Authors: Barry Unsworth
The French ships are set out now, all thirteen of them, anchored in their curving line. Their commander, Admiral de Brueys, whose last day of life this is, is an experienced seaman, a former royalist officer, reinstated by Napoleon. He has fought the British before, during the American War of Independence. He has three 80-gun ships, the
Franklin
, the
Tonnant
, and the
Guillaume Tell
, and one of 120 guns, his flagship, the
Orient
. For ships as big as this, Alexandria Harbour is rather too narrow; he is afraid of jamming at the harbour mouth. So he has brought the ships eastward, here to Aboukir, and anchored them in a tight defensive line protected behind by the shoals and sandbanks of the bay.
I always used the top left-hand corner of my table for this battle, a triangular space taking up almost half of the total surface. The right angle formed by the sides of the table represents the arms of the bay,
with the peninsula of Aboukir to the north and the Nile delta to the south. The French line curves shallowly outwards toward the open sea, with the
Guerrier
in the van, the
Timoléon
in the rear, and the mighty
Orient
in the exact centre. They are anchored,
but only by the bow
; they swing with the current, there are spaces between them. An error on the part of de Brueys, yes, but who would have supposed Horatio would try to pass through, risk the shallows inside the bay, notoriously treacherous? And at night, in darkness, without maps!
Other errors the French admiral has made, all springing from the assumption that his rear is secure. Believing that the attack must come from seaward, he has placed his strongest ships in the centre, his weakest and oldest in the van. And he has failed to ensure that his leading ship, the
Guerrier
, is anchored right up against the shoals, so as to prevent our ships from passing inside, between his line and the shore.
Five twenty-two by my watch. There has been time to prepare for battle since that first sighting of the French, ample time—that leisurely preparation for mortal risk; as always I was troubled and excited by it as I set out the British ships in their rough grouping on the seaward side. Rarely can men have prepared to face death with more deliberation, more knowledge of it in every heart. The port lids are opened and the guns run out; hammocks are rolled up and packed in nets along the bulwarks as a shield against splinters and musket shot; the furled sails are wetted to reduce risk of fire; damp sand is strewn on the gundecks to prevent bare feet from slipping on blood. The gun crews, stripped to the waist, stand by the lines of cannon; the surgeons wait in the cockpit; the marines, in full uniform, troop with their muskets to the upper deck, watched by their lieutenants with drawn swords.
Our ships are fortunate in the wind; a brisk northwesterly fills
their sails as they bear down from the north. As they approach, they form a line in obedience to your general signal, number 31:
Form line of battle ahead and astern of the admiral as most convenient
.
At a distance, from the open sea, the French line looks impregnable, set in a convex curve outward from the shoals, the sea behind seething white as it breaks against the sandbanks. The ten British seventy-fours, hauled sharp to the wind, are already in the shallower water, sounding as they go, fifteen fathoms, thirteen, eleven, nine … One is out of action already; Troubridge, in the
Culloden
, has run aground. Here he is, in a frenzy of frustration, at the tip of the shoal stretching east from the bay. I try not to think further of Troubridge; thoughts of him distress me, renew that sickness of doubt, inappropriate on the eve of such a glorious victory. Troubridge was one of the two captains—Ball was the other—that you sent to Cardinal Ruffo in Naples the following July, with your assurance that you would not oppose the embarkation of the rebels …
But now you are innocent still. You scan the French line with the eye of a commander set on immediate attack. Landwards, behind them, the sun is setting in the magnificent summer dustglow of the Levant. Their masts and yards are fiery, they ride on a molten sea. You see their weakness together with their beauty. You will throw your whole weight on their van and crush it before help can come. But the shoals are dangerously close. The
Zealous
is still in the lead, sounding as she goes—eight fathoms, seven …
The last moment for choice is approaching. You can stay outside, order your captains to anchor two by two opposite the enemy ships. This is what de Brueys expects. You can break through the gaps in the French line and attack from the inside. But how can you be sure there is enough water?
It is exactly 5:40
P.M.
You give the signal for close action. I pour out my first glass. Now it comes, the moment of pure and perfect opportunity.
Can we outflank the French by rounding his line and attacking from inside? From our flagship, here in the centre of the line, we shout across to Hood in the
Zealous
. Can he take his ship round the end of the enemy line? Hood shouts back that he will try. So to the
Zealous
falls the honour of being the first to round the point of the shoals. But I have been too hasty—it is still only six minutes to six; I must wait six more minutes before taking her round. I have been rather hasty with the wine too, in my excitement; the glass is almost empty, and I am not due for another till 6:28, when the battle is joined.
These are the last moments of the day, before the swift descent of that southern darkness. I have turned off the overhead light, left on only the lamps at the ends of the table. This is the poised moment—everything is at risk; we are entering a strange bay at nightfall, without pilots, without reliable charts, moving in narrow waters among invisible reefs and shoals. The progress of the
Zealous
is slow because of her need to take continual soundings. She is overtaken now by Captain Foley in the
Goliath
. Foley has made a deduction and acted on it with a boldness worthy of his great commander. If the French have anchored their ships by the bow only, there must be water enough to allow for the swing. If there is water enough to allow for the swing, there must be water enough for another ship to pass inside.
Impeccable logic. The
Goliath
sweeps into the lead. Here she is. It is 6:28, time for another glass. The enemy have hoisted their colours and opened fire. Foley has crossed the bows of the
Guerrier
, raking her with a broadside as he does so, then passing on to anchor here, on the inner quarter of the
Conquérant
, next French ship in line. Hood takes up his station opposite the
Guerrier
. Our ships follow round in order of sail—the
Orion
, the
Theseus
, the
Audacious
. As the fires of that sunset are quenched in the sea, the five leading British ships are all inside and at closest possible quarters, bringing a concentrated fire to bear on the enemy van, the more deadly as the French
can make no adequate reply. Their guns on the shoreward side have not been cleared for action, they are cluttered with rope and tackle and mess furniture—another disastrous consequence of the French assumption that attack was bound to come from the open sea.
Our flagship, the
Vanguard
, is the sixth ship to come into action, the first to anchor on the seaward side. Here she is, abreast and within pistol shot of the
Spartiate
. Now she is hard pressed, fired upon by both the
Spartiate
and the
Aquilon
, next ship in the French line. The
Minotaur
, Captain Louis, relieves us, ranging up to draw off the
Aquilon’s
fire.
Seven
P.M.
Night has fallen in a thunder of guns. In a pall of smoke, lit only by gunfire, the five seventy-four’s of the French van, undermanned and able to fire only on the starboard side, are being beaten into helplessness by eight of ours settled like a swarm about them. My lamps cannot match the glimmer and flicker of the gunfire and the lurid flaring of the smoke, and my room is hushed, only the slight sounds of my miniature hulls scraping on the glass; but my table is beautiful, reflections glinting on the dark surface, changing with the movements of my hands and arms as I direct the ships.
The eighth and ninth in our line, coming into position opposite the enemy centre, sustain the heaviest damage. In the smoke-hung confusion, the
Bellerophon
misses her chosen foe, the
Franklin
, first of the French eighties—at present being very gallantly attacked by one of our frigates, the fifty-gun
Leander
—and fetches up abreast of the mighty
Orient
, a ship with double her armament. Within fifteen minutes her masts have been entirely shot away. She veers out of the line, completely disabled. I leave her here, over on the lee side of the bay. The
Majestic
also suffers heavy loss, her captain, Westcott, being fatally wounded in the throat by a musket ball.
But we are gaining. Our ships are like a swarm—it is as if they are feasting on carcasses. No, not carcasses, bodies still twitching. Always
the same tactic: pass along the line, gather on either side, concentrate the fire.
Now, with battle fully joined, comes the wound. You are standing on the quarterdeck with Berry by your side when a flying piece of scrap shot slashes your brow to the bone. A flap of flesh falls over your good eye, and the blood flows thickly down, blinding you. Berry catches you as you fall.
I am killed
, he hears you say.
Remember me to my wife
.
I see you as you are carried down to the cockpit, I see the lamps down there, swaying with the roll of the ship and thud of the gun carriages. There are seventy or so men already waiting there, in that shuddering heat, many of them gravely injured. You do not allow the surgeons to be told you are among them. Still blinded, your face a mask of blood, you wait your turn.
The surgeon probes the wound, pronounces the damage not serious—the visible damage, that is. You are in total darkness; you send for the chaplain and dictate messages for Lady Nelson and for Louis, the captain of the
Minotaur
, who relieved your flagship from the dual fire of the enemy.
Your support prevented me from being obliged to haul out of the line
. This was before your wound had been dressed, while you lay waiting for the dressing. You could not see. That you should think of Fanny at such a time was natural enough. But a message of thanks to one of your captains …
Once again, as I thought of you lying there, that familiar prickle of tears came to my eyes. How could this behaviour of yours be named? It was something more than courage or endurance. It was
grace
, springing like a flower from the hard ground of duty.
Still blind, you hear cheering from above. The youthful Berry enters with what he announces as a “pleasing intelligence”—one of the great understatements of history, this must be regarded, considering that he brings news of the most notable British victory at sea since
the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The French fleet is shattered. The
Spartiate
has altogether ceased to fire; the
Aquilon
and the
Peuple Souverain
have struck their colours; the
Orient
, the
Tonnant
, and the
Heureux
, though not yet captured, are no longer able to make effective reply to our shot.
News to bring you back to life. Time for my third glass. Your brow stitched and bandaged, you are settled in the bread room in the hold, below the water line, as far removed as possible from the din of battle. You send for your secretary to take down a despatch to Earl Spencer, the first lord of the Admiralty. But the secretary is in a state of nervous collapse; at the sight of you, blinded by bandages and working the stump of your arm in a fury of impatience, he loses his nerve altogether and cannot write. There and then I dismiss him from my service. I push up the bandage, take the pen myself.
My Lord, Almighty God has blessed His Majesty’s arms in the late Battle
…
I am interrupted again by Berry, this time to report that the
Orient
is on fire. The surgeon has ordered me to stay quiet, but with the usual disobedience I demand to be helped up on deck. The night is soft and warm, thickly hung with smoke. A reddish glow is creeping over the expanse of the bay. My head throbs and aches, it hurts me to focus my eye, but as the glow strengthens I can distinguish the colours of the ships, make out the situation of the battle, see the leaping flames on the poop of the French flagship. I tell Berry to do what he can to save as many as possible of the crew. At the same time I give orders that our shot should be concentrated on the blaze so as to hinder the enemy from bringing it under control. Many of the
Orient
’s guns are now disabled, but some on the lower deck are still firing, the French gun crews serving them until the fire gets too close and they are driven off. I see the flames begin to race up her tarred rigging, flare blue along her newly painted sides. I know that the flames will be seeking paths downward, towards her powder magazine.
What I do not see—what no-one in the British fleet sees—is the appalling fate of the French wounded, trapped belowdecks with their surgeons, all burned alive together. Or Admiral de Brueys, who had made all the wrong assumptions, with both his legs shot away and tourniquets tied around the stumps, seated on a chair on his blazing deck, still facing his tormentors, still shouting orders to maintain fire, until another shot cuts him in two and puts him out of his misery.
A competent commander—not brilliant, not like you. The end he made has been a recurrent nightmare since I first read of it at the age of fifteen. Thoughts of it now wrenched me from the action. I was here, this was me in the basement, reaching for my glass. You were there on the deck of the
Vanguard
, pushing up your bandages for a sight of your beautiful, desolate victory.