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THE BATTLE
Aboukir Bay, Egypt, 1 August 1798
They rose in line from the west under a blood-red sky. Thirteen men-of-war falling on their prey. Hood in Zealous found the enemy first, and he now led the way into the uncharted bay, sounding as he went. Nelson hailed his friend from Vanguard, raising his hat in salute.1 In their hunger for prizes, Orion, Audacious, Theseus and Goliath swept past them both.
Weeks of playing blind manâs bluff across the wide Mediterranean Sea â Nelson blind and Bonaparte bluffing â had ended just hours before with the discovery of the French fleet at anchor in Aboukir Bay, at the mouth of the River Nile. With it came the bitter knowledge that the enemy had landed in Egypt. Back in June, the two fleets had sailed within 20 miles of each other, but lacking frigates, Nelson had been unable to probe the sails pricking his distant horizon and Bonaparte had slipped past. To Sir William Hamilton, British envoy to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies at Naples, Nelson had complained that, ââThe Devilâs children have the Devilâs luckâ.â2 Hamilton had been feverishly working behind the scenes to push the reluctant King Ferdinand IV of Naples into actively supporting this lone British effort to stem the French tide of conquest across Europe. He was assisted by his beautiful young wife, Emma, who had lavished attention on Nelson on his visit to Naples in 1793. Low born, she wanted to prove her worth to her esteemed husband and to dispel her titillating reputation back in England as an artistâs model, exotic dancer and aristocratic plaything. Together, the Hamiltons had cajoled the King of Naples, terrified of French repercussions, into allowing Nelson to provision and water his ships at Sicily as he hunted down Bonaparte. Without such help, the British fleet could not stay at sea. Rumours of victory or defeat tormented them both. Even as the British warships finally closed on the anchored enemy on 1 August 1798, Sir William was writing to Nelson to express his disappointment that rumours of him âhaving defeated the French fleet in the Bay of Alexandriette on the 30th of June and taken Buonaparte prisonerâ were ill founded.3
Despite the encouragement of the Hamiltons, Nelson was stressed and exhausted; burdened by responsibility and the expectation of a nation on his shoulders. The target of the enemyâs vast battle fleet had been unknown, causing panic across the eastern Mediterranean area from Naples to Malta, Constantinople to Cairo. His officers were also strained, suffering from debilitating ennui in the exhausting heat and drinking heavily at his table day after day. In July, in declining health, Peyton in Defence had pleaded to leave his command altogether, âto return to a climate that may give me a possibility of re-establishing itâ.4 There was unpleasantness too. At Syracuse, a lieutenant in Orion jumped ship after being accused of importuning a midshipman for sex.5 These were men on the edge.
It was the first time Nelson had commanded a fleet in action, but he did not hesitate now as Vanguard closed with an enemy wrapped in the first shrouds of night. The hundreds of men below him in the gun decks were blind to their fate, their senses sharpened for the smell, taste and feel of battle and focused only on the task ahead. In Goliath, gunnerâs mate John Nicol would see nothing of his foe. He recalled only the ominous light of a âred and fiery sunâ leaking into the gun deck as they approached.6 All around him, men prepared for battle in the oppressive heat: stripping to the waist, checking guns, opening ports, spreading sand to soak the blood, maybe their own, which would soon flow in warm sticky streams down the deck.
The enemy were well prepared for an attack and yet were still shocked when it came, suddenly and violently from the west. One by one, the British ships snaked through their line â some inside and some without â with brilliant seamanship, anchoring in turn before unleashing murderous fire on their chosen victim at point-blank range. In his haste to join the action, Troubridge turned Culloden into the bay too tightly, thrusting the ship hard into a shoal, where it stuck fast, leaving him to curse and roar at his lost prizes. Ball in Alexander drove into the heart of the enemy line to challenge the towering French flagship LâOrient. Soon a fire was seen licking hungrily in its bowels.
Vanguard was in the thickest action, locked in a deadly slugging match with Le Spartiate. The upper deck was strewn with shattered timbers, shredded sails and torn bodies. Few men exposed to such a maelstrom could escape unscathed, and within an hour Nelson himself was wounded: struck on the head by a piece of red-hot iron which spiralled at him through the heavy air. It slashed through his hat, opening his flesh to reveal brilliant white bone for an instant before blood flooded the wound. His captain, Berry, caught him as he fell. Nelson had been hurt in action before but, stunned, he now feared a fatal injury. His first thought was of Fanny, oblivious and far away in England. âI am killedâ, he cried out, âRemember me to my wife!â7 He was taken below, where the surgeon discovered a âwound on the forehead over the right eye. The cranium bared for more than an inch, the wound three inches long.â8 The gash was washed then closed with adhesive strips before the dazed patient was given opium for the searing pain. Nelson was then sat in the bread room below the waterline to recover his dazed senses.
At the heart of the French line, LâOrient was now ablaze from stern to bow, her guns silent and ports burning a fiery chequerboard in the smoke and darkness. Fearing a cataclysm, the nearest British ships pulled away and some of the smaller enemy brigs fled too in panic. Berry went below to find Nelson, leading him back to the quarterdeck to witness the death throes of his enemyâs flagship. From masthead to keel, every ship convulsed and every still-living soul shuddered when LâOrient went up in an eruption of timber, iron, looted treasure and torn, burning flesh. Oblivious to the scene above, John Nicol felt Goliath get âsuch a shake we thought the after part of her had blown up, until the boys told us what it wasâ.9 Fiery debris, torn limbs and wreckage crashed onto the decks of the nearest ships in a deadly rain of burning embers. Two large timbers ripped from the wooden corpse cartwheeled onto the deck of Swiftsure. The holocaust flooded the battle with bright light, revealing ships locked in mortal combat right across the wide bay.
Nine miles away in Alexandria, French officers listening intently to the rumble of distant battle saw the dreadful explosion on the dark horizon and were troubled by its meaning. Nearer, at Rosetta, others clambered onto roofs to watch LâOrient burn before she blew up âwith tremendous noiseâ.10 For several minutes or maybe an hour â shock made memories fluid â the battle stopped, all energy sucked from it by the vortex at its scorching heart. The bay was shrouded by âpitchy darkness and a most profound silenceâ which the horrified French observers took as âa very unfavourable auguryâ.11 Then, like punch-drunk fighters pulling off the ropes, with rising anger, the opposing ships started firing again, hurling hot iron against each other with renewed fury. Their flagship vaporised, their line shredded, the French fought blindly, crazily, bravely on. In Tonnant, the captain, both legs and an arm shot away, remained on deck, grotesquely and fleshily propped up on a bran tub, his life soaking away. The horror and the exhaustion was so great it was said that entire gun crews, friend and foe alike, fell asleep at their posts during the raging night.12
The battle lurched on sporadically and messily into the next day. As milky dawn broke, firefights still flared across the bay, the now tranquil waters slick with a bloody sheen and broken by wreckage, viscera and bloating dead bodies. Nelson was confused, dazed and disorientated. He lay below decks vomiting, his eyes black from bruising, his head agony and bound with a bloodied bandage. Feverish and irritable, he was enduring the first effects of that severe concussion which would jar his moral compass for months to come, forcing bad decisions and strange behaviour. Weeks of nervous tension had left him weakened and injured but triumphant â and vindicated. He had some hours now to gather his senses and scrambled thoughts: time to compose the perfectly nuanced dispatch for London. He was the master of a good press release. After the Battle of Cape St Vincent just eighteen months before, he had seized the headlines from his commanding officer by leaking accounts of his own boarding of the enemy ship San Josef to the newspapers. But this was a much bigger story and one entirely of his own making. So as he lay in his cot, he started turning phrases in his aching head.
He knew that his daring, the brilliance of his captains â who, with Shakespearean flourish, he now dubbed his âBand of Brothersâ - the superb seamanship and gunnery skills of his men, together with the mistakes of the French, had given him victory. He had also been incredibly lucky. His ships had been propelled into Aboukir Bay by a kindly north-westerly on the perfect trajectory for attack, giving the enemy no time to summon men back from the shore. The same wind had also made it difficult (but not impossible) for the rear of the French line, which had escaped, to come to the aid of its centre and van. Not that Nelson ever recognised luck; he called it Providence. With the sounds of occasional gunfire still filtering through the gloomy sweat-heavy deck, he shaped the perfect opening for his dispatch, one which flattered his God, his king and himself. Feeling weak, he called his secretary to his side for dictation, but âovercome by the sight of blood and the appearance of the admiralâ, he was not up to the task so Nelson took up the pen himself.13 âAlmighty Godâ, he wrote, âhas blessed his Majestyâs Arms in the late Battle by a great victory over the Fleet of the enemy, who I attacked at sunset on the 1st August, off the mouth of the Nile.â It was said that King George III turned his eyes to heaven with thanks when he read these words some three months later.14 Off Muslim Egypt, a Christian god had vanquished an atheist foe. âAlmighty God has made me the happy instrument of destructionâ, Nelson would tell Emma Hamilton: and that is exactly how he saw it.15 Satisfied, he summoned his officers to a service of thanksgiving on the deck of Vanguard, then ordered his flag captain, Edward Berry, to carry the dispatch in Leander down the Mediterranean to Earl St Vincent, his commander-in-chief at Gibraltar. As insurance against Berry being captured (which he was), duplicate dispatches were sent to Naples with 21-year-old flag lieutenant Thomas Capel in the brig Mutine, with orders to continue overland to England from there. Capel also carried a letter for Sir William Hamilton from Nelson, seeking urgent aid and safe haven for the damaged British ships. Before Capel sailed, Nelson handed him the sword surrendered by the French admiral Blanquet, its blade inscribed VIVRE LIBRE OU MOURIR, for him to present to the Lord Mayor of the City of London when he reached England. Finally, correctly sensing Bonaparteâs wider ambitions, Nelson gave a third letter to Thomas Duval, another young lieutenant in Zealous, to carry to India to warn British interests there of possible attack.
While their commander recovered, his jubilant captains, anticipating their spoils, resolved to form an âEgyptian Clubâ, an instinctive desire in a period when London taverns were crowded with private drinking and dining clubs. Even as the last guns echoed across the bay, they gathered in Orion under a sky wheeling with hungry sea birds and heavy with the stench of death to pledge 80 guineas each for the families of their dead and wounded: 895 casualties in all. They also vowed to pay for a portrait of Nelson, if he survived his wound, and to give him a luxurious gold sword as a memento of their shared victory.16 The idea was Saumarezâs, who envisaged hanging the portrait in an âEgyptian Hallâ in London where the captains could meet.17 This giving of gifts was a time-honoured tradition for the victors of battle, a relic from the age of chivalry. So was the hurried grabbing of trophies from this watery battlefield. Captured weapons were traded, and great chunks of LâOrient fished out of the bay and stowed away for crafting into snuff boxes and furniture. Nelson took away LâOrientâs mast head, while Benjamin Hallowell, âthe gallant but at times eccentric captain of the Swiftsureâ,18 gathered enough timber for his shipâs carpenter to make the admiral a coffin so âyou may be buried in one of your own trophiesâ.19 Before the completed box left Swiftsure, John Lee, a midshipman in the ship, climbed into it for fun until Hallowell threatened to screw it down and send him with it to Nelson.20
As his jarred senses settled over the coming days and the fear of his own death lifted, Nelsonâs strategic grip grew stronger, and with it came the grim reality of his predicament. Hundreds of miles from safety, unfit to sail away, the British fleet was anchored off a hostile coast in a bloody slick of debris and floating corpses which grotesquely defied efforts to sink them with shot. The shoreline for miles around the bay was strewn with masts, rigging, boats and gun carriages which the watching Arabs gathered into huge pyres to burn for the iron.
A more personally pressing matter for Nelsonâs officers and his men, discussed by the captains when they met after the battle, was their prize money. This was paid by the Admiralty to the crews of a successful action in return for recycling their captured ships and enemy loot. There now began a lengthy argument over the value of the many Nile prizes, conducted at armâs length by Nelson through his agent Alexander Davison. Sticking points would be the destruction of LâOrient, for which there could be no payment but which Nelson grumpily thought had ÂŁ600,000 of treasure stolen from Malta on board when it exploded; and compensation for those enemy ships too damaged to rep...
