Battle Fleet (2007) (25 page)

Hardy summoned all the officers to his cabin, including the midshipmen. ‘The mood of the people is downcast,’ he said. ‘Aside from the loss of the Admiral we have nearly sixty dead and over a hundred wounded. The people are exhausted but we must keep them busy. The
Victory
is badly mauled. The hull has been much damaged by shot, especially the wales, strings and spirketing, and between wind and water. Several of the beams, knees and riders are shot through and broke, and the starboard cathead is shot away …’

Hardy rattled on, detailing the awful damage. My thoughts began to wander. I was in a strange, absent frame of mind.

Our men worked through the night making good the ship against the approaching storm. When they did rest, many discovered their hammocks had been shot away or drenched in blood. With every inch of spare canvas needed to mend our sails, they had to sleep on the deck. The carpenter and his crew worked throughout the night and there was no time when the ship was quiet.

There were no prisoners aboard the
Victory
but we did have one visitor from the Combined Fleet. A woman came aboard during the night, exciting much curiosity among the crew. She had been fished stark
naked from the sea, having abandoned a blazing French man-o’-war. She was brought aboard the
Victory
as it was well known we had a fine selection of women’s clothing for our amateur dramatic society. Lord Nelson was fond of plays and thought them a great diversion for his men.

‘Sort her out, Witchall,’ said a lieutenant. She was a fine-looking woman, tall with long dark hair. Someone had given her a white shirt to wear. She looked utterly bedraggled with the same kind of vacant stare I had seen on many men after a battle. I took her down to the orlop deck where the clothes were stored. She spoke a little English, and I understood that she had disguised herself as a man in order to go to sea with her husband. ‘Where is he now?’ I asked.

‘
Il est mort
,’ she said and began to cry.

Totally exhausted, I managed to snatch a little sleep but woke the next morning to the terrifying sound of wood crashing on wood. I hurried out on deck to see a main-mast yard had fallen. No wonder. A howling wind whistled in from the south-west and some of the sails set the previous day had already been torn from the yards.

The rest of that day was such a blur of frantic activity I was not able to visit Robert to see how he was. Loose sails shook themselves to tatters. Waves broke over the weather deck knocking exhausted sailors off their feet.
The ship was gaining a foot of water every hour. Men worked non-stop on the pumps to keep us afloat. As we pitched in the churning sea, stray shot rolled across the decks and the great guns slithered and strained in their moorings. ‘Please God, don’t let a cannon loose in this weather,’ I thought. I hardly dared think of the carnage that would cause.

Peering through the rain and spray, I could see many of our ships had been forced to cut loose their prizes – either that or their tow ropes had snapped. At the farthest reaches of my vision I could see that other ships with no masts to raise sails were drifting perilously close to the shore. How terrible to survive such a bloody battle only to die in a shipwreck.

In the middle distance I saw our gallant foe of yesterday, the
Redoutable
, floundering in the water, with all her masts broken. Tiny boats from one of our warships battled through towering waves to take off her surviving crew. By the time it got dark her poop deck was almost down to the water. By the morning she had gone.

The next day and night the weather grew worse and on the morning of 24th October Admiral Collingwood, now Commander in Chief of the fleet, signalled us all to withdraw crews from the remaining prizes and disable or destroy them.

This caused much ill-feeling among the men on the
Victory
, and no doubt every other sailor in the fleet.
With so many enemy ships taken, even the humblest seaman could have expected an extra thirty pounds prize money in his pocket – two years’ extra pay.

Great efforts were made to rescue the defeated sailors still aboard their ships and bring them aboard ours. We could not take part in this highly dangerous activity. The
Victory
was too damaged to help another vessel and had to be towed herself.

Robert returned to duty with a bandage still wrapped around his head. He felt unsteady on his feet and prone to sickness, but he was convinced the
Victory
would not be able to manage without him. That night we saw blazing ships in the distance, prizes set alight to stop them falling back into enemy hands, and in the morning, the carcasses of shipwrecks along the distant shore. I was grateful we had decided not to board the
Fougueux
. I heard she had been driven ashore and almost all on board had drowned.

On the evening of 28th October, a whole week after the battle, we finally limped into the safe haven of Gibraltar. Here the men were allowed on shore – usually forbidden in any port, where the fear of desertion far outweighed the boost to morale leave would provide. The worst of the wounded were transferred to the hospital.

Robert and I ventured ashore and found a small inn for supper. We were both too tired and melancholy to
enjoy ourselves much and drank more than was wise, especially Robert, whose injury was still giving him blinding headaches. As we walked back, amid the wild carousing and wenching of our victorious crews, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the residents of this small port, having thousands of sailors on the rampage. It must have felt like a hurricane had hit them.

When we returned to the mess, we set about writing letters to our families, telling them we had survived the battle. A fast frigate would take our post to England much quicker than we would arrive ourselves.

Sending letters home reminded us of William Duffy. ‘I suppose we ought to write to his family too,’ said Robert. Certainly, no one else had offered to do so, even his friend Edward Randal. The devil got into us that evening. It was our way of letting off steam after the horror of battle. As we composed our letter, Robert and I hooted with laughter until tears ran down our faces.

Dear Mr and Mrs Duffy,

It is with great sadness I write to tell you your son died gallantly during a great battle with the French and Spanish fleets off the coast of Trafalgar.

William was a singular presence in the midshipmen’s mess and we shall all miss his playful wit and wisdom.

He will be particularly mourned by the men who served under him, whom he always treated with great kindness.

‘D’you think they’ll know we’re being sarcastic?’ said Robert. ‘I can’t imagine him being any different at home.’

That brought us to our senses. Of course his family would know it was untrue. The letter was swiftly torn to pieces.

I often looked at that empty place in the mess. His trunk was still there, with his name engraved grandly upon it. Seeing it gathering dust in the dim light of the mess filled me with sadness. Loathsome or not, he was just a boy. Did his family come to Portsmouth to see him off? Him and his trunk in one of the
Victory
’s boats, rowing away from the quayside to a distant ship out in the Solent. Did they squint through the sunshine and the haze to gaze at the soaring masts and glinting stern galleries. I could hear them now, boasting to callers: ‘You know William is serving with Lord Nelson aboard HMS
Victory
.’

As we sailed north, the winter hit hard and the biting wind rarely blew in our favour. The remoteness I felt after the battle remained with me for most of the voyage. The midshipmen’s mess, so often a scene of dissipation and childish pranks on the voyage out to Trafalgar, was now much quieter.

No one in England knew what had happened. Not yet. The news would take another week or so to reach them. Nelson’s death, and our victory, would be relayed with equal urgency. The rest of it – reports of the thousands dead or maimed – would trickle through to
anxious families in the weeks to come.

We sighted the Cornish coast at the beginning of December, and reached Portsmouth on 4th November. Back in home waters I allowed myself to feel some sense of triumph. ‘We’ll be heroes, y’know,’ said Robert with a sly grin, ‘when we go home. Right in the thick of it. It’ll be sure to impress your Bel.’

At the start of the voyage I had been wary of serving alongside Admiral Nelson. But it was he who had been the victim of his audacity, along with the sixty or so killed and a hundred wounded on the
Victory
. I had been extremely lucky. On the journey back, word had gone round that we had suffered the greatest casualties among British ships during the battle. This was a source of great pride for the crew.

I wondered if we would stay at Portsmouth, or at the least send Lord Nelson’s body on to London by coach. But instead we sailed on along the coast, set for the Thames, and had almost reached Dover by 12th December. Here we were engulfed in the foulest winter weather, and I feared we might be lost in the storm. ‘What a cruel twist of fate that would be,’ said Robert, one queasy evening as we tried to eat our supper with the ship lurching around.

It was not until 22nd December that we reached the Nore, just off the coast at Chatham. The south-westerly wind was too fierce for us to come close to the town, but
we could see every flag in the harbour at half mast. This is when I realised how important our dead Admiral actually was.

Nelson’s coffin was transferred to a yacht and taken up to Greenwich. That Christmas I had foolishly hoped we officers would be allowed leave, but we stayed there in the estuary. Howling wind whistled through every patched-up hole in the hull and torrential rain seeped down from the weather deck to gather in the stinking hold. We were ‘awaiting orders’, and they came eventually. Forty-six sailors and fourteen marines from the
Victory
were to take part in the funeral procession.

Hardy summoned me to his cabin. ‘You’re going, Witchall. You fought gallantly. Neville too.’

‘Will you stay at Grosvenor Square?’ said Robert. It was always a pleasure to visit the Nevilles’ grand family home, so I agreed at once. I wanted to see Bel too. I had sent her a letter telling her I’d be in London soon. I was determined to let her know how I felt about her – maybe even ask her to marry me one day, if I became a lieutenant.

Those of us chosen to attend the funeral were taken off the
Victory
one dreary January afternoon. We sailed up the Thames in a brig and arrived in Greenwich at dusk. No sooner had we stowed our hammocks in the Naval Hospital than we were marched to a grand dining room recently built in the hospital grounds. It was here
that Lord Nelson was lying in state, and it was said that fifteen thousand people had already passed through the hall to pay their respects.

We could see a large crowd clamouring to gain entry. But as soon as we arrived in the echoing marble hall – fantastic in size and ornate in decoration – the doors were closed. A great roar of disappointment rose from those outside. There would be no more visitors. We were the last.

Removing our hats, we marched slowly past the coffin. We knew it had been made of wood from the mast of a French man-o’-war. Gold motifs were painted on its black velvet exterior, the material held in place by rows of gilt nails.

The coffin looked small and I was reminded that the Admiral was quite a slight fellow. But what a great hero he was too. At that moment I felt a surge of grief for this remarkable man.

The following day we set off up river in a grand procession. Huge crowds filled the quayside to catch a glimpse of the coffin. Every boat moored there was full of people, from deck to rigging to yardarms, all desperate to glimpse a piece of history.

I started to feel quite proud of myself. Would anything I ever did be more important than fighting in the Battle of Trafalgar? Would anything I ever saw be grander than Lord Nelson’s funeral? It was on such
events that the world turned. We had discussed this in the mess on our way home. There would be no invasion, that was sure. There would be no further challenges to the British Navy. ‘The entire Combined Fleet destroyed or humiliated, and not a single British ship surrendered,’ said Robert with great pride. ‘Look at the
Royal Sovereign
. She started the battle taking on ten ships at once. That kind of story’ll keep any French and Spanish admiral awake at night!’

There was no doubt that the thousands who craned their necks to watch our procession thought so too. This was a tale that would be told for the rest of my life, perhaps even the rest of the century.

The next day we stood shivering in Admiralty Yard awaiting our position in the funeral procession. It was such a grand affair I doubted a king himself could be buried with greater ceremony. There were thousands of soldiers in the parade and thousands more lining the route to keep order among the crowds. When we finally set off, I noticed how quiet it was. The streets of London were packed with more people than I had seen in my life, but the only thing we heard was the beat of the bass drums in the military bands and the boom of the minute guns as we passed. Just that, and the eerie rustle of thousands of people removing their hats as the coffin went by. Some called out ‘God Bless’ or wept, but otherwise made no noise. It was an unsettling
experience, seeing so many people making so little sound.