On the night he was pressed, Peter found himself aboard a receiving ship lying out in the bay. He had been stripped, and the ship’s doctor, after a cursory inspection, pronounced him sea worthy. Then they took him down into the hold.
He knew what to expect. Over the top of the hold was a grate. Above he could see the shadowy outlines of four marines with loaded muskets standing guard. Around him in the cramped space were, he estimated, thirty other men, some of them taken the day before. The hold was now so full that all the men were pressed together. The stench was terrible. In his pocket he still had the ring he had been carrying. It would not be long before someone tried to get that. He took it out and, in the darkness, slipped it over his little finger. It stuck at the joint, but, though it made him wince, he pushed it over. “Now,” he thought, “they’ll have to cut my finger off to get that.” What would follow next? They would probably be taken, he guessed, to rendezvous with the other tenders. There would be all manner of recruits: experienced sailors taken from merchant vessels, sometimes quasi-legally, raw recruits like himself, and ‘Lord Mayor’s men’ – those who had joined the navy to escape from the law or other misdeeds. Then they could be distributed anywhere in the fleet. If they were lucky the pressed men might join a ship with a kindly commander. If not . . . a cruel captain could exact terrible punishments for all kinds of offences: he had heard of men being given seven hundred lashes, or worse, being keel-hauled: dragged under the ship on a rope so that, if you did not drown, the barnacles on the hull ripped the flesh off your body.
It was while he contemplated these horrors, and the fact that he had lost his home and his bride, that he heard a voice above remark.
“These are all to be put ashore at Buckler’s Hard. There’s a new ship there.”
He knew Buckler’s Hard. It was a small inlet a few miles along the coast from Christchurch, where the heathland at the southern end of the New Forest ran down to the sea. There was a dockyard there where they built ships.
And it was there, praise be to God, that he joined the
Euryalus
.
The
Euryalus
was a small vessel: a thirty-six gun frigate with three masts: a trim, speedy little vessel, designed by Sir William Ruse, surveyor of the King’s Navy, commissioned in 1803: her captain, the Hon Henry Blackwood. From the moment that Peter Wilson walked on board, he knew he was in luck.
Being only a frigate, the
Euryalus
had none of the impersonality of the huge hulks with seventy-four or ninety-eight guns. Being newly commissioned, she had no bad tradition of cruelty, which some of the older ships had. And her captain was a kind and dashing figure.
“You’re in luck with this one,” one of the seamen told him. “Lucky as if you’d got Nelson himself.”
He learned his seamanship fast. It came to him naturally; and apart from the occasional blow from the bo’sun’s rattan – which was more a genial reminder of his authority than a punishment, he escaped harm. He learned the menial duties of swabbing the deck and the endless, hand-tearing work on the canvas, but he loved to swarm up the rigging and out along the arms, feeling the salt breeze in his face as he waited the order to unfurl the sails.
Because his sight was excellent, and he loved to be up there, he was often sent aloft to act as lookout.
One other circumstance had made him into a kind of mascot amongst the ship’s company. When he first stood in line with the other recruits and the master demanded his name, he answered:
“Wilson, sir.” Then he added, he did not know why, unless it was to remind himself of his home: “Of Christchurch.”
There was a roar of laughter.
“Damme,” cried the master, “not another one.” And so he learned that the ship contained a young midshipman, Robert Wilson, son of Sir Wykeham Wilson, whose estate lay just outside Christchurch. He gazed at the boy curiously – several years his junior, but an officer of course. He had only seen Sir Wykeham once or twice and never seen his son before. He was a tall, dark, good-looking young fellow who seemed to have an easy way both with the other midshipmen and the men. However, he did not suppose that the young gentleman would ever address a word to him, unless it was an order. He was surprised to be proved wrong. That very afternoon, the boy strode over to him.
“We Wilsons of Christchurch must stick together,” he said with a pleasant grin. And from that day, whenever the young midshipman was on duty and he was up aloft as the lookout, he would make a point of crying up: “What do you see, Wilson of Christchurch?” And this harmless, good-hearted joke somehow made his exile from home seem a little less bitter.
It was a happy ship. Though Captain Blackwood never addressed him personally, he was conscious of his kindly and professional rule at all times. “The men of the
Euryalus
eat well,” the men said. But once, when they had been long at sea and supplies were running low, an old seaman remarked to Peter: “Mark this, young Wilson: Blackwood sees to it his officers eat no better than we do when supplies are short. Not many do that.”
He was often lonely. But he did not despair. Every day when he got up, and again, when he went to sleep, he would finger the wedding ring on his little finger and murmur: “She’ll be there, when I get back.” It comforted him.
The frigate was kept continually busy. First they were employed off the coast of Ireland; then under Admiral Keith, watching the port of Boulogne.
“For God’s sake don’t fall asleep when you watch up there,” Robert Wilson said to him once in a serious tone. “If ever Boney gets his army out of there, you and I will never see Christchurch under English rule again.”
But it was in the summer of 1805 that events really began to move quickly.
The huge French fleet under Villeneuve was poised to strike, but first it had to try to shake off the British. Villeneuve got out to open sea; then he made a feint towards the West Indies. Nelson followed. Villeneuve doubled back. It was a game of cat and mouse. Nelson made for Gibraltar; Villeneuve went north towards the Channel but another British force, in an indecisive action, turned him back. Nelson returned to England. Where would Villeneuve go next?
The crisis was approaching. Back in England awaiting his instructions, Nelson was convinced that the French masterplan intended Villeneuve to come out into open sea, unite the French fleet, and then strike south at the Mediterranean, pinning down the allied forces in Italy while Napoleon made a mighty sweep across central Europe. He was correct. By late summer 1805 this was Napoleon’s plan. But first Villeneuve had to get out. Where was the French Admiral, and what would he do next?
On August 14 Villeneuve arrived in Cadiz, where Admiral Collingwood and his force were keeping watch.
“He can’t refit his ships there. There are no supplies,” Robert Wilson remarked. “He’ll have to come out into open sea soon. Keep your eyes peeled, Wilson of Christchurch.”
But the mission of the
Euryalus
was to be a more important one than watching.
“You’re to make for Portsmouth,” Captain Blackwood was told. “To tell them Villeneuve’s here. As fast as you can.”
So it was the little frigate
Euryalus
, playing the first part of her particular role in history, that sailed, at lightning speed, to fetch the great Admiral Nelson.
They reached the Isle of Wight on September 1. By the next morning, Blackwood called upon Nelson at Merton. Then, on to the Admiralty.
It is often thought that Admiral Nelson saved England from immediate invasion in the great events of autumn 1805. This is not in fact so. For on August 9, just before the
Euryalus
had begun her dash home, another event of great significance had taken place. Austria had declared war on France.
The response of Napoleon was immediate. He would fight the alliance on land and he would win. But in order to do so, he had to withdraw the huge army threatening England from Boulogne. He did so, as was his habit, with amazing speed. On the day when the
Euryalus
passed the Isle of Wight, Boulogne was already almost empty.
But for Nelson, now given unrestricted command of the fleet, this was not the point.
If by a single blow he could now smash the French fleet once and for all, he could make it impossible for Napoleon to invade England not only this year, but any year. This was his ambition – his mission – nothing less.
On September 15, 1805, Nelson’s flagship
Victory
sailed from Spithead. In its company rode Captain Blackwood’s little squadron of frigates:
Euryalus, Phoebe, Naiad, Sirius
, the schooner
Pickle
and the cutter
Entreprenente
. They arrived off Cadiz to join the rest of the fleet on September 28, Nelson’s forty-seventh birthday.
Then they waited three weeks. Meanwhile the
Euryalus
kept watch.
Night and day, while Nelson and his fleet of twenty-seven huge warships waited patiently on the horizon, the little frigate hung in sight of the harbour mouth. Behind her stretched, at intervals, the chain of her sister frigates so that her messages could be passed back to the waiting fleet.
“What do you see, Wilson of Christchurch?” The haunting question would echo in his mind all his life.
“Nothing yet, sir.”
Nelson even sent several of his ships away, in the hope of tempting them out. Nothing happened.
And then one day after three weeks, young Peter Wilson saw it: a distant mast near the harbour mouth. Then another. And another.
“They’re moving!” he cried in excitement, before correcting himself: “Ship ahoy.” In moments, not only Robert Wilson but Captain Blackwood himself and every officer was on deck, training their telescopes on the spot.
“Are they coming, sir?” he heard Robert Wilson ask.
Then Blackwood’s voice, very calm.
“Not yet, I think.” And then, glancing up, breaking all normal rules, the captain himself: “Well done, Wilson of Christchurch.”
Blackwood was right. For three more days, Villeneuve’s fleet hung about near the harbour mouth. Each day it seemed they might break loose. Each day, tantalisingly, they held back.
Awesome though the thought of the huge battle that would follow must be, Peter Wilson found himself praying: “Please Lord, let them come soon.” The suspense was almost more than he could bear.
And then, on October 20, they came: thirty-four huge ships of the line, rolling majestically out to sea, every one of them capable, with their huge banks of cannon, of blasting the little frigate out of the water with a single broadside: he counted them, all thirty-four, as they came; and as he saw this terrifying fleet he wondered: “Can anything withstand them?”
The huge fleet made southwards towards Gibraltar, past Cape Trafalgar. And the little frigate
Euryalus
followed, as close as she dared, while Nelson and the main fleet lurked just over the horizon. And as they went, and he felt the hissing salt surf in his face, young Peter Wilson smiled grimly to himself and murmured:
“We’re Nelson’s watchdog all right.”
They watched the fleet all day and all night. The enemy was constantly moving about. Each time Villeneuve’s ships changed their tack,
Euryalus
fired a signal gun. Every hour, she burned a blue light to show the English fleet that she was watching. And every signal she made was passed back, from frigate to frigate, and along the chain of battleships to the
Victory
herself.
They did their work well. Not a motion of the French fleet was missed.
Then Nelson came out into the open, and bore down upon them.
He did what he had been planning to do for months: he divided his own force into two, one half, the weather column, he led himself, the other, the lee, was led by Collingwood in
Royal Sovereign
. Then, aiming to converge somewhat above the centre of the huge, crescent-shaped line of the French, they began their approach.
The performance of the
Euryalus
had been faultless. As he made his formation at six o’clock that morning, Nelson summoned the little frigate to
Victory
’s side, and ordered Captain Blackwood aboard to congratulate him.
“We shall surprise the enemy now,” he declared. “They won’t know what I am about.”
As the advance began,
Euryalus
rode proudly by Nelson’s side.
“One eye and one arm,” an old seaman told Peter, “but you see what he does with what he’s got left!”
At eight o’clock Villeneuve reversed course, but he could not now avoid Nelson’s battle.
The final approach began. At 11.45 am, the famous signal from the flagship went out:
“England expects every man to do his duty.”
“And when we have,” Midshipman Robert Wilson remarked, “I dare say it’ll be the end of the French.” Then under his breath he said a prayer.
As for seaman Peter Wilson, he said no prayer; but he gave the wedding ring a nervous squeeze and muttered: “You see me safe out of this.”