On the Redoutable’s main deck, Lucas’s men swarmed over the gangways, ready to repel boarders. To Charles Adair, captain of the Victory’s Marines, it was obvious that they were preparing to storm the Victory. But Midshipman James Walker, at the other end of the ship, hadn’t even seen them in the smoke:
Captain Adair, at the head of his Marines, rushed from the poop to the forecastle, and, applying his mouth to my ear, bawled into it, ‘Are they going to board us?’
I replied, ‘Who are going to board us?’
‘Why, this ship in contact with us on the starboard bow’ – at the same time elevating his hand, and pointing to the foreyard of the Redoutable, dimly seen through clouds of smoke right across our forecastle, and perceiving at the same time an officer in white uniform in the forerigging of that ship, who instantly disappeared, whether shot or not I cannot say.
We of course put our sixty-eight-pounder into immediate requisition, and, I believe, most effectively, but so incessant was the small-arm fire of the enemy, that most of the Marines who came on the forecastle, as also their gallant captain, fell like corn before the sickle; the blue jackets sharing a similar fate.
The sixty-eight-pounder was the Victory’s starboard carronade, loaded like the port one with a heavy shot and 500 musket balls. Bosun William Willmet had fired it across the Redoutable’s deck with dramatic effect. Scores of Lucas’s men had been blown away, cut down as if they had never existed. The planks of the French ship were suddenly slippery with blood and entrails, spilling out bright and glistening as bodies slumped and men fell broken to the deck.
But the fight was far from one-sided. The Redoutable fired back at Willmet with grenade-throwing mortars loaded with canister. She had muskets in her rigging and below deck, firing into the Victory through the gunports. Both sides were shooting frenziedly at each other, loosing everything they had from a range of only a few feet. Fire and reload, fire and reload. There was no time for anything else.
On the Victory’s gundecks, the smoke was so intense that the gun crews couldn’t see each other any more. Nor could they hear each other either. They were operating by feel and touch, running the guns out and firing blind. They didn’t need to aim. They couldn’t miss, with their muzzles only inches from the Redoutable’s side.
But the closeness of the two ships brought dangers of its own. Every gunshot into the Redoutable carried the risk of fire. If the Redoutable burned, so would the Victory. Each gun on the British side had a fireman ready with a bucket of water. As soon as his gun had fired, he stepped forward and leaned out of the port, emptying his bucket at the Redoutable. Fire was the enemy of them all aboard ship. It was in everyone’s interests to make sure the Redoutable didn’t go up in flames.
Behind them, coming up fast, the Téméraire was hurrying to join in the fight. The Bucentaure was there, too, still reeling from the Victory’s broadside. With dense smoke all around, Villeneuve had little idea of what was happening to the centre and rear of his line. He knew only that Admiral Dumanoir’s squadron was continuing to sail ahead, taking no part in the fight. Soon after the Victory had raked his stern, Villeneuve had hoisted a signal from the yardarm: ‘All ships not engaged because of their positions are to get into action as soon as possible.’ The signal was for the whole fleet, but there was no doubt whose squadron it was aimed at. It was to Dumanoir’s eternal shame that the signal had to be sent at all.
The duel between the Victory and the Redoutable had slackened for a moment. The Redoutable’s main guns had remained silent after their one broadside, leading the Victory to assume that she had surrendered. Twice the order was given for the Victory’s guns to stop firing, in the expectation of a white flag. Twice the order had to be rescinded as the Redoutable continued fighting. The French had not surrendered. Far from it. As Captain Lucas understood it, the story was quite different. His men were actually winning the struggle:
There was some delay at the guns. We had to use rope rammers in several cases, and fire with the guns run in. We couldn’t run them out because the ports were blocked by the Victory’s sides. At the same time, in other places, we were firing muskets into the enemy’s ports and preventing them from loading their guns. Before long they stopped firing altogether. What a glorious day for the Redoutable if she had only had the Victory to deal with! The Victory’s guns couldn’t fight us any more.
It was then that the enemy tried to board us. I immediately had the bugles sound ‘Repel boarders!’ Everyone instantly came up from below, in fine style. The officers and midshipmen ran to the head of their men, as if on parade. In less than a minute our decks were swarming with armed men, fanning out across the poop and into the nettings and shrouds. It would be impossible to say who took the lead.
The fighting was fast and furious. Lucas’s marksmen raced up the rigging to the tops – platforms halfway up the masts. Armed with muskets and bayonets, they began a murderous fire on the British below. They threw grenades as well, more than 200 by Lucas’s account, creating havoc on the Victory’s deck.
Second Lieutenant Louis Rotely of the Marines remembered the scene with horror:
The poop became a slaughter-house. The two senior lieutenants of Marines and half the original forty were placed hors de combat. Captain Adair then ordered me to bring him up a reinforcement of Marines from the great guns. I need not inform a seaman of the difficulty of separating a man from his gun. In the excitement of action the Marines had thrown off their red jackets and appeared in check shirts and blue trousers. There was no distinguishing Marine from Seaman – they were all working like horses.
I was now upon the middle deck. We were engaging on both sides, every gun was going off. A man should witness a battle in a three-decker from the middle deck, for it beggars all description. It bewilders the senses of sight and hearing. There was the fire from above, the fire from below, besides the fire from the deck I was upon, the guns recoiling with violent reports louder than thunder, the deck heaving and the side straining. I fancied myself in the infernal regions, where every man appeared a devil. Lips might move, but orders and hearing were out of the question; everything was done by signs.
The noise was so bad that some gunners never recovered their hearing. Others suffered hernias as they struggled to keep their weapons firing.
With two sergeants and two corporals to help him, Rotely succeeded in getting twenty-five Marines together, some of whom had to be dragged from their guns by force. It was much safer down below. Perhaps the Marines had guessed why Rotely needed them up above. Whatever the reason, they returned to the main deck to find that the battle had taken a turn for the worse, as Rotely quickly noted:
The Redoutable had fallen on board us on the starboard side, and the soldiers from their tops were picking off our officers and men with deadly aim. We were also engaging with the Santissima Trinidad and the Bucentaure (though at a greater distance) on our larboard. The reinforcement arrived at a most critical moment. Captain Adair’s party was reduced to less than ten men, himself wounded in the forehead by splinters, yet still using his musket with effect. One of his last orders to me was, ‘Rotely, fire away as fast as you can!’ when a ball struck him on the back of the neck and he was a corpse in a moment.
The carnage was appalling. The Redoutable’s sharpshooters could hardly miss at such short range. The British were no more than forty or fifty feet away. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
From the Redoutable’s mizentop, one of the sharpshooters had a view of the Victory’s quarterdeck, twenty feet below. Two dusty figures were pacing the deck, officers by the look of them. The Frenchman took quick aim, fired at one and ducked down again, swiftly reloading before seeking another target.
Aboard the Victory, Lord Nelson slumped to his knees, vainly trying to stop his fall with his hand. The musket ball had torn through the epaulette on his left shoulder, smashing two ribs, severing an artery and shattering his spine. His face hit the deck as Captain Hardy turned round and saw what was happening. Two seamen and Serg
eant James Secker of the Marines were already rushing to his aid.
‘They have done for me at last,’ Nelson told Hardy, as the men gathered him up.
‘I hope not,’ Hardy replied.
‘Yes.’ Nelson was in no doubt. ‘My backbone is shot through.’
Hardy ordered the men to carry Nelson down to the cockpit, where the surgeon would attend to him. Nelson was badly hurt, but his mind was still on the battle. When he was being handed down the ladder from the middle deck, he saw that the tiller ropes had not yet been replaced. He told a midshipman to go back on deck and ask Hardy to have it done. Then he covered his face with a handkerchief, so the crew wouldn’t notice who had been wounded.
Surgeon Beatty was already overwhelmed with casualties as Nelson was brought in. It was a strict rule that they should be seen on a first-come, first-served basis, but the other casualties made an exception for Nelson. ‘Mr Beatty,’ they cried. ‘Lord Nelson is here. Mr Beatty, the admiral is wounded.’ Beatty and Purser Walter Burke immediately took hold of Nelson and laid him in a midshipman’s berth for examination. They stumbled as they went, causing Nelson to ask who was carrying him. ‘Ah, Mr Beatty,’ he said. ‘You can do nothing for me. I have but a short time to live. My back is shot through.’
Beatty carefully undressed Nelson and investigated the wound. The musket ball had penetrated deep into his chest and was probably lodged underneath his right shoulder blade, since there was no exit hole. Beatty asked Nelson what he could feel:
He replied that he felt a gush of blood every minute within his breast: that he had no feeling in the lower part of his body: and that his breathing was difficult, and attended with very severe pain about that part of the spine where he was confident that the ball had struck; for, said he, ‘I felt it break my back.’
Beatty could see that Nelson was doomed, but decided to say nothing for a while. Captain Hardy would have to be told, but no one else outside the cockpit. The rest of the crew wouldn’t want to know until the battle was over. Moving Nelson to a more comfortable position against a thick oak timber, Beatty went back to the remainder of the wounded. There was nothing else he could do for Nelson.
On deck, the fight with the Redoutable was still raging. The British had suffered so many casualties that the remainder had been ordered below to avoid further slaughter. With no one to stop them, Midshipman Jacques Yon and four French sailors boarded the Victory via her anchor and reported back that there wasn’t a soul on the quarterdeck. Lucas decided to storm the ship. He gave orders for the Redoutable’s mainyard to be dropped on to the Victory’s deck to make a bridge for his boarding party. But Lucas was too hasty. With the Téméraire closing fast through the smoke, this was not the time to try to take the Victory.
For Captain Hardy, it was the most testing moment of his career. A devoted friend of Nelson, he was longing to get down to the cockpit to see how the admiral was doing. But his immediate priority was to beat off the Redoutable and win the firefight. It was easier said than done, with bullets flying all around. In addition, Hardy was now in command of the fleet as well, because the Victory was still flying the admiral’s flag. It was a naval convention that command always vested in the admiral’s ship. As soon as he had a chance, Hardy would have to get a message across to Collingwood to tell him what had happened, but for the moment the conduct of the fleet was entirely his responsibility, even though he couldn’t see forty yards in the smoke. With the Redoutable threatening to storm the Victory at any moment, it must have been a nightmare for Hardy, his worst imaginings come true. Everything was going wrong, all at the same time. The loneliness of command could never have weighed more heavily.
At the stern of the ship, nineteen-year-old Midshipman John Pollard had an agenda of his own. Pollard was the only one still alive of the officers and midshipmen originally stationed on the poop. He had taken a splinter in his right arm at the beginning of the fight, but was otherwise unharmed. Pollard knew what had happened to Lord Nelson and realised the shot had come from the Redoutable’s mizentop. He could see several Frenchmen up there, hiding behind a canvas tricolour three feet high. They bobbed up to fire, then bobbed down again, reloading out of sight.
Pollard grabbed a dead Marine’s musket. One of those Frenchmen had felled Lord Nelson, but Pollard had no idea which. There was only one way to be certain of avenging the admiral. Taking careful aim, Midshipman Pollard set out to kill the lot.
CHAPTER 36
THE BATTLE RAGES
In the other British column, Collingwood was still in trouble, fighting alone among the enemy. The Belleisle and Mars were coming to his rescue, but for the moment the Royal Sovereign was surrounded by hostile ships, all firing at her from different directions. Casualties were mounting rapidly. Collingwood himself had felt a great thump in the back – the wind of a passing shot – and had a bad leg wound from a splinter. The ship’s master, William Chalmers, had been killed at his side.
A great shot almost divided his body: he laid his head upon my shoulder and told me he was slain. I supported him till two men carried him off. He could say nothing to me, but to bless me; but as they carried him down, he wished he could but live to read the account of the action in a newspaper.
The situation hung in the balance. The Santa Ana was one of the Spanish flagships. It had been a bold move to sail straight at her without close support. The Royal Sovereign had taken so much punishment that she was effectively crippled – two of her masts were about to fall and she could barely move through the water. But the Santa Ana was in an even worse state, her side smashed in by the Sovereign’s guns. She had only survived for so long because the Royal Sovereign was fighting several other ships at the same time, keeping all of them at bay until help arrived from the rest of Collingwood’s column.
George Castle was a midshipman aboard the Royal Sovereign as she tore into the enemy.
She was fifty-five minutes engaged with them before any other ship came to our assistance, and we were alongside of a great three-decker. I can assure you it was glorious work; I think you would have liked to have seen me thump it into her quarter. I’m stationed at the heaviest guns in the ship, and I stuck close to one gun and poured it into her; she was so close it was impossible to miss her. She behaved very rascally; for when she struck first to us, she went round our bows, and when right ahead of us, up with her Ensign and raked us; but we soon brought our starboard guns to bear upon her.
Crash went her masts, and then she was fairly sicken’d. She was a Spanish Admiral’s ship, but the Admiral was kill’d, and after that we made an eighty-four strike to us. I looked once out of our stern ports; but I saw nothing but French and Spaniards round, firing at us in all directions. It was shocking to see the many brave seamen mangled so; some with their heads half shot away, others with their entrails mashed, lying panting on the deck. The greatest slaughter was on the quarter-deck and poop; we had seven ships on us at once.
Several of the enemy ships melted away as the Belleisle arrived in support – by most accounts, only five or ten minutes behind the Royal Sovereign. The Belleisle had been under fire for some time as she approached, but deliberately withheld her own fire until she was within pistol shot of the enemy. Her crew could see what was happening to the Royal Sovereign, and knew it would soon be happening to them, too. It was a nerve-racking time for everyone on board as they neared the enemy line. Lieutenant John Owen was on deck with his Marines:
Captain Hargood had taken his station at the forepart of the quarterdeck, on the starboard side, occasionally standing on a carronade slide, whence he issued his orders for the men to lie down at their quarters, and with the utmost coolness directed the steering of the ship. The silence on board was almost awful. It was broken only by the firm voice of the Captain. ‘Steady!’ or ‘Starboard a little!’ which was repeated by the Master to the quarter-master at the helm, and occasionally by an officer calling to the now impatient men, ‘Lie down there, you sir!’
Sixteen-year-old Lieutena
nt Paul Nicolas of the Marines was on deck as well:
A shriek soon followed – a cry of agony was produced by the next shot – and the loss of the head of a poor recruit was the effect of the succeeding; and, as we advanced, destruction rapidly increased. A severe contusion in the breast now prostrated our Captain, but he soon resumed his station . . . My eyes were horror-struck at the bloody corpses around me, and my ears rang with the shrieks of the wounded and the moans of the dying. At this moment, seeing that almost every one was lying down, I was half-disposed to follow the example, and several times stooped for the purpose, but – and I remember the impression well – a certain monitor seemed to whisper, ‘Stand up and do not shrink from your duty!’
Seeing that our men were falling fast, the First Lieutenant ventured to ask Captain Hargood if he had not better show his broadside to the enemy and fire, if only to cover the ship with smoke? The gallant man’s reply was somewhat stern but emphatic: ‘No; we are ordered to go through the line, and go she shall!’
This state of things had lasted about twenty minutes, and it required the tact of the more experienced officers to keep up the spirits of those round them, by repeating, ‘ ‘We shall soon begin our work,’ when . . . our energies were joyfully called into play by the command ‘Stand to your guns!’ ’
The men needed no urging. Within minutes the Belleisle’s gun crews were in action, firing at the Santa Ana to port and the Fougueux to starboard as they crashed through the enemy line. They passed the Royal Sovereign and turned starboard to go round the Indomptable and attack her on the lee side. But the Fougueux came out of the smoke to intercept them, running her foreyard over the Belleisle’s quarterdeck. She fired into the Belleisle for ten minutes and succeeded in shooting away her mizenmast about six feet above the deck. The Fougueux was then chased away by the Mars, which had followed the Belleisle through the enemy line.
But the Belleisle was still in trouble. The sails of her mizenmast had fallen over the stern of the ship, making it impossible for the gun crews at that end to see anything. The Achille fired broadside after broadside into her, knowing the British were unable to return fire. The Aigle, San Justo and San Leandro took pot shots as well, from a safe distance. The Belleisle was pounded from every side until her other two masts gave way under the strain. Her bowsprit, figurehead, boats and anchors were destroyed too, leaving her a total wreck. Everything collapsed in a heap on the deck, until the Belleisle lay little better than a hulk, so swathed in smoke that her crew couldn’t even see the colours of the ships that were shooting at her. Lieutenant Paul Nicolas was lucky to escape with his life:
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