Tested by Fate

by David Donachie

  He was Nelson of the patent bridge, the man who had captured the public imagination. So his credit stood high, and his fellow countrymen demanded the right to place his image upon their walls. This he knew from Locker, to whom he had given, some fifteen years previously, a portrait of himself by John Rigaud. His old mentor had been approached with a request to make prints from it, for sale to the public. How good it was to be praised instead of damned, to have his knighthood conferred by the King in person, and not just sent to him on some foreign station.

  King George, no longer irascible in the face of a man now a hero, had asked for a written history of his Mediterranean service, and Nelson knew that that which he had returned was impressive: four single-ship actions, six engagements on land commanding batteries, the cutting-out expeditions numbered ten, and he had captured a couple of towns. That, and his wounds, won him a welcome annual pension of a thousand pounds.

  The best day had been when his doctors, reaching for the string that held the ligature inside his wounded stump, had pulled, and instead of acute pain, the whole affair had come away, taking with it all the poisons that had kept it from healing. That was the day he went to the Admiralty to say he was again ready for service.

  So he had said goodbye to Fanny in the same gentle way he had greeted her, a dry peck on a dry cheek, still uncertain of his feelings. But for all that, when he thought of her as he penned his near daily letter, it was with kindness and warmth.

  A red-coated band played them away from Gibraltar, the God-speed of an Army garrison who had entertained them royally, soldiers who never felt quite safe unless a British fleet was in the Mediterranean. Having raised his hat to the island, and waited till Orion and Alexander, with four frigates and a sloop in attendance, had cleared the bay, Nelson turned to his new flag captain, Edward Berry.

  “My lucky sea, Captain Berry. Set us a course for Toulon. Let’s find this Corsican menace and destroy him.”

  Berry grinned. “What a contest, you and Bonaparte.”

  “I long to try him on a wind, Berry, for landsman or no, I wager that the Corsican will ignore his admirals and try to control the battle.”

  “I take leave, sir, to differ,” Berry replied. “I would wager that whatever battle we have will be controlled by you.”

  Nelson was not one to be haunted by words, but that expression of confidence made by Berry and wholly endorsed by him produced a sickening sensation when he recalled them. His return to the Mediterranean had not been the success he had craved, quite the opposite. Between Toulon and Corsica HMS Vanguard, caught in a violent storm, had lost every one of her masts, and had been left to roll so heavily on a menacing swell that Berry had been forced to flood the lower decks just to gain some stability. Lacking steerage way the heavy seas of a week-long storm had nearly driven her on to the rocks of several dangerous shores, only saved by the application of Captain Alexander Ball, who used his vessel to tow the flagship out of danger.

  At the subsequent interview, which took place in a placid bay resounding to the clatter of shipwright’s hammers, Nelson faced Ball with some trepidation. Having been brusque with the man on the few meetings he had attended, he now had to thank him for his ship and probably his life. If Ball knew that his admiral disliked him, it didn’t show, and as they talked Nelson felt his aversion evaporate in the face of the man’s modesty. He refused to acknowledge that his exceptional behaviour and courage had been anything but the action any other captain would have taken.

  What was intended to be brief extended itself to an invitation to dine, and as the meal progressed Nelson found his feelings growing warmer by the course. Ball was a man after his own heart, a fighter, a sailor, and modest with it. Nelson couldn’t understand his previous animosity. How could he have so misjudged Ball? It was an indication to him to be more cautious in future, never to let his heart rule over every emotion. When they parted, he was sure that he was saying goodbye to a friend.

  They got HMS Vanguard back to sea in an astonishing four days, and resumed the hunt for Bonaparte. Nelson’s hopes were lifted off Cape Corse by the sight of Thomas Troubridge in HMS Culloden, sailing to join him at the head often sail-of-the-line. Now a battle fleet, they sailed north to close Cape Sicié, only to discover from a Marseilles merchantman that the Corsican’s armada had already departed Toulon. But there was no information as to where he was headed. At least he could call his captains to meet him, so that they could have no doubt about their commander’s intentions.

  It was a gathering of old friends as well as new faces: Ralph Millar, Troubridge, of course, dark of countenance and doleful by nature. Tom Foley was there, his friend from his first ever ship, now in command of HMS Goliath, tall Sam Hood, the son and nephew of admirals, who had been with him at Tenerife. There was also the round-faced and cheerful Louis, his second-in-command, and Galwey, who was mad, Irish and looked it, with his protruding eyes and unkempt ginger hair, and Darby, another Irishman of a more sober disposition. These were good men, the best St Vincent could send him, fighters all.

  “Gentlemen,” he had begun, “we will, as a fleet, pay not one jot of attention to the Fighting Instructions.”

  The faces of his captains betrayed no hint of the import of those words. The Fighting Instructions, as rules of engagement, were not designed to confer outright success on a battle fleet: they were designed to avoid complete failure. A maritime nation like Britain couldn’t afford to entrust its fleet to the mere whim of an admiral, especially since the appointment of a commander-in-chief might often have more to do with politics than ability.

  It was the bane of the service that a captain became an admiral by mere seniority, filling a dead man’s shoes. A promising midshipman did not always pass for lieutenant; a good premier did not always rise to be a competent captain. Nor did a man who could command and manoeuvre one ship necessarily have the ability to manage a fleet. To take a fleet into battle, risking death and destruction and win, required skills granted to few.

  So the Admiralty had evolved a set of rules tying the hands of individual commanders. A battle was considered a victory if the enemy withdrew. A stalemate, in which no side could claim an advantage, was seen as a positive result; defeat was unthinkable. Failure had dire consequences. Admiral Byng, after a farce of a trial, had been shot on his quarterdeck for failure at Minorca thirty years previously, as Voltaire, the French sage, had put it, “pour encourager les autres.”

  “Gentlemen,” Nelson continued, referring to that disgraceful episode, “is there one of us present who has not wondered if we’d share Admiral Byng’s fate at some time in our career? I am the Admiral. That risk is mine. I would ask you to obey the orders I give you in writing and put aside all thoughts of what consequences might attend upon failure.”

  Nelson rarely raised his voice in company, his even temper being one of his great qualities, but he did know how to be emphatic. “Why? Because we cannot fail. We have ships and men that have been at sea for years. Our gun crews achieve a rate of fire that will be double that of our enemies. Not a day goes by that does not include practice in boarding. In short, gentlemen, we are professional naval officers. Our opponents have been decimated by the guillotine and politics, and are led by a bullock, a blue-coated one, I grant you, but a soldier nevertheless, and like to be a buffoon on water.”

  Some applauded, others grinned. Fat-faced Louis cried, “Hear him.”

  “Our fleet will be split into three divisions. The pair closest to the enemy battleships, wherever we find them, will engage them immediately, the third will seek to destroy the transports. Since the object of the French plan is to carry troops to whatever destination they have in mind, defending those will become a priority. The first two divisions must and will interpose themselves between the transports and the enemy flag. We will make them fight their way through to provide succour.

  “My signals lieutenant will give you the outline of a set of flags each, relevant to your own ship. But we all know that flags can be obscu
red. I therefore expect you to act according to your outline instructions without recourse to a command from me. These, too, will be in writing.”

  There was more to discuss, a dozen different outlines. Where would the enemy be? Would it be day or night? The sea-state would have a bearing, as would wind direction. Would the French have an anchorage under their lee to which they could run for safety? What if they split their forces? Nelson had to make sure that every one of his inferior officers understood that their ships were instruments of war; that an individual loss was acceptable, given a positive result to the battle. The conference broke up in a happy mood.

  What followed was the worst sixty days of Nelson’s life, a seemingly fruitless voyage around the Mediterranean. His instructions from St Vincent, to find and destroy the enemy, fell on the hurdle of his lack of frigates. They were the eyes of the fleet, able swiftly to seek likely rendezvous, the bays and harbours where the French might congregate, then report back to an admiral who could mount an attack. He had too few for an expanse of water that stretched from Gibraltar to the Black Sea.

  Bonaparte threatened Malta, Tuscany, Naples, the Adriatic, Tunis, Algiers, Egypt, and the rest of the Ottoman Empire. If there was a grand design, it was secret. Nelson sailed to Alexandria, only to find the anchorage devoid of French shipping. On his return to the Straits of Messina he heard that Malta had fallen to the French, but that Bonaparte was no longer there. He had disappeared again! Faced with a frightened King Ferdinand, still at peace with France, he had to use subterfuge to keep his ships victualled, using what frigates and sloops he had to scour the seas while he remained inactive at Syracuse.

  Reports came in of sightings at every corner of the Inland Sea. Thomas Hardy, now master and commander of the brig Mutine, spoke with a Ragusan trader in the Adriatic who had sighted a fleet heading east. Was this Bonaparte? Had Nelson guessed right about Alexandria, only arriving too soon to catch a slow-sailing convoy of four hundred transports?

  Off they sailed again, Nelson sick, so great was his anxiety. Hailed as a hero in England for his exploits at St Vincent, forgiven for heroic failure at Tenerife, he knew that whatever reputation he enjoyed would disappear like a puff of smoke from a chimney if he failed to find Bonaparte. How confident he had been at those early conferences, how foolish his plans seemed now.

  And this voyage to Egypt seemed just as fruitless as the first. Two ships had looked into Alexandria only to find its harbours empty, a fact signalled to Nelson as soon as the fleet came in sight. It was with a heavy heart that the Admiral ordered a signal to turn eastwards for what he suspected to be a futile search of the coastline.

  “Frigates,” he said to Tom Allen, as his bovine servant served him a solitary dinner. “When they cut me open, Tom, they will find that word engraved on my heart. If I had half a dozen, I’d have Bonaparte.”

  Allen regarded the man he served with an experienced eye, wondering if he should say something. Nelson was so jumpy he daren’t knock one salver into another. The slightest unusual noise made him jerk round to look, evidence of the tension he was harbouring in what he thought was a calm demeanour. He had heard that Frank Lepée had never feared to advise Nelson or to tell him he was wrong. But Lepée had been shown the cabin door, which was the last thing Tom Allen wanted. Serving the Admiral was a soft billet, which he was not about to sacrifice. Let the Admiral tie himself in knots, it was no job of a servant to act the doctor.

  The food lay uneaten on the plate, to get cold and congeal. Nelson, looking at it, was inclined to see his career in a similar light. He knew from the faces of the ship’s officers that they felt the same. They had started out with high hopes under a commander who never missed a chance for action. This was the place to be; he was the man to be with, yet it had all fallen flat. Berry, he knew, would be above him with his officers, eating a silent repast, thinking the same as his admiral, that they had missed the boat.

  All those admirals at home, above him on the list, would be crowing now, telling all who would listen what folly it had been to appoint such a junior and vainglorious character to command. People who had treated him as a hero six months before would shun him now, the man who couldn’t find an armada of over four hundred ships. And just where was Bonaparte, a man who had taken on the features of a demon in Nelson’s mind? He was attacking something somewhere, and the man ordered to stop him was in the wrong place.

  Nelson started to shake. Was it a recurrence of the malaria, a disease which always came to attack him when his spirits were low? Or was it just the lack of sleep, endless nights spent lying in his cot gnawing at the problems he faced both professionally and personally? Tom Allen, had he dared, would have told him to eat, which he had scarce done for a week.

  The scraping of a dozen chairs, followed by the sound of running feet, distracted Nelson but did nothing to dent a miserable, sickly mood that had him close to seeking rest. Even the peremptory knock on his cabin door failed to rouse him and he left Allen to respond. But the flushed, excited face of Midshipman Hoste, sent to give him a message, set his heart racing.

  “Zealous signalling, sir. The enemy is in Aboukir Bay, fifteen sail moored in line of battle.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  AT THOSE WORDS the enervating malaise fell away. The whole ship was alive with cheering by the time he made the deck. From his position in the line Nelson could see little of his leading vessels, but he trusted to the ships in the van to take the appropriate action, Foley in Goliath and Sam Hood in Zealous. It was after 1:30, and raking the high masts that lay in Aboukir Bay with a telescope, their hulls cut off by a headland, he began to make his calculations. He had already sent a frigate ahead to lay off and repeat signals to his leading vessels, which would attack unless he issued orders to desist. Was that wise?

  Hood and Foley would barely make the bay before sunset, and the rest of his ships would engage in the increasing gloom, the last ships in the line going into battle in darkness. That particularly applied to Alexander and Swiftsure, straining to catch up, having been detached to look into Alexandria. A night battle was always a chancy affair, with the exercise of command impossible. And the French were anchored in a strong defensive position. But Horatio Nelson had laid out his principles, which were based on an abiding trust in his captains and a deep faith in the men they commanded.

  “Captain Berry, be so good as to signal to the squadron, prepare for action.”

  “Sir,” Berry replied, beaming.

  “My dinner is on the board, and I intend that this day it should be eaten. If you wish you may join me.”

  Information came in piecemeal over the next five hours: signals from the frigate standing off to pass orders, through speaking trumpets over the taffrail of HMS Minotaur sailing ahead of Vanguard, through excited midshipmen sent by their captains in boats, and all that was allied to what his own lookouts could see. Nelson perceived that the French Admiral, de Brueys, had anchored with his strongest vessels to the rear of his flagship, the 120-gun L’Orient. The vessels closest to the approaching British squadron were the weakest in his fleet.

  By the amount of activity on the beach there appeared to be numerous shore parties, some of whom would struggle to get back to their ships before battle commenced. There were also gaps between the anchored ships large enough for a 74 to sail through, so orders went out to all ships to prepare sheet anchors that would hold the warships by the stern and keep steady and true whatever fire they poured on the enemy.

  “Monsieur de Brueys is not anticipating a fight today, Mr Hoste.”

  The youngster fixed Nelson with his huge soft brown eyes. With his now spotty skin, no one could look less the warrior and, indeed, so small had Hoste been that Nelson had worried for him when he first came to sea. He had grown now, and was nearing an age to sit for lieutenant. As for fighting, he was apparently a right Tartar when it came to fisticuffs.

  “He will get one, sir, won’t he?”

  “It would be interesting to know what would prev
ent such a thing.”

  Hoste knew he was being tested, just as he knew that there were no traps in the examination. “We lack charts, sir, so there may be shoal water that would run us aground.”

  Nelson smiled. “There’s enough for the French.”

  “There might also be shore batteries, given all the men that have vacated the ships.”

  “Well spotted, Mr Hoste.” The youngster talked on, mentioning the lack of light, the possibility of the unexpected, as Nelson listened. “And given all this, and assuming you were Monsieur de Brueys, what would you have done?”

  “I’d want to fight in open water, sir. I’d have put to sea as soon as I spotted our topsails.”

  Nelson lifted his telescope then, and fixed it on the Admiral’s pennant flying at the masthead of L’Orient. “So would I, Mr Hoste, so would I.”

  Goliath was just edging Zealous to be first into the bay, both ships with leadsmen casting for sandbars. Captain Tom Foley could hear Sam Hood over the gunfire exhorting his men to greater efforts as they rounded the headland protecting the anchorage. The cannon fire came from a French sloop inshore, trying by its pinpricks to persuade either of the captains to pursue it into water shallow enough to run them aground. Foley had made his way to the forepeak, to raise his glass and look at the enemy, the sides of the vessels aglow and orange in the light of a sinking sun. In 27 years, much had changed about the midshipman who had challenged his admiral to a pissing contest, but he still had sharp, bird-like eyes and tidy features, even if they were lined with age.

  Foley could see men hurrying about the deck of the lead French ship, Le Guerrier. He could also see that, with the tide running east, she was straining on her single forward anchor cable. There wasn’t much tidal movement in the Mediterranean, a rise of two feet or so, but there was enough. That meant his enemy, when the tide turned, would swing through an arc of 180 degrees. The deduction that followed was simple. Le Guerrier had to have enough water under her keel to do that, which meant that ahead of that anchor cable was a whole ship’s length of water deep enough for Goliath to sail through.