Nelson: Britannia's God of War (25 page)

Nelson was sufficiently recovered to return to the deck to see the spectacle, and immediately sent his last remaining boat to save lives.
This instinctive, humane action disproves the silly notion that he was a bloodthirsty killer, a mere butcher of men, dominated by hatred and blood lust. Around n o’clock the two magazines on
L
’
Orient
exploded, a stunning
son
et
lumière
to mark the defeat of the French fleet. The concussion, noise and spectacular pall of smoke suspended the fighting for at least fifteen minutes; those further away in Alexandria saw before they heard. Debris rained down on the ships of both fleets, setting fire to sails and damaging rigging. Captain Casabianca and his ten-year-old son, the famous ‘boy who stood on the burning deck’, were drowned, but Chief of Staff Rear Admiral Ganteaume was saved.

The French had lost their flagship and their admiral, although the treasure of the Knights of Malta had been landed by Bonaparte to fund his campaign and occupation of Egypt. Plunder, rather than the island or the harbour, had drawn him to Valletta. Nelson had lost a tremendous prize, a prestige vessel which had defied him as the
Sans
Culotte
back in 1795, and would have been a fitting trophy for his cabinet. Instead he made do with her lightning conductor, and a little later a smart example of carpenter’s work, knocked up from her mainmast. He had also lost his share of the prize money for the ship. Unlike some of his contemporaries Nelson was unlucky with money.

Not that such thoughts would have troubled him. While ten French battleships and a frigate had been taken, destroyed or run ashore, there were still three undamaged battleships, and three frigates at the end of the line, commanded by Rear Admiral Pierre Villeneuve. Villeneuve spent the night paralysed by uncertainty: he had no orders to act and no standing instruction to reinforce the van. As Brueys made no signal, he sat still. To move against the wind would have been difficult, and dangerous under fire. The battle petered out around midnight, with only a few shots being exchanged before 4 a.m., when the sun came up. The men were so tired they simply slept where they fell, alongside their guns, or slumped over the capstan bars. Once he could see the situation Nelson ordered his least damaged ships down to continue the battle: as he had said when criticising Hotham’s action, it was not enough to win, it was necessary to annihilate. The nearest of the French ships, the seventy-four
Timoleon
, was soon crippled by a well-directed fire at medium-range, and after further indecision Villeneuve elected to escape, getting away at midday with two battleship and two frigates. Hood in the
Zealous
was the only ship in a position to block his path, but after exchanging fire on opposing courses Nelson called her back, unwilling
to risk a reverse at this stage.
Tonnant
and
Timoleon
covered the escape by remaining in action for the rest of the day, the latter being deliberately burnt after surrendering.

*

Having won the battle, and surpassed the standard of victory set by previous generations, Nelson now had to clear up the battlefield, bury the dead, attend to the living, patch up his ships, repair his prizes and as soon as possible turn the battle to strategic account. However, before attending to any of those concerns he ordered a public thanksgiving for the victory at 2 p.m., before the last of the French ships had surrendered. This was not mere form, but unusual and heartfelt: Nelson had no doubt his God had preordained the victory. It was equally characteristic of Nelson to share the credit even for his greatest victory with his subordinates; his captains responded, in turn, by assembling on the
Orion
and agreeing to buy a sword and a portrait of their commander, and to set up a Nile Club to remind them of the occasion. Nelson had won their hearts, as well as a battle.

Good discipline and the support of his captains remained critical: he had two fleets to repair, a large body of prisoners to control and no friendly base closer than Gibraltar. The repairs were aided by stripping some of the prizes, especially those already ashore, to supplement his stores. Two British ships,
Majestic
and
Bellerophon
, were totally dismasted, and most of the rest had been damaged aloft; the French ships were almost all bereft of masts. Until they could be repaired they were perfectly immobile on a hostile coast, controlled by the French. With little food, and many wounded prisoners, Nelson started sending the French sailors ashore, only keeping the senior officers and those unwounded officers who refused to give their parole. On 12 August he ordered Saumarez to take five of the best British ships, along with the two most badly damaged, and five prizes to Gibraltar. They sailed on 14 August, but made slow time.
Culloden
had finally floated free on the 5th after an epic struggle. Anyone other than Troubridge would have given up: she required urgent dockyard attention. Nelson decided to accompany her to Naples, hoping to repair the shattered rigging of his flagship at the same time.

A public dispatch announcing the victory was addressed to St Vincent and sent on 5 August on board the
Leander
, which was relatively undamaged. Berry – brave but inconsistent, and not the best man to run a flagship – was sent to gather the laurels of taking it to
Court, a knighthood being customary on such occasions, while Hardy was promoted into the flagship. The brief despatch opened: ‘Almighty God has blessed His Majesty’s arms in the late battle, by a Great Victory …’ and set out the basic facts. The fleet had been ‘absolutely irresistible’ and no words could add to the glory of all concerned.
³⁸

Rewards were quickly given. Lieutenant Capel from the flagship took over the
Mutine
: he was a good officer and as Spencer’s nominee particularly well connected. More significantly Lieutenant Cuthbert, who had fought the
Majestic
so well after Westcott was killed, retained the command to await St Vincent’s decision. Every first lieutenant could expect to be promoted for the victory, while their captains would receive other distinctions. The men would get prize and head money for every ship taken and every man they contained at the outset of the fight.

Those who died of their wounds in the weeks that followed were buried ashore on Aboukir Island, secured to provide shore exercise for the men. It had not been an easy victory: casualties amounted to almost nine hundred officers and men, around a tenth of the force engaged, with 172 of them fatalities. The French fought hard, and at close quarters their determination made them dangerous opponents. Losses were very unevenly distributed. Hood’s
Zealous
lost only one killed and seven wounded,
Bellerophon
49 and 147 respectively, and
Majesties
list was almost identical.

Having easily penetrated the ultimate destination of the French force, Nelson wasted little time in sending an officer to India, via Alexandretta, Baghdad and Basra, arriving at Bombay on 21 October. The news arrived only two weeks after that of Bonaparte’s landing in Egypt. From Calcutta the British Governor General Lord Mornington declared, ‘I cannot doubt that this success must awaken Europe.’
³⁹
India was safe, Tippoo was already dead, the Royal Navy had occupied the Red Sea – Indian forces would help to clear the French out of Egypt. Here Nelson had been in step with the Cabinet, which had accepted Henry Dundas’s argument in early June, reinforcing the subcontinent with troops and money, placing a naval force in the Red Sea, and giving orders to attack Tippoo if he showed any sign of encouraging the French. While Mornington, and his younger brother Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, destroyed the threat posed by Tippoo’s regime in Mysore, Nelson had shattered Bonaparte’s dream of conquest.

The first fruits of the newly won British control of the Egyptian coast were a collection of French despatches and letters that revealed Bonaparte’s ambition ‘to be the Washington of his country’. These would be printed, as part of the propaganda offensive against the French, being both divisive and despondent.
⁴⁰

Though Nelson told Fanny, some ten days after the battle, that he was much better than might be expected,
⁴¹
professional correspondents heard a very different story. The head wound had left him sick and distracted, and he was considering handing over the command to Troubridge. The arrival of orders from St Vincent on 14 August changed the picture. The information that the British were already changing their focus to offensive operations, notably the seizure of Minorca, persuaded him to give up the hopeless struggle to refit the remaining French battleships. Two were hard aground, while the
Guerrière
was an old hulk that had been transformed into a picturesque ruin by close-range broadsides. They were not worth the time and trouble required to repair them, but to destroy them would deprive the men of their prize value. Nelson understood there were more important issues than money, and burnt them, along with the half-submerged
Sérieuse
, although he wrote to Spencer and the Admiralty asking that the men be given their share. He would have burnt two more of the prizes for the same reasons, but regarded the other four ships as ‘a treasure to our navy’.
⁴²
The
Franklin
, renamed HMS
Canopus
, became the model for a whole class of post-war ships, and remained in service until the late 1840s.

Nelson now divided his remaining six battleships, leaving the three in best condition, with three of the belatedly recovered frigates under Hood, to blockade the Egyptian coast, open links with the Turks and cut French communications. Leaving the newly historic bay on 19 August Nelson headed for Naples. These three ship squadrons were more than equal to anything the French could now muster, and demonstrated the value of annihilating the enemy. Naval power could be spread across the Mediterranean, to cut off the French, encourage the Neapolitans and reinforce the fleet off Cadiz.

On passage, Nelson turned his thoughts to the wider war: he had written off the French army, and hoped his success would encourage others to take up the struggle. A few bomb vessels would complete the destruction of the French transports in Alexandria, and he hoped that Naples or Turkey would provide them. The Turks declared war, but
were less forthcoming with such specialist equipment. Naples was waiting on the Austrians, who were also waiting, although it was not entirely clear why.

The voyage to Naples was long, hampered by the slow sailing of the
Culloden
and the elements’ continuing grudge against the
Vanguard
. Hit by a squall off Stromboli on 15 September she lost her foremast, part of the main topmast and the jib-boom. The crippled admiral arrived for his triumph at Naples in a suitably crippled flagship, towed into the harbour on 22 September.