Losing Nelson (20 page)

A great relief it must have been to escape from these devastating lampoons. But there was reason enough in the appointment without looking for kindness in it. England by now was fighting for her life, for her very existence. With Napoleon’s defeat of the Austrians at Marengo, the anti-French alliance had collapsed; we stood quite alone, with a great fleet preparing against us in the Baltic ports and a new army of invasion gathering across the Channel. Not until 1941 was this country again to be in such danger.

Once more he comes to the rescue, so slight, so maimed—what an overwhelming debt he has laid on us! At the beginning of February, he learns that he will be sailing for the Baltic in an operation designed to discourage the Scandinavian states from allying themselves with France and Russia and closing their ports to English shipping. These are not traditional enemies, but the crazed Czar Paul, shortly to be assassinated, is besotted with Napoleon and has leagued Russia with him. And he, the scoundrelly Corsican, diabolical bogeyman to generations of our ancestors in infancy, has come to a logical conclusion—the cursed French, they are never short of logic. England rules the seas, yes, well then, we will make the seas useless to her, we will close the Baltic ports to her trade. Grain and timber: without the one she cannot feed her people, without the other she cannot build masts for her ships.

Our first move is to threaten the Danes. Perhaps a show of force will be enough. The commander-in-chief, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, who has played safe all his life, is a good enough man for that; but
they have Horatio as second-in-command, knowing—as everyone in the service knows—that where he goes, victory goes with him. A fortunate appointment, because the show of force is not enough; the Danes reject our terms, they are set on resistance, they prepare to defend their city.

I had to start quite early in the morning. The first shots were not fired until shortly after 10
A.M
., but the signal was given at 9:30 and there was a long approach before that. The battle in any case took quite a while to lay out, because it involved the Danish land defences. I was slower even than usual that morning because I had laid awake most of the night, then fallen asleep at about 5:00. The alarm went off as usual, but I could not come to the surface; I lay between sleeping and waking till after 8:00, then panicked at the idea of being late for the battle and went down to the basement carrying my coffee with me. I did not even stop to heat the milk.

I had everything I needed. I had modelled the Danish shoreline years before in compressed paper, exactly to scale—the inlet into the harbour of Copenhagen, the headland with the formidable Trekroner battery defending the approaches. I had the shore guns too, small-scale models made in lead, which I had bought at Wrights in Holborn. The shape of the Middle Ground I had first traced and then cut out of thick cardboard, which I had left its natural sand colour.

It is this tapering lozenge of sand-coloured cardboard, this Middle Ground, that constitutes the main difficulty for the attackers. I take care to place it in exact position. It lies here, sharp end to the south, between the Danish shore batteries and the Swedish coastline, dividing the strait into two channels, the western or inner one narrower and shallower, heavily defended by the floating batteries, which I put in place now to the south of the city. Here they are, one after the other, moored broadside on. Formidable obstacles to any approach from the south. However, to approach by the outer, more easily navigable
channel means bringing the English ships under devastating fire from the guns of the Trekroner fortress guarding the harbour.

Horatio is all on fire to attack; his superior hesitates, prevaricates—he will not risk the heavier ships in those shallow waters. Once again that classic combination of prudent principal and risk-taking second; only at Horatio’s last battle will this conflict be resolved and all power rest in the hands of the risk-taker. But he has more on his mind now than impatience with Sir Hyde Parker. He has received word from London that Emma has been delivered of a baby daughter, whom she will call Horatia. He is a father for the first time and wild with joy. Also, and at the same time, he is tormented by jealousy. The Prince of Wales has ogled Emma at a reception, and Horatio fears she may fall prey to the wiles of this practised lecher. He even suspects Sir William, his devoted friend, of acting the pander out of deference to royalty.

Sir Hyde Parker continues irresolute. He summons one conference after another. He cannot decide whether to fight or not. Horatio sums up his feelings in a letter home:
If a man considers whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting
 …

Finally he has his way: they will attack from the south, approaching by the narrower channel, avoiding the Trekroner guns. He shifts his flag into the shallower-draft
Elephant
and takes command of about half the fleet: twelve sail of the line with shallow draft, a squadron of frigates, some bomb ketches and fireships. He will make a direct attack on the city. Hyde Parker remains with his heavy ships here, six miles to the north, eighteen inches on my table.

The wind turns fair, veers to the south. On this day 196 years ago, at just this time in the morning, the first signal flew from the
Elephant
’s halyards: weigh anchor and make sail. With this order, the action begins. The English ships under topsails move majestically into
the attack. I place them in their order of sail, the
Edgar
leading. The plan is simple: they will pass down the enemy line, concentrating their fire, battering the moored gunships into silence one by one.

The opening phase is disastrous. The
Agamemnon
, which should have followed the
Edgar
, fails to do so; she cannot weather the shoals. Here she is at the entrance to the channel, signalling her inability to proceed. Then the
Bellona
goes aground on the east side of the Middle Ground. The
Russell
, mistakenly following her in the smoke of battle, suffers the same fate. I place them together here, one just south of the other, almost touching. Horatio’s twelve ships are reduced to nine. However, he keeps the signal to advance flying, the remaining ships take up position, the action becomes general. It is a static, murderous battle now, with great slaughter on both sides, a series of thunderous, half-blind duels at cable-length range. On the main deck of the
Monarch
, immediately ahead of Horatio, not a man is left standing the whole length of the ship. Our gun crews, as always, are superbly trained and disciplined, but the ships are on the light side because of the shoals, and the Danish floating batteries are strongly built, low-lying; some of their guns are forty-four-pounders, heavier than anything on our side. A thousand dead and wounded on the English side in the first three hours of fighting.

My
Monarch
rested on her glinting artificial sea, with no sound, no motion other than what I gave her. As far from the bloody pandemonium of those decks as my body was from risk of wounds …

Just at this moment, in the midst of these thoughts, I had a terrible sensation of having been wounded myself, somewhere low in the leg or in the foot. There was no pain, but I could feel the wetness of the blood. For a moment I braced myself for the pain to come. But the wetness was cold, too cold for blood. When I looked down, I saw that I was standing with one slippered foot in water, the other just out of it. A stream about two feet wide was running from under the door.

I was forced to abandon Horatio in the midst of the battle, the issue still in doubt, something I had never done before. The water was flowing in a shallow stream down the basement passage, fortunately not spreading much, as the floor slanted slightly towards the skirting board. It was coming from above, shining and murmuring in a sort of ecstasy as it dropped down the stairs. When I went up, I found the kitchen floor completely submerged; water was brimming over the sink and splashing down. In my sleepy haste I had left the cold tap running, and somehow the sink had got clogged.

Slippers and socks and trouser bottoms were now completely soaked. I splodged my way to the sink, turned off the tap, scrabbled to clear the paste of bread crumbs and coffee grounds from the plughole. A bucket and mop were the only answer. For some nightmarish moments I waded here and there, trying to remember where Mrs. Watson kept them. I found them in the cupboard adjoining the pantry. Then I began swabbing—a task that was to take up all my afternoon and most of my evening.

Mop and squeeze, mop and squeeze. I was still in the kitchen at 1
P.M
., when Sir Hyde Parker began to grow alarmed—or rather, when the state of alarm he had been in from the beginning began to intensify—and sent his historic signal of recall. Quite understandable, in a way. From six miles off he couldn’t see much—a thick pall of smoke lay over the battle. He could hear the thunder of the guns, apparently unabated. He could make out the distress signals flying from the grounded ships. He was an old man, and he subscribed to the old maxims, one of which said that ships could not stand and fight against fortifications. In his heart, he did not believe Horatio could carry the day. So he sent signal number 39, the signal of recall.

At this historic moment, one of the highlights of Horatio’s career, I was still miserably mopping and squeezing. I hadn’t even got as far as the basement stairs. My feet were soaked. Nevertheless, on this
day of his triumph I fixed my mind on him, I gave him his due of homage. He sees the signal, of course. What is his first reaction? He asks if his own signal is still in place, his favourite, the signal for close action. He is told that it is.
Mind you keep it so
. Then he turns to Captain Foley at his side—Foley, superb seaman and pilot, his battle companion at the Nile.
You know, Foley, I have only one eye—I have a right to be blind sometimes
. He puts the telescope to his blind eye.
I really do not see the signal!

This is the moment when legend is born. The path of the hero cannot be smooth; he must show disregard for all restraints of prudence, he must not stop short; he must always struggle to thrust aside impediment, to break through into pure freedom, absolute success. Those around him on board the ship never forgot this moment: the lieutenant who brought him the news of the signal; Foley, to whom the words were said; Colonel Stewart, the commander of marines, who recorded them for posterity. And so they have come to generation after generation of British schoolchildren, as they came to me. The quintessential act of heroic insubordination, the ultimate rejection of half-measures. And he, the hero—he understood completely the value of that gesture, the moment when acting the part and realizing the self meet and blend together. And to use his infirmity to reinforce his strength!
I really do not see the signal
. Wonderful, wonderful. At 1:40
P.M
., when these words were uttered, I stood with mop suspended, quite still there in the kitchen, observing a minute’s silence.

However, fear somehow entered this silence, or foreboding rather, making it difficult to sustain: I had not been properly present in these moments of his triumph, I had failed in my role of witness and shadow. There would be a price to pay. Again that yearning for freedom came to me. I thought then it was
his
freedom I wanted—all fear conquered. Someday, and perhaps soon, I would prove worthy of
him. I vowed it as I stood there. But then I began to worry about my wet feet; I was afraid I might catch cold and be unable to deliver my talk, only a week away now. The kitchen floor was still wet but no longer awash. I went to my bedroom and changed my socks. I had no idea which of my shoes might be waterproof or whether any of them were, but I put on the stoutest I had. Then I went back to my mopping.

It was nearly eight in the evening before I got things back in some sort of order, and by that time I was tired out. In my anxiety to deal with the flood I had neglected to eat. The Italian takeaway on Haverstock Hill had a delivery service, and I phoned them and ordered a pizza margherita, which came very promptly—it took twenty-two minutes from the phone call to the ring at the door. I had some claret with it. Sitting in my study afterwards, I felt reasonably at peace—to begin with, at least.

I was thinking about the battle as it had developed after Horatio’s inspired disobedience. The firing had begun to slacken off after an hour or so. By about four in the afternoon, most of the Danish gunships were smoking wrecks. Their dead and wounded amounted to more than two thousand. But they still had not capitulated, still maintained a sporadic fire on our ships. It was then that Horatio showed the other essential side of the untrammelled angel; to courage and panache is added the ruthless will to victory. He sent for writing materials. Spreading the paper on the wooden casing over the rudder head, he wrote a message to Crown Prince Frederick. He would spare the Danes if they no longer resisted, but if resistance were continued, he would be obliged to set on fire all the floating batteries he had taken,
without having the power to save the men who had defended them
.

And he would have done it! He would have sent his fireships in among the defenceless hulks and burned the whole line, men and ships together. And if this had not been enough to bring them to a
cease-fire, he would have pounded into ruins the beautiful city of Copenhagen, whose steep-pitched roofs and copper-green spires were clearly visible to him.

The Danes knew it was no bluff; their remaining guns fell silent. After a week of negotiations, an armistice was signed; Denmark was detached from her alliance with Russia. By an irony of history, one of those parallel courses I always found so fascinating, none of all this was necessary; none of those thousands of dead and maimed need have received a scratch. Unknown to either Danes or English at the time, an event had taken place that made the bloodshed and the bargaining equally superfluous. A week before the battle, a group of Russian officers who had dined rather too well made their way to the Mikhailovsky Palace and strangled the lunatic Czar Paul, choking the life out of the Scandinavian alliance at the same time.