Victory

by Julian Stockwin

  There were nods of agreement: every encouragement was needed to ensure the enemy ventured out and was dealt with once and for all, or the threat would persist for many more months, years even.

  ‘Now to your battle instructions. Gentlemen, let us assume the enemy ventures out in strength and he forms line-of-battle. No day is too long to arrange our line to be formed to oppose them, supposing we are thirty or forty sail.’

  Kydd frowned: at a cable apart – a couple of hundred yards – forty ships amounted to a line six or seven miles long, an impossibly unwieldy thing to manoeuvre by the wind to bring up parallel to the enemy line.

  ‘Therefore I propose to dispense with the old ways. We shall not form line-of-battle. Instead we will throw our force straight at ’em. Pierce their line and bring on a mêlée as will see our ships at their best.’

  A murmur went about the table. Nelson was completely disregarding the hallowed Fighting Instructions issued by the Admiralty, which specified that to confront an enemy line it was necessary to form up in parallel and smash away in broadsides until they yielded.

  Breaking the line had been done before, however: Rodney at the Saintes, Duncan at Camperdown, even Nelson himself at St Vincent, but always as a chance opportunity, never as a deliberate plan.

  ‘This is how it will be accomplished. In the event we approach from the windward there will be two divisions, weather and lee. The weather shall attack ahead of the enemy flag in the centre, the lee on signal will bear up to fall severally upon their rear.

  ‘The assault will be swift – under full sail to stuns’ls, the order of sailing to be the order for battle – for I wish a victory over the enemy flag and rear before their van are able to reverse their course to succour them. Is this clear?’

  There was a hush as the implications of the novel strategy were digested, then admiring gasps as it penetrated. By throwing his fleet at the foe on sight, without the formality of juggling positions to form an opposing line, the enemy line was to be chopped into thirds.

  The vanguard was effectively to be isolated from the fight when the line was broken at the centre by the weather division, turning it into a close-range free-for-all. The rear third would be dealt with in detail by the lee division, all before the leading enemy ships had time to put about and come to the aid of the others.

  In essence, the stately line-of-battle and its exchanging of broadsides were to be replaced by a brawling, one-on-one fight, which Nelson determined to win.

  It was daring, reckless even, for the oncoming British divisions would be under fire from the broadsides of the entire enemy line as they approached without the opportunity to fire back. But when they reached and broke the enemy line . . .

  ‘A most marvellous plan, sir!’ Keats said, in open admiration.

  ‘Genius! Nothing less will serve to describe it!’

  The comments were fulsome. Nelson’s trust in the resolution and capability of each captain was both tribute and compliment. And at its core – that the battle was to be transformed from a fleet action into a spectacular series of individual combats – the strategy tapped the very spirit of aggression that Nelson had inculcated.

  He held up his hand. ‘Something must be left to chance, for nothing is sure in a sea fight. In the smoke and confusion signals may be missed, but this I say to you – no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy.’

  ‘Pray God they sail, and soon!’ cried Moorsom of Revenge, punching the air.

  ‘And a leading wind as will see us close aboard ’em before they wake up!’ another added.

  Wine circulated again and, glasses charged, Nelson spoke for them all: ‘I trust, gentlemen, in English valour. We are enough in England if true to ourselves!’

  A roar of agreement arose – and Kydd knew what it was to be one of that band of brothers.

  The following day was spent bringing together the fleet that the ships had joined. The men-o’-war lay to as orders criss-crossed by boat: there was much to arrange. This far into hostile waters it was not practical to hazard supply by store-ships and therefore the commander-in-chief had no option other than to send parts of his fleet to Gibraltar for provisions and Tetuan for water.

  The first detachment set out, and with Rear Admiral Calder recalled to England, and five away on replenishment, an expectation of forty sail was looking less and less likely. However, this was Nelson’s command and a rising charge of pride was bringing the fleet together in a way that mere orders could not. Almost immediately, those who had not done so began painting ship in the distinctive ‘Nelson chequer’, which had a warlike black hull with vivid yellow along the line of the guns, the gun-ports themselves deadly black squares.

  Captain Blackwood called his frigate captains aboard Euryalus. A bluff, energetic officer, he wasted no time. ‘We have our orders: the watch on Cadiz – others will get the observations to the admiral.’

  He went on, ‘An inshore squadron of three sail-of-the-line lies ten or twelve miles in the offing, there to tempt Villeneuve, and more are spaced along out to where the fleet cruises, fifty miles or more to the west. It’s our duty to let Nelson know every movement of the enemy. For this we’ll be using your usual Admiralty signals but as well, Captain Popham’s telegraph code.’

  It was nothing short of fantastical: Nelson was going to shape the battle in person but over lines of communication at the same distance as from London to Brighton, receiving priceless intelligence in minutes that would enable him to make his approach to the unsuspecting enemy precisely as he chose.

  Other details concerned signals to be made at night or in fog, and Blackwood closed with handing a hastily sketched Pennant Board to each that detailed the distinguishing pennants of each ship in the fleet, necessary for the addressing of signals to individual vessels.

  ‘Then to our station, gentlemen!’

  L’Aurore left the fleet in company with the other frigates and, during the night, closed with the moon-cast Spanish coast. At dawn they began their watch, cruising slowly three or four miles offshore, the tiny handful of frigates endlessly passing each other off the ancient city.

  Cadiz was well-known to English sailors: here it was that Francis Drake had ‘singed the King of Spain’s beard’ more than two hundred years previously and blockades had been frequent since. The port was within a rocky peninsula on which stood a city of white stone, surrounded by vicious half-tide rocks but low enough to reveal an ominous forest of naked masts within the inner harbour.

  Navigation was perilous in these shallow seas, which allowed entire blockading fleets to anchor offshore with impunity but at the same time hid a chain of sprawling reefs as much as three or four miles out to sea.

  In the days that followed there was no sparing the ships, for missing the enemy putting to sea would be a catastrophe beyond imagination. Each morning, as the fragrance of the sun-kissed land came out to them, one or other of the frigates would close with the entrance at the fort of San Sebastian and look in. Oared gunboats once issued out to exchange shots but otherwise there was no disputing their presence.

  This close, the tall, square Tavira Tower was in plain sight, the mirador that gave the Spaniards a sweeping vista some twenty miles out to sea.

  Day by day the watch continued.

  A blustery autumnal north-westerly forced the frigates seaward for a time, but also made it dead foul for leaving Cadiz. As the weather moderated they quickly closed again with the white-fringed shore.

  A Swedish merchantman put to sea and was intercepted by L’Aurore. The affable master made no bones about what he had seen: deep within the harbour in the inner roads he had noted soldiers embarking in the Combined Fleet and talk alongshore had it that they were merely waiting for an easterly and would be putting to sea.

  Kydd lost no time in setting in motion the communications line. They were equipped with monster signal flags fourteen feet across to be perceived a full ten miles distant. The new telegraph code proved its worth in d
etailing his intelligence but it took skill to handle the huge flags among the entangling lines of rigging.

  It was becoming clear that a move was imminent: sharp eyes had spotted that sails had been bent to the yards and signal towers up and down the coast were unusually busy. Had they succeeded in deceiving Villeneuve that he faced only the handful of ships of the Inshore Squadron instead of Nelson, with his fleet being quietly reinforced out of sight? Were they misled by reports from Spanish watchers of Gibraltar that the five detached to store and water had, in fact, seriously weakened the British Fleet?

  With thirty-five ships-of-the-line available to him, Villeneuve must have realised that if he was going to break out then it must be now – and when the north-westerly died and was replaced by the whisper of a variable easterly towards evening, even the humblest landman aboard L’Aurore knew what to expect the following day.

  With the first delicate light of morning came the electrifying sight of the ships deep in the harbour rigged for sea. Sail to topgallants, fighting topsails, all were bent to the yards ready to set in a trice. And the dense pattern of masts was changing: they were opening up, separating. The ships were warping – the Combined Fleet was coming out.

  Kydd’s signal flags – the longed for number 370, ‘Enemy’s ships are leaving port’ – soared up. Five miles away Euryalus acknowledged and relayed it on to the Inshore Squadron. Soon, fifty miles away, Lord Nelson would at long last be receiving the dramatic news he craved.

  The winds were light but still in the east. It was taking a long time for Villeneuve’s fleet to reach open water and tension grew. Everything now depended on the frigates: if the French disappeared into the vastness of the ocean once again, it would be a calamity beyond bearing.

  Blackwood sent the sloop Weazle flying for Gibraltar to alert the storing battleships while the little schooner Pickle went north to spread the word. The first French frigates were emerging, their mission only too obvious – to destroy the impudent English watchers and allow the battle-fleet to slip away.

  L’Aurore was long cleared for action; now she went to quarters, her men standing resolutely by her guns. Blackwood had divided his forces in the light winds, two luring the frigates away while the rest stood out ready to shadow the rest of the enemy.

  L’Aurore was given new orders. It was vital that the commander-in-chief received negative intelligence – that the seas north and south did not contain an enemy squadron summoned by shore telegraph on its way to reinforce Villeneuve. Thus one of the precious frigates was dispatched north while L’Aurore hauled to the wind for the run south.

  It would be the harshest of luck to miss the coming contest, but Kydd’s mission was to go no further than the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar and then return by the shortest possible route, assuming any reinforcements sent for from Cartagena would not delay.

  They hugged the land up to the one promontory and turning point between Cadiz and the strait, a fearful journey with the scattered reefs. L’Aurore showed true breeding, though, and they raised the bleak sand-spit within a few hours; further inland there was a bluff cliff with a tower. This was marked on the chart as Torre de Meca and the turning point – Cabo Taraf-al-Gar, Trafalgar on Kydd’s chart.

  He was struck with a sense of poignancy that reached out to him from the lonely place, in the light airs the sinister gurgling of a roiling counter-current adding to the sense of desolation. The chart had a neat entry noting the current, adding that this was known locally as the ‘Risa de Cabo’, the laughter of the cape.

  There were no reinforcements; Kydd sighted Cape Spartel on the African side of the strait and his mission was accomplished. He lost no time in wearing round for the return, dreading what he might find.

  The unpredictable weather had turned squally and wet; towards the end of the day he had made it back to Cadiz through the curtains of rain and ragged bluster – and the port was empty. The enemy had left, taking with it the shadowing British frigates.

  Kydd was in a desperate quandary as to what to do next but then, to his vast relief, there was a hail from a lookout. To the westward, out of sight from the deck, a fleet had been sighted.

  Whether it was Nelson or the French didn’t matter: his duty was clear. As they bore down on the mass of ships an outlying frigate saw them, its challenge showing bright and clear against the dark grey of the clouds. It was the English Sirius.

  Kydd closed with the vessel and, in a terse hail, was told developments. The enemy had been hampered in leaving by fluky winds and once to sea had suffered even further from the adverse winds. In all they were thirty-three of-the-line and five frigates and were heading south, towards the Strait of Gibraltar.

  Lord Nelson, still in communication, was racing to intercept. Their immediate duty was to stay with the enemy fleet at all costs through the coming night, for it was now fast becoming a certainty that it would be the next day when that fateful clash would come.

  Bowden had slept little during the dark hours of the middle watch – the irregular bass creaking at the rudder stock and endless shrill working of the steering tackle sheaves seemed more than usually intrusive. But he knew the real reason: as the day dawned it would unveil either an innocent, empty horizon or the dread sight of an enemy battle-fleet.

  Unlike the majority aboard he had served under Lord Nelson in a major fleet action, the Nile, and knew at first hand of the chaos and injury, terror and fatigue – and the callous working of Fate that decreed this one go on to fame and glory and another be struck down.

  He was not in a state of mortal fear of the new day for he had long ago concluded that his profession would always require he stand resolute in the face of personal danger, and if he was to aspire to higher things, an unreasoning terror would for ever be a millstone around the neck.

  His problem was a sensitive and active imagination that had to be crushed in times of crisis, but now, lying in his hammock in the reeking blackness, it was galloping at full stretch, his restless mind reaching for certainties and assurance for the coming day.

  It helped to serve under an unquestioned hero such as Nelson, whose only worry seemed to be that the enemy was not prepared to stand and fight. Now, there was a leader and an example! How could any fail to be inspired by his clarity of purpose, the single-minded objective of victory – and the warm humanity that underlay them?

  And there was Captain Kydd, who had risen from fore-mast hand to frigate captain and was as much a natural seaman as Nelson. Bowden had seen L’Aurore’s name on the Pennant Board; at that very moment Kydd was somewhere out in the night, dogging Villeneuve, and whether or not the foe was there in the morning depended largely on whether he and the other frigate captains had done their job.

  Or . . . during the night the French might very well have taken fright and returned to port as they had done so often before. Then all talk of a mighty clash would be so much vapour and dreams.

  But then again . . . Villeneuve might have slipped his pursuers and was now ranging swiftly north to trigger the invasion.

  Bowden tossed and turned restlessly until eventually a ship’s corporal came with his lanthorn to call the watch. He dressed quickly and made his way up the hatchways through the gun-decks of stirring men.

  It was a moonless night with the pale immensity of canvas above and the muffled plash of the wake below. The cosy warmth of his hammock was soon forgotten in the chill night breezes. After the usual muted jocularity of handover, his friend Bulkeley, clearly of a mind for rest as he went through the ritual, hurried below.

  Lieutenant Pasco was having an irritable exchange with the quartermaster. The officer appeared disinclined to indulge in trivialities and Bowden had to pace the decks alone in the long hours before an imperceptible lightening hinted at the coming sunrise.

  The light increased, wave by wave extending out, the anonymity of early dawn slowly infused with colour until the technical requirement for daybreak was met – that a grey goose could be seen at a mile. Then the lookout�
�s thrilling hail came nearly simultaneously from a half-dozen throats – the enemy fleet was sighted!

  There was now no more speculation, no more questioning: the French had not fled back to port, they had not vanished into the vastness of the ocean. Somewhere, soon, there would be enacted the greatest sea battle the world had ever seen.

  In the whisper-quiet morning breeze, it was a long hour before they could be seen from the deck but then, stark against the fast brightening eastern sky, the topgallants and upper rigging of countless men-o’-war stretched from one side of the horizon to the other.

  By now Victory’s decks were alive with men gazing out over the placid sea. Some mounted the shrouds to get a better view, but in laughing, devil-may-care high spirits – as if they were at a village fair instead of readying to fight for their lives.

  Bowden stood at ease next to the wheel, still on watch. Nelson came on deck, avidly taking in the spectacle he had yearned for over so long a time.

  ‘A brave sight, my lord,’ Pasco said diffidently, offering his officer-of-the-watch telescope.

  Nelson seemed not to hear as he focused on the distant masts.

  Captain Hardy appeared and stood next to him. ‘I conceive they cannot escape us now, sir,’ he said gravely. ‘And we shall give them a drubbing such as all the world may notice.’

  ‘I shall not be satisfied with less than twenty taken, Hardy.’ He lifted his head to sniff at the wind. It was calm – barely enough to kick up more than wavelets that sparkled in the misty sunshine, the picture of peace and serenity. Yet underneath, a long, heavy swell rolled in massively towards the land, token of a great storm out in the Atlantic and certain to be heading for them.

  ‘A west-sou’-westerly,’ he mused, and threw a light-hearted smile at Hardy. ‘It couldn’t be bettered.’

  There were knowing looks about the quarterdeck. For the enemy it was going to be difficult. Heading south as they were they had no choice – the shoals and rocks of Spain to the east, and to the west the British Fleet advancing on them, forcing them into a passive defence, the line-of-battle.