[Illustration: The Battle of the Nile. — Doubling on the French Line. From Allen’s “Battles of the British Navy.”]
Bruéys had calculated that the English fleet must come down perpendicularly to his centre, and each ship in the process be raked by a line of fire a mile and a half long; but the moment the English ships rounded the island they tacked, hugged the shore, and swept through the gap between the leading vessel and the land. The British ships were so close to each other that Nelson, speaking from his own quarter-deck, was able to ask Hood in the Zealous, if he thought they had water enough to round the French line. Hood replied that he had no chart, but would lead and take soundings as he went.
So the British line came on, the men on the yards taking in canvas, the leadsmen in the chains coolly calling the soundings. The battery roared from the island, the leading French ships broke into smoke and flame, but the steady British line glided on. The Goliath by this time led; and at half-past five the shadow of its tall masts cast by the westering sun fell over the decks of the Guerrier, and as Foley, its captain, swept past the Frenchman’s bows, he poured in a furious broadside, bore swiftly up, and dropped—as Nelson, with that minute attention to detail which marks a great commander, had ordered all his captains—an anchor from the stern, so that, without having to “swing,” he was instantly in a fighting position on his enemy’s quarter. Foley, however, dropped his anchor a moment too late, and drifted on to the second ship in the line; but Hood, in the Zealous, coming swiftly after, also raked the Guerrier, and, anchoring from the stern at the exact moment, took the place on its quarter Foley should have taken.
The Orion came into battle next, blasted the unfortunate Guerrier, whose foremast had already gone, with a third broadside, and swept outside the Zealous and Goliath down to the third ship on the French line. A French frigate, the Sérieuse, of thirty-six guns, anchored inside the French line, ventured to fire on the Orion as it swept past, whereupon Saumarez, its commander, discharged his starboard broadside into that frigate. The Sérieuse reeled under the shock of the British guns, its masts disappeared like chips, and the unfortunate Frenchman went down like a stone; while Saumarez, laying himself on the larboard bow of the Franklin and the quarter of the Peuple Sovrain, broke upon them in thunder. The Theseus followed hard in the track of the Orion, raked the unhappy Guerrier in the familiar fashion while crossing its bows, then swept through the narrow water-lane betwixt the Goliath and Zealous and their French antagonists, poured a smashing broadside into each French ship as it passed, then shot outside the Orion, and anchored with mathematical nicety off the quarter of the Spartiate. The water-lane was not a pistol-shot wide, and this feat of seamanship was marvellous.
Miller, who commanded the Theseus, in a letter to his wife described the fight. “In running along the enemy’s line in the wake of the Zealous and Goliath, I observed,” he says, “their shot sweep just over us, and knowing well that at such a moment Frenchmen would not have coolness enough to change their elevation, I closed them suddenly, and, running under the arch of their shot, reserved my fire, every gun being loaded with two, and some with three round shot, until I had the Guerrier’s masts in a line, and her jib-boom about six feet clear of our rigging. We then opened with such effect that a second breath could not be drawn before her main and mizzen-mast were also gone. This was precisely at sunset, or forty-four minutes past six.”
The Audacious, meanwhile, was too impatient to tack round the head of the French line; it broke through the gap betwixt the first and second ships of the enemy, delivered itself, in a comfortable manner, of a raking broadside into both as it passed, took its position on the larboard bow of the Conquerant, and gave itself up to the joy of battle. Within thirty minutes from the beginning of the fight, that is, five British line-of-battle ships were inside the French line, comfortably established on the bows or quarters of the leading ships. Nelson himself, in the Vanguard, anchored on the outside of the French line, within eighty yards of the Spartiate’s starboard beam; the Minotaur, the Bellerophon, and the Majestic, coming up in swift succession, and at less than five minutes’ interval from each other, flung themselves on the next ships.
How the thunder of the battle deepened, and how the quick flashes of the guns grew brighter as the night gathered rapidly over sea, must be imagined. But Nelson’s swift and brilliant strategy was triumphant. Each ship in the French van resembled nothing so much as a walnut in the jaws of a nut-cracker. They were being “cracked” in succession, and the rear of the line could only look on with agitated feelings and watch the operation.
The fire of the British ships for fury and precision was overwhelming. The head of the Guerrier was simply shot away; the anchors hanging from her bows were cut in two; her main-deck ports, from the bowsprit to the gangway, were driven into one; her masts, fallen inboard, lay with their tangle of rigging on the unhappy crew; while some of her main-deck beams—all supports being torn away—fell on the guns. Hood, in the Zealous, who was pounding the unfortunate Guerrier, says, “At last, being tired of killing men in that way, I sent a lieutenant on board, who was allowed, as I had instructed him, to hoist a light, and haul it down as a sign of submission.” But all the damage was not on the side of the French. The great French flagship, the Orient, by this time had added her mighty voice to the tumult, and the Bellerophon, who was engaged with her, had a bad time of it. It was the story of Tom Sayers and Heenan over again—a dwarf fighting a giant. Her mizzen-mast and mainmast were shot away, and after maintaining the dreadful duel for more than an hour, and having 200 of her crew struck down, at 8.20 P.M. the Bellerophon cut her cable and drifted, a disabled wreck, out of the fire.
Meanwhile the four ships Nelson had left in the offing were beating furiously up to add themselves to the fight. Night had fallen, by the time Troubridge, in the Culloden, came round the island; and then, in full sight of the great battle, the Culloden ran hopelessly ashore! She was, perhaps, the finest ship of the British fleet, and the emotions of its crew and commander as they listened to the tumult, and watched through the darkness the darting fires of the Titanic combat they could not share, may be imagined. “Our army,” according to well-known authorities, “swore terribly in Flanders.” The expletives discharged that night along the decks and in the forecastle of the Culloden would probably have made even a Flanders veteran open his eyes in astonishment.
The Swiftsure and the Alexander, taking warning by the Culloden’s fate, swept round her and bore safely up to the fight. The Swiftsure, bearing down through the darkness to the combat, came across a vessel drifting, dismasted and lightless, a mere wreck. Holliwell, the captain of the Swiftsure, was about to fire, thinking it was an enemy, but on second thoughts hailed instead, and got for an answer the words, “Bellerophon; going out of action, disabled.” The Swiftsure passed on, and five minutes after the Bellerophon had drifted from the bows of the Orient the Swiftsure, coming mysteriously up out of the darkness, took her place, and broke into a tempest of fire.
At nine o’clock the great French flagship burst into flame. The painters had been at work upon her on the morning of that day, and had left oil and combustibles about. The nearest English ships concentrated their fire, both of musketry and of cannon, on the burning patch, and made the task of extinguishing it hopeless. Bruéys, the French admiral, had already been cut in two by a cannon shot, and Casablanca, his commodore, was wounded. The fire spread, the flames leaped up the masts and crept athwart the decks of the great ship. The moon had just risen, and the whole scene was perhaps the strangest ever witnessed—the great burning ship, the white light of the moon above, the darting points of red flame from the iron lips of hundreds of guns below, the drifting battle-smoke, the cries of ten thousand combatants—all crowded into an area of a few hundred square yards!
The British ships, hanging like hounds on the flanks of the Orient, knew that the explosion might come at any moment, and they made every preparation for it, closing their hatchways, arid gathering their firemen at quarters. But they would not withdraw their ships a single yard! At ten o’clock the great French ship blew up with a flame that for a moment lit shore and sea, and a sound that hushed into stillness the whole tumult of the battle. Out of a crew of over a thousand men only seventy were saved! For ten minutes after that dreadful sight the warring fleets seemed stupefied. Not a shout was heard, not a shot fired. Then the French ship next the missing flagship broke into wrathful fire, and the battle awoke in full passion once more.
The fighting raged with partial intermissions all through the night, and when morning broke Bruéys’ curved line of mighty battleships, a mile and a half long, had vanished. Of the French ships, one had been blown up, one was sunk, one was ashore, four had fled, the rest were prizes. It was the most complete and dramatic victory in naval history. The French fought on the whole with magnificent courage; but, though stronger in the mass, Nelson’s strategy and the seamanship of his captains made the British stronger at every point of actual battle. The rear of the French line did not fire a shot or lose a man. The wonder is that when Nelson’s strategy was developed, and its fatal character understood, Villeneuve, who commanded the French rear, and was a man of undoubted courage, did not cut his cables, make sail, and come to the help of his comrades. A few hundred yards would have carried him to the heart of the fight. Can any one doubt whether, if the positions had been reversed, Nelson would have watched the destruction of half his fleet as a mere spectator? If nothing better had offered, he would have pulled in a wash-tub into the fight!
Villeneuve afterwards offered three explanations of his own inertness—(1) he “could not spare any of his anchors”; (2) “he had no instructions”! (3) “on board the ships in the rear the idea of weighing and going to the help of the ships engaged occurred to no one”! In justice to the French, however, it may be admitted that nothing could surpass the fierceness and valour with which, say, the Tonnant was fought. Its captain, Du Petit-Thouars, fought his ship magnificently, had first both his arms and then one of his legs shot away, and died entreating his officers not to strike. Of the ten French ships engaged, the captains of eight were killed or wounded. Nelson took the seven wounded captains on board the Vanguard, and, as they recovered, they dined regularly with him. One of the captains had lost his nose, another an eye, another most of his teeth, with musket-shots, &c. Nelson, who himself had been wounded, and was still half-blind as a result, at one of his dinners offered by mischance a case of toothpicks to the captain on his left, who had lost all his teeth. He discovered his error, and in his confusion handed his snuff-box to the captain on his right, who had lost his nose!
What was the secret of the British victory? Nelson’s brilliant strategy was only possible by virtue of the magnificent seamanship of his captains, and the new fashion of close and desperate fighting, which Hood and Jarvis and Nelson himself had created. It is a French writer, Captain Gravière, who says that the French naval habit of evading battle where they could, and of accepting action from an enemy rather than forcing it upon him, had ruined the morale of the French navy. The long blockades had made Nelson’s captains perfect seamen, and he taught them that close fighting at pistol-shot distance was the secret of victory. “No English captain,” he said, “can do wrong who, in fight, lays a ship alongside an enemy.” It was a captain of Nelson’s school—a Scotchman—who at Camperdown, unable, just as the action began, to read some complicated signal from his chief, flung his signal-book on the deck, and in broad Scotch exclaimed, “D—— me! up with the hellem an’ gang in the middle o’t.” That trick of “ganging into the middle o’t” was irresistible.
The battle of the Nile destroyed the naval prestige of France, made England supreme in the Mediterranean, saved India, left Napoleon and his army practically prisoners in Egypt, and united Austria, Russia, and Turkey in league against France. The night battle in Aboukir Bay, in a word, changed the face of history.