Napoleon in Egypt (28 page)

By now the last light of day had faded from the western horizon and the bay was shrouded in darkness. Despite the fact that there was a bright moon, none of its light could penetrate the thick pall of smoke from the guns and the fires. The deafening uproar of the battle itself was fitfully illuminated by the garish flashes of gunfire on all sides and the flickering flames from burning rigging. By around eight
P.M.
the massive firepower of
L’Orient
had completely dismasted the
Bellerophon
, which now had just three splintered stubs sticking up from its decks, most of its guns silenced, and only one remaining officer on the quarterdeck, young Lieutenant Cathcart. He gave the order to cut her cables, allowing her battered hulk to drift free, away from the French line and any further carnage. But the danger was not over. By now the latecomers—
Alexander
and
Swiftsure
—were bearing down under press of sail, racing to join in the fray; they were both heading for the center of the French line and
L’Orient
. The
Alexander
intended to break through the French line and take up a position on the shore side of
L’Orient
whilst the
Swiftsure
engaged her on the seaward side. Amidst the chaos and clamor of battle, Captain Hallowell aboard the
Swiftsure
saw the dismasted
Bellerophon
drifting away from the French line and mistook her for a fleeing French ship. The four lanterns which would have distinguished her as British had long since been shot away with her mizzen-mast. “Supposing that she was an enemy, he felt inclined to fire into her; but as that would have broken the plan he had laid down for his conduct, he desisted.”
¹³
The
Bellerophon
had had a lucky escape. A few minutes later the
Swiftsure
anchored just ahead of the spot which had previously been occupied by the
Bellerophon
, and began firing into the vulnerable bows of
L’Orient
.

By now conditions aboard
L’Orient
itself were beginning to deteriorate. Part of the ship was on fire, and the French commander Brueys had been struck by a cannonball which had taken off his left leg (or, according to some sources, both legs). The ships were now so close that each of the crews could easily observe across the narrow gap of water what was happening in the flickering light of the enemy ship at which they were firing. The eleven-year-old midshipman John Lee aboard the
Swiftsure
would later remember: “The brave Bruyes [
sic
], the French commander-in-chief, having lost both his legs, was seated with tourniquets on the stumps, in an armchair facing his enemy, and giving instructions for extinguishing the fire, when a cannon ball from the western side of the
Swiftsure
put a period to his gallant life, by nearly cutting him in two.”
¹⁴
Amidst such hellish action, none was safe—friend or foe, cabin boy or commander. Around this time, “Admiral Nelson received a very severe wound in his head and was obliged to be carried off the deck.”
¹⁵
In fact, it is now known that he had been struck by some flying metal, such that the sliced skin of his forehead hung down from the wound and covered his left eye, rendering him sightless; as he subsided in the arms of Captain Berry beside him, he exclaimed: “I am killed,” and was immediately carried down below to be attended by the ship’s surgeon.

Conditions amidst the hurtling cannonballs, flying debris, musket fire and collapsing rigging on deck were bad enough, but belowdecks it was even worse. The spaces between decks were cramped at the best of times. Even given the short stature of most men of this period, it was impossible to stand upright, and the only outside air and light came from the gun ports. When the cannons fired they clattered back on their wheels, which could crush the unwary amidst the deafening noise, smoke, confusion and howls of the wounded, and there was the ever-present prospect of death by direct hit or by being flung into the sea to drown.

The most powerful cannons were thirty-six- and twenty-four-pounders (the figure relating to the weight of the cannonballs they fired). A thirty-six-pounder had a barrel almost nine feet long, weighed nearly four tons and required fifteen men to operate it, each of whom was drilled to play his part in an elaborate routine—hauling and powdering the guns, heaving the cannonballs, firing the powder, all men coordinated, following bellowed orders in the smoky, sweating, panicky darkness. The well-rehearsed preparations required before a shot could be fired meant that a good gun crew took around two minutes between shots; others often took as much as eight minutes. Such weapons were extremely powerful, especially at the close range at which Nelson encouraged his ships to engage the enemy. A thirty-six-pound cannon ballfired from 200 feet could penetrate a ship whose oak hull was almost three feet thick. Often at close range a cannonball would pass through one side of a ship and out the other, causing hideous damage to the swarm of men in the dim, cramped conditions in between.

A British tar called John Nicol, who was a member of a gun crew belowdecks on the
Goliath
, recalled the battle. His terse description bespeaks the bravery of men amidst such conditions: “In the heat of the action a shot came right into the magazine, but did no harm, as the carpenters plugged it up, and stopped the water rushing.”
¹⁶
The women, too, seem to have held their nerve, as Nicol thankfully records: “I was much indebted to the gunner’s wife, who gave her husband and me a drink of wine every now and then, which lessened our fatigue much.” He records: “There were some of the women wounded, and one woman belonging to Leith died of her wounds.” Astonishingly: “One woman bore a son in the heat of the action. . . . We never ceased firing.”

By now two of the French ships towards the van of their line were in a similar crippled state to the
Bellerophon
, but the battle still hung in the balance. There remained an ever-present danger to the British from the powerful French battleships at the rear of the French line—most notably the
Généreux
and the
Guillaume Tell
, the latter carrying Brueys’ young and ambitious second-in-command Rear-Admiral Villeneuve. Had Villeneuve taken his own initiative he could have upped anchors and led these two powerful ships forward towards the main action around
L’Orient
. Here they could have given the British a taste of their own medicine, by outflanking Nelson and his ships on the seaward side, thus sandwiching them between two lines of French battleships and subjecting them in turn to a murderous crossfire. However, he did not attempt this—either because he had not received orders to do so, or because he faced a headwind that would have rendered this a difficult (though not impossible) maneuver. Unlike Nelson’s captains, the French naval commanders were not encouraged to use their initiative. They were expected to follow their orders to the letter, and remain at their station until commanded otherwise.

The battle now underwent a decisive development. In the middle of the French line, it became evident that fire had once again broken out on board
L’Orient
. As young Midshipman Lee saw it: suddenly the smoke cleared and “the cold, clear, placid light of the moon formed a striking contrast with that of the burning ship, and enabled the lines of the hostile fleets to be, for the first time, clearly distinguished.”
¹⁷
This time the fire aboard
L’Orient
took hold and Lee on board the
Swiftsure
noticed how it “soon ran up the rigging, along the yards and decks.”
¹⁸

The French historian La Jonquière, drawing on firsthand accounts from aboard
L’Orient
, described what happened next: “By now everything was contributing to the confusion. The incendiary pump was found to be broken; the fire hatchets were buried beneath piles of debris; the buckets that were meant to be kept in the fo’c’sle were scattered all over the ship, so that some even had to be brought up from the hold.”
¹⁹

By this stage, according to Lee, the intense heat of the fire could be felt from across the water: “The
Swiftsure
was so near the burning
L’Orient
the pitch ran out of her seams in streamlets down the side.”
²⁰
Cooper Willyams, the ship’s chaplain aboard the
Swiftsure
, now watched how several officers and men aboard
L’Orient
,

seeing the impracticability of extinguishing the fire . . . jumped overboard; some supporting themselves on spars and pieces of wreck, others swimming with all their might to escape the dreaded catastrophe. Shot flying in all directions, dashed many of them to pieces; others were picked up by boats of the fleet, or dragged into the lower parts of the nearest ships; the British sailors humanely stretched forth their hands to save a fallen enemy, though the battle at that moment raged with uncontrolled fury.
²¹

It was becoming obvious to all that
L’Orient
was on the point of blowing up. Nelson had by now been treated by his ship’s surgeon, who had removed the flap of skin from his eye and succeeded in persuading him that he was not dying: “Forgetting his sufferings, [Nelson] hastened on deck, impelled by the purest humanity and gave directions that every exertion should be made to save as many lives [from the crew of
L’Orient
] as possible.” The compassion and absurdity of the scene were seemingly plain to everyone: “Above seventy men were saved by the exertions of those so lately employed in their destruction.”

Casabianca, the Corsican captain of
L’Orient
, had by this stage been struck on the head and carried below. His son, a midshipman who was two years younger even than Lee, was left standing on the quarterdeck. Urged by his crewmates to save himself and jump overboard, the boy refused to leave the ship without his father, and remained on the burning deck.
^*

Just before ten
P.M.
the inevitable happened. Willyams aboard the
Swiftsure
remembered: “The fire communicated to the magazine, and
L’Orient
blew up with a crashing sound that deafened all around her.”
²²
Lee, also aboard the nearby
Swiftsure
, recalled: “It was like an earthquake, the air rushing along the decks and below with inconceivable violence, and creating a tremulous motion in the ship, which existed for some minutes, and was awfully grand.”
²³
Even ships further away felt the devastating blast. According to Nicol, belowdecks: “The
Goliath
got such a shake, we thought the after-part of her had blown up, until the boys told us what it was.”
²⁴
L’Orient
had a full ship’s company of over 1,000 men, though many fewer than this would have been aboard at the time—of these it was estimated “a few score were saved.” Others claim the figure for those saved was higher. Either way, when
L’Orient
exploded, the bodies of many hundreds of men were blasted into the heavens above Aboukir Bay.

According to Captain Berry aboard the
Vanguard
, after the explosion, “An awful pause and death-like silence for about three minutes ensued, when the wreck of the masts, yards, &c., which had been carried to a vast height, fell down into the water, and on board the surrounding ships.”
²⁵
This silence, during which all ships on both sides ceased firing, is remarked upon by many witnesses. Some say it lasted as long as twenty minutes. Its uncanniness, after the hours of deafening noise, may well have made it seem that long, though Berry’s estimate does seem a little short, for reasons which will become clear. Some put the silence down to the men’s wonder at the sheer force, size and spectacle of the detonation. However, although doubtless there was a feeling of wonder amongst many of those present, this was not enough to stop a battle; men do not cease fighting (nor are they allowed to do so) through a sense of wonder alone. It is Berry who points to the real reason why every cannon throughout both fleets was silenced for several minutes. Debris from the exploded
L’Orient
was flung high into the air and came down over a very wide area, and this was more than just the scattered splinters of a ship blasted to smithereens by its exploding magazine. Recently, naval archaeologists diving in Aboukir Bay discovered a cannon from
L’Orient
weighing two tons which had been hurled over 400 yards from the site of the explosion. With such debris raining down out of the night sky, there would have been little time for wonder: with one accord, all those on deck would have fled below for cover. Yet no sooner would they have found safety than they would have been ordered back on deck regardless, together with many of the belowdecks gun crews. Much of the debris falling from the sky was burning, and began setting the surrounding ships on fire. All hands were soon required to put out the blazes which now broke out on deck and in the riggings. Meanwhile the debris continued to fall through the darkness. Besides cannons and rigging, cadavers and limbs, there would also have been over a million francs’ worth of gold bullion, and much of the historic jewelencrusted plate seized from the Knights of Malta, which was known to have been aboard
L’Orient
. Napoleon’s precious financial reserves, upon which the future economy of his colony depended, had also been blown sky high.