Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys (32 page)
Read Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys Online
Authors: Neil Oliver
“I am a dead man, Hardy,” said Nelson softly. “I am going fast. It will be all over with me soon.”
Those men not engaged in the fighting gathered around their lord, as he lay propped up on bedding packed against the massive oak beams of the hull. Every shudder of the woodwork must have pained him terribly, and there was next to nothing that could be done to ease his suffering. Still he clung to life, indeed long enough to hear Hardy’s assurances that the day was theirs.
Some time between four thirty and five in the afternoon Nelson died. It’s hard to know the truth of the moment, since more than one man witnessed it and remembered it differently. Most famously, and fittingly, the
Victory
’s chaplain, the Reverend A. J. Scott, recorded that as he was bent over the dying man, gently rubbing his chest to lift some of the pain, Nelson murmured: “Thank God, I have done my duty.”
He said it over and over, almost too softly to be heard. Then at last: “God and my country.” And with that he was gone.
Not a single British ship was lost at the Battle of Trafalgar—though many were terribly mauled. Nelson’s death brought to 450 the total of officers and men lost on the British side. There were also as many as 1,200 wounded, many of them horribly. This toll paled somewhat in comparison to that recorded aboard the ships of the combined French and Spanish fleet, which lost 4,500 dead and 2,400 wounded. As many as 7,000 of their officers and men had been taken as prisoners.
For Napoleon, Trafalgar ended any hopes of crossing the English Channel and invading Britain. But his soldiers were already engaged elsewhere. On October 20, the day before Nelson’s triumph, the Emperor defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Ulm. On December 2 he would achieve his most luminous and towering victory at Austerlitz against a combined Russian and Austrian force. In 1806 he would crush the Prussians at Jena and Auerstedt, and in 1807 his armies would inflict the same upon the Russians at Eylau and Friedland.
But thanks to Nelson, Britain was and would ramain safe. Napoleon would attempt to strangle the British with his “Continental System” of economic blockade—but his battles to enforce it would lead to the Peninsular War in Portugal and Spain that began his final undoing. In 1812 he would hopelessly overstretch himself in Russia, losing half a million men in the process. Then would come defeat at Leipzig in 1813, his abdication and his exile to Elba the following year—before his final return and the Hundred Days that brought him to Waterloo and destruction. In many ways, the rot set in at Trafalgar—making it the most significant battle of the Napoleonic War.
That victory had been achieved by a British Navy at the absolute peak of its powers, when so many of its captains and
senior officers were incapable of anything but winning.
But there is no avoiding the fact that it was above all else the achievement of one man. One man destined to be the best of all.
As Lord St. Vincent said: “There is but one Nelson.”
“Thank God, I have done my duty.” The words still ring out clear. It’s hard to read them without involuntarily straightening the spine a little, maybe sticking out the chin a touch. The leaders who live longest in the imagination are those who, seemingly without trying, win not just the obedience and loyalty of their men, but their love as well.
Scott was one of those, but in his case he was, after all, offering opportunities that you just don’t see in the papers nowadays. Imagine having the chance to give up your day-job and join an expedition aiming to go somewhere no human being has ever been before. That kind of break won’t come along again unless, when they finally shoot for Mars, they make seats available to the general public.
Shopworkers, clerks, office boys, railwaymen, students and factory fodder—they all sent desperate letters of application to the office in Victoria Street pleading for the chance to risk their lives in the name of patriotic duty. There were professionals too, of course—hoping their skills would give them an edge—doctors, sailors, soldiers, civil servants. officers from the armed forces, senior men some of them, wrote to say they would swab the decks or tend the horses, just for the offer of a place. (Cavalryman Titus Oates caused quite a stir when he stepped aboard the
Terra Nova
for the first time. Scott had taken him on to look after the ponies intended for some of the sled-hauling
duties—and the sailors in particular had been looking forward to judging the mettle of the man they would come to know as “The Soldier.” So it was with some amazement that they beheld the character in the tattered raincoat and crumpled bowler hat that climbed the gangplank and stepped cheerfully down among them.)
On June 1, 1910, the
Terra Nova
left London bound for Cardiff, where she took delivery of 100 tons of free coal as well as £2,500 raised by public subscription. Scott was so impressed and so personally touched by the show of support and generosity from the people of Wales, that he vowed to make their capital city the first port of call for the
Terra Nova
on her way home from Antarctica.
As before with the
Discovery
, Scott remained behind in Britain to tidy up the last of the financial details and sent the
Terra Nova
and her crew onwards to South Africa. On July 16, with all the paperwork finally squared away, he set sail aboard the mail steamer
Saxon
, accompanied by Kathleen, who had decided to leave nine-month-old Peter behind in England and stay with her husband for as long as possible. At Cape Town, Scott replaced Wilson as captain of the
Terra Nova
and sailed for Australia.
As soon as the ship arrived in Melbourne, Scott was handed a telegram. Sent by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, it was brief and to the point.
“Am going south,” it said.
Scott could hardly have been thrilled at the news, but he kept any anger or disappointment from the men. Back in Britain, the news would be greeted by open criticism of the perceived interloper. As far as anyone knew, Amundsen’s interests had always been focused on the Arctic. But Peary’s triumph in 1909 had brought an end to the Norwegian’s dreams of glory at that end of the world. Without a word, he had quietly altered his plans and sailed for Antarctica ahead of Scott. Amundsen was in debt—having raised funds for a dash to the North Pole—and in order to recoup his losses he would need a
spectacular result elsewhere. Now the quest for the South Pole had turned into a race.
For now, Scott had to concentrate on his own preparations. There was still fundraising to be done—in Australia and then in New Zealand. Regardless of whatever anxiety he might have felt about the latest developments, he knuckled down to the tiresome job of exploiting any and all opportunities to raise last-minute cash.
Finally, in the afternoon of November 29, came the time for last farewells. Whatever words were shared by Kathleen and her husband at the end are not known—since they were said in private earlier in the day. As she wrote in her diary later: “I decided not to say goodbye to my man because I didn’t want anyone to see him look sad.”
Around 4:30 p.m. the
Terra Nova
cast off, making for Antarctica at last. Trouble and hardship were not long in joining them. On December 2 a vicious storm blew up, severely testing the ship and the men. They were already riding low in the water thanks to the sheer bulk of supplies aboard, and mountainous waves driven by near-hurricane-force winds threatened to overwhelm them completely. For two days the men were embroiled in a desperate fight to keep their ship afloat. Eventually coal dust became mixed with the seawater, creating a sludge that put the automatic pumps out of action. By the end, a chain of men—Scott included—were up to their chests in freezing water, using buckets to bail out the
Terra Nova
’s hold by hand.
Fighting for their lives in the great Southern Ocean, they felt they were the loneliest men, aboard the loneliest ship in all creation.
It is now 35 years since human beings walked on the surface of another world. Only 12 have ever done so, and Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt were the last. Between December 11 and 14, 1972, they lived on the moon. They drove 21 miles across it in their lunar rover and collected hundreds of pounds of moon rock. They took in the view that only 10 other men had ever beheld—planet Earth from solid ground elsewhere. From time to time they lay down inside their lunar module and slept while the home planet rose and set in a black sky.
Command module pilot Ron Evans was the third member of the crew. Not for him the small steps of man upon that surface—instead he remained in orbit 60 miles above, ready for his colleagues’ return. On December 7, en route to the moon, one of them had snapped the photograph of planet Earth known as “the blue marble”—now among the most famous images in history. It reveals the home planet for what it is—a vulnerable ball suspended in infinity.
Apollo 17
achieved the sixth lunar landing in three and a half years and it went like clockwork.
When Cernan and Schmitt blasted away from the moon on December 14 it was just 69 years—less than a lifetime—since another American had made the first-ever powered flight. Orville Wright, watched by his brother Wilbur, flew 120 feet across the sky above the beach at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. (When the first Boeing 747 “Jumbo Jet” was unveiled 65 years later its wingspan alone was twice as long as that first flight.) On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had landed on the moon for the first time, having flown the best part of 240,000 miles. It seemed technology and aspiration knew no bounds.
A billion people around the world watched the first moonwalk by the
Apollo 11
astronauts that day—when television sets were rarities by today’s standards. Armstrong’s first words from the surface of the moon are etched into the memory of the world. It was hailed as the greatest achievement in human history and it
seemed, at that moment, as though the exploration of the universe was just about keeping on walking, more small steps and giant leaps.
But by 1972 the American people had become too accustomed to seeing their fellow citizens at work nearly a quarter of a million miles from home. They’d seen 12 of their countrymen walk on the moon and that was enough. It was no thrill any more, the space race was won and the US Government had pulled the plug on further lunar landings. The world had moved on.
JFK, the president who’d made the moon his nation’s inspiration for more than a decade, had been dead for nine years. His brother Bobby was gone too, and Martin Luther King, Jr. It was two years since the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, not to mention the break-up of the Beatles. Americans were more concerned with their war in Vietnam and what President Nixon’s men had been up to in the Watergate building. The time for moonwalking had come and gone.
Long forgotten, too, was the adventure of another three-man crew of astronauts—who’d reached out for the moon but found it exceeded their grasp. While they failed to reach their destination, their journey proved all the greater for falling short of the goal.
In December 1910, as they fought for survival in the towering seas between latitudes 50 and 70 degrees south, Captain Scott and the crew of the
Terra Nova
had felt they were aboard the loneliest ship in the world, and they were. But for a handful of days in April 1970 the loneliest men in the history of the world so far were Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise, the crew of
Apollo 13.