by Neil Oliver
The Redoutable was a sitting duck. She was also smaller than the Temeraire, her deck some feet below that of her foe. Seeing his chance, Captain Harvey gave the order to fire and his broadside brushed Lucas’s would-be boarding party off their deck in a mist of blood and bone. All three blood-soaked hulks then drifted down on to the French Fougeaux until all four warships were locked together, one huge ocean-going slaughterhouse.
Great moments in war come about by luck as often as by design—and the turn of events now handed Captain Lucas one last opportunity for which he had prepared. Stuck in harbor for months as he had been, along with the rest of the fleet, he’d had no way of training his men in the arts of gunnery or seamanship. Rather than waste the time completely, he’d had them practice their musketry. While the British Navy scorned the use of such weapons—reasoning quite rightly that their use could never take an enemy ship—the French found it useful to station musketeers and snipers in their rigging. From their lofty aspect they could pick off targets on enemy decks and make life thoroughly unpleasant for those below them. And so it was that a French sailor so armed, high in the tangled rigging of the Redoutable, looked down onto the quarterdeck of the British ship alongside and spotted the prize of all prizes.
Nelson was unmistakable. His battle honors and decorations, faded and stained by constant wear but still instantly recognizable, would have marked him in any case. Then there was the ruined arm, worn tight across his chest. The sniper took aim and fired. The round entered the Admiral’s chest below the collarbone and smashed down through his body, lodging in his spine. Nelson’s slight frame crumpled to the deck. It was a mortal wound.
Hardy dropped beside his friend.
“They have done for me at last,” said Nelson. “My backbone is shot through.”
He was carried below deck.
Perhaps Hardy tried to remain optimistic. Nelson believed he was about to die every time he went into battle—and thought every wound he received would be the end of him. After all, this was England’s greatest hero and around him was unfolding his greatest victory. Surely he could not die now? Not this day of all days?
While the hero was being carried, as gently as conditions would allow, down into the semi-darkness of the Victory’s cockpit, the battle raged on. Now as never before the superiority of the British crews—and in particular the British gunners—made all the difference. Napoleon had believed that since his sailors spent all their time stuck in harbor, they were being kept fresh for the inevitable fight. In fact the opposite was true. The men and ships of the combined fleet had simply been rotting where they lay—the ships deteriorating and their crews along with them. The British by contrast had become tougher with every day spent at sea. As they worked either to keep their ships on station in the Channel to confine the enemy to port, or chased him around the Mediterranean in a bid to bring him to battle, they became the most efficient seaborne force that ever was.
All of this would be revealed in stark relief at Trafalgar. For a start, the British gun-crews proved at least three times as fast as their opponents. The greatest compliment that can be paid to the gunners on the other side was that they stayed at their posts, facing up to the savage efficiency of the men ranged against them.
The French and Spanish captains would routinely strike their colors and surrender once their ships had been dismasted or otherwise disabled. This thought never even occurred to the British commanders. Instead they fought on through it all, blithely ignoring the damage to their ships and the deaths of their men. Collingwood spent the duration of the fighting aboard the Royal Sovereign making jokes with his officers and munching on apples. The behavior of the officers and crew of the Belleisle was also typical. Shot to pieces though she was, her decks running with the blood of her dead and dying and her masts completely shot away, her men found a flag and fixed it to a pike that could be lashed to a mast stump. In this way they were able to keep fighting while Captain Hargood, cheerful and beaming in the midst of it all, paced the decks while eating a bunch of grapes.
“The ship is doing nobly,” he said to his captain of marines.
By the time Hardy was able to go below and visit his friend, he was able to report the capture of “12 or 14” of the enemy fleet.
He could also assure him that not one of the British ships had struck its colors—that all were still in action, of one kind or another.
“I am a dead man, Hardy,” said Nelson softly. “I am going fast. It will be all over with me soon.”
Those men not engaged in the fighting gathered around their lord, as he lay propped up on bedding packed against the massive oak beams of the hull. Every shudder of the woodwork must have pained him terribly, and there was next to nothing that could be done to ease his suffering. Still he clung to life, indeed long enough to hear Hardy’s assurances that the day was theirs.
Some time between four thirty and five in the afternoon Nelson died. It’s hard to know the truth of the moment, since more than one man witnessed it and remembered it differently. Most famously, and fittingly, the Victory’s chaplain, the Reverend A. J. Scott, recorded that as he was bent over the dying man, gently rubbing his chest to lift some of the pain, Nelson murmured: “Thank God, I have done my duty.”
He said it over and over, almost too softly to be heard. Then at last: “God and my country.” And with that he was gone.
Not a single British ship was lost at the Battle of Trafalgar—though many were terribly mauled. Nelson’s death brought to 450 the total of officers and men lost on the British side. There were also as many as 1,200 wounded, many of them horribly. This toll paled somewhat in comparison to that recorded aboard the ships of the combined French and Spanish fleet, which lost 4,500 dead and 2,400 wounded. As many as 7,000 of their officers and men had been taken as prisoners.
For Napoleon, Trafalgar ended any hopes of crossing the English Channel and invading Britain. But his soldiers were already engaged elsewhere. On October 20, the day before Nelson’s triumph, the Emperor defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Ulm. On December 2 he would achieve his most luminous and towering victory at Austerlitz against a combined Russian and Austrian force. In 1806 he would crush the Prussians at Jena and Auerstedt, and in 1807 his armies would inflict the same upon the Russians at Eylau and Friedland.
But thanks to Nelson, Britain was and would ramain safe. Napoleon would attempt to strangle the British with his “Continental System” of economic blockade—but his battles to enforce it would lead to the Peninsular War in Portugal and Spain that began his final undoing. In 1812 he would hopelessly overstretch himself in Russia, losing half a million men in the process. Then would come defeat at Leipzig in 1813, his abdication and his exile to Elba the following year—before his final return and the Hundred Days that brought him to Waterloo and destruction. In many ways, the rot set in at Trafalgar—making it the most significant battle of the Napoleonic War.
That victory had been achieved by a British Navy at the absolute peak of its powers, when so many of its captains and senior officers were incapable of anything but winning.
But there is no avoiding the fact that it was above all else the achievement of one man. One man destined to be the best of all.
As Lord St. Vincent said: “There is but one Nelson.”
A long way from home
“Thank God, I have done my duty.” The words still ring out clear. It’s hard to read them without involuntarily straightening the spine a little, maybe sticking out the chin a touch. The leaders who live longest in the imagination are those who, seemingly without trying, win not just the obedience and loyalty of their men, but their love as well.
Scott was one of those, but in his case he was, after all, offering opportunities that you just don’t see in the papers nowadays. Imagine having the chance to give up your day-job and join an expedition aiming to go somewhere no human being has ever been before. That kind of break won’t come along again unless, when they finally shoot for Mars, they make seats avai
lable to the general public.
Shopworkers, clerks, office boys, railwaymen, students and factory fodder—they all sent desperate letters of application to the office in Victoria Street pleading for the chance to risk their lives in the name of patriotic duty. There were professionals too, of course—hoping their skills would give them an edge—doctors, sailors, soldiers, civil servants. officers from the armed forces, senior men some of them, wrote to say they would swab the decks or tend the horses, just for the offer of a place. (Cavalryman Titus Oates caused quite a stir when he stepped aboard the Terra Nova for the first time. Scott had taken him on to look after the ponies intended for some of the sled-hauling duties—and the sailors in particular had been looking forward to judging the mettle of the man they would come to know as “The Soldier.” So it was with some amazement that they beheld the character in the tattered raincoat and crumpled bowler hat that climbed the gangplank and stepped cheerfully down among them.)
On June 1, 1910, the Terra Nova left London bound for Cardiff, where she took delivery of 100 tons of free coal as well as £2,500 raised by public subscription. Scott was so impressed and so personally touched by the show of support and generosity from the people of Wales, that he vowed to make their capital city the first port of call for the Terra Nova on her way home from Antarctica.
As before with the Discovery, Scott remained behind in Britain to tidy up the last of the financial details and sent the Terra Nova and her crew onwards to South Africa. On July 16, with all the paperwork finally squared away, he set sail aboard the mail steamer Saxon, accompanied by Kathleen, who had decided to leave nine-month-old Peter behind in England and stay with her husband for as long as possible. At Cape Town, Scott replaced Wilson as captain of the Terra Nova and sailed for Australia.
As soon as the ship arrived in Melbourne, Scott was handed a telegram. Sent by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, it was brief and to the point.
“Am going south,” it said.
Scott could hardly have been thrilled at the news, but he kept any anger or disappointment from the men. Back in Britain, the news would be greeted by open criticism of the perceived interloper. As far as anyone knew, Amundsen’s interests had always been focused on the Arctic. But Peary’s triumph in 1909 had brought an end to the Norwegian’s dreams of glory at that end of the world. Without a word, he had quietly altered his plans and sailed for Antarctica ahead of Scott. Amundsen was in debt—having raised funds for a dash to the North Pole—and in order to recoup his losses he would need a spectacular result elsewhere. Now the quest for the South Pole had turned into a race.
For now, Scott had to concentrate on his own preparations. There was still fundraising to be done—in Australia and then in New Zealand. Regardless of whatever anxiety he might have felt about the latest developments, he knuckled down to the tiresome job of exploiting any and all opportunities to raise last-minute cash.
Finally, in the afternoon of November 29, came the time for last farewells. Whatever words were shared by Kathleen and her husband at the end are not known—since they were said in private earlier in the day. As she wrote in her diary later: “I decided not to say goodbye to my man because I didn’t want anyone to see him look sad.”
Around 4:30 p.m. the Terra Nova cast off, making for Antarctica at last. Trouble and hardship were not long in joining them. On December 2 a vicious storm blew up, severely testing the ship and the men. They were already riding low in the water thanks to the sheer bulk of supplies aboard, and mountainous waves driven by near-hurricane-force winds threatened to overwhelm them completely. For two days the men were embroiled in a desperate fight to keep their ship afloat. Eventually coal dust became mixed with the seawater, creating a sludge that put the automatic pumps out of action. By the end, a chain of men—Scott included—were up to their chests in freezing water, using buckets to bail out the Terra Nova’s hold by hand.
Fighting for their lives in the great Southern Ocean, they felt they were the loneliest men, aboard the loneliest ship in all creation.
Moonwalkers and Apollo 13
It is now 35 years since human beings walked on the surface of another world. Only 12 have ever done so, and Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt were the last. Between December 11 and 14, 1972, they lived on the moon. They drove 21 miles across it in their lunar rover and collected hundreds of pounds of moon rock. They took in the view that only 10 other men had ever beheld—planet Earth from solid ground elsewhere. From time to time they lay down inside their lunar module and slept while the home planet rose and set in a black sky.
Command module pilot Ron Evans was the third member of the crew. Not for him the small steps of man upon that surface—instead he remained in orbit 60 miles above, ready for his colleagues’ return. On December 7, en route to the moon, one of them had snapped the photograph of planet Earth known as “the blue marble”—now among the most famous images in history. It reveals the home planet for what it is—a vulnerable ball suspended in infinity. Apollo 17 achieved the sixth lunar landing in three and a half years and it went like clockwork.
When Cernan and Schmitt blasted away from the moon on December 14 it was just 69 years—less than a lifetime—since another American had made the first-ever powered flight. Orville Wright, watched by his brother Wilbur, flew 120 feet across the sky above the beach at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. (When the first Boeing 747 “Jumbo Jet” was unveiled 65 years later its wingspan alone was twice as long as that first flight.) On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had landed on the moon for the first time, having flown the best part of 240,000 miles. It seemed technology and aspiration knew no bounds.
A billion people around the world watched the first moonwalk by the Apollo 11 astronauts that day—when television sets were rarities by today’s standards. Armstrong’s first words from the surface of the moon are etched into the memory of the world. It was hailed as the greatest achievement in human history and it seemed, at that moment, as though the exploration of the universe was just about keeping on walking, more small steps and giant leaps.
But by 1972 the American people had become too accustomed to seeing their fellow citizens at work nearly a quarter of a million miles from home. They’d seen 12 of their countrymen walk on the moon and that was enough. It was no thrill any more, the space race was won and the US Government had pulled the plug on further lunar landings. The world had moved on.
JFK, the president who’d made the moon his nation’s inspiration for more than a decade, had been dead for nine years. His brother Bobby was gone too, and Martin Luther King, Jr. It was two years since the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, not to mention the break-up of the Beatles. Americans were more concerned with their war in Vietnam and what President Nixon’s men had been up to in the Watergate building. The time for moonwalking had come and gone.
Long forgotten, too, was the adventure of another three-man crew of astronauts—who’d reached out for the moon but found it exceeded their grasp. While they failed to reach their destination, their journey proved all the greater for falling short of the goal.
In December 1910, as they fought for survival in the towering seas between latitudes 50 and 70 degrees south, Captain Scott and the crew of the Terra Nova had felt they were aboard the loneliest ship in the world, and they were. But for a handful of days in April 1970 the loneliest men in the history of the world so far were Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise, the crew of Apollo 13.
In a speech he gave in 1961, President John F. Kennedy said it was time to send as American to walk upon the moon—and then return him “safely to the Earth.” If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, he pledged to see it done before the end of the decade. He’d been elected in November 1960 after a campaign in which, among other things, he’d promised the American people superiority over Russia in the fields of space exploration and missile defense.
When he set his nation the target of the moon that day, he made it sound as if it should be done because it was a d
ream deserving of being made real. It’s hard to imagine what dream any of our leaders could pledge themselves to today in order to match JFK’s: maybe a trip to the sun, or to the constellation Orion. Whatever else he did or didn’t do, JFK knew how to shape a dream. In truth, though, he was unnerved by the advances communist Russia had made into the new frontier of space and he was desperate to close the gap.
Sputnik I, the first manmade satellite, had launched in 1957. On April 12, 1961, Russian Yuri Gagarin completed the first manned mission into space. American Alan Shepard followed him into the new domain on May 5, when he managed a 15-minute suborbital flight in the cramped capsule of the Mercury Freedom 7. Shepard had shown his class—not least because of the calming influence he’d had upon a nervous ground crew and Mission Control during the long wait for ignition. He’d been strapped into the claustrophobic cabin for four hours, but elsewhere other men were unhappy with the weather and the feedback they were getting from their machines. Finally Shepard’s quiet voice came over the radio.
“Why don’t you fellows solve your little problems,” he said. “And light this candle.”
And so they did, and the world turned and Shepard flew.
But everyone on that world could see that a two-horse space race had begun and America was running second. There was a cold war on as well—or at the very least a cold peace—and JFK needed to show his people there was something they could beat the Russians at. What followed was the most extraordinary demonstration yet seen of the power of imagination and ambition when coupled with near-limitless wealth. By the end it would cost the American people $24 billion—$100 billion in today’s money—using as much as 5 percent of the annual federal budget.
It was also a demonstration of how desire can persuade ambitious men to turn a blind eye to inconvenient truth. By the end of World War II America had acquired the services of Hitler’s chief rocket scientist, Wernher von Braun. The Allies knew the development of von Braun’s V2 rocket-bombs had been dependent upon slave labor. But the benefits to be had from rocket technology were deemed more important than the means used to acquire it, and so the SS officer became an unlikely ally.