Nelson: The Essential Hero (32 page)

He had already written to St Vincent, in a letter which Ball had advised him not to send - on the grounds that he was defending his conduct of the chase before it was yet over, and before any criticism had been made. But his nerves were on fire, and he knew that officers senior to him were ready at any moment to point to the folly of sending a junior on so important a mission. In later years he was to tell Troubridge how the return to Syracuse had almost broken his heart, and to counsel him : ‘Do not fret at anything. ... I wish I never had.’ Now, at his desk in the sun-laced cabin of the
Vanguard
, with the rhythm of the ship's operations assuaging his anxieties a little, he wrote on 20 July, in a quieter manner, to his wife. Poor Fanny must not be unduly disturbed. At the same time he never concealed from her whatever lay at the core of his real feelings:

... I have not been able to find the French Fleet, to my great mortification ... we have been off to Malta, to Alexandria in Egypt, Syria into Asia, and are returned here without success. However, no person will say that it has been for want of activity. I yet live in hopes of meeting these scoundrels; but it would have been my delight to have tried Buonaparte on a wind, for he commands the Fleet, as well as the Army. . . . Glory is my object, and that alone. God Almighty bless you.

To Sir William and his wife he expressed himself in terms which reflected his invariably high-romantic nature: ‘Thanks to your exertions, we have victualled and watered; and surely, watering at the Fountain of Arethusa, we must have victory. We shall sail with the first breeze, and be assured I will return either crowned with laurel, or covered with cypress.’

The first breeze came, the sultry harbour stirred under the northwesterly : the only wind that makes life supportable in Sicily, Malta, or the central Mediterranean during July and August. The wind came off the land, the fleet was unmoored, and, as he wrote to Sir William : ‘[We] shall go out of this delightful harbour, where our present wants have been most amply supplied, and where every attention has been paid to us.’ This last sentence in itself completely belied his previous complaints - complaints made in letters which he undoubtedly expected either to be anticipated by the French, or shown to them if necessary as proof that the British had not been made welcome in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Napoleon, far absent in the hot sands of Egypt, had in the meantime achieved his triumph. On 8 July, while Nelson was searching for him off the southern coast of Crete, Napoleon had moved his army out of Alexandria on the march to Cairo. It was indeed ‘le commencement d’une grande chose’, something that was confirmed by his defeat of the Mamelukes at Chebreiss and the Pyramids. On 24 July, the day before Nelson sailed from Syracuse, Napoleon entered Cairo. The East lay at his feet.

He now set about reorganising the affairs of Egypt. A proclamation printed in Arabic was issued everywhere that he, Napoleon, reverenced Mahomet and the Koran far more than the defeated Mamelukes ever had. In accordance with the doctrines of the Revolution, it was proclaimed that all men were equal, with the necessary rider ‘except in so far as they were distinguished by their intellectual and moral excellences’. The overthrow of the papal authority in Rome was put forward as a proof of the fact that the French were sincere Moslems. Such casuistry would have been quite beyond the Protestant Nelson (who might possibly have approved of the overthrow of papal authority, but never that of Christianity). But, as always with Napoleon, there was constructive sense in many of his words. In the future, for instance, all posts in the country were to be open to all men of whatever class. The hereditary autocracy of the Mamelukes was thus overthrown at a blow. Somehow or other Napoleon - and the Eastern mind is adept at tortuous thinking — was accepted as the Sultan’s emissary, while at the same time being regarded as a new Sultan of Egypt himself.

Dropping the shores of Sicily behind them, the British were once more headed eastward. Before leaving Syracuse Nelson had already informed his commanders: ‘I now acquaint you that I shall steer direct for the Island of Cyprus, and hope in Syria to find the French fleet. . . .’ He knew from his sources of information in Naples that the French had certainly not got to the west of him, but he could still hardly believe his original judgement that their destination was Alexandria could be correct. It must have been that he had missed them in the Levant. Their paths had somehow crossed while he was searching the shores of Turkey, and the French Army was now headed inland through Persia to join forces with Tippoo Sahib and reduce British India, while their fleet lay at anchor in one of the ancient ports that had once housed the ships of the Crusaders.

Crowding on all sail, with studding-sail yards hauled out and their gull-wings spread, mizzen, main and .even maintop staysails set, the ships took the favourable northwesterly on their port quarter and sped on their way. During their beat back from Alexandria, Nelson had his captains aboard whenever possible, to discuss every eventuality if and when they came up with the French - whether at sea or at anchor. Gunnery practice and the exercise of the marines in small arms had not been neglected.

Still hoping to catch the enemy at sea, he disposed the squadron in order of battle in case such good fortune came their way. They ran down the wind in three divisions, two of them designed to take care of the French fleet, while the third was to engage and capture the transports. If their first passage of six days had been excellent, this second was even better. The gods of chance, to whom Napoleon paid such respect, might favour him ashore, but at sea - even though he had been led astray for many weeks - the ancient gods were to smile upon Nelson. He himself would have rightly disparaged any such expression. The God he worshipped was the one whom he had known since childhood in the Burnham parsonage. He had been tried like Job, but he could answer ‘Yes’ to God’s question : ‘Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea, or hast thou walked in the search of the depth ?’

Despite Nelson’s original intention of making direct for Cyprus, he had decided to take one more look into Alexandria. The reason was simple. On the way, as they had passed the great Gulf of Kalamata, north of Cape Matapan, Troubridge had gone into the anchorage of Koroni and had found a French wine-brig there. This was a double delight, for not only did the good pressed grapes of the Morea help to serve the fleet, but she held the key to the door at which Nelson had so long and so obstinately been hammering. A month ago the French fleet had passed on a course to the south-east of Crete. Alexandria!

On
the
morning of 1 August 1798, the
Alexander
and
Swiftsure
, which had been sent on ahead the previous night, made their landfall off Alexandria. They signalled back that the French flag was flying over the city and that the harbour was full of merchantmen. Of the French fleet itself there was not a sign. The officers in the
Vanguard
, who had breakfasted that day with Nelson, commented that their Admiral had constantly asked for the time throughout the night. It was difficult even for them to understand how dangerously stretched were his nerves. At times it seemed to him that the mission upon which he had been sent had been beyond his powers, and that he had failed his ‘Dear Lord’, St Vincent.

The
Vanguard's
log reads : ‘On the 1st of August at 1
pm
moderate breezes and clear: the wind north. We saw Alexandria bearing S.E. seven or eight leagues. ... At half past two hauled our wind, unbent the best bower, took it out of the stem port and bent it again.’ The dilapidated Pharos - that wonder of the ancient world which the Arabs had been unable to maintain - came into sight, and beyond it Pompey’s lonely tower. The reason for taking the principal anchor to the stern was that Nelson envisaged he might have to commence an action against the battlements of Alexandria and French men-of-war within, which would entail anchoring by the stern so as to position the ships accurately. On learning that there were no men-of-war within either of Alexandria’s harbours fear must have clutched at his heart, but the presence of the French transports was in itself reassuring. He knew that the warships were not in Corfu, and from his previous investigation he knew also that if their fleet was in Egypt there was only one other place where it could anchor - Aboukir Bay. He immediately turned the fleet to the east.

It seemed to almost everyone that their hopeless quest was to begin yet again, and Captain Saumarez was later to recollect how despondent he felt. At four in the afternoon everything changed dramatically. The masthead lookout of Captain Hood’s
Zealous
had sighted the French fleet off the starboard bow, at anchor in that large sandy bay called after the Coptic saint* The enemy had been sighted at almost the same moment by the
Goliath.
The main meal of the day had begun half an hour beforehand, and the cloth was just being removed from the table in front of Captain Saumarez, when Midshipman Elliot came running to acquaint him with the news : ‘Sir, a signal is just now made that the enemy is in Aboukir Bay and moored in a line of battle.’ As Clarke and M‘Arthur recorded : Nothing could equal the joy that prevailed throughout the British squadron at the sight of the French flag, unless it were the calm determination and awful silence by which that joy was succeeded. Sir Horatio, for many preceding days, had hardly eaten or slept; but now, with a coolness peculiar to our naval character, he ordered his dinner to be served, during which the dreadful preparation for battle was made throughout the
Vanguard.
On his officers’ rising from the table and repairing to their separate stations, he exclaimed,
Before this time tomorrow, I shall have gained a Peerage, or Westminster Abbey.

His officers knew his high style (it was part of the rhetoric of their day), but they had to address themselves to their tasks with no such assurance.

The preparations that had been made for engaging the enemy, if they were found at anchor in Alexandria, were to hold equally good for Aboukir Bay. All ships were ready to anchor by the stern, all the preparations for a fleet action had been made, and every man from gunner to marine was at his post with the sure knowledge of his exact duties. As Falconer puts it in his
Dictionary:
‘When the admiral, or commander in chief, of a naval armament has discovered an enemy’s fleet, his principal concern is usually to approach it, and endeavour to come to action as soon as possible. Every inferior consideration must be sacrificed to this important object. . . .’ Nelson after so arduous a chase had no doubt at all about his duty. With the French, however, it was a very different matter. They had been under the assumption that their enemy had lost them and was far away to the west, and this had led to an over-confidence which was to prove disastrous. It had not been anticipated that the British would retrace their steps all the way across the eastern Mediterranean. Brueys had also taken unfortunate comfort in the fact that two British admirals, Hood and Barrington, had previously succeeded in fighting a successful action from just the kind of position in which he had anchored his fleet. Theoretically it should have been almost impregnable, for the shores of the bay provided a protection from the windward, or northerly, side and he had mounted guns on Aboukir Island which the enemy must round in order to come to grips with his fleet. This battery was, however, to prove ineffective, being ill-sited, under-gunned, and not having the necessary range to hit their opponents when they came sailing in.

One French flag-officer who survived the Battle of the Nile, Rear-Admiral Blanquet-Duchayla, left the clearest account of how the action appeared from the French point of view. The British were sighted about two o’clock in the afternoon, and the French Commander-in-Chief immediately called a council of war. Many of the men were away on shore, digging wells and foraging for provisions. Because of the attacks of the Bedouins upon the shore-parties, each ship had also had to send twenty-five additional men to protect their companions which meant that not only they but the ships’ boats were away. All must be recalled. In fact, many of them never did get back in time to be at their posts when battle commenced. The French frigates, which should have been permanently on the lookout against just this eventuality - the surprise arrival of their enemies - were at anchor. Brueys was betrayed by over-confidence. It was a known fact that men-of-war stood little chance against powerful, well-sited shore batteries and he should, in theory at any rate, have converted his ships into an impregnable defence-line. He had thirteen ships-of-the-line, nine of them of 74 guns, three of 80 guns, and in the very centre he had anchored his own flagship
L'Orient
with her 120 guns. This should have been more than enough to cope with Nelson’s thirteen 74s and his 50-gun
Leander.
The ships were anchored in a line stretching from north-west to south-east and certainly, by every rule of naval warfare, should have been more than capable of giving a good account of themselves. In view of the late hour, with darkness about to fall, they could hardly believe that the enemy would attack at once and risk a night action in uncharted waters. They had underestimated Nelson, who had constantly said, ‘I will bring the French Fleet to action the moment I can lay hand on them.’

Only Blanquet-Duchayla had suggested at the council that they should up-anchor and stand out to sea. Brueys, however, who was also constrained by having to wait for the shore-parties to return, felt reasonably confident that the British would not engage that day. The normal procedure would have been for the advancing squadron to reconnoitre the position, make their calculations, and then lie off overnight, inviting the French to come out the following day. If, on the other hand, they intended to attack them at anchor, they would not press home their attack in an unknown bay until daylight. Brueys, as Blanquet-Duchayla tells us, did briefly consider taking the fleet out to sea, and even had his top-sail yards set up. He changed his mind because he saw that, with his shortage of crew and so many men not yet returned from shore, he was in no position to fight a ship-to-ship action at sea. There was nothing for him but to stay at anchor, man all the starboard guns, and rest confident that if the British did enter the bay he could pick them off one by one as they came to anchor. A further reason for his staying at anchor was that the prevailing northerly wind would have meant his tacking out of an awkward position while the British would have had the weather gauge.