Breaking the Line

by David Donachie

  The solution to him was obvious. Better to live to fight another day than to go down in a blaze of futile glory. If he could extricate Nelson’s squadron now, while they were still capable of manoeuvre, the fleet would be wounded but basically intact. The grounded ships, he knew, would refloat, either naturally on a rising tide or by towing and warping, and they were capable of defending themselves until that time came.

  ‘I have a mind to ask Nelson to discontinue, Captain Dommet.’

  Parker could almost feel every officer stiffen on the deck of HMS London. All seemed an inch or two taller, as every ear strained to hear Dommet’s reply. The Captain of the Fleet was furious and working hard to hide it, clenching the muscles of his stomach to force out a calm and considered reply. ‘I doubt we can tell enough from this distance to make that decision, sir.’

  ‘Captain Otway?’ Parker asked.

  ‘I find I must agree with Captain Dommet, sir. I strongly advise that to send such a signal now would be premature.’

  Dommet was not sure if Nelson was winning or losing. Like Otway, all he knew for certain was that it was too soon to tell. And Nelson surely had boats coming aboard Elephant from his other ships reporting progress. He no longer subscribed to the theory he had held before meeting him, that Nelson was a lucky chancer: having seen him at his conferences, having witnessed his clear brain and sound tactical thoughts carried into execution, having read the comprehensive orders he had issued for this attack, Dommet was prepared to acknowledge that Nelson had a superior mind.

  He trusted Nelson to know the state of the battle, trusted him not to pursue a course that would lead to death and destruction for the men and ships he commanded. So far not one of the vessels engaged in the attack had pulled out of the line, and although there was a lot of smoke about it was mainly blowing away from the British ships so it was easy to see they were still firing full broadsides. But Dommet knew that what he saw and what Sir Hyde Parker saw were not the same thing. He also knew that until now his advice had been little appreciated. Yet he was at a loss to know how to stop Parker from doing something he considered precipitate.

  It was Otway who provided the solution, addressing Parker directly. ‘Might I suggest, sir, that we send a boat to Lord Nelson and ask his opinion?’

  ‘Excellent idea, Captain Otway,’ cried Dommet, ‘and I, sir, would deem it an honour to be the messenger.’

  Parker wanted to say no, to state that as the fleet commander his opinion was what counted: that Nelson, heavily engaged in fighting, could not see the wood for the trees. Dommet did not give him the chance. ‘I will need another coat, sir.’ With that, the Captain of the Fleet was gone, down the companionway to change from his dress uniform coat to an old and less valuable one.

  As soon as he disappeared, Parker rediscovered his voice. ‘Am I to see my fleet beaten for the sake of a damned coat?’

  Otway stepped forward quickly. ‘My suggestion, sir, so I claim it as my duty.’ The captain of HMS London rushed to the side, and blessed the fact that a boat was passing. He guessed that with any delay Parker would act, so he hailed the boat to come alongside and rushed below to the entry port before his open-mouthed commander-in-chief could stop him.

  The navy to which Sir Hyde Parker belonged did not have ships’ captains acting as mere messengers, but when he looked over the side, Otway was urging the oarsmen to put their backs into it.

  Dommet rushed back on deck in a threadbare blue coat that had seen better days.

  ‘You are too late, Captain Dommet. Look and you will observe Captain Otway is already pulling towards Elephant to do the duty you had assigned to yourself.’

  Parker expected Dommet to be angry, but the Captain of the Fleet just nodded, picked up a telescope and trained it along the still fighting battle line, leaving his superior once more feeling isolated in a sea of his own reservations.

  ‘Prepare to hoist the signal, “Discontinue the action.”’

  ‘Sir,’ protested Dommet. ‘Captain Otway is not yet with Lord Nelson.’

  That was when Sir Hyde Parker lost his temper. ‘I must ask you, sir, who commands here?’

  For Dommet to answer such an obvious question would have been foolish, so he covered himself with the nod of one who recognised the reality. Not that he would have had a chance to speak anyway, because Parker, who had gone very red in the face, left him no space.

  ‘It is damn annoying, sir, to have everything I say disputed. I do not recall you, sir, or Captain Otway, being given the responsibility for the execution of my orders. That falls to me and me alone, and while I am man enough to be advised I am not such a base fool as to require constant repudiation.’

  There was a still, small voice in Parker’s head telling him to withdraw, but having put Dommet in his place he could not back down.

  ‘Now oblige me, sir, by preparing that signal, and when it is prepared, oblige me further by having it hoisted. Then I will have it driven home by two guns.’

  A shot from one of the floating batteries engaged by HMS Elephant struck the mainmast, sending a shower of deadly splinters flying in several directions, although none, fortunately met flesh. Midshipman Frears had spent his time dashing back and forth with messages from the starboard side of the ship, where Nelson paced the deck attended by Colonel Stewart, Merry Ed and a knot of unemployed officers, mostly captains come to see the action. Frears was just passing the base of the mast at that point and the crash made him throw himself down.

  Nelson watched as the boy picked himself up, his hands patting his body and his head looking for a wound, his face full of wonder to find himself intact, before he carried on to rejoin his admiral.

  ‘Warm work, Mr Frears, and this day may be the last for any one of us.’ Frears looked into Nelson’s face expecting to see a worried expression. Instead what he found was a look of contentment as Nelson added, ‘Mind you, I would not be elsewhere for thousands.’

  The signal lieutenant was right in Frears’s wake, to inform Nelson, ‘Flag signalling, sir. Number thirty-nine, with two guns.’

  That look of contentment was wiped away in a flash to be replaced by a fleeting expression of anger, that, in turn, was masked by forced indifference as Foley approached. Nelson turned away from everybody, pacing toward a gangway before turning to come back.

  ‘Should I repeat it, sir?’ asked the lieutenant, as he came close.

  That was the correct thing to do, so that every ship in action would know that he, the junior admiral, had received and was preparing to obey the command. But Nelson knew it to be right only in the sense of hierarchy. As far as the battle was concerned he suspected it to be dead wrong. There was a fleeting moment when he thought that perhaps Parker and the officers on London could see something he could not.

  Had there been a couple of drifting dismasted hulks in mid-channel with blood running out of the scuppers and the decks full of dead and dying the order would have made sense, but if he looked along the line he knew he would observe all his ships in position, all fighting. Captain Olfert Fischer had been obliged to shift his flag from the original position he held, a ship set seriously on fire by Bligh in HMS Glatton, to another vessel that was now being reduced to matchwood by Admiral Graves in Defiance. That was not the act of a man anticipating victory, and what news he had coming in was positive: Danish fire slackening, through loss of men or cannon, flags hauled down, vessels drifting onshore, boarding parties being formed to take possession of the shattered prizes. On his own deck stood a growing band of enemy officers who had surrendered.

  ‘No, acknowledge it,’ said Nelson. There was a brief pause while the signal lieutenant digested the import of that before he turned away. Nelson called after him, ‘Is my signal still hoisted?’

  ‘It is, sir.’

  ‘Then mind you keep it so.’

  Nelson started pacing again, alarmed, wondering how that would be taken elsewhere. It was another moment when he would have to trust his captains. Those to his rear, unable to see
London, would not know about Parker’s order if he did not repeat it. But the ships ahead of him, closer to the flagship would, and when they looked to Elephant they would see his own signal, ‘Engage the enemy more closely’, still flying.

  He knew he was being watched by a knot of officers, the number of which had grown as the battle progressed, and it was to them he spoke, his voice querulous. ‘Do you know what’s shown on board the commander-in chief?’ he demanded. ‘Number Thirty-nine.’

  The naval officers understood and nodded, but Stewart, a soldier, had no idea what he was talking about and immediately requested an explanation.

  ‘Why, it is a signal to leave off the action.’ Nelson’s voice rose as he turned to face his old friend Tom Foley. ‘Leave off action. Now damn me if I do. You know I have only one good eye, and I reckon I have the right to be blind sometimes.’

  Nelson snapped open his pocket telescope and put it to the eye that had been damaged all those years ago in Corsica, his voice showing increasing agitation as he spoke. ‘I really do not see the signal. So damn the signal. Keep mine for closer battle flying. That’s the way I answer such signals! Nail mine to the mast.’

  Sir Hyde Parker had no idea of the confusion and anger his signal caused in the line of ships. The two guns that accompanied the flags had meant that it was no suggestion, the instruction to discontinue the action was mandatory, disobedience a court-martial offence and every commanding officer knew it. But those who could see it looked to Elephant for confirmation and, not perceiving it, had a choice to make.

  Rear Admiral Graves, who had originally doubted the notion of the present attack, was now wholly committed to action and suspected Parker’s signal to be nonsense. Yet he was duty bound to repeat it, as well as the one Nelson was flying. He solved his dilemma by hoisting the repeat in a position where Nelson, and most of the ships engaged, could not see it. Having done that he kept on fighting.

  Aboard HMS Amazon, Captain Riou, already wounded, had done his best to ignore the flagship of the fleet. He and his squadron had been fully engaged against the Trekroner battery, the three sloops and brigs before it, all this while under fire from Steen Bille’s capital ships. But they were doing what was required, occupying the enemy, achieving the kind of success he knew Nelson wanted. But when Graves hoisted the repeat he could see clearly what was hidden from the others, and his two other frigates had already broken off to obey.

  Riou was left with no choice but to do likewise, being too junior to flaunt such an order. It was with a heavy heart that he gave the instructions to cease firing, to cut his cable, and to bear away. As Amazon’s guns ceased firing, the smoke cleared and, for the first time since action was joined, Riou had a clear view of the target he had been firing at, the fort built on piles driven into the point of the sandbank. ‘What will Nelson think of us,’ he said.

  Seconds later a last salvo was fired from the Trekroner fort. The Danish gunners, with a clear view of a ship hardly yet under way, had both time to aim and a good sight of what they were trying to hit. One ball from that salvo hit Riou in the back, and nearly cut him in half. He was dead before they got him below to the surgeon.

  Nelson had the satisfaction of observing that all his capital ships had remained in place. Even the bomb ketches, which had finally anchored mid-channel kept firing despite the order. His instructions outweighed those of his superior, the men of his part of the fleet looked to him not Parker, and Nelson was sure he could detect a diminution in the Danish fire. It was hard to pin down in the mêlée of shot shell and noise, but it was there.

  The messengers were flooding aboard in droves, midshipmen and lieutenants, to tell him a ship had struck, boarded and was now in British possession: that another was on fire and a hulk, that yet another’s cable had been cut and she was drifting ashore not a gun left firing, that the Danish Commodore’s pennant was no longer flying above a ship in the defence line but was on a flagstaff over the Trekroner fort, which could mean that his place on his vessel had become untenable. There were flags and more than enough prisoners to crowd out Nelson’s great cabin, and in his own lee were four vessels that had surrendered.

  The Trekroner fort, as well as the Quintus and Sixtus batteries – no doubt under the orders of Olfert Fischer, and denied the target of British frigates – decided to open up on the main line, particularly HMS Elephant. Most of the shots fell short, landing on a group of surrendered Danish ships inshore of Nelson’s flagship, where men were gathered on the decks. The death toll was terrible and the effect on Nelson electric. He knew that only one thing would slacken that fire, and that there was only one way that the men who, having surrendered had become his responsibility, could be kept alive.

  The battle was over, Nelson knew that, not fooled by the continuing fire. He also knew that his victory was complete. The Danish defence line had been destroyed, and Copenhagen was wide open to bombardment. To continue the battle would only see good men on both sides killed to no purpose. The task now was to persuade the Crown Prince and his advisors to accept that they had been beaten.

  ‘Mr Frears, to my cabin for paper and pen. Captain Foley, I will need a messenger to carry for me a proposal of a truce to the Trekroner fort.’

  The invitation to propose a truce was written on the casing that housed the head of the rudder, Foley’s purser making a fair copy from Nelson’s scrawl. Sealed at Nelson’s insistence with wax carrying the impression of his own coat of arms, it was sent off with Captain Thesiger, a British officer who spoke Danish, the wording really a plea that humanity take over from what could only be carnage.

  The Danes were still firing, but the three 74s well out ahead of Parker’s division had come close enough to oblige the ships ahead of Elephant to strike, which left only the land batteries firing. A Danish ship, the Danneborg was on fire and looked likely to blow so Nelson, mindful of Aboukir Bay and L’Orient, decided to move his ships out of the north end of the King’s Deep to anchor with those of Sir Hyde Parker.

  That this turned into a farce showed Parker how right he had been to worry. None of the ships, given the damage they had sustained to sails and spars, could sail efficiently. The Monarch, with her captain, Mosse dead, ran aground, then Ganges quickly ran her bowsprit amidships aboard the stranded ship. It took an age to separate them, with the Danes still peppering the withdrawing vessels.

  The Danneborg, grounded on the Amager sandbank, blew up at three thirty, the boom reverberating across the city. Nelson’s messenger must have found someone with authority close to that time for a Danish emissary came aboard to be passed on to Sir Hyde Parker and the Danish guns fell silent at around four. In eight hours, Nelson had destroyed the armed might of a whole nation, and as he went over the side of HMS Elephant, intent on returning to Hardy’s ship, he said to young Frears,

  ‘Well, young fellow, I have fought contrary to orders and I may well be hanged for it.’ Then he laughed out loud. ‘Never mind, let them.’

  19

  Emma Hamilton had a great many thoughts to occupy her mind, not least the fact that the man she loved was at war. It was only by roundabout means that she could find any news of his well-being. If he were killed or wounded, at least a week would go by before the news filtered through, and Emma would probably have it with the public rather than from any private message, the like of which would go to Lady Nelson.

  She was not, like Nelson’s wife, in the charmed social circle that received news immediately from the Admiralty. Earl St Vincent, though he made polite and encouraging noises, thoroughly disapproved of her association with Nelson. Thomas Troubridge, very much the First Lord’s protégé, felt that it was nothing short of disastrous to a man he considered a lifelong friend. So while Fanny Nelson was kept abreast of affairs in the Baltic, Emma was not. Rumours abounded of everything from defeat through victory to stalemate, but from exposure to the damage done by gossip she gave them little credence.

  Emma had come to rely on James Perry. As the editor of the Morning Chronic
le, even if he, too, was denied solid information, Perry was in a good position to ferret out news, so Emma knew that no battle had yet taken place, that Sir Hyde Parker had sent a despatch and that he had received a sharp reply, that her lover had, in his usual fashion, advised an aggressive course of action. What no one knew was what had resulted from all of that.

  She also had Horatia to worry about. The child had fallen ill, probably due to an infection picked up from her wet nurse and, though she knew Nelson would worry, it was her duty to write and tell him so. What she did not tell him was that, having replaced the wet nurse, she had brought the baby into her own house rather than leaving it in the care of Mrs Gibson.

  Emma was far from idle: as Sir William Hamilton’s wife, she had to keep up the social engagements that position entailed. With his treasures sold, his government pension secured and a resumption of revenues from his estates, he was once more in funds. There were visits to the theatre, to the opera, to salons and houses where those people the court considered disreputable could gather to make jokes about their more pious brethren. They entertained at number twenty-three Piccadilly, and if occasionally a guest heard the cry of a small child, they were too polite to remark on it.

  Sir William was determined to see nothing. He could enter his reception rooms when he had no guests and evince no surprise at seeing either Emma or her mother cradling a baby. He adhered to the fiction that the infant was a foundling, and while he knew that some ridiculed him as a booby and cuckold he was of an age and mode of behaviour that could ignore such jibes.

  As host and hostess no visitor would see them as anything other than a contented pair. Privately they were mutually considerate and companions enough to laugh or shed tears at their shared memories: Naples in the good times and bad, friends and acquaintances from those happy days, an increasing number of whom, especially those of Sir William’s generation, were dying off.