Napoleon in Egypt (27 page)

Nelson had his reasons for such precipitate action: the steady northwest wind which was blowing gave his ships the advantage of a following wind as they entered Aboukir Bay. If he anchored overnight, the French would have time to prepare, and the wind was liable to change; the French might even use this to slip away undercover of darkness, and then he would have to begin the chase all over again. Now at last he knew where they were, even if their defensive anchorage meant that they were in a stronger position. He was also undeterred by the fact that his squadron was scattered and not in any close battle formation: his captains could be relied upon to remedy this of their own accord. The frequent meetings which Nelson had called with his captains during the previous weeks, when he had sought their advice, had not just been exercises in shifting the blame for his lack of success; they had also been used to rehearse battle plans in case they did happen upon the French fleet. Nelson placed great trust in his captains: he had implicit faith in their seamanship, their bravery, and most of all their initiative. These were the qualities which had enabled him to achieve success in battle and rise above commanders who stuck to the traditional methods of engagement at sea; and Nelson looked for such innovative qualities in his captains. In his view, “the boldest moves are the safest,” and his guiding principle was to always “engage the enemy more closely.” This required a steady nerve, amidst the mayhem and death of close-range encounter, but it often ensured a quick, decisive victory.

At three
P.M.
Nelson issued his orders, and the
Vanguard
ran up the signal: “Prepare for battle.” His squadron continued before the wind, moving at around four knots, and an hour or so later, before the ships were rounding the point to enter the bay, he issued a further order: “Prepare to anchor with the sheet cable in abaft and springs, etc.”
^*
5
This order would be acted upon when the British ships came alongside the line of anchored French ships. The British could anchor in parallel with the French, but the “springs” would give them a certain maneuverability, so that they could direct their fire at the weakest parts of the enemy ships, such as the bows and the sterns. Then it would become a slogging match, with the ships of both sides firing their cannons, blasting each other at short range, with much splintered timber and carnage amidst the cannon smoke and collapsing rigging. There was no rigid preconceived battle plan and Nelson would issue only the minimum of simple commands; his captains would know what was required, and how to act in concert, or seize the initiative.

Nelson took dinner early, along with his officers. Raising his glass in a toast, he promised them that the morrow would see him bound for the House of Lords or Westminster Abbey: made a lord or given a hero’s burial—there was no thought of defeat. Meanwhile, above their heads the sailors’ bare feet padded over the decks and scampered up the rigging in well-rehearsed drill as they prepared for battle. As with his captains, there was little need for orders: by now every man had spent many long months (or even years) at sea, and each knew his task—their seamanship was second nature. (Years later, when Napoleon was being taken into exile aboard the
Bellerophon
—which also happened to be one of Nelson’s squadron at Aboukir—he would comment on the silence and minimum of shouted orders as the ship got under way: this was not the way it was done in the French navy.)

The qualities of seamanship amongst the British “jack tars,” with their deck-hardened feet, rope-hardened hands and tarred pigtails, may have been encouraged by Nelson, but such qualities were also enforced by strict discipline. Nelson’s men may have felt deeply for their brave and compassionate leader, but order was maintained nonetheless with a heavy hand in many of his ships, where conditions could sometimes be as harsh as those prevailing before the Nore and Spithead mutinies. In such cases the jack tars belowdecks often hated and feared their officers more than they did their enemy. Any man who stepped out of line faced the lash: a vicious public whipping whose screams of agony and flayed flesh were compulsorily witnessed by the entire crew, as a horrific warning. On the very morning the squadron sighted Alexandria, three men aboard the
Bellerophon
were given twelve lashes apiece for drunkenness. Yet things were not all that they appeared belowdecks: lessons had been learned from the mutinies, and conditions were not entirely harsh—for instance, it is known that several ships in Nelson’s squadron had women aboard. And these were not officers’ wives. A seaman aboard the
Goliath
mentions there being several women: “the gunner’s wife . . . one woman belonging to [i.e., from] Leith, [another] belonged to Edinburgh” and others.
⁶

After Nelson had finished his early dinner he retired briefly to his cabin. He was suffering from a severe toothache, and he wished no one to mistake his state for pre-battle nerves, which would by now have been afflicting every man (and woman) in every crew throughout the squadron. Nelson may not have been willing to contemplate defeat, but he had been willing to anticipate his own death: naval battles involved much slaughter and maiming, and such was the nature of the conflict that no man’s fate lay in his own hands. The dead were in many ways lucky; the wounded or maimed frequently died in agony or under the attentions of the harassed shipboard surgeon, who operated as best he could amidst the mayhem. (For obvious reasons, naval surgeons were popularly known as “sawbones.”) In view of this atmosphere of universal trepidation, all hands were kept especially busy before an engagement, to keep their minds off what lay ahead.

As Nelson stood in his cabin all but whimpering with pain, across the squadron the men completed the order to “clear decks for action.” Belowdecks bulkhead partitions were taken down and livestock removed to clear the way for the smooth operation of the guns, while above decks nets were rigged to protect the crew from falling masts and rigging. Sand was scattered across the well-scrubbed planks to prevent feet from slipping in the blood, and four lighted lanterns were hung in a line from the mizzen mast to identify the ship after dark as British.
^*
As the ships turned to enter Aboukir Bay, the marine drummers “beat to quarters,” calling the men to drop all tasks and run to their battle stations. A sailor on board one of the leading ships vividly recalled: “The sun was just setting as we went into the bay, and a red and fiery sun it was.”
⁷

Nelson mounted to the deck of the
Vanguard
, and passed his glass slowly along the line of French ships riding at anchor in the bay ahead; as an eyewitness remembered it: “The enemy’s line presented a most formidable appearance.”
⁸
Nelson noted that the ships in the French van, at the head of the line, appeared to be the least prepared for action, though they were heavily reinforced by the awesome three gundecks of the flagship
L’Orient
in the middle of the line. There was now only need for two further orders: at four
P.M.
Vanguard
ran up the signal “I mean to attack the enemy’s van and centre”; half an hour later Nelson flagged the second order: “Form line of battle as convenient.”
⁹

The official plan of the battle shows the British squadron forming in line for the attack: the reality was slightly different. Both Nelson and his captains were keen to engage the enemy before nightfall, so there was no waiting for the slower ships to catch up and form a proper line. The
Culloden
had earlier been towing a captured French merchantman, which had made her lag some seven miles behind, before she was ordered to cut free her prize tow and try to catch up with the others.

As the British ships that had entered the bay raced to engage the French, a single brilliant observation passed simultaneously through the mind of Nelson and that of Captain Foley aboard the
Goliath
, which was ahead of the others and already in musket range of the
Guerrier
, the leading ship of the French line. Nelson realized that “where there was room for an enemy’s ship to swing, there was room for one of ours to anchor.”
¹⁰
In plain terms, he saw that the French ships were anchored in line by the bow, which allowed them to swing in an arc, with the wind or the current. This meant that there must have been a deep passage beyond them, on their shore side, so that they did not ground on the shoals when they swung at anchor. There was thus room for British ships to pass, and anchor,
inside
the French line as well as outside it, allowing it to be fired on from both sides. Since the French were unprepared for attack from the shore side, their guns were liable to be unmanned and unprepared, and it soon transpired that the gun ports on the shore side of the
Guerrier
were not even open. In fact, the lower deck guns were heaped over with storage boxes and other stowed lumber.

But seeing all this was one thing: acting upon it was another matter altogether. Nelson watched from the
Vanguard
as the sun sank behind the fort at the end of the Aboukir peninsula, observing the
Goliath
glide forward across the bow of the
Guerrier
on the light breeze, moving slowly towards the line of waves breaking against the shallow rocks of the shoals. There was no need for communication, even had this been possible in the rapidly growing dimness. Nelson was fully aware of the brave and dangerous nature of what Foley was undertaking. According to one member of the squadron: “No one in the fleet had the least knowledge of the bay; nor was any known chart of it existing, except an ill-drawn plan found on board the [French] vessel captured on 29 June, which had been presented to the Admiral [Nelson], but from that nothing could be made out.”
¹¹
Foley had to guess at the width of the deep passage beyond the French line: a single mistake as he navigated his course, and he would run his ship aground on the underwater rocks.

In the rapidly gathering darkness of the Egyptian night, which fell with tropical suddenness, the
Goliath
, followed by four other British ships of the line, made for the inside channel. The skilled leadsman at the bow of each ship took soundings with his leadline, his voice singing out through the darkness at regular intervals, calling the depths. As their sails guided them, their sheet anchors astern held them on their curving course, preventing their sterns from swinging round on to the shoals. Had the French guns been manned and run out through the ports on the shore side of the
Guerrier
, the
Goliath
would now have been a sitting target as it swung, its own guns not yet aligned for attack. But Foley’s gamble had paid off—at least as far as the enemy’s guns were concerned. The
Goliath
swung, and fired a broadside at the
Guerrier
’s flank, receiving no reply. At this point Foley’s luck broke: the
Goliath
’s sheet anchor dragged, and he could do nothing to stop his ship drifting up to the second French anchored ship, the
Conquérant
. Yet this was no longer of consequence to the overall maneuver. It was now clear there was a way through, and three of the following British ships—the
Zealous
, the
Orion
and the
Audacious
—soon passed along the inside channel. The move had taken the French completely by surprise: even their shore batteries were not manned. It seems a French frigate anchored in the shallows did manage to fire at
Orion
, but fire was returned by the
Goliath
and “in a moment she went to the bottom, and her crew were seen running into the rigging.”
¹²

Only one of the British ships, the
Culloden
, failed to negotiate a passage into the channel, running ashore on shoals close to the island beyond the peninsula, leaving Captain Troubridge and his crew as spectators of the ensuing battle. Even so, they were able to serve some purpose. The squadron had two stragglers, the
Swiftsure
and the
Alexander
, which had earlier been sent ahead to reconnoiter Alexandria harbor and were now attempting to catch up and rejoin the squadron. These were able to use the lights of the stranded
Culloden
as a beacon to guide them around the shoals into the bay, where they sailed forward to join Nelson.

As the
Goliath
rounded the van of the French line, Nelson led his main squadron towards the seaward side of the line; these ships now executed a turn so that they fell into line with the French. Nelson’s ships furled their sails and cast anchor, taking up their stations in close range of the enemy and firing their first broadsides. The leading French ships now found themselves caught between two lines of British ships, and the slugging match began, cannon for cannon, broadside for broad side, wreaking hideous damage.

But it quickly became clear that all was not going according to plan for the British. Amongst Nelson’s line, the
Bellerophon
had dropped anchor too late, so that it came to a halt directly opposite the French flagship
L’Orient
. The
Bellerophon
’s two gundecks, with more than thirty cannon overall, were no match for the towering three decks and more than sixty cannon of
L’Orient
. The
Bellerophon
’s masts and cables, decks and gunports were quickly being blown to smithereens by the French firepower. In the midst of the darkness, smoke, blinding flashes, cannon roars, and cries of men, a third of the
Bellerophon
’s 600 crew were soon put out of action: dead, dying or seriously wounded.