’s practised wrist took the incision right around the limb, inclining the point towards the upper thigh.

  ‘If I am quick, he is in shock . . . see how little his arteries bleed, they have closed, and I can do no more damage than his wound . . .’ Masson nodded to the bunch of bleeding rags that had once been a leg. As he spoke his deft fingers tied thread around the blood vessels and then he had picked up his saw, thrust it deep into the mess and quickly cut through the femur. He drew the skin together and swiftly sutured it. ‘Do you know, Captain,’ he bawled conversationally as he nodded and the wounded man was removed to be replaced by another, ‘that the Russians and Prussians simply cut through, tie the ligatures and draw the flesh together, leaving the bone almost at the extremity of the amputation and the skin tight as a drum . . .’ Masson glanced at his next patient, caught the eye of his assistant and made a winding motion with one finger. The assistant brought a roll of linen bandage and the great welling wound in the stomach was bound, the white quickly staining red. The man was moved to a corner, to lean against a great futtock and bleed out his life.

  Drinkwater looked round. The wooden tubs were full of amputated limbs and still men arrived and were ministered to by Masson as he hacked and sawed, bound and bandaged. The surgeon was awash in blood and the foul air of the orlop was thick with the stink of it. Above their head Bucentaure was raked again, and then again at intervals as, following Victory, Téméraire and then the British Neptune crossed her stern.

  Another body appeared under the glimmer of the lanterns and Masson looked at his assistant busy amputating the arm of a negro. He called some instructions and then shouted at Drinkwater, ‘Assistance, Captain. This one we will have to hold!’ Masson tore the blood-soaked shirt off the frail body of the boy, a powder monkey or some such.

  ‘Hold him, Captain! He is fully conscious! They are always difficult!’

  The white body arched as Masson began his curettage. ‘We may save him, its a fragment from a ball, perhaps it burst when it hit a gun, but it is deep. Hold him!’ There was demonic strength in the thin body and it wailed pitifully. Drinkwater looked at the face. It was Gillespy.

  ‘Dear God. . . .’ The boy was staring up at him, his eyes huge and dark and filled with tears. Blood seeped from his mouth and Drinkwater was aware that he was biting his lip. Masson’s mate had seen it and as Gillespy opened his mouth to scream he rammed a pad of leather into it. Masson wrestled bloodily with the fragment, up to his wrist in the boy’s abdomen until Drinkwater found himself shouting at the boy to faint.

  ‘He will not stand the shock . . .’ Drinkwater could see Masson was struggling. ‘Merde!’ The surgeon shook his head. ‘I cannot waste time . . . he is finished . . .’

  They dragged Gillespy aside and Drinkwater picked him up. He made for the cot in his cabin, but it was already occupied and, as gently as he could, Drinkwater laid the boy down in a dark corner and knelt beside him.

  ‘There, there, Mr Gillespy . . .’ He felt desperately inadequate, unable even to give the midshipman water. He could not understand how it had happened. The boy had been helping them . . . and then, Drinkwater recollected, he had withdrawn, his hand over his mouth as though about to vomit. He looked at Gillespie. He had spat the leather pad out and his mouth moved. Drinkwater bent to hear him.

  ‘The . . . the pain has all gone, sir . . . I went on deck, sir . . . to see for myself. I wanted to see somethin
g . . . to tell my grandchildren . . . disobeyed you . . .’ Gillespy’s voice faded into an incoherent gurgle. Drinkwater knew from the blood that suddenly erupted from his mouth that he was dead.

  Another broadside raked Bucentaure and Drinkwater laid the body down and straightened up. He was trembling all over, his head was splitting from the noise, the damnable, thunderous, everlasting bloody noise. He stumbled over the recumbent bodies of the wounded and dying. Reaching into the cabin he had occupied, he picked up his sword and made for the ladder of the lower gun-deck. Nobody stopped him and he was suddenly aware that Bucentaure’s guns had been silent for some time, that the continued bombardment was the echo in his belaboured head.

  The lower gun-deck was a shambles. Swept from end to end by the successive broadsides of British battleships, fully half its guns were dismounted, their carriages smashed. The decks were ploughed up by shot, the furrows lined by spikes of wood like petrified grass. Men writhed or lay still in heaps, their bodies shattered into bloody mounds of flesh, brilliant hued and lit by light flooding in through the pulverised and dismantled stern. Drinkwater could not see a single man on his feet throughout the whole space. He made for the ladder to the upper deck and emerged into a smoke-stifled daylight.

  Drinkwater stared around him. Bucentaure was dismasted, the stumps of her three masts incongruous, their shattered wreckage hanging all about her decks, over her guns and waist where a vain attempt was being made to get a boat out. A man was shouting from the poop. It was Villeneuve.

  ‘Le Bucentaure a rempli sa tâche: la mienne n’est pas encore achevée.’

  Amidships a lieutenant gestured it was impossible to get a boat in the water. Villeneuve turned away and nodded at a smoke-begrimed man whom Drinkwater realised was Magendie. All together there were only a handful of men on Bucentaure’s deck. Magendie waved his arm and shouted something. Drinkwater was aware of the masts and sails of ships all around them, towering over their naked decks, and in the thick grey smoke the brilliant points of fire told where the iron rain still poured into Bucentaure. It was quite impossible to tell friend from foe and Drinkwater stood bemused, sheltered by the wreckage of the mainmast which had fallen in a great heap of broken spars and rope and canvas.

  A wraith of smoke dragged across Bucentaure’s after-deck and Drinkwater saw Villeneuve again. He had been wounded and he stood looking forward over the wreckage of his ship. ‘A Villeneuve died with Roland at the Pass of Roncesvalles,’ Drinkwater remembered him saying as, behind him, the great tricolour came fluttering down on deck.

  Bucentaure had struck her colours.

  Chapter 22

  21–22 October 1805

  Surrender and Storm

  Drinkwater stood dazed. At times the surrounding smoke cleared and he caught brief glimpses of other ships. On their starboard quarter a British seventy-four was slowly turning – it had been she that had last raked Bucentaure – and, to windward, yet another was looming towards them. Beneath his feet the deck rolled and Drinkwater came to his senses, instinct telling him that the swell was building up all the time. He turned. Ahead of them another British battleship was swinging, presumably she too had raked Bucentaure, though now she was ranging up to leeward of the Santissima Trinidad. And still from the weather side British battleships were coming into action! Drinkwater felt his blood run chill.

  ‘God!’ he muttered to himself, ‘what a magnificent bloody risk Nelson took!’ And he found himself shaking again, his vision blurred, as around the shattered Bucentaure the thunder of battle continued to reverberate. Then suddenly a double report sounded from Bucentaure’s own cannon. Two guns on the starboard quarter barked a continued defiance at the British ship that had just raked them. Drinkwater saw splinters dance from her hull and an officer point and shout, clearly outraged by such conduct after striking. He saw muzzles run out and the yellow and scarlet stab of flame. The shot tore over his head and, with a crash, what was left of the Bucentuare’s foremast came down. The two quarter-guns fell silent.

  Drinkwater clambered aft. No one stopped him. Men slumped wounded or exhausted around the guns, their faces drained of expression. Bucentaure’s company had been shattered into its individual fragments of humanity. Pain and defeat had done their work: she was incapable of further resistance. He hesitated to climb to the poop. This was not his moment, and yet he wished to offer Villeneuve some comfort. On her after-deck officers were waving white handkerchiefs at the British battleship. He turned away below. It was not his business to accept Bucentaure’s surrender. He reached the lower gun-deck. Running forward from aft came a party of British seamen led by two midshipmen.

  ‘Come, Mr Hicks, we’ve a damned Frog here!’

  Drinkwater turned at the familiar voice. The young officer was partially silhouetted against the light from the shattered stern, but his drawn sword gleamed and from the rapidity of his advance Drinkwater took alarm. His hand went to his own hanger, whipping out the blade.

  ‘Stand still, God damn you!’ he roared. ‘I’m a British officer!’

  ‘Good God!’

  Recognition came to the two men at the same time.

  ‘Captain Drinkwater, sir . . . I, er, I beg your pardon . . .’

  ‘Mr Walmsley . . . you and your men can put up your weapons. Bucentaure is finished.’

  ‘So I see . . .’ Walmsley looked round him, his face draining of colour as his eyes fell on an entire gun crew who had lost their heads. Alongside them lay Lieutenant Guillet. He had been cut in half.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ Lord Walmsley put his hand to his mouth and the vomit spurted between his fingers.

  ‘I was a prisoner of the French admiral, gentlemen. I am obliged to you for my liberty,’ Drinkwater said, affecting not to notice Walmsley’s confusion.

  ‘Midshipman William Hicks, sir, of the Conqueror, Captain Israel Pellew.’ The second midshipman introduced himself, then turned as more men came aboard led by a marine officer. ‘This is Captain James Atcherley, sir, of the same ship.’

  The ridiculous little ceremony was performed and the scarlet-coated Atcherley was acquainted with the fact that Captain Drinkwater, despite his coatless appearance and blood-stained shirt, was a British officer.

  ‘Come, sir, I will take you to the admiral.’ They clambered onto the upper deck and Drinkwater stood aside to allow Atcherley to precede him onto the poop.

  ‘No, no, it is your task, Captain,’ Drinkwater said as Atcherley demured. ‘He speaks good English.’

  He followed the marine officer. Villeneuve lowered the glass through which he had been studying some distant event and turned towards the knot of British officers.

  ‘To whom have I the honour of surrendering?’ Villeneuve asked.

  Atcherley stepped forward: ‘To Captain Pellew of the Conqueror.’

  ‘I am glad to have struck to the fortunate Sir Edward Pellew.’

  ‘It is his brother, sir,’ said Atcherley.

  ‘His brother! What! Are there two of them? Hélas!’

  Atcherley refused the proffered sword. Captain Magendie shrugged. ‘Fortune de la guerre. I am now three times a prisoner of you British.’

  ‘I shall secure the ship’s magazines, sir,’ Atcherley said. ‘You shall retain your swords until able to surrender them to someone of sufficient rank –’ he turned – ‘unless Captain Drinkwater would receive them?’

  Drinkwater shook his head. ‘No Captain Atcherley. I have in no way contributed to today’s work and am bound by my word to Admiral Villeneuve. Do you do as you suggest.’ He acknowledged the tiny bow made in his direction by Villeneuve.

  ‘In that case, sir,’ said Atcherley, addressing the French officers, ‘I should be obliged if you would descend to the boat.’ He looked round. The Conqueror had disappeared in the smoke, joining in the mêlée round the huge Santissima Trinidad that had not yet struck to her many enemies.

  ‘I shall convey you to Mars, sir,’ he nodded at the next British ship looming up on the quarter. Atcherley turned to D
rinkwater. ‘Will you come, sir?’

  Drinkwater shook his head. ‘Not yet, Captain Atcherley. I have some effects to gather up.’ He had no desire to witness Villeneuve’s final humiliation.

  ‘Very well, sir . . . come, gentlemen . . .’

  Villeneuve turned to Drinkwater. ‘Captain, we fought well. I hope you will not forget that.’

  ‘Never, sir.’ Drinkwater was moved by the nobility of the defeated admiral.

  Villeneuve stared at the north. ‘Dumanoir wore but then turned away,’ he said with quiet resignation. ‘See, there, the van is deserting me.’ Without another word Villeneuve followed Magendie from the deck.

  Drinkwater found himself almost alone upon Bucentaure’s poop. A few seamen and petty officers sat or squatted, resting their heads upon their crossed arms in attitudes of dejection. Exhausted, concussed and hungry, they had given up. Drinkwater watched Villeneuve, Magendie and Prigny pulled away to the Mars in Conqueror’s cutter. Lord Walmsley sat in the stern, his hand on the tiller. Drinkwater leaned on the rail. Despite Bucentaure’s surrender the battle still raged about her. He watched Dumanoir’s unscathed ships standing away to the north, feeling an immense and traitorous sympathy for the unfortunate Villeneuve. It occurred to him to seek the other part of Villeneuve’s miscarried strategy and he looked southward to identify Gravina. But astern the battle continued, a vast milling mêlée of ships, their flanks belching fire and destruction, their masts and yards continuing to fall amid clouds of grey powder smoke. Ahead too, the hounds were closing round the Santissima Trinidad, and one of Dumanoir’s squadron, the Spanish Neptuno, had been cut off and taken. Away to the north a dense column of black smoke billowed up from an unidentifiable ship on fire.

  He looked for the British frigates. Astern he could see the schooner Pickle and the trim little cutter Entreprenante. Then he caught sight of Euryalus, obeying the conventions of formal war, her guns unemployed as she towed what Drinkwater thought at first was a prize but then realised was the Royal Sovereign, Collingwood’s dismasted flagship.