The Perils of Command (24 page)

He was vaguely aware of the activity above his head; even bare feet make a sound if there are enough of them. He was wondering what it portended when the master at arms, who had locked the door behind him, appeared jangling his ring of keys. Selecting one he unlocked the door and stood aside.

‘You’re free to go.’

‘On whose orders?’

‘What odds does that make, sir?’

‘It matters to me.’

‘Mine came from the premier, who desires that you vacate the ship as we are in the process of weighing.’

Had the order come from a higher authority? It was good to speculate but there was no point in asking the ship’s gaoler, he would not know. Picking up the ditty bag, which had very little of his actual possessions, just enough for the duty he had been engaged, he walked free and made for the entry port to seek a boat.

Normally he would have been required to plead but on this occasion one was provided with alacrity. He walked down the gangway to find the pinnace still in the water but with different men on board and no longer under sail. Looking around the anchorage he saw the whole fleet was preparing to depart and above his head HMS
Britannia
’s signal gun banged out. When he was far enough off he saw flags flying up and down with ships’ numbers displayed and messages telling them to get a move on.

‘Take me to HMS
Agamemnon
.’

‘Orders were to put you ashore, Your Honour,’ replied the leading hand.

‘Which you can do once I have my dunnage, which is aboard Captain Nelson’s ship. I can scarce do without it, can I?’

The man did not reply but he did murmur words to his fellow oarsmen as the pinnace changed direction to make for the side of
Agamemnon
. The gangway was gone and the entry port closed so Pearce was obliged to use the man ropes and clamber up the battens that lined the side. He was greeted by Dick Farmiloe wondering what he was about, as well as a deck full of men working to get the ship to sea.

‘I need to get to the wardroom and get my things.’

‘Then you best shift for we are about to pluck our anchor.’

Pearce dashed down the companionway two at a time, which meant men coming up had to shift to avoid him. He was calling to the wardroom stewards to lend a hand long before he got to the door. A surly bunch by nature, it required hassle to get help, he on one rope handle and one of the stewards on the other. By the time they came on deck Nelson had taken up his place on the quarterdeck.

A wave got a raised hat – clearly the captain had been told what was happening. Now he needed hands to loop his chest onto a line that could be dropped down to the pinnace. That provided he looked over the side to guide it down, only to see there was no boat waiting to receive it; the men from
Britannia
were gone and in an anchorage full of boats he was unsure which one was his. Added to which he wondered, even if he could identify it, whether a shout would have any effect.

Although far from being the complete naval officer,
Pearce knew that this was not the moment to ask Nelson for a replacement. The yards were full of topmen loosing canvas, while from down below he could hear the stamp and go of the men on the capstan, as well as more faintly the cries as the soaking cable was hauled in to be looped round the bitts. She was being hauled over her anchor and the men ready to secure it were waiting.

The best he could do was stay out of everyone’s way and wait till
Agamemnon
was under sail. It would be a big favour to ask that a boat take him back to Leghorn, and it would mean a hell of a haul for whoever undertook it to catch up with their ship out at sea, but ask he must.

‘Mr Pearce, I am deeply reluctant to oblige you.’

Nelson troubled, with his height and build, looked more like a concerned schoolboy than a post-captain with decades of seniority, and the man to whom he was reacting could understand why. So, judging by the looks Pearce was getting, could Nelson’s officers.

‘I must wait in Leghorn for HMS
Flirt
, sir, in the hope that she will call in there.’

The conversation had to be abated; HMS
Agamemnon
was required to manoeuvre to take her place in the van squadron to the rear of HMS
Royal Sovereign
, commanded by Rear Admiral Samuel Goodall. He was on the poop of his first rate to see the act properly executed and by the time that was completed Nelson’s attitude had changed.

‘I have the solution, Mr Pearce.
Flirt
will surely first make for San Fiorenzo Bay, since it was from there you sailed. Even if she does touch at Leghorn her clear duty is to rejoin the fleet wherever we are, so I suggest that you would be best staying with us.’

‘Sir, I am far from sure.’

‘Mr Pearce, we are, it is to be hoped, sailing to fight the French, fleet against fleet. How can you even suggest a course of action that would cause you to miss such an event? No, you must stay aboard with us and come the contest we will find for you a role in which you can share in our glory.’

Even if Pearce had wanted to dispute that, there was little point. Leghorn was fast receding over
Agamemnon
’s stern.

Having sent out every brig and sloop in the fleet, Hotham had a fair chance of finding the enemy. Early intelligence had hinted at an attempt to retake from the British the island of Corsica – Toulon still harboured enough anti-republicans willing to provide information on the military activities of their revolutionary enemies – but that quickly tended to be out of date. Only later was it established that the fleet weighed without the transports carrying the required troops.

For Rear Admiral Pierre Martin, the French commander, with the proposed Corsican invasion in abeyance, the cruise was not going to be one in which he sought his foes or a fleet action. Too many of the men he led were not sailors and thus were lacking in experience. This sortie provided a chance to work them up into crews that he hoped could be relied on in battle.

Extensive training had been carried out in Toulon but there was no substitute for actual sea time, where work aloft and exercising the guns was carried out on swaying masts or a rising and falling deck, not flat calm water. The pity was that
with as much powder and shot as he could carry, to actually fire the guns posed a risk; the discharge of one cannon would be audible for miles around, a broadside would carry ten times further and Martin knew the enemy were scouring the sea for a hint of his presence.

Having parted from the captured
Semele
, Martin headed for the Île St Marguerite, off the town of Cannes, which provided a good anchorage and time to rearrange matters on what was a fighting body in a state of flux. Certain officers were removed, others promoted, while the crews were reorganised by watches and duties to encourage greater efficiency. Within sight of the mainland coast he felt relatively secure, only to discover his assumption was mistaken.

HMS
Moselle
had strayed further than their orders really allowed, not that the man in command would be chastised for such elasticity. The sight of the sloop, which immediately put up her helm and raced away with flags flying at the masthead, sent alarm bells ringing through the French fleet, for it implied that Hotham was not far over the horizon. Martin ordered that they weigh immediately for Toulon, but it was then that lack of experience told; it took an interminable time to get to sea and even longer to form up in any sort of order, the whole hampered by light winds that made movement difficult.

Common sense told the Frenchman his ships needed sea room in which to manoeuvre; to hug the coast was risky, given he might be driven into an unsuitable anchorage in which he could be trapped. It was therefore on a southerly course that the first sightings of his enemies were made, and quite naturally Martin signalled for a change of course. From their tops, if they could not really read the signal sent up on
the mast of
Britannia
, it took no great deduction to guess what it said.

‘Enemy in sight,’ Nelson muttered with some satisfaction. ‘General chase to the north-west.’

‘A bit of wind would help,’ John Pearce opined as the orders to comply were carried out.

‘Then we must pray for one,’ Nelson replied in a deeply serious tone of voice, replicated in his expression, which got a blank look from Pearce, he being a man not much given to supplication either human or divine. ‘And it will serve, for I am convinced God hates a Frenchman as much as I do.’

The fact that a passenger was on the quarterdeck said something about
Agamemnon
as well as the man who commanded her. To more inflexible captains it would have been seen as slack; indeed almost everything that happened on the 64-gunner could be termed that by those who lacked the ability to see the efficiency with which tasks were carried out. The vessel came about on her new course with little in the way of bawled orders; the crew knew what they were about and what was required. They were going to their various stations before anyone even spoke.

While Pearce found himself at ease with Horatio Nelson, he did have a problem with the man’s deep faith as well as his convictions, not least the one just expressed. The views he held on such matters had been formed from reading Rousseau and Voltaire, as well as the likes of the Scottish philosopher David Hume.

The Sage of Caledonia was a man much admired and spoken of fondly by John’s father Adam, who had known the philosopher well. Hume held that if God did exist – and he was sceptical, if careful, in open expression of the notion
that he might not exist at all – there was no reason to think him proficient.

Holy indifference was what could be attested to; for all the spouting of the religious as to there being a divinity, as well as the supposed omnipresence and omnipotence of same, John Pearce had observed that it was a deity utterly unconcerned by the fate of its followers. Those who fervently prayed were just as likely to be struck down as the agnostic and revolution or not, there would be men on the French warships praying to the same God, sure that he was predisposed to smite any Briton who crossed their path.

If there had been initial excitement, matters soon settled into the usual ennui of slow and sometimes no action at all. In such light airs, closing with the enemy was going to be difficult while to overhaul them completely prior to their reaching safety might be impossible. For all that, the chase must go on for, as Nelson kept reminding everyone, they were on the wing and who could tell what chance would provide. That was a way of putting the situation with which his agnostic passenger could agree.

The weather changed abruptly over the course of the night, with sudden squalls that kept the crew awake, for it required much work to hold both the course and speed, as well as their station on their consorts, while at the same time ensuring no damage. Sails had to be reefed and loosened in pitch-dark weather, often to avoid the strain on groaning masts and straining yards, while constant attention was required on the rigging to ensure nothing carried away.

In this the British fared better than the French. Dawn showed one of the enemy line of battle ships, identified as
Mercure
74, had lost her main topmast and was in the process
of parting company under a towing frigate. The temptation to chase one vessel was quite rightly set aside in favour of a possible fleet action.

Daylight also showed the gap had closed and there was now a freshening breeze: if Hotham commanded ships suffering from much wear and tear he also had men serving him, right down to the meanest waister, who knew their trade, and indeed it was the lack of that efficiency in the enemy that provided the change in circumstances for which everyone was hoping.

Ça Ira
80, in a general change of course for the entire French fleet, collided with the same-sized vessel ahead of her in the rear squadron.
Victoire
sailed on seemingly unscathed but
Ça Ira
suffered much more, severely damaging her main and fore topmasts. This caused her to fall off her course and lose speed.

Captain Thomas Fremantle, in command of the 38-gun frigate HMS
Inconstant
, closer to the enemy than any of Hotham’s capital ships, closed immediately and took station on the
Ça Ira
’s quarter to pour several broadsides into her, an act eagerly applauded on the quarterdeck of
Agamemnon
.

The favourable situation for Fremantle soon deteriorated as the French frigate
Vestale
ranged alongside to pour fire into an enemy fully engaged seeking to disable the line of battle ship. Fremantle broke off the action temporarily and that allowed
Vestale
to get a cable to
Ça Ira
in order to take her in tow. With his opposition frigate occupied in that task, Fremantle tacked to cross the stern of the French 80-gunner and poured a deadly broadside through her deadlights.

Inconstant
suffered for that. The crew of the
Ça Ira
had cleared the wreckage of those fallen topmasts and could now
man their cannon. With her greater firepower and at near to point-blank range the French shot swept across the deck of the British frigate, carrying much away in the case of rigging and surely spilling a great deal of blood.

More telling was the shot that hit between the waterline and the hammock nettings to smash the scantlings at a point low enough to bring a risk of foundering, damage so severe that
Inconstant
was obliged to swiftly bear away, using the wind to raise the wounded hull clear of the water.

John Pearce observed all this with increasing clarity, a fact that applied to everyone aboard
Agamemnon
, for she was coming up on the Frenchmen hand over fist, the air of anticipation along the decks almost physical in its intensity. Lighter in terms of weight of shot, the rate of fire from the well-worked-up crew made up for any shortfall in metal and
Agamemnon
poured salvo after salvo into the much larger vessel.

A passenger he might be but Pearce was not one to remain idle. He was perfectly willing to carry any orders Nelson gave to whichever part of the ship they required to be directed, mostly to divisional lieutenants to tell them to adjust their aim and concentrate on some particular part of the target vessel. Having never been in a ship of the line in battle, the noise, smoke and seeming general turmoil confused him; it took time to see that for all the seeming chaos Nelson’s men were working as a complete and orderly unit.

Having been below decks he missed the arrival of HMS
Captain
74, come to assist
Agamemnon
in disabling the
Ça
Ira
. But the rear elements of Admiral Martin’s fleet had worn to come to the aid of their struggling comrades and wisdom dictated that discretion be the better part of valour. Nelson
was a warrior but he was not a fool and soon he and
Captain
were dropping back to rejoin the main British line, leaving a pair of their fellow 74s to exchange desultory fire with the enemy rear at long distance.

‘Yonder, Mr Pearce!’ Nelson cried, pointing to a towering first rate closing in on
Ça Ira
, ‘there is their behemoth
Sans Culotte
. Triple-decked, one hundred and twenty guns and a crew of over a thousand men as well as a commanding admiral’s flag. What a prize she would be.’

‘Might I suggest it would be one to share, sir? If she carries twice the guns and of a larger calibre …?’

‘Indeed, but I cannot deny I am tempted. It would be a sarcophagus in Westminster Abbey for the fellow who gave his life to capture her.’

‘Is any capture worth a life?’

‘What is life, Mr Pearce, compared to immortality?’

Nelson’s eyes were shining as he said those words, while the man on the receiving end was stunned to realise he meant every word. It was something he raised that night with Dick Farmiloe.

‘He does mean it, John. You will have seen him these last few days as he rarely is. I have never known a man so given to maladies as Nelson, yet the merest hint of action and all his ills fall away. His doctor talks of animal spirits but I believe he has a real wish to be a hero. That is what so drives him and it provides a cure.’

That thought was in Pearce’s mind the following morning as the dawn revealed that the towing vessel had been changed to the 74-gun
Censeur
. But it also exposed the fact that there was no sign of the mighty
Sans Culotte
. Clearly it had become detached from the rest of the fleet during the hours
of darkness, while
Ça Ira
and her consort, naturally sailing more slowly, were becoming isolated from their comrades by a margin that made them very vulnerable.

‘So they are without a commanding admiral now?’ Pearce said in a half question, referring to the fact that
Sans Culotte
had not reappeared.

Nelson shook his head. ‘Perhaps not. The madmen in Paris passed a law that commanded any admiral in a battle to move his flag to a frigate, I presume so they could avoid capture. I think if you were to go aloft with a glass you would observe that Admiral Martin’s flag is flying in one of his smaller vessels.’

‘I’ll settle for the notion without the proof.’

‘Flagship signalling,’ came the cry from aloft.

Hotham’s fleet had the weather gage and he obviously discerned there was an advantage to be gained. Flags flew on
Britannia
ordering forward
Captain
as well as
Bedford
, another 74, to close and engage. That made Nelson glum and he sent his own signal in an attempt to join with them, his request denied. So he became a frustrated spectator to a hard-pounding artillery duel as the two Frenchmen battled it out.

Even Pearce could see that Hotham had the right of it; to put a third vessel into a fight of the nature of that which they were watching risked the British ships firing on each other and the men on
Ça Ira
and her consort were giving a good account of themselves. Hotham finally called off that pair and replaced them with another pair of 74s.

The damage to the French ships was terrible; they were becoming close to defenceless, but it seemed relief was on the way as Martin sent forward another 74,
Duquesne
, to
back up their efforts and to confront the two British 74s,
Illustrious
and
Courageux
.

The wind, brisk at dawn, had now fallen away to almost nothing, hampering all three vessels in their attempt at manoeuvre. This left the frigate
Lowestoffe
, near to being becalmed and unable to get clear, at the mercy of the slowly approaching
Duquesne
. Those watching as the 32-gunner was mauled feared for much loss of life but the man in command, Benjamin Hallowell had confounded French hopes for a massacre by sending every man aboard below. Then the Neapolitan
Minerva
, coming between
Duquesne
and
Lowestoffe
became the object of the sustained enemy fire.

Victoire
and
Tonnant
eventually managed to join
Duquesne
and exchange gunnery with the British vessels, which brought ragged cheer from the decks of
Ça Ira
and
Censeur
. That died as it became plain their comrades were not coming to their rescue but were instead intent on making their escape by getting to windward of the enemy.