Men of Honour (12 page)

The ships themselves were as worn as their officers. By early October, Nelson had returned from England to join the fleet off Cadiz. He sent a list to the Admiralty of the state
in which he found the ships:
Victory
was fit for service;
Canopus
would be better docked before the winter;
Spencer
was fit for service,
Superbe
‘must be docked for her movement'—the shifting of timbers in heavy weather—
Belleisle
needs docking,
Donegal
‘needs docking but not so much as
Belleisle.
'

The inefficiencies of men, ships and supplies, the annoyance with others, the conscious display to superiors, the squabbles about prizes, prize money and the sums due to flag officers who may or may not have been absent from the station, the tendency to disobey orders, the sheer illness and exhaustion of many of the officers under this strain, the extreme tautness of the naval screen stretched around the European periphery from the Baltic to the Aegean, the vast army ranged opposite the British coast at Boulogne, the threat to the British possessions in the Caribbean, the slowness of communications, which meant that a conversation could take three months, the overriding anxiety about where the enemy fleets and squadrons were and how they were to be prevented from achieving the concentration they need to establish superiority in the Channel: all of this is the human and technical reality underlying the idea of an orderly fleet which they all held as the model of perfection in their mind. Alert they listen all the time for the truth straining at the horizon to identify the ships they see. On 12 September, Collingwood wrote to the Admiralty: ‘The intelligence I get of the Enemy is vague, and sometimes contradictory.' It reads at this distance like a plea for understanding.

There was undoubtedly high tension in the exactness. On the morning of Trafalgar, for the first time in his life, Nelson forgot to wear his sword; it was found in his quarters after the battle. All around him on the
Victory
,
the anxiety was running at a high level. Nelson, Hardy and the frigate captains who were with them toured the various decks of the ship. Nelson urged the men not to fire unless they knew the shot would tell and ‘expressed himself highly satisfied with the arrangements.' There were then discussions over the danger to Nelson himself. Hardy, Nelson's secretary, the ship's chaplain and others discussed the possibility of persuading Nelson to conceal the stars on his coat. None dared raise the question with him, as it was known with what contempt he would treat it. The great officer needed to maintain a heroic bearing. He should, in the aristocratic mould, ‘appear and be', which meant that he should wear his stars.

Instead, Blackwood raised the question with the admiral as to which ship should lead his column into the battle. The first ship would take an immense quantity of fire. On tactical grounds alone, the flagship should not be exposed to such fire. Nelson loved and admired Blackwood and accepted his advice. The
Téméraire
was sailing abreast of the flagship, so close that Nelson thought he might shout instructions over to her, that she should go ahead of the
Victory
, to take the brunt of the Combined Fleet's defence. But Captain Harvey of the
Téméraire
could not hear and so Blackwood was sent in one of
Victory'
s boats to deliver the orders. The
Neptune
, one ship further back, was given the same orders by flag signals.

The discussion is anxious, clipped, excited. Nelson's subordinates scarcely dare approach him. Even as Blackwood is away, Nelson, without countermanding them, goes back on the orders and urges the
Victory
forward, asking Hardy to have still more sail set so that the
Téméraire
could not pass. Lieutenant John Yule, who was in command on the flagship's forecastle, seeing that the starboard lower studding sail

was improperly set, caused it to be taken in for the purpose of setting it afresh. The instant this was done, Lord Nelson ran forward and rated the Lieutenant severely for having, as he supposed, begun to shorten sail without the Captain's orders. The studding-sail was quickly replaced; and Victory, as the gallant chief intended, continued to lead the column.

That is not the action or behaviour of the calm man. A Calder or a Villeneuve might have done the orderly thing, and allowed the
Téméraire
and the
Neptune
to go ahead. But Nelson's battle agitation was governing him. ‘Lord Nelson's anxiety to close with the enemy became very apparent,' Henry Blackwood wrote afterwards. That too is another reason that battle was longed for: as a place in which the anxiety was over, a place paradoxically of ultimate order and calm.

October 21st 1805
9.30 am to 11.30 am

Distance between the fleets: 5.9 miles—2 miles
Victory
's heading and speed: 067°—101° at 3 knots

Honour: nobleness of mind; scorn of meanness; magnanimity
S
AMUEL
J
OHNSON
,
A Dictionary of the English Language
, 1755

As the sun rose, and with all preparations made on all ships, there was little to do but think of home. The fleets were still more than five miles apart and the maximum range for even the heaviest guns was 2,000 yards. There would be no battle, no death and no resolution before midday. In the
Bellerophon,
the men chalked ‘Victory or Death' on the barrels of their guns. In the
Bucentaure
, the French flagship, the eagle which Napoleon had granted to the ship was paraded from deck to deck accompanied by the admiral.
Vive l'Empereur! Vive l'Amiral!
the sailors cheered as it passed. In the Spanish ships, the crews assembled for prayers and absolution. On the
San Juan Nepocumeno
, the captain, Don Cosme Churruca—a 45-year-old, highly educated disciplinarian and scholar, a hidalgo of the highest class,
El Gran Churruca
—spoke to the men. ‘In the name of the God of Battles, I promise
eternal happiness to all those who die today doing their duty.' Anyone who did not, he went on, would either be ‘shot immediately or, if he escapes my eyes or those of the valiant officers I have the honour to command, bitter remorse will follow the wretch for the rest of his days, in misery and disgrace.' He did not tell them what he had written to a friend before leaving Cadiz: ‘If you hear that my ship has been taken, you can say that I am dead.' Nor the advice he had given to his nephew, then a volunteer on the
San Juan
: ‘Write to your friends that you are going into a battle that will be desperate and bloody. Tell them also that they may be certain of this—that I, for my part, will meet my death there. Let them know that rather than surrender my ship I shall sink her. It is the last duty that an officer owes to his king and country.' Honour for the Spaniard was a matter more of death than of victory.

On board this morning, Churruca told his secondincommand, ‘The fleet is doomed. The French admiral does not understand his business. He has compromised us all.' They could look out to the west and see their fate approaching. The captain stood on his quarterdeck with his telescope fixed to his eye, trained on the masts of the
Bucentaure
, waiting for Villeneuve to respond to the threat which the two approaching columns of the British fleet posed. The British plan was becoming clear. Nelson would throw the weight of his attack on the centre and rear of the Combined Fleet. In the light winds, once the attack had begun, the French and Spanish van would not be able to turn in time to bring their force to bear. Arriving in force, the British would outnumber the centre and rear of the Franco-Spanish fleet. As Churruca understood, there was a perfectly clear tactical move Villeneuve could have decided on as the two British columns approached which would have made the British position much more vulnerable. All Villeneuve had to do was order his van to wear
round and double on the rear squadron. That way they could envelop the British as they attacked. But no signal came and Churruca finally lowered his telescope and walked across the quarterdeck, saying to himself, ‘
Perdidos, perdidos, perdidos.
' Why Villeneuve did not make this signal until far too late and why the Combined van did not take it upon themselves to turn back towards the battle are the two great conundrums of Trafalgar. It may, as Churruca thought, have been mere indecisiveness on the part of Villeneuve. It may have been a reluctance on the part of Dumanoir, the admiral commanding the van, to make an independent decision, without orders from his Commander-in-Chief. This fatal mistake may, in other words, have been a failure of morale on one side and a failure of initiative on the other. In that double weakness lay the roots of the British victory.

Nemesis was on the western horizon. What was it like on the British commander's quarterdeck? No word-by-word record survives of Nelson's behaviour on the morning of Trafalgar, as it does of his tragic end during the afternoon, but an extraordinarily illuminating account of Nelson's behaviour in pursuit of the enemy, also when hard on the chase of the French, survives from five years earlier. Scarcely any document describes more exactly the man he was.

Nelson was in command of a small squadron in the central Mediterranean, on board his flagship the
Foudroyant
, with his friend Captain Sir Edward Berry on the quarterdeck beside him. They found themselves in the same stretch of sea as a French squadron, under Rear-Admiral Perrée, whose flagship
Le Généreux
had been one of the very few French ships-of-the-line to have escaped from the Battle of the Nile. The account was published by one of his lieutenants, George Parsons.

'Ah! An enemy, Mr Stains. I pray God it may be Le Genereux. The signal for a general chase, Sir Ed'ard, (the Nelsonian pronunciation of Edward) make the Foudroyant fly!'

Thus spoke the heroic Nelson; and every exertion that emulation could inspire was used to crowd the squadron with canvas, the Northumberland taking the lead, with the flagship close on her quarter.

'This will not do Sir Ed'ard; it is certainly Le Genereux, and to my flagship she can alone surrender. Sir Ed'ard we must and shall beat the Northumberland.'

'I will do the utmost, my lord; get the engines to work on the sails—hang butts of water to the stays—pipe the hammocks down, and each man place shot in them—slack the stays, knock up the wedges and give the masts play—start off the water, Mr James, and pump the ship.'

Nelson is competitive, goading, and extraordinarily hungry for conflict. Berry's orders are all designed to get extra speed out of the ship and prepare her for battle. ‘Engines' are pumps with which to wet the sails, since damp sails set fairer and will not catch fire in a fight; water butts on the deck are further fire precautions; shot placed in the windward hammock netting on deck helps balance the ship and a level ship sails faster; the slackened stays and masts given play both allow more sail to be set; pumping the ship and draining the water butts lightens the load.

The Foudroyant is drawing a-head, and at last takes the lead in the chase. ‘The Admiral is working his fin (the stump of his right arm), do not cross his hawse I advise you.'

The advice was good, for at that moment Nelson opened furiously on the quartermaster at the conn [wheel]. ‘I'll knock you off your perch, you rascal,
if you are so inattentive. Sir Ed'ard, send your best quartermaster to the weather wheel.'

'A strange sail a-head of the chase!' called the look-out man.

'Youngster, to the mast-head. What! Going without your glass, and be d-d to you? Let me know what she is immediately.'

'A sloop of war or frigate, my lord,' shouted the young signal-midshipman.

'Demand her number.'

'The Success, my lord.'

'Captain Peard; signal to cut off the flying enemy—great odds, though—thirty two small guns to eighty large ones.'

An order which in itself is the mark of a ruthless commander: to set a 32-gun frigate against a ship of the line rated at 74 guns, with extra upper deck armament, was to set a poodle on a bear.

'The Success has hove-to athwart-hawse of the Genereux, and is firing her larboard broadside. The Frenchman has hoisted his tricolour, with a rearadmiral's flag.'

'Bravo—Success,
at her again
!'

'She has wore round my lord, and firing her starboard broadside. It has winged her my lord—her flying kites [her lightest sails] are flying away all together. The enemy is close on the Success, who must receive her tremendous broadside.' The Genereux opens her fire on her little enemy, and every person stands aghast, afraid of the consequences. The smoke clears away, and there is the Success, crippled it is true, but bull-dog like, bearing up after the enemy.

'The signal for the Success to discontinue the action, and come under my stern,' said Lord Nelson; ‘she has done well for her size. Try a shot from the lower deck at her, Sir Ed'ard.'

'It goes over her.'

'Beat to quarters and fire coolly at her masts and yards.'

It might often have been the case that the French aimed for the rigging and the British for the hull, but that was never a universal rule. Where a chasing ship wanted to halt or slow the progress of the enemy, destroying the masts and yards, the source of any motive power, was the obvious option.

Le Genereux at this moment opened her fire on us; and as a shot passed through the mizzen stay sail [i.e. immediately above the quarterdeck], Lord Nelson, patting one of the youngsters on the head, asked him jocularly how he relished the music; and observing something like alarm depicted on his countenance, consoled him with the information that Charles XII [the great 18th-century Swedish warrior king] ran away from the first shot he heard, though afterwards he was called ‘The Great', and deservedly, from his bravery. ‘I, therefore,' said Lord Nelson, ‘hope much from you in future.'

Here the Northumberland opened her fire, and down came the tri-coloured ensign, amid the thunder of our united cannon.

Even in this tiny fragment, his method of command can be seen to run across all the strings: intemperate, charming, theatrical, anxious, impetuous, educative, curt, considerate, indifferent to death and danger, inspirational to those around him and above all fixed on attack and victory.

Rising and falling in the wake of the British flagship in the weather column, behind the
Téméraire,
was the
Neptune
, 98 guns, one of the big and heavy three-deckers which, with the other two
,
formed the battering ram at the head of
Nelson's windward line. The
Neptune
was not a good sailer but capable of dominating and destroying any craft she fell in with, firing plunging shots down through the decks of her victims. She was force, not elegance. The
Neptune
had been part of the British Channel Fleet and for many months had suffered the long, wearing tedium of holding the French locked into their ports. One of the boys on that station, the eleven-year-old Bernard Coleridge, had written to his father and mother:

Indeed we live on beef which has been ten or eleven years in corn and on biscuit which makes your throat cold in eating it owing to the maggots which are very cold when you eat them, like calves-foot jelly or blomonge being very fat indeed. Indeed, I do like this life very much, but I cannot help laughing heartily when I think of sculling about the old cyder-tub in the pond, and Mary Anne Cosserat capsizing into the pond just by the mulberry bush. I hope I shall learn not to swear, and by God's assistance I hope I shall not.

Every ship at Trafalgar, in all ranks, quarters and stations, carried its freight of homesickness. The
Neptune'
s captain was Thomas Fremantle, who had his copy of Pope's
Iliad
in his library on board. There was no doubt that he too was longing for home, quite as much as any powder-monkey. A battle is not only the aggression at the point of contact; it is a meeting of hinterlands. Fremantle's anger, violence, anxiety, tenderness, professionalism and sheer ambition—all constituents of his honour—were also some of the vital factors in battle.

He was not quite 40 years old, and one of Nelson's favourites. As Nelson had been blockading Toulon, he had written to his old friend in the Channel. zI Trust, my dear Fremantle, in God and English valour. We are enough in
England if true to ourselves.' It was the sort of encouragement at which Nelson had no equal. His words, which carry subtly heroic undertones, echoing the famous speech of Henry V in front of Harfleur, transform the king's exhortations into a kind of complicit togetherness: ‘
We
are enough in England if true to ourselves'. That is the Nelson charm in action, a form of combined balm and stimulus for any officer suffering the sapping and demoralising conditions of a blockading fleet.

Off Brest, Fremantle had been forced to stay in his quarters for four days, his head swathed in bandages, his eyes burning from an acute inflammation. To hold the tedium at bay, he took to brewing spruce beer, smoking ‘segars' in his cabin and reading
Family Secrets,
a book of wonderfully consoling pornographic stories given him by the ship's purser. His wife rapidly sent out a set of Shakespeare to fill the gap and some of Cobbett's diatribes against the wickedness of the French. In thanking her, Fremantle described how his goat had fallen down a hatchway and died, depriving him of his daily glass of milk. He asked her to send him out some toothpaste with the next set of letters. The air of his private correspondence is more exhausted than heroic. Nelson's undoubted role was as a goad to honour, to lift these men to a higher conception of themselves and of their duty.

Like most officers, Fremantle had been at sea since he was twelve and he was in some ways fed up with the life he had led for almost 30 years. The strain and the tedium, the impositions of duty, were of a kind unknown to those who stayed ashore. In the summer of 1803, the last time he had been at home, he had not wanted to leave England again. ‘He really goes to sea quite
à contre coeur
,' his wife had written in her diary,
'
as he was now so comfortably settled here.' He had wept at dinner on the evening before he left and had to leave the room to conceal his tears.

Despite this intense emotionality—and Englishmen in 1805 had more immediate access to their emotions than at any time before or since—Fremantle was no Nelson. He was, at least on the surface, and unlike the admiral, a strong, tough, stocky man, with an intimidating rather than a persuasive presence, but was certainly capable, when required, of a kind of charm. In the summer of 1796, as a 30-year-old captain in Nelson's Mediterranean squadron, he had been ordered to take on board his frigate, the
Inconstant
, then at anchor off Leghorn, an English family, the Wynnes, who were threatened by the French armies then sweeping down into Italy. Fremantle was already the hero of a famous action against a French 84-gun ship, the
Ça Ira,
when quite alone in the
Inconstant
, with 38 guns; he had tacked to and fro behind her, bringing first one broadside to bear, then the other, on the French man-of-war's stern, like a boxer with his jabs, all the time staying out of reach of the French ship's massive broadsides, any one of which would have sunk the
Inconstant
in a few minutes. Nelson loved him, one of the few captains he referred to as ‘one of my darling children', as much for Fremantle's capacity to apply unbridled violence as for any softer human qualities. He was a member of the Band of Brothers.