Next came Nelson's Vanguard: seeing that five of his ships were in action to port of the enemy, he directed Berry to anchor within 100 yards of the Spartiate's starboard beam at 6.40 pm. Thomas Louis followed his Admiral's example: steering the Minotaur to port of the Vanguard, he dropped anchor on the Aquilon's starboard beam. John Peyton left the Minotaur to starboard and anchored the Defence on the Peuple Souverain's starboard beam. By 7, the five ships in the French van were in close action with eight of the British, five to port, three to starboard. It was now so dark that the British ships, which had gone into action flying the white ensign instead of the blue of Nelson's rank, because the white could be more clearly distinguished from the tricolor, hoisted a horizontal row of four white lamps at the mizen peak so that they could also be distinguished from the enemy at night.
Meantime, the British fleet suffered a mishap. Lagging too far astern of the Leander to be guided by her wake, Troubridge, having slipped his prize, sailed the Culloden so close to the Aboukir shoals that she grounded and stuck fast. Thus denied any part in the fierce action that had already begun, Nelson's devoted disciple was nonetheless of service to him: his signals warned the Alexander and Swiftsure, as they came up from Alexandria, to keep well clear. The Culloden was not got off until around 2 am on 2 August, with the help of Hardy's Mutine, by which time she had lost her rudder and was so badly holed that she was making seven feet of water per hour.
Soon after 7 pm, the next ship in the British line after the Defence, Darby's Bellerophon, anchored by the stern abeam of Brueys' flagship. A few minutes later George Westcott's Majestic dropped anchor to starboard of the Tonnant, from where she shifted berth an hour later to one on the port bow of the Heureux. Despite the smoke and darkness, Benjamin Hallowell managed to let go the Swiftsure's stern anchor abreast the gap between the Franklin and the Orient, 200 yards off the latter's starboard bow. With considerable skill and judgment, Thomas Thompson, after delaying to see if he could help the stranded Culloden, anchored the Leander across the bows of the Franklin, which he raked with his port broadside, then raked the Aquilon with his starboard one. Finally, the Alexander entered the bay, where, despite the darkness, smoke, and general confusion, Ball managed to cut through the French line astern of the Orient and anchor on her port quarter.
So much for the way in which, between 6.30 and 8.30 pm on the night of 1 August 1798, all but one of Nelson's fourteen ships sailed into action in accordance with his plan to concentrate on Brueys' van and centre. How fared these eight French sail-of-the-line against this onslaught? The Guerrier, raked not only by the anchored Zealous, but by the Goliath, Orion, Theseus and Audacious as they passed, soon lost all her masts. Nonetheless, Captain T. Trullet and his men fought on with great gallantry until after 9 when they surrendered to the Zealous. The crew of the Conquerant were not so resolute: assailed by the Goliath, raked by the Audacious, and subjected to the passing fire of the Orion and Theseus, the slaughter became so dreadful . . . that the French officers declared it was impossible to make their men stand to their guns': after only twelve minutes Captain Dalbarade struck his colours. The Spartiate, engaged by the Theseus and Vanguard, backed up by the Minotaur and Audacious, was eventually dismasted despite some help from the Aquilon, when Captain Emeriau surrendered. The Aquilon suffered heavily from the Theseus's carronades, losing all her masts, so that Captain Therenard hauled down her flag at 9.25. The Peuple Souverain, hotly assailed by the Defence and Orion, lost her fore- and mainmasts and had her cable shot away: by the time Captain Raccord could clear away another anchor, his ship had dropped down abreast of the Orient where she ceased firing. The Franklin, after initially having no opponent except for the distant Orion, was raked by the Leander, then engaged by the Swiftsure, followed by the Defence and Minotaur.
Captain Casabianca's Orient was first in action with the Bellerophon, but the odds were weighted against this British 74. By 8.20 she had lost all her masts to the French flagship's 120 double-shotted guns, and Darby was obliged to cut his cable and take his ship out of the battle. When an attempt to set her foretopsail brought down the foremast, he managed this under spritsail alone, in which condition she was engaged by the Tonnant, when, according to a French authority, her crew 'et principalment les officiers, jetèrent de grands cris, pour faire connaitre qu'il était rendu'. But there is no real evidence that Darby so much as considered surrender, only that he had an unusually noisy ship's company, whose voices incidentally saved their darkened ship from being mistaken for an enemy and engaged by the Swiftsure as she came in.
The attack on the Orient was continued by the Alexander and Swiftsure. Brueys was already dead; twice wounded early in the action, he was almost cut in two by a round shot at 8 pm while descending from poop to quarterdeck. When his men tried to take him below, he rebuked them proudly: 'Un amiral francais doit mourir sur son banc de quart.' He died before 9, when the Orient, already a wreck, with Casabianca mortally wounded, caught fire. Fanned by the wind, the flames spread along her decks and leaped up her rigging. Foreseeing a catastrophe, the British vessels near the doomed three-decker shifted berth or, closing all ports and hatches, held their men in readiness with buckets filled with water. At 10 pm the blaze reached the Orient's magazine and shell lockers, when the darkness was rent by the brilliant flash and shattering roar of an explosion so violent as to injure ships lying some distance away, and throwing a hail of burning wreckage that set the Alexander and Leander on fire. The shock stupefied both fleets: Poussielgue told Bonaparte that the explosion was followed by 'the most profound silence for the space of almost ten minutes'. Almost all the Orient's crew perished: her first captain, Ganteaume, and a few more managed to swim to the brig Salamine; seventy were saved by British boats. 'Throughout the Napoleonic wars it [was] a point of honour [with all maritime nations] to rescue from drowning those seamen whose ships had been taken or destroyed. . . . It was reserved for the twentieth century to witness . . . the deliberate jettisoning of all such obligations hitherto considered sacred.' (Sir Archibald Hurd in History of the Great War, The Merchant Navy.) With the Orient's destruction went the plate and bullion, valued at the best part of £1 million ($2.4 million), which Bonaparte had taken from the Knights of Malta. (4)
The French were the first to renew the action after this disaster, but to little avail. Broadsides from the Defence and Swiftsure soon brought down the Franklin's main- and mizenmasts and reduced Admiral Blanquet du Chayla's flagship to such a shambles that Captain Gilet hauled down her flag. HMS Majestic, though likewise dismasted was, however, able to continue her duel with the Tonnant, supported at longer range by the Swiftsure and Alexander, for the further two hours needed to compel this 80-gun French vessel to cease fire. By then her gallant Captain Dupetit Thouars had lost both arms and a leg to British round shot. Instead of being taken below, he insisted on being placed in a tub of bran from which he continued to give orders until loss of blood rendered him unconscious. With his last heroic words, he implored his crew to sink their ship rather than surrender. They responded by veering sufficient cable to allow the Tonnant to drop astern out of range. And there she was allowed to stay, licking but unable to heal her wounds until the morning of 3 August, when such of her crew as had survived after putting up a more desperate defence than any of their consorts, finally struck to the Theseus and Leander.
Long before this, early in the middle watch on the 2nd, all the French ships ahead of the Tonnant had struck or been destroyed. Those next to the rear were engaged at long range by the Majestic and Alexander soon after daybreak. Simultaneously the Theseus and Goliath compelled the frigate Artimise to strike, but not until she had been set on fire so that she blew up before she could be taken, which Miller classed as a 'dishonourable action . . . not out of character for a . . . Frenchman: the devil is beyond blackening'. At 6 am Nelson signalled the Zealous, Goliath and Theseus to weigh, the first to chase the frigate Justice, which was threatening the disabled Bellerophon, the others, accompanied by the Alexande
r and Leander, to settle accounts with the Heureux and Mercure, whose captains had sought to avoid disaster by dropping sufficiently far to leeward to ground their ships in the bight of the bay. But this gave them no succour from their four opponents whose gunfire persuaded both to surrender as easily as Foley induced Captain Jean Villeneuve to abandon his designs on Darby's wounded vessel.
Directed by Rear-Admiral Pierre Charles Villeneuve, the remaining three French ships-of-the-line, and the frigate Diane, which was soon joined by the Justice, made belated sail shortly before noon and, with the advantage of being to leeward of Nelson's fleet, endeavoured to escape. The Timoleon was unlucky; embayed among shoals, Captain J. Trullet's ship ran ashore, where, rather than surrender, she was set on fire by her crew and eventually blew up. So, only the Guillaume Tell and the Ginireux, accompanied by the two frigates, got away.
By this time, none of Nelson's ships was in a fit condition to pursue these unharmed fugitives. The Bellerophon had lost all three masts, the Majestic two. Both these vessels and the Vanguard had serious hull damage; and although the rest had suffered less, all needed repairs to their rigging before they could make effective sail. Their casualties totalled 218 killed, and 678 wounded, mostly in the Bellerophon and Majestic, the latter's Captain Westcott being among those killed in her prolonged action with the Tonnant. The wounded included Ball, Darby, Saumarez, and Nelson himself. A splinter struck the Admiral above his blind eye early in the action, leaving pendant a strip of flesh. As at Santa Cruz ('I am shot through the arm: I am a dead man'), he at first supposed this his fifth wound to be mortal, crying out: 'I am killed: remember me to my wife.' But after a short delay in the cockpit because he insisted that he 'take his turn with his brave fellows' who had also been wounded, the surgeon stitched it and, with the same disregard for pain that he had shown at Calvi and Santa Cruz, he resumed command, and began writing a dispatch that began: 'Almighty God has blessed His Majesty's arms in the late battle by a great victory.'
This was no premature verdict. Out of thirteen French ships-of-the-line, two had been burnt and destroyed, nine had been captured. Seven of the latter had lost three masts, the others two; and all their hulls were so badly damaged that three had to be burnt, and it was several weeks before the Conquerant, Spartiate, Tonnant, Peuple Souverain, Franklin and Aquilon could be made sufficiently seaworthy to be sailed to the west (to be commissioned later under the British ensign, the first three under their own names, the others as the Guerrier, Canopus and Aboukir). The French casualties numbered 1,700 killed (including Brueys and Casabianca of the Orient, Thouars of the Tonnant, Therenard of the .Aquilon, and Dalbarade of the Conquerant), 1,500 wounded and 3,000 taken prisoner.
The measure of this British victory was plain for all to see, 'the most signal that has graced the British Navy since the days of the Spanish Armada'. Nelson had redeemed his pledge, except, as he wrote afterwards to Sir Gilbert Elliot, now Lord Minto: 'I regret that one [enemy vessel] should have escaped, and I think if it had pleased God I had not been wounded, not a boat would have escaped to tell the tale.' Rodney, St Vincent and Howe had been content to take some six of their opponents when they brought them to battle and allow the rest to escape: Nelson in his first action in command of a fleet had virtually annihilated Brueys.
Much more important were the consequences of his victory: as yet only a junior rear-admiral and two months short of his fortieth birthday, he had, in one short night, regained command of the Mediterranean for Britain. He had also cut the only link between Bonaparte's Armée d' Orient and its homeland, shattering his dream of seizing British India. But, of more immediate import, Turkey was persuaded to declare war; so did her traditional enemy Imperial Russia; while Austria was encouraged to avenge her recent capitulation.
For a defeat of such consequence Brueys must bear the blame, both for having none of his frigates at sea to give him more warning of Nelson's approach, and for deciding to remain at anchor in an open bay instead of putting to sea where he should have been able to avoid such a devastating concentration on his van. But it is unreasonable to fault him, as some critics do, for anchoring his fleet in a line whose van could be turned, with his ships so far apart that an enemy could cut between them. Even if he had taken the soundings needed to berth the Guerrier as close to the Aboukir shoals as was possible without her stern grounding when the wind blew from the south, a seaman of Nelson's experience would know that there must be enough water for his ships to round her bows when she swung to a northerly wind. And 160 yards apart - two ships' lengths - was as close as the French vessels could be berthed in a tideless sea without the risk of collision when they swung idly at their anchors on a windless day.
So, too, with Admiral Villeneuve. It is contended that if he had ordered the French rear to weigh as soon as he saw Nelson's design, he might have prevented the Alexander and Swiftsure entering the bay, captured the Culloden, and brought succour to Brueys' hard-pressed van. But why should he, an inexperienced flag officer of thirty-five, be expected to show such extraordinary initiative? The more reasonable argument, that he should have issued such an order as soon as the Orient blew up and knew that Brueys could no longer control the battle, disregards the time the French rear must have taken to beat up to windward, in order to reach the Culloden, and that by then it was too late to save their van and centre. It is, however, fair to say that Villeneuve should have ordered the Heureux and all to leeward of her to weigh at dawn on the 2nd: five French ships-of-the-line might then have escaped instead of only two.
Such mistakes as were made by the French commanders cannot, however, belittle Nelson's achievement. He did not hesitate to bear down on the enemy as soon as he was sighted even though this entailed the confusion of a night action: 'I had the happiness to command a Band of Brothers; (5) therefore night was to my advantage. Each knew his duty, and I was sure each would feel for a French ship.' He did not engage in accordance with the Fighting Instructions, which would have him range his fleet in a ship-for-ship gun duel all along the enemy's line. Instead, he concentrated on a part of it, risking the loss of a ship to test whether he could gain the advantage of turning the enemy's van. He also accepted the possibility that his ships might fire into each other, so that he could gain an effective strength of two ships against one. Saumarez, who thought one British ship a match for any Frenchman, would have criticized Nelson for this after the battle, despite the dismasting of the Bellerophon, but when he began to say, 'It is a pity that -', his Admiral cut him short with the fervent words, 'Thank God there was no order', i.e. that he had not followed the Fighting Instructions.
Soviet historians ascribe Nelson's victory to his 'use of the Russian Admiral F. F. Ushakov's tactics, an attack from the landward side'. (6) In 1791 this able Russian commander led his fleet of eighteen ships inshore of a larger Turkish fleet whilst it was lying at anchor off Cape Kiliakra, near Varna in the Black Sea. But because the Turks at once cut their cables, Ushakov achieved no more than an indecisive action in which neither side did much damage before nightfall and his enemy made good his escape. As well might a Dutch historian claim that Nelson was inspired by De Ruyter's destruction of Charles II's fleet in the Medway in 1667. How much more likely that he remembered the plan, aborted by bad weather, by which his erstwhile Commander-in-Chief, Lord Hood, proposed to attack the French Toulon fleet whilst it was at anchor in Gourjean Bay in 1794. What is certain is that Nelson's tactical skill at Cape St Vincent was no flash in the pan. The man capable of incurring the disaster of Santa Cruz possessed much more than the strategic insight needed to find Brueys' fleet: he had demonstrated his mastery of the whole art of tactics needed to destroy it.
Nelson's triumph placed him on the pinnacle which St Vincent believed he would achieve. He gained the crown which is worn only by that elite band, the sea kings of Britain. The hunger for honour and glory, which was his driving force, was largely appeased. Ordered to take Nelson's despatches home in the Leander, Berry was delayed by the ill-chance that thi
s 50-gun vessel fell in with the 74-gun Genereux off Crete, and after a furious action lasting six and a half hours in which the British ship lost all her masts, was compelled to surrender, though the French gained little satisfaction from this aftermath of Brueys' defeat since the Genereux's casualties numbered 288 against 92 in the Leander. But when Berry at last reached London in October many were the awards that Nelson received. He was created Baron of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe, though he was disappointed not to receive a viscountcy for no better reason than that Spencer could find no precedent for the higher honour going to an officer who was not a commander-in-chief. He was no more satisfied when Parliament voted him a pension of £2,000 ($4,800): 'they cut me off £1,000 ($2,400) a year less than either St Vincent [for Cape St Vincent] or Duncan [for Camperdown]'. The Irish Parliament proposed, but did not agree, to give him another £1, 000 ($2,400). The East India Company granted him £10,000 ($24,000).
The City of London presented him with a sword in return for the one surrendered by Blanquet du Chayla. The Porte of Turkey honoured him with the Order of the Crescent, created specially for non-Mohammedans, 'a superb aigrette . . . or plume of triumph . . . being a blaze of brilliants crowned with a vibrating plumage, and a radiant star in the middle'. Nor were his officers and men forgotten, those of whom he had written: 'It must strike every British seaman how superior their conduct is, when in discipline and good order, to the riotous behaviour of lawless Frenchmen.' Both Houses of Parliament accorded them their thanks. Nelson's friend, Alexander Davison, now his sole prize agent, struck commemorative medals at a personal cost of £2,000 ($4,800); in gold for admirals and captains (not excepting the luckless Troubridge), in silver for the only commander present, Hardy, and for lieutenants, in copper for warrant officers, and in bronze for the men. And Hardy and all the first lieutenants were promoted.
Nelson the Commander Page 15