Touch and Go (25 page)

At half-past eleven the situation changed abruptly. From somewhere ahead came the sound of gunfire. It was at once clear that the
Superb
had overtaken the enemy and was heavily engaged. Flashes could be seen and the
Caesar
now steered towards them.
Superb
would have shortened sail before opening fire and the distance now quickly diminished between her and the flagship. A blue flare from the
Caesar
was intended to assure Keats that help was at hand but there was an unexpected response from the
Venerable,
only a few miles astern. Things looked more hopeful and every night-glass in the
Caesar
was trained on the
Superb
and her opponents, both sides using flares to illuminate their target.

To Delancey it was immediately apparent that the Spanish ships were still in line abreast, a feat of discipline which did them credit. Third and fourth from the left, obvious from their size, and level with each other were the two huge three-decked ships of 112 guns; the
Real-Carlos
and the
San-Hermenegilde.
Second from the left and ahead of the three-deckers was a French two-decked ship with a Commodore's pennant; probably the
Saint-Antoine.

The two ships on the right of the line were more distant, which explained why the
Superb
was closing on those more within reach. For her to steer between two 112-gun ships seemed tantamount to suicide but that was evidently Keats' intention. He could count, admittedly, on the Spaniards' lack of experience (especially at night) but the disproportion in weight of metal was terrifying. Sternmost of all the enemy ships was one on the extreme left, possibly the
San-Augustin,
and she might have been the first target, at long range, of the
Superb's
port broadside.

“A bold attack!” said Brenton to the Admiral.

“But an unequal combat,” replied Sir James. “If he must attack three-decked ships, why can't he fight them one at a time?”

“I should never fight both batteries if I could help it,” muttered Dumaresq, “—not even with a crew up to strength.”

“You may be doing just that,” said Brenton, “before the night is over.”

Delancey said nothing but was careful to make a note of events, as material for the Master's Log. “At 11.20 p.m.
Superb
seemed to shorten sail.” As the crash was heard of the
Superb
's two broadsides, he inserted “11.35
Superb
seen in action with two Spanish three-decked ships” and so continued with his record for the rest of the action. Under fire from her big opponents on either side, the
Superb
was seen to fire two more broadsides. It was evident, however, that she was drawing ahead of the Spaniards. Her hull was invisible in the smoke of gunfire but her topsails seemed now to be beyond the three-deckers, both very much in action.

“Good God!” exclaimed Delancey. “Those Spanish ships are firing at each other!” What had happened was obvious. The smoke of the combined broadsides, three from the
Superb,
two from each of the Spanish ships, had filled the space which the British 74 had now vacated. Each three-decker was firing into the smoke, from which an unseen enemy was replying with vigour, and each new broadside added to the obscurity which prevented them from recognising each other. Their guns were now firing independently, the noise was continuous and Delancey was awestruck at the mere weight of shot being fired between two three-deckers at a range of less than three hundred yards.

“What an astounding spectacle!” said the Admiral. “Leave them to it, captain, and pass them to starboard. The day is ours!”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

As the
Caesar
drew level with the Spaniards, Delancey observed that the further one, the
Real-Carlos
was on fire. He noted the fact and the hour, thinking to himself that he had just seen a perfect demonstration of the dangers inherent in the line abreast. He had been told about it as a midshipman and so had everyone else, but it made a difference to have actually seen it. In line ahead you were safe at least from one type of disaster.

Somewhere ahead of the flagship the
Superb
was now in action with the
Saint-Antoine
—or was she the
San Antonio?
—and the
Caesar,
followed by the
Venerable
and
Spencer,
was coming up on the other side of the same opponent. Delancey felt the ship reel under him as the starboard broadside fired, then heard the same noise from the following ships. He discovered afterwards that the wretched
Saint-Antoine
had already struck her colours.

Sail was now made after the other enemy ships but Delancey, looking back, saw that the burning
Real-Carlos
was drifting towards the
San-Hermenegilde.
Noting this, he was able to add, a little later, that they had collided and that both were on fire. They afterwards drifted apart, both of them doomed, the fire starting no doubt on the gun decks, spreading to the tattered rigging and so to the sails, which then fell on the decks again.

“God, what a terrible sight!” said Brenton to Delancey.

“Appalling, sir. It doesn't look as if they can ever bring the fire under control.”

“Not now. You have to stop it before it begins, and even with a well-trained crew you can still fail. Look what happened to the
Queen Charlotte,
and that began with no more than some hay for the livestock! The officers did their best and even managed to flood the lower deck. What they didn't manage to flood was the magazine. . . . The wretched Spaniards will be mostly untrained. They will have unused cartridges beside every gun, lighted matches for each gun captain, no water bucket at hand and no habit of instantly obeying orders. As for their boats, the
Superb
probably smashed the lot with her first treble-shotted broadside. I could wish it were over quickly.”

Looking aft at the two burning ships Delancey echoed the wish. They were among the finest ships afloat, and were probably the biggest and most well designed, built and equipped; but battles are not won by ship-wrights. They are won by disciplined bodies of men, by rules and safety precautions, by habituation to an exact drill, by doing everything quickly but correctly, by remembering what you have been taught and doing what you are told.

In the opposite direction, Delancey saw that the other enemy ships had disappeared into the darkness. They might outnumber their opponents—no, they were merely on equal terms now—but their one idea was to escape. Or was that unfair? They were under orders. Delancey added to his notes: “Midnight, other enemy ships out of sight.”

In the immediate area there was light enough to see and the Admiral used it to make some signals; first to the
Superb
and
Calpé
to remain with the prize,
Saint-Antoine:
second, to the remainder of the Squadron, to make sail after the flagship. “We'll aim to intercept them,” said Sir James, “before they can reach Cadiz.” Delancey knew that the plan could not succeed. Cadiz might be no more than thirty miles away; even with a fitful wind the enemy should be nearing harbour by daybreak. The battle was over.

There was a dazzling flash, as of lightning, and then a deafening crack of thunder. Delancey covered his eyes for an instant, opening them in time to see the
Real-Carlos
blown apart. There was a mushroom effect as spars and ropes were thrown upwards in a cloud of smoke. Her sides bulged outwards, her guns crashing through her ports. A minute later she was gone, save for some debris in the water, and Delancey suspected that any survivors would have been killed by the concussion; a few, he thought, might have escaped earlier, perhaps to the
Saint-Antoine.

“Poor devils!” exclaimed Philip Dumaresq. He was not looking towards where the
Real-Carlos
had been. He was staring at the
San-Hermenegilde,
and he was evidently feeling sick. Nearly a thousand men had just died but another thousand had yet to go, still fighting the fire and knowing by now exactly what their fate was to be. By the light of the flames he could see that a few men had jumped overboard and were swimming towards the wreckage of the
Real-Carlos.
They had perhaps the best chance of any provided they were good swimmers, but what when their ship blew up? There were no boats near them and how could there be?

Turning once more to his notes, Delancey added: “At fifteen minutes past midnight the
Real-Carlos
blew up and sank.” He wondered for a moment whether she had flown an Admiral's flag? He thought not. Then he remembered that Spanish flag-officers always moved to a frigate when in presence of the enemy. The idea was that a battle could be more easily controlled by someone not actually involved in it; a reasonable notion except in so far as it meant sacrificing the force of example. Anyway, it was the Spanish custom. Vice-Admiral Moreno would not, therefore, have been on board. He would be half-way to Cadiz by now in the
Sabrina,
if that was the ship's name, and thinking himself lucky to be alive.

Reflecting on the enemy's losses, it struck him that the flagship had sustained no losses at all and had not so far been under fire. There was always something fantastic about war, the odd way in which some people were killed, the strange way in which others escaped. He tried to think of past instances of men knocked down by the wind of a shot, of his own appearance in a duel. . . . Never had he known the minutes pass so slowly. . . .

At last it came. There was another dazzling flash, another tremendous crack of thunder, and the
San-Hermenegilde
was gone in her turn. This time Delancey noticed the effect of the blast on the
Caesar
herself—a thump on the ship's hull, as if she had been hit by a giant hammer. The previous explosion must have had the same effect but he couldn't think why he had hardly noticed it. There was a difference this time, though, in that the flash was followed by darkness. There was no other burning ship to throw light on the scene where another thousand men had died. Now there would be boats from the
Superb
and the
Saint-Antoine
but he doubted whether there was much they could do. As for himself, his only response was to add a laconic note to his rough log: “At half an hour after midnight the
San-Hermenegilde
blew up and sank.”

By the 13th Sir James Saumarez was on his way back to Gibraltar and to a hero's welcome. That day Delancey dined in the wardroom of the
Caesar
and was interested to compare notes with the other officers. It was the first formal dinner he had attended since joining the flagship. The bulkheads had been replaced, the table recovered from the hold, a clean tablecloth laid, the servants were all smartly dressed and the officers had all slept and washed and shaved.

“Last night,” said the second lieutenant, “was my first real sleep for about a week. I was never so tired in my life!”

“Never mind,” replied the captain of marines. “You have now been in a naval battle and may be regarded as a hero for ever.”

“But isn't it absurd?” exclaimed Dumaresq, “I've been in a dozen minor actions, being lucky to have come out alive. They count for nothing, however, beside a general engagement. We have won a victory and our Admiral will be made a Knight of the Bath, an honour he has earned ten times over. There may be other promotions—” (he coloured a little in saying this) “and we shall be told what fine fellows we are. But what have we done? Our total service has been to fire two broadsides into a wretched ship which did not reply for the good reason that she had already struck. We did not fire or receive another shot, let alone suffer any damage or loss. We have been as safe as if we had been at Spithead!”

“Our achievement was not in fighting,” said the purser, “but in having the ship ready for battle. We were nearly dead from fatigue before we left harbour.”

“All you say is true,” Delancey admitted, looking at Dumaresq, “but it applies to the squadron as a whole. All the fighting was done by two ships, the
Superb
and the
Venerable.
The
Superb's
chief effort was in capturing the
Saint-Antoine,
which took about thirty minutes. By sheer luck she induced those two Spanish three-deckers to destroy each other, an almost unbelievable business which took place before our eyes! And there you have the whole of our victory, the work of one seventy-four. As for the
Venerable,
she was fairly beaten by her opponent. But for our presence she might have been taken.”

“She left the
Formidable
in poor shape, though,” objected the second lieutenant.

“Of course she did, but the fact remains that our victory was gained by one ship.”

“The French will claim the victory for themselves,” complained the captain of marines. “They'll describe the
Venerable
as wrecked, a fair equivalent for the
Saint-Antoine
and explain that the two Spanish ships were lost following a collision with each other.”

“They can say what they like,” said Delancey. “The fact remains that they did not offer to fight us. With a vastly superior force they still made their run to Cadiz. That is why I judge that they were really defeated on the 6th. After this subsequent affair that combined squadron is no longer fit for battle at all. Their morale is gone and each ally will be blaming the other. We can blockade Cadiz now with a couple of ships and I'll wager that they stay at anchor.”

“So perhaps we deserve a hero's welcome after all,” concluded Dumaresq. “It is certainly what we are going to have!”

The setting of Gibraltar lends itself to drama, with galleries for the public and a place for the orchestra. When Sir James's squadron sailed into harbour on the 14th the ramparts were again lined with cheering spectators and the band on the pierhead was again playing “Britons, strike home!”—or had it (as Midshipman Brock suggested) been playing that continuously since the day they sailed? Anyway, their return was triumphant and the
Saint-Antoine
was the trophy for display.