Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys (31 page)

The officers around him hesitated a moment, before one of them pointed out that since neither “Nelson” nor “confides” nor “duty” were in the standard code book, they would have to be spelt out letter by letter. To save time, wouldn’t it be better to start the signal with “England expects”?

Nelson agreed at once and the most famous battle signal ever made or read was hoisted to the
Victory
’s yards and mastheads.

It’s hard to know just how generally understood his signal was by the sailors who saw it. Better perhaps if he’d stuck to his guns
and insisted on “Nelson expects.” For those thousands of men waiting on the ships around him, upon decks cleared of belongings and piled deep with sawdust to soak up their blood, were not fighting for their country. Here on the swell off Spain’s southwest coast, England was far away. They would fight and die for Nelson, because they loved him.

Aboard the
Royal Sovereign
Collingwood only remarked, “I wish Nelson would stop signaling. We all know what we have to do.”

After a short while the flags of “England expects” were pulled down and replaced with “Engage the enemy more closely.” This last would remain in place, limp for want of wind, until it was finally shot away.

In the end it took over six hours for the two fleets to come within firing range of one another. Collingwood led his own division of 15 ships from the front. As recently as July of that year the
Royal Sovereign
had been fitted with a brand-new copper bottom that gave her a smooth turn of speed unmatched by any other ship in the fleet.

Immediately to her stern were two 74s, the
Belleisle
and the
Mars
, then the 80-gun
Tonnant
and behind her the
Bellerophon.
Next in line came the
Colossus
,
Achilles
,
Revenge
,
Polyphemus
,
Swiftsure
, followed by the three-decker
Dreadnought
, Collingwood’s old flagship. Bringing up the rear of this leeward division were the
Defiance
,
Thunderer
,
Defence
and lastly the 98-gun
Prince
. But Collingwood’s new flagship had pulled well clear of the rest and was alone when a roar of guns ripped away the quiet of the morning, just a few minutes before noon.

From a range of 1,000 yards the French ship
Fougeaux
had unleashed a full broadside toward the
Royal Sovereign.

The ships of the combined fleet were laid out before the approaching British in a gigantic, concave arc. Collingwood and the rest were therefore sailing into the enemy’s open arms and for
20 hellish minutes the
Royal Sovereign
was helplessly exposed to broadsides not just from the
Fougeaux
but also from every other enemy ship within range, perhaps as many as five of them. Collingwood coolly ordered his men to lie down on the decks while the round shot tore at the rigging above their heads.

Finally the distance was closed and the crews aboard the trailing British ships could see that the
Royal Sovereign
was making for the steadily closing gap between the
Fougeaux
and the
Santa Anna
, flagship of the Spanish Admiral, Ignatius d’Alava.

Nelson looked on proudly as his old friend showed them all how the job was to be done.

“See how that noble fellow Collingwood takes his ship into action,” he cried. “How I envy him!”

The
Royal Sovereign
unleashed a full broadside of her double-shotted port guns as she passed close by the Spaniard. Round shot fortified with wooden caskets of musket balls blasted through the
Santa Anna
’s hull, killing and maiming hundreds of her men and destroying a dozen and more of her guns. The rigging of both ships became entangled and they disappeared within the great clouds of smoke from their firing. For the next quarter of an hour at least, Collingwood’s ship fought the Battle of Trafalgar alone. Soon she was engaged with five enemy ships simultaneously, the firing so intense that round shot were seen colliding in midair and flattening against one another like mud pies before falling uselessly into the waves. Others flew (or were deflected) beyond their intended targets to cause death and damage aboard ships nearby. With elegant understatement Collingwood would say later: “I thought it a long time after I got through their Line before I found my friends about me.”

Gradually—as fast as the murmuring wind would allow—more great ships of the British line joined the fray. The
Belleisle
was next, second in Collingwood’s leeward division and commanded by
Captain William Hargood. Once engaged, the
Belleisle
remained stuck in the thick of things for the duration of the battle, taking on first the
Fougeaux
and then being attacked by ship after ship until her predicament was no better than that of the
Royal Sovereign
, whom she’d come to aid. Finally she came alongside the Spanish 80-gun
Argonauta
, and was able to take her as a prize—but not without the loss of almost a quarter of her men. Heavy though it was, her death toll was far from being the worst aboard the British ships that day.

Steadily the pre-battle formations gave way until each ship was engaged in its own private war. This was no more than Nelson had expected—this was the way of things in battles at sea in the 18th century. What the Admiral also knew, however, was that his captains were the finest the world would ever see and needed no help to make the right decisions. He shone brightest of all during the last dozen years of his life, but he was among a dazzling galaxy of stars. When Nelson said he expected every man to do his duty, it was with absolute confidence. Once battle was joined, each captain fought alone—and within minutes nearly 60 ships were engaged in a hellish dance contained in a single square mile of sea. Nelson had asked for and predicted a “pell-mell battle” and that was what he got.

Now it was the turn of the
Victory.
She came within range of the French and Spanish guns around 20 minutes after the
Royal Sovereign
, and enemy round shot were soon finding their mark. John Scott, Nelson’s secretary, had been among the first aboard the flagship to die, almost cut in two by a cannonball as big as his head. As custom dictated, Nelson was pacing back and forth on the quarterdeck accompanied by his friend, and captain of the
Victory
, Thomas Hardy. A round shot passed so close between them that the air of its passing tugged at their clothes hard enough
to briefly wind both men. Another shot shattered her steering wheel, and now 40 men had to control her direction by man-handling the tiller on the lower gun-deck.

She passed through the enemy line behind the
Bucentaure
, Villeneuve’s flagship, blasting her with the double-shotted carronade on her foredeck as she did so. The 68-pound ball topped with a barrel containing 500 lead balls blasted through the glass windows of the
Bucentaure
’s stern and down the entire length of the ship. Moments later she gave the Frenchman the benefit of a full broadside of double-and even triple-shotted guns. The wave of iron swept away 400 men or more at a stroke, along with dozens of her guns. In an instant the French flagship had effectively ceased to exist as a fighting unit.

Nelson and Hardy were not to have it all their own way, of course. The French warship
Neptune
poured lethal fire into her, felling men and causing mayhem. But still the
Victory
’s gunners kept their cool, still the powder monkeys—little boys—dashed from gun to gun with their cartridges while blood sloshed around their ankles. When the French 74-gun
Redoutable
came into view, the
Victory
was able to let her have a full broadside from her starboard, while her larboard guns raked the hull of the massive
Santissima Trinidad
, largest warship of the age.

Unable to do much to prevent it, the
Victory
then rammed into the side of the
Redoutable
and careered along her side until both ships were lying together, facing in the same direction. The gun-crews aboard both ships continued the drill of loading and firing, loading and firing—blasting one another’s hulls from point-blank range.

Aboard the French ship, Captain Jean-Jacques Lucas was determinedly preparing his men to board the British ship. He had around 200 of his crew on the open deck, armed with muskets, cutlasses and anything else that came to hand. But the fact was
that both ships were drifting helplessly now and it was in this condition that they came to a standstill in front of the British 98-gun
Temeraire
, commanded by Captain Eliab Harvey.

The
Redoutable
was a sitting duck. She was also smaller than the
Temeraire
, her deck some feet below that of her foe. Seeing his chance, Captain Harvey gave the order to fire and his broadside brushed Lucas’s would-be boarding party off their deck in a mist of blood and bone. All three blood-soaked hulks then drifted down on to the French
Fougeaux
until all four warships were locked together, one huge ocean-going slaughterhouse.

Great moments in war come about by luck as often as by design—and the turn of events now handed Captain Lucas one last opportunity for which he had prepared. Stuck in harbor for months as he had been, along with the rest of the fleet, he’d had no way of training his men in the arts of gunnery or seamanship. Rather than waste the time completely, he’d had them practice their musketry. While the British Navy scorned the use of such weapons—reasoning quite rightly that their use could never take an enemy ship—the French found it useful to station musketeers and snipers in their rigging. From their lofty aspect they could pick off targets on enemy decks and make life thoroughly unpleasant for those below them. And so it was that a French sailor so armed, high in the tangled rigging of the
Redoutable
, looked down onto the quarterdeck of the British ship alongside and spotted the prize of all prizes.

Nelson was unmistakable. His battle honors and decorations, faded and stained by constant wear but still instantly recognizable, would have marked him in any case. Then there was the ruined arm, worn tight across his chest. The sniper took aim and fired. The round entered the Admiral’s chest below the collarbone and smashed down through his body, lodging in his spine. Nelson’s slight frame crumpled to the deck. It was a mortal wound.

Hardy dropped beside his friend.

“They have done for me at last,” said Nelson. “My backbone is shot through.”

He was carried below deck.

Perhaps Hardy tried to remain optimistic. Nelson believed he was about to die every time he went into battle—and thought every wound he received would be the end of him. After all, this was England’s greatest hero and around him was unfolding his greatest victory. Surely he could not die now? Not this day of all days?

While the hero was being carried, as gently as conditions would allow, down into the semi-darkness of the
Victory
’s cockpit, the battle raged on. Now as never before the superiority of the British crews—and in particular the British gunners—made all the difference. Napoleon had believed that since his sailors spent all their time stuck in harbor, they were being kept fresh for the inevitable fight. In fact the opposite was true. The men and ships of the combined fleet had simply been rotting where they lay—the ships deteriorating and their crews along with them. The British by contrast had become tougher with every day spent at sea. As they worked either to keep their ships on station in the Channel to confine the enemy to port, or chased him around the Mediterranean in a bid to bring him to battle, they became the most efficient seaborne force that ever was.

All of this would be revealed in stark relief at Trafalgar. For a start, the British gun-crews proved at least three times as fast as their opponents. The greatest compliment that can be paid to the gunners on the other side was that they stayed at their posts, facing up to the savage efficiency of the men ranged against them.

The French and Spanish captains would routinely strike their colors and surrender once their ships had been dismasted or otherwise disabled. This thought never even occurred to the British
commanders. Instead they fought on through it all, blithely ignoring the damage to their ships and the deaths of their men. Collingwood spent the duration of the fighting aboard the
Royal Sovereign
making jokes with his officers and munching on apples. The behavior of the officers and crew of the
Belleisle
was also typical. Shot to pieces though she was, her decks running with the blood of her dead and dying and her masts completely shot away, her men found a flag and fixed it to a pike that could be lashed to a mast stump. In this way they were able to keep fighting while Captain Hargood, cheerful and beaming in the midst of it all, paced the decks while eating a bunch of grapes.

“The ship is doing nobly,” he said to his captain of marines.

By the time Hardy was able to go below and visit his friend, he was able to report the capture of “12 or 14” of the enemy fleet.

He could also assure him that not one of the British ships had struck its colors—that all were still in action, of one kind or another.