Battle Fleet (2007)

by Paul Dowswell

  It was true. We could scarcely see the Redoutable through the smoke of the guns, let alone one of our own ships.

  We crouched for a while, and there came a steady thump and CRUMP of explosions as men in the Redoutable’s tops threw down grenades on our companionways, wrecking our carefully tended decks. All that work, caulking the planking and rubbing fingers to the bone with holystones, was now wasted.

  The Redoutable stopped raining down fire. ‘Have they struck?’ said Hardy. ‘Perhaps their men have stopped firing because there is no one left to fire at?’ said a lieutenant. That was true. Only bodies remained visible on our weather deck.

  Hardy shouted down to the upper gun deck, commanding our starboard batteries to cease fire. There was a strange silence on the ship, broken occasionally by the rumble of guns from our larboard crews, firing at enemy ships on their side. Had we won this particular battle? Then, through the screaming and cannon fire, we heard a piercing cry – ‘A l’abordage!’

  ‘They’re coming aboard,’ said Hardy. ‘Come on, Witchall, let’s see what you’re made of!’

  We ran out from cover with a party of marines. One immediately fell to the deck, a victim of musket fire. The rest looked above, and discharged their muskets towards their comrade’s assassin, but we could not see who had fired the shot.

  I ran to our starboard rail and peered over, expecting to see men from the Redoutable swarming up the side of our ship. But before I could take a proper look a shot whistled past my ear and I ducked behind the rail. ‘Never mind that,’ said Hardy, ‘they’re coming over the mainmast.’

  Towards the waist of the ship they had swung the mainsail yardarm around to act as a bridge for their boarders. Through the smoke I could see men swarming up the ratlines and out on to the yard, armed with cutlasses, boarding axes and pistols. Our marines had seen them too, and directed their musket fire on the yard. Our attackers fell in such numbers the others lost heart and turned tail. Our men kept up their fire as the enemy clambered down and some chose to plunge to the deck rather than face being felled by a musket.

  Now it was safer to lean over the sides, we fired at the deck below. I pointed my pistol at an officer and saw him drop to his knees.

  But another hail of grenades from the masts above drove us back into the shelter of the poop deck. How much longer could we hold off another assault? There were so few of us still alive on the upper deck of the Victory.

  ‘This is how I will die,’ I thought. A midshipman fighting shoulder to shoulder with Captain Hardy. I would go out in a blaze of glory and damn the enemy to hell!

  ‘Let us hope Collingwood’s column is faring better,’ said Hardy, to no one in particular.

  But we were not done for, not yet. Close to our starboard side we heard an almighty broadside. The Redoutable rocked and trembled in the water so violently there could be no doubt that she was the victim of this attack. One of the marines raised his head to look at what was happening, and was felled at once with a musket shot through the temple. That was how I would like to die, I thought. No spilled guts, no ripped off limbs. No agonising struggle with gangrene …

  The Redoutable shook again – jolted by another broadside. ‘It must be one of ours – come up beside her. We’re saved for now!’ said Hardy. I moved to look, but the Captain pulled me back as a shot thudded into the woodwork close to my head. ‘That one had your name on it, Witchall,’ he said.

  I couldn’t see which ship had come to our aid, but could make out she was a first rate like us, as she towered above the Redoutable. I marvelled at the courage of the French sailors – two great warships had made a vice to trap her between them, and still she fought on. Minutes before, her Captain must have thought he had all but captured us – the greatest prize in the British fleet. Now, they were certain to be massacred.

  A midshipman ran through a hail of fire towards us. Hardy didn’t miss a trick. ‘Look boys,’ he said to the marines, and pointed to where we’d seen flashes from enemy muskets. The marines fired. Two, then three men fell from the rigging. The midshipman arrived, breathless. He seemed elated to still be alive. ‘Lord Nelson is calling for you, sir,’ he said to Hardy.

  ‘Tell him I shall be with him presently,’ replied the Captain.

  ‘Lord Nelson is still alive, sir!’ I said. ‘Perhaps his injuries are not as serious as we feared?’ Hardy shook his head.

  He shouted orders that our crews were to load their guns triple shot and with reduced powder. We did not want our own cannon fire to penetrate the Redoutable and go through to damage our friends on the other side of her. Then he sprinted out on to the quarterdeck and down below.

  The ferocity of the cannon fire died down. The smoke that had made it seem we were fighting in dense cloud and semi-darkness began to clear. Through the haze, to the south, I could see a squadron of French and Spanish ships heading towards us. Were these reinforcements, or merely the van, cut off from the centre early in the battle, and now heading back to aid their comrades? Why had they left it this late? And would they still make a difference? Seeing them I was sure everything was lost. All our struggles had been for nothing. Exhausted after several hours of heavy fighting, we would have to face fresh ships and start all over again.

  I stood up and walked back on to the poop deck, my station in battle. Although we were still tangled up with the Redoutable, the barrage of grenades and musket fire from her tops had ceased. I stood awhile on the stern, watching our enemy approach. Through the mist I could see four? Five? No, seven men-o’-war bearing down on us. They would be upon us in less than half an hour.

  Then I heard cheering drifting across the water. That must mean someone had surrendered! Was it us or was it them? Across the water I could see a French flag being lowered from the mast of a nearby 74. This was one victory to us, at least.

  A moment later I heard something else that gladdened my heart. ‘Witchall,’ yelled Captain Hardy from the quarterdeck, ‘come here at once.’ I ran over. ‘The Redoutable has struck. Take a party of men on board to put down that fire in the bow. I don’t want us going up in flames.’

  As I prepared to leave, I saw that Robert had appeared on deck. I should have felt elated to see he had survived the battle, but numbness prevailed. Now he was overseeing a party of tars who were clearing rubble from the deck. Hardy saw him too. ‘Neville, go with Witchall to the Redoutable,’ he said. ‘Make sure he keeps out of mischief.’

  I was still anxious about the enemy warships coming at us from the south. But the wind had dropped, and they had made little headway. Two, I saw, had collided and lagged behind the others as their crews tried to untangle rigging and spars. ‘Never mind them,’ I thought, ‘we’re winning!’

  Before me, on the Redoutable, was a tangle of netting, fallen masts and canvas. I knew that she was sandwiched between another British man-o’-war, but beyond that, there was yet another warship jammed against her. A French or Spanish ship, I was sure. We were four great warships locked together – perhaps three thousand men, bludgeoning each other to death. What a hideous way to wage war. But then, what ways of waging war weren’t hideous?

  I called over three sailors and two marines, and we set off over the starboard side and on to the deck of the Redoutable. I dreaded to think what I would find on the ship, and I feared the reception I would receive from the French crew.

  But when we entered from the stern quarters, we were greeted with courtesy. Men shook my hand and, I understood from their tone of voice and manner, congratulated me on our victory.

  I realised then, with shame, how often I had thought so badly of the French, feared them as monsters and expected them to be brutal bullies or craven cowards. All of our enemies had fought well today – with just as much bravery as the British tars who had beaten them.

  We went at once to the fo’c’sle to help extinguish the fire there, and our men from the Victory helped throw buckets of water over the flames. Picking my way along the length of the ship was an ordeal. There was so much
blood on the decks it painted bizarre patterns as it washed to and fro in the swell. There must have been three hundred corpses on that ship. It was a hideous sight, and made me glad for once that we threw our dead over the side as soon as they were slain. To fight among all this carnage would have killed the fighting spirit in anyone. On the Redoutable it appeared that only those stationed below the waterline had survived.

  CHAPTER 24

  The Ariane

  Below deck on the Redoutable, as we waded through the gore and bodies trying to sort the wounded from the dead, we felt the ship lurch in the water. Caught as we were, in the middle of four ships jammed together, that could only be the Victory, disentangling herself.

  Sure enough, ten minutes later, while carrying one man up to the weather deck, I saw the Victory sailing away from us. We would have to rejoin her later. Pushing away from the Redoutable, she had left her to the British warship that had come to our rescue earlier at such a crucial moment. I could now see this was the Temeraire. Hailing across to her I also discovered the name of the fourth ship in this lethal tangle. There on Temeraire’s starboard side was another French 74, Fougueux. She too had surrendered.

  I looked around for the French and Spanish squadron I had seen heading towards us. They were nowhere to be seen. Had they given up the fight and scattered?

  When there was nothing more we could do aboard the Redoutable, we left her for the Temeraire. I approached a lieutenant, seeking passage back to the Victory.

  ‘We don’t have a boat available,’ he told us, ‘but you can join a prize crew for the Fougueux or make yourself useful over there.’ He waved towards another French ship drifting close by on the starboard side.

  She was a 74 by the look of her. Ariane was the name on her stern. She had struck and was on fire at the fo’c’sle and in obvious need of assistance. The Temeraire was sending a small number of her crew over to help, in a jollyboat.

  This was the moment I first began to think we were winning this battle. Three French ships in our immediate vicinity had struck. Perhaps we were having similar successes up and down the line?

  ‘Let’s join the Ariane rather than the Fougueux,’ said Robert discreetly. ‘I want to get back to the Victory by the end of the day, rather than get stuck with another crew on a captured ship.’

  I agreed. I would feel more confident on my own ship, rather than with strangers. The sooner we were back the better.

  As we approached, I could see that the Ariane had suffered terribly in the battle. All her masts had been shot away, the stern was so badly raked that little remained of her cabin windows, and her larboard side had also taken a severe pummelling. Again we were welcomed with dignity by the French crew and its most senior officer, a Lieutenant Laruelle. The Captain had been killed early in the action, he told me in halting English. She was taking in water fast and half her pumps were broken. The smoke we could see billowing from the fo’c’sle was from a fire on her upper gun deck, close to the forward magazine. There were also two hundred wounded men among the crew. With so many dead strewn around the decks it was difficult to see who was wounded and who had perished.

  Side by side with our French foes we fought the fires and pumped water from the flooding hold through the rest of that terrible afternoon. Several times we thought we had beaten the fire in the fo’c’sle, but it always burst into life again. The thick black smoke that rolled over the deck made us cough and gasp for air.

  The Ariane continued to sink slowly in the water. As the light faded, her battered stern lay perilously close to the rising swell.

  Dusk was falling when Robert came to me and said, ‘Do you want to drown or be blown to pieces?’

  We consulted the French Lieutenant. ‘There’s no hope of saving the ship now. We have to take as many men off as we can,’ said Robert. He nodded solemnly.

  ‘I shall stay here, with the wounded.’

  We didn’t waste time trying to dissuade him, but I thought him a very gallant man.

  The stern was now so close to the water that the sea would flood in through the broken windows with every wave. The cries of the wounded on the lower gun deck became more urgent and troubled me terribly. As the water flooded in and the long open deck began to tilt more steeply, injured men would roll down the planks and into the icy water.

  We had drifted a distance from the Temeraire, but HMS Pegasus, one of the 74s towards the end of our column, was within hailing distance. By the look of her she had suffered little in the action. Robert called for them to send their boats to assist us. Three arrived within minutes and we began to fill them with the French wounded we were still able to move. Those who screamed and wriggled in agony when we tried to pick them up would have to be left to their fate.

  I was touched by how tenderly the British tars cared for their foes. We were all sailors after all. The Pegasus’s boats made three trips before the Ariane gave another fearful lurch and her stern slipped further under. Robert called from one of the boats. ‘Hurry, Sam, her bow is almost out of the water.’

  This was my final chance to escape. The Pegasus had already moved away, certain that the Ariane would soon blow up.

  As I turned to go, I saw another poor fellow on the deck stir among the corpses. I had taken him for dead. Perhaps he had been unconscious. Now, seeing us leaving, he gathered his remaining strength and called for my assistance. He was an ordinary sailor and close to me in age. Both his legs were covered in bloody bandages.

  ‘Come on, Sam,’ shouted Robert again as the last boat bobbed close to the rail. ‘Hurry or you shall surely be lost.’

  It was not me lying there on the deck, wounded and left to die, as I had been in my dreams. It was one of my French adversaries. I could not leave him. In my sleep I had lived through the terror he was feeling.

  I turned to the boat and shouted, ‘Come and help me with this one!’

  ‘There’s no room,’ shouted Robert above the din of the wounded and the roar of the fire. ‘Hurry, Sam.’

  I went over to the man, picked him up by the arms and hauled him over my shoulder. He screamed terribly, but he did not struggle. I staggered across the sloping deck to the waterline and bundled him aboard the boat like a sack of coal.

  As we rowed away, the timbers of the Ariane gave a great sickening groan as she upended herself in the water, blazing bow now towering above our tiny boat. Debris fell on the flames and fed them. ‘Pull hard, men,’ shouted Robert, seeing the fire burn higher.

  An explosion roared across the water, and fierce flames belched from the Ariane’s gun ports still above the surface. We felt the heat on our faces. I hunched down in the boat, shielding my wounded enemy. Not Robert though. He was standing proud at the stern of the boat. His pride and his training forbade him to flinch or take cover. ‘Get down, you bloody idiot,’ I shouted at him, instinctively grabbing his arm and pulling him forward. A moment later, the Ariane vanished in a great flash of light and splinters. As shards of wood and metal scythed through the air, one caught Robert at the top of his head.

  Blood splattered over my face. Something fell on me – I felt the weight of it in my lap just as the heat of the explosion singed my hair. The bile rose in my throat. ‘It’s Robert’s head,’ I thought. A splinter has taken it clean off his shoulders.

  I could barely bring myself to look. It was just his hat. An instant later he slumped forward, collapsing on me and the wounded Frenchman, who screamed again. I wondered again if Robert had been killed. There was a nasty gash on the back of his head, oozing out blood. His heart was still beating. ‘Sit him up,’ I said to one of the sailors beside me. I took off my jacket and ripped the sleeve from my shirt. ‘Tie this around the wound.’

  We rowed for HMS Pegasus and the prisoners were swiftly pulled on deck. Robert was unconscious but his eyes would occasionally flicker open. ‘Take good care of this one,’ I shouted as he was hauled aboard.

  The mood aboard the Pegasus was jubilant. ‘Fourteen or fifteen of the Combined Fleet have struc
k,’ one of their midshipmen told me. ‘The rest of them have fled! And not a single one of ours surrendered.’ I had had an inkling the battle was going our way when we left for the Redoutable. It was marvellous to hear we had won such an extraordinary victory, but I felt relief rather than triumph. There would be no more killing and we could consider ourselves to have survived!

  Robert came to later that evening but could remember nothing of the day, beyond the moment we left the Victory and entered the Redoutable. The Frenchman I had rescued offered me his hand when I went to visit him in the hold. ‘Ami,’ he said, with some effort. The incident moved me greatly. The French and Spanish had fought so gallantly I would be proud to count them as my friends.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Storm

  Robert had a brutal headache and I needed to support him when he walked, but by mid-evening he felt steady enough to risk a return to the Victory. Although there was little wind, the swell had picked up and we could all sense a storm was coming. We were ferried in the Pegasus’s smallest boat. As I boarded the boat, it lurched under me and I fell hard, banging the side of my face. By the time we reached the Victory I had a livid bruise from temple to jaw. I felt quite proud of this injury. I had managed to go through the entire day without a scratch. Now no one would think I had had an easy battle.

  Robert was sent at once to Mr Beatty and word quickly reached me that he would remain in the sick bay for the next few days. I was glad to be back on board my own ship, but the midshipmen’s mess was a melancholy place that night. We should have been euphoric, but we had lost too many men this day and seen too many hideous things. I was cheered to hear Pasco had survived his wounds, and Mr Beatty expected him to make a good recovery. Poor James Patrick had lost an arm and all that remained was a stump, though he too was expected to live. ‘The poor lad,’ I thought. Injuries like this on young sailors not fully grown were especially painful and slow to heal. What was left of his arm would continue to grow along with the rest of him and the stump would cause him agony for years to come.