The War for All the Oceans

by Roy Adkins

  At the city of Rouen, Smith had to wait several days for a false passport, and here Midshipman Wright caught up with him. While they were at Rouen, their escape from Paris was finally noticed. On 2 May the Temple’s doctor, who had come to know Smith well, was dining with a senior prison official and asked how Smith liked his new quarters. As he had not heard of the move, the official’s suspicions were aroused, and when he checked with Fontainebleau prison the next day he realised Smith had escaped and raised the alarm. A reward was offered for the capture of Smith, who was described as ‘middle-sized, very thin, brown hair, blue eyes, marked with the small pox, long nose, speaking French well, about 30 years of age’10, but it was far too late. With false passports and dressed as fishermen, Smith and his companions rowed out from Le Havre in a small boat and were picked up by a British ship. As reported in The Times, ‘They were taken on board the Argo frigate, which joyfully received these welcome strangers, who on Saturday morning [5 May] were landed at Portsmouth, amidst the acclamations and congratulations of all ranks of people, who lined the streets as they passed along. The same civilities were shewn Sir SYDNEY SMITH at every place where he was recognised . . . Sir SYDNEY is in a tolerable good state of health, though he looks very thin.’11 In London Smith was received by the King and the Duke of Clarence and dined with Lord Spencer at the Admiralty.

  The first time that Smith’s path had crossed that of Napoleon was almost five years earlier at the siege of Toulon, in the summer of 1793. Toulon was the main French naval base in the Mediterranean, but that summer the largely Royalist population threw out the Revolutionary administration. As an army approached to take back control, the people of Toulon opened the port to the British and the Spanish, who were allies of Britain at that time. The resulting siege was a stalemate for some weeks while the British tried desperately to bring in reinforcements to counter the growing army of Revolutionary troops surrounding the town. At this point a twenty-four-year-old major of the French artillery, Napoleon Bonaparte, came to prominence by the skilful use of his guns. He persuaded his commanding officer to capture a key fort on high ground from where his artillery could threaten the British ships in the harbour, giving them the stark choice of retreat or destruction. The British fleet pulled out, leaving many of the local population to be massacred by the vengeful Revolutionaries. Smith volunteered to organise the burning of those ships that could not be sailed out of the harbour - fifty-eight warships, including thirty-two large battleships.

  There was little time to lose. The Revolutionary army was pressing at the gates of the town, and many of the inhabitants had already thrown away their Royalist colours and were wearing the red, white and blue cockade of the Revolutionaries. In the end, the British sailed nineteen French ships out of the harbour, and Smith managed to destroy ten ships of the line5 and four others, but this left eighteen ships of the line and seven others to be recaptured by the French. Even so, the loss of thirty-three ships was a greater blow to the French Navy than Nelson later inflicted at the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar, but in the subsequent search for scapegoats after the abandonment of Toulon, Smith was criticised for not destroying more ships, although in reality his achievement was remarkable.

  Admiral Lord Hood, the commanding officer of the British fleet at Toulon, was himself well pleased with Smith’s work and rewarded him with the honour of taking the dispatches back to London. Napoleon gave him the nickname ‘Capitaine de Brûlot’12 (fireship captain), and one far-reaching result of Smith’s actions was that the French regarded him as an arsonist rather than a naval officer acting on orders, a charge frequently quoted when they refused him prisoner-of-war status during his captivity in the Temple. At the time of the Toulon siege Smith already had a reputation for gallantry, and a few years earlier, when working for the Swedish Navy, he had helped their trapped fleet escape from the Russians. For this, King Gustavus III had requested King George III to invest him with the Swedish honour of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Sword. From then on Sir Sidney was referred to by his enemies in Britain as ‘the Swedish knight’.

  By contrast, Napoleon earned great praise at Toulon and was promoted to brigadier-general, but he had yet to make his mark. His chance came in Paris two years later when the French government, then known as the Convention, was threatened by an armed mob of Royalists, anarchists and others opposed to the Revolution. Napoleon dispersed the crowd withgrapeshot fired from his artillery and earned the gratitude of General Paul Barras, the commander-in-chief. Barras hailed him as saviour of the French Republic, and suddenly Napoleon’s name was known throughout France and his face recognised by Parisians. Barras had made him an overnight celebrity and basked in the reflected glory.

  Within weeks Napoleon was promoted to full general, and a few months later, when the Convention was replaced by the Directory, he was given command of an army with orders to conquer northern Italy. Napoleon was still a protégé of Barras, who passed on to him Josephine Beauharnais. Her aristocrat husband had been guillotined during the Revolution and she was now the official mistress of Barras, who shared her with General Lazare Hoche. Napoleon soon also became her lover, in a bizarre and complicated relationship since she did not immediately give up the other two men, but Napoleon fell madly in love with her, and in March 1796 they were married - two days before Napoleon left Paris to invade Italy.

  After winning twelve major battles in thirteen months, Napoleon not only achieved the objective of conquering northern Italy, but also occupied the Papal States. His charismatic and forceful character allowed him to impose a rigid discipline on his troops without their becoming rebellious. He marched them from place to place at a speed that amazed his enemies, who were equally outclassed by his tactics - he read the landscape and used it to his advantage during battles. This was not the dumpy, middle-aged Napoleon, with thinning hair and rather sullen expression, of portraits painted towards the end of his life, but a dashing, energetic young soldier.

  To the Directory Napoleon was almost a miracle worker, who could be deployed against the enemies surrounding France, but they were aware of the dangers of someone who had risen from nowhere to a position of authority in an astonishingly short time. However, he was just one player in a constantly changing power struggle that had been raging ever since the start of the Revolution in the summer of 1789, and at this point there was little indication of his future destiny. He may have been an inspired general and one of France’s greatest military assets, but the Directory did not trust his ambition. To keep him occupied, preferably away from Paris, and to hamper his flair for intrigue, the Directory put him in charge of the preparations for an invasion of Britain. His private secretary, Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, recalled Napoleon’s irritation at being thwarted:I do not wish to stay here [in France]; there is nothing to do. They are unwilling to listen to anything. I foresee that if I remain here, I am ruined in a short time. Everything here wears out; already I no longer have any glory. This little Europe does not supply enough. I must go to the East, all great glory comes from there. Nevertheless, I wish first to make a tour along the coasts, to assure myself about what can be undertaken . . . If the success of a raid into England appears doubtful to me, as I fear it will, the army of England will become the army of the East, and I will go to Egypt.13

  This ‘tour along the coast’ took place in February 1798. It was a rapid two-week inspection of the Channel ports and of the preparations for an invasion of Britain, just a few weeks before Sir Sidney Smith escaped from Paris, and it resulted in a long letter from Napoleon to the Directory setting out in detail why an invasion attempt was premature. At a stormy meeting with the Directory in the last week of February, Napoleon was finally pushed to an outright refusal to continue with the invasion plans, and out of the confusion of the following days his suggestion of an alternative expedition to Egypt was accepted.

  The prospect of acquiring Egypt as a colony was attractive not only for the fabled riches that the country possessed - fabled
because there was relatively little accurate information about Egypt in western Europe - but also because it was a gateway to the overland route to the East. The Turkish Ottoman Empire that nominally controlled Egypt was fragile and starting to disintegrate. Its grip on the countries of the eastern Mediterranean was weakening and, in theory, a French army based in Egypt could push eastwards to India. Not yet the jewel in Britain’s imperial crown, India was not even a British colony, but outposts there were vital for Britain’s trade and prosperity. Any serious threat to trade with India would be a potential defeat for Britain, and at the very least might force the country to accept peace terms with France.

  Added to these powerful incentives was the thought that an expedition to Egypt would keep Napoleon far from Paris and away from any conspiracies for quite some time, so the Directory did not take long to decide to sanction the expedition. For his part, Napoleon was aware that taking an invading army to Egypt ran counter to his immediate ambitions to seize power in France, but he had a grand vision of what might be achieved in the East. Egypt could provide a gateway to Africa as well as Asia, while a canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea at Suez would give a fast sea route to India and beyond. Napoleon believed it was his destiny to carve out an eastern empire to rival that of Alexander the Great, and he made his plans accordingly. ‘A short time before leaving,’ Bourrienne noted, ‘I asked Bonaparte how long he intended staying in Egypt. “A few months, or six years; everything depends on circumstances. I will colonise that country; I will bring them artists, craftsmen of every description; women, actors, etc. We are only 29 years old, and we will then be 35. That is not old age. Those six years will enable me, if all goes well, to go to India.”’14

  The success of the expedition depended on misleading the British, and so preparations for the invasion of Britain continued in order to keep the British Navy tied up far from the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, the groundwork for the expedition to Egypt took place in the utmost secrecy. This was an incredible feat of military administration: Napoleon oversaw the project from Paris, delegating the work to subordinate generals in ports in southern France, Corsica and western Italy. In the end, an army of some thirty-eight thousand infantry and cavalry troops was assembled to be carried by a fleet of four hundred transport vessels, escorted by thirteen warships and seven frigates. Also embarked were sixty field guns and forty siege guns, but only twelve hundred horses for the three thousand cavalrymen because Napoleon expected to use camels. The ships were gradually gathered in the ports of Toulon and Marseilles in southern France, Genoa and Civitavecchia in Italy and Ajaccio in Corsica - and to the British warships patrolling off these ports, it was obvious that a huge campaign was in preparation.

  The warships and frigates that were to escort the expedition could not possibly protect such a large convoy from a British attack: their best hope lay in deceiving the British about their destination. Napoleon was remarkably successful in this, and although British agents in France struggled to find out, they could not obtain any reliable information. Knowing that his movements were closely watched, Napoleon left it to the last moment before travelling to Toulon, but a week later Rear-Admiral Nelson, patrolling off that port, composed a dispatch to Admiral Earl St Vincent to report that ‘Buonaparte arrived at Toulon last Friday, and has examined the troops which are daily embarking in the numerous Transports . . . it is not generally believed that Buonaparte is to embark, but . . . Reports say they are to sail in a few days, and others that they will not sail for a fortnight.’15 A day later he was again writing to St Vincent, admitting, ‘I have, in fact, no farther particulars to tell you . . . They order their matters so well in France, that all is secret.’16 At this time Nelson was commanding a small force of three warships (the Vanguard, Alexander and Orion), each carrying seventy-four guns, as well as three frigates, which were more lightly armed vessels, having about half the number of guns of a large warship, but were faster, more manoeuvrable and ideal for scouting purposes. This was a stronger squadron6 than would normally be sent on a reconnaissance mission, and although it might hamper the sailing of the French fleet from Toulon, it could not stop it. For this reason Nelson was sending frequent reports to St Vincent, who was commanding a much larger fleet off the Spanish port of Cadiz, from which Nelson’s ships had been detached.

  In Toulon itself the French fleet had completed all its preparations, and according to Bourrienne, ‘Bonaparte knew by the movements of the English that there was not a moment to lose; but adverse winds kept us for ten days.’17 On the same day that Nelson was writing to St Vincent about the lack of information, the wind changed sufficiently for Napoleon’s ships to start leaving Toulon. With a massive number of transports and warships to organise, it took over eight hours to assemble the fleet outside the harbour, and it was not until the next day, 20 May 1798, that they were ready to set sail. The very fact that Napoleon had planned this expedition, assembled its components and sailed in time to reach Egypt before the annual Nile flood made the Nile Valley impassable, was evidence not just of his ability as a commander, but of the strength of his power within France.

  What was a good sailing wind for the French fleet at Toulon was actually the edge of a storm further out to sea - a storm that blew Nelson’s ships south for two days before starting to moderate. Because the masts and rigging of Nelson’s flagship, the Vanguard, were badly damaged, the ship was taken in tow by the Alexander. The warships, which had lost touch with the frigates, now looked for a sheltered spot to carry out repairs. They were off the Gulf of Oristano, on the west coast of Sardinia, roughly 250 miles south of Toulon, but the wind was keeping them off the coast, and as nobody had charts or personal knowledge of the area, they continued some 30 miles south to the island of San Pietro.

  Parts of the world were still completely uncharted, and many places did not have adequate maps. Each seafaring nation had conducted surveys ofsome areas, but overall the coverage of sea charts was piecemeal and of variable quality. British naval captains were required to provide their own charts, but even if they could afford to buy everything available, it was often not practical to store so many charts on board ship, so they tended to be selective. When they found themselves in places not covered by their charts, they relied on anyone on board who had sailed in those waters before, so the situation that Nelson and his captains found themselves in was not unusual. Writing to his father-in-law afterwards, Captain Edward Berry of the Vanguard summed up the dangers of sailing into uncharted waters:The storm did not abate till Tuesday afternoon [22 May], which enabled the Alexander to take us in tow. Our situation on Tuesday night was the most alarming I ever experienced: we stood in for the Island of Sardinia, and approached the S.W. side of the Island, intending to go into Oristan Bay, which we were not acquainted with, but it was absolutely necessary to go somewhere. Finding we could not fetch Oristan, the Admiral [Nelson] determined to try for St. Pierre’s [San Pietro], which we could have fetched had the breeze continued, but unfortunately it fell light airs, and at times almost calm . . . All this time there was a heavy swell driving in towards the shore, so that at midnight we were completely embayed. You may easily figure to yourself our situation, and the feelings of those who knew the danger, when I tell you I could easily distinguish the surf breaking on the rocky shore; still there was hope anchorage might be found, though we knew of none.18

  Berry described how they avoided shipwreck:We therefore bent our cables [ready to anchor in an emergency] and prepared for the worst, anxiously wishing for daybreak, which at length arrived, and we found ourselves about five miles from the shore, the western swell still continuing to drive us in . . . Indeed, the Vanguard was a perfect wreck, but the Alexander still had us in tow. Fortunately, at about six o’clock on Wednesday, the 23rd of May, a breeze sprang up, the Alexander’s sails filled, we weathered the rocks to windward of the Island of St. Pierre’s, and before 12 we anchored in six fathoms7, and fine smooth water - a luxury to us scarcely to be equalled.19

  Desp
ite the exhaustion of the crews after the storm, they were set to work to repair the three warships anchored off San Pietro, and remarkably the ships were ready to sail within four days, only to be delayed by variable winds. Before the repairs were complete, they were very vulnerable to capture, and Nelson commented that ‘the meanest Frigate out of France would have been a very unwelcome guest’.20 It was not until 3 June that they regained their station off Toulon, by which time they learned from passing ships that the French fleet had sailed, but nobody knew where. Two days later, while Nelson was still hoping to make contact with his missing frigates, Commander Thomas Masterman Hardy arrived in the British brig8 Mutine with the welcome news that eleven warships were on their way to reinforce Nelson’s fleet - he would now have a force capable of tackling the enemy fleet, but as yet had no knowledge of the destination of the French.

  While Nelson’s ships were blown southwards by the storm, Napoleon’s fleet headed eastwards in order to round the northern tip of Corsica. After two days’ sailing they met up with the French fleet from Genoa, and on 28 May this combined fleet reached the rendezvous point, west of Civitavecchia, to find the ships from Ajaccio already there. This huge convoy continued southwards, while the ships from Civitavecchia struggled to make contact, but they were not fast enough to keep up and sailed on a parallel course. For the rest of the journey to Malta, which was the first objective, the main French fleet had no idea where the ships from Civitavecchia were, but in fact they had the advantage of better winds and overtook the main convoy, arriving off Malta three days before the rest arrived on 9 June.