[Amnorix]

1805. Just for you big guy. All original work.


Europe was aflame. At war, again, as it ever seemed to be. But this time, instead of the usual power politics between emperors and kings, the whole continent struggled against the efforts of one man to subjugate them all. The monarchy of France had fallen, the result of forces that it had unleashed in assisting the Americans in their colonial uprising against their mother country. After years of turmoil and the "efficient" slaughter of thousands to the guillotine, Napoleon had arisen and seized control. Brought order and repeated military victories for France, sweeping all opponents before him. And only a year ago he had seized for himself the title of Emperor. Not King, as Louis XIV had been before losing his head. Emperor! And indeed, it was an empire that he controlled. Spain and Northern Italy were in thrall, as were the Dutch Netherlands. The Treaty of Amiens, less than three years old, was no longer worth the paper it was written on, as Napoleon seemed bent on expanding his power base, and his first target was the ancient French enemy, Britain.

So the situation might have seemed to Admiral Horatio Nelson, pacing the deck of his flagship, HMS Victory, in full dress blue uniform in the pre-dawn hours of this date, 1805. Had he known he would die this day, he may also have thought about his long and glorious career in the British Royal Navy, which stretched back to 1771 when he had joined the Navy as an Ordinary Seaman, at the age of 12. He certainly did not need to look far to see the scars of his many years of service. With his left eye, the one good eye he had, he could see the empty sleeve of his right arm. At least the seasickness that had plagued him throughout his career was not a problem on this day, as his fleet rode the seas of the North Atlantic outside Cadiz, Spain, near Cape Trafalgar, northwest of the Straits of Magellan. For too many days had his fleet lay well out of sight of the harbor, with only a few picket ships to inform the main fleet of anything worth reporting. Now, however, the enemy was sighted, and battle would soon be joined.

Vice Admiral of the White, he commanded a fleet of 27 ships of the line. HMS Victory was as good as the British had, 104 cannons mounted on three decks. Not as big as some of the Spanish leviathans, especially the thrice-cursed Santissima Trinidad, which carried between 120 and 136 guns. The Santa Anna was good for 112 guns, and he was outnumbered by the fleet that he sought to engage, 33 French and Spanish ships riding at anchor in Cadiz these many weeks. But he had the advantages that the British always had -- better seamanship, higher morale and, especially, better gunnery including the all-important superior rate of fire. Relentlessly drilled, the British could often fire three, if not four, broadsides for every two fired by other nations and in battle, it was all about throwing weight of shot and accuracy. Hence Nelson's simple but famous dictum -- always close with the enemy.

Meanwhile, French Admiral Villeneuve had determined to leave the harbor after receiving a stinging rebuke from his Emperor, alleging cowardice. Preemptorily ordered to make sail, he had left the harbor in line of battle a day or two earlier. By dawn on October 21, 1805, Nelson had caught his quarry and signalled his fleet to begin the attack. His captains knew the plan, Nelson had instructed them carefully for weeks. It was not, however, an elaborate plan -- fleet battles rarely were. The vagaries of wind and tides and currents and the smoke and fog of battle made precise coordination difficult if not impossible. The plan was this -- the fleet would split into two squadrons -- one to windward, one to leeward. The one to windward would consist of HMS Victory in the lead, with half the fleet behind her and attempt to cut the Franco-Spanish fleet into roughly 1/3rd and 2/3rds. The leeward, with the other half of the British fleet, the same with the back half of the enemy fleet. The forward ships of the Franco-Spanish fleet would be out of position, and need to turn to engage in the action. Meanwhile, the British, as always under Nelson, would be in close quarters and with superior firepower crush the enemy. Nelson was confident of victory, stating that he expected to capture 20 ships. He had left his captains with this dictum, in the scrum of battle when signals and flags would be impossible -- "No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy."

At 11:45 a.m., as the fleets closed, Nelson informed his signalman that he wanted to hoist a message to the fleet: "England confides that every man will do his duty." Informed that the word "confides" would have to be spelled letter by letter, however, he consented to change the word to "expects". As soon as possible he raised a new, and his last, signal -- close for action.

And that they did. As they charged forward, the ship behind Victory, HMS Temeriare, attempted to overtake the Victory to spare the Admiral the relentless pounding Victory was sure to take from her position in the van. Nelson peremptorily ordered him back into line. Vice Admiral Collingswood, leading the leeward squadron in HMS Royal Sovereign, reached the enemy first. After taking a fearful pounding, she broke through, directly behind Santa Anna, a 112 gun behemoth, and loosed double shot point blank into the Santa Anna's aft. Double shot, which has grape shot on top of round shot, is particularly fearsome if used effectively, and this first broadside reportedly removed 14 guns and 400 sailors from action.

The battle devolved, as Nelson planned, into a melee of isolated ship battles. At point blank range, the gunners fired as rapidly as possible. Cannon balls flew through the bulkheads and hulls of the ships, spraying huge wooden splinters and beams everywhere in their path. The men below decks choked and blinded by the smoke of battle, with barely enough room to stand up straight, loaded, fired and reloaded their guns as fast as possible. The decks had been prepared before battle with sand, to help traction and, inevitably, absorb the blood of their comrades. High in the rigging of the ships marine sharpshooters held onto their precarious perches while firing onto the decks of the enemy with, as always, the primary target being the captains and officers.

The French ship Achille was being raked so thoroughly at such close range that she caught fire from the guns of the enemy, and was soon aflame. The second ship in the British lee column, Belleisle, had become entangled with at least three enemy ships and was soon completely dismasted, her batteries blinded by her own rigging which was down, a floating, helpless hulk awaiting rescue or capture, as the fates might decree. Victory had been so pounded that she lost her wheel, and had to be steered from belowdecks.

Walking on the deck of Victory with the ship's captain, Thomas Hardy, Nelson had no reason to feel anything but satisfaction as the battle progressed. Then Hardy looked next to him and saw Nelson down on the deck. A musket ball shot from the mizzentop of the French ship Redoubtable had struck Nelson in the left shoulder, passed through his sixth and seventh vertebrae and lodged in the muscles of his back two inches below his scapula. As Hardy bent down to see what had happened, Nelson told him, "they finally succeded, I am dead." He was carried below decks, and would live for hours yet.

The battle continued to rage, but as more and more British ships entered the line, the rear of the allied ships were overwhelmed, while the van of the Franco-Spanish fleet tried and took far too long to turn back and join the fray. Eventually, the British took 22 ships, losing none. As he lay dying, Nelson was informed that the battle was won (though not quite yet over), and ordered that the fleet ride at anchor, as a storm was expected. The British surgeon heard Nelson murmur "thank God I have done my duty." Soon thereafter, at about 4:30, three hours after being hit, Nelson died.

The storm did break upon the fleet as expected, and many of the heavily damaged ships were sunk, or thrown onto the shoals. Some were even recaptured by their original crews in the disarray. Only 11 ships reached the safety of Cadiz, of which only five were deemed seaworthy.

Vice Admiral Villeneuve was taken prisoner back to England. Upon his release in 1806, he was en route to Paris when he was found in his inn room stabbed in the chest six times. His death was recorded as a suicide. Nelson's body was placed in a barrel of rum (or brandy, accounts differ) for preservation prior to burial. The Victory put in at Gibraltar for repairs, and his body was transferred to a lead-lined coffin filled with wine spirits aboard HMS Pickle for return to England. And so, sadly but accurately, Nelson's pickled body returned to England aboard HMS Pickle and he was buried with full honors at St. Paul's Cathedral. His funeral procession included 32 admirals, over 100 captains, and 10,000 troops.

HMS Victory herself still remains on display, and is the oldest commissioned ship in the world (though it is drydocked; USS Constitution is therefore the oldest commissioned ship afloat. Reputedly, after many years of service, Victory was scheduled for the scrapyard, and her old captain, Thomas Hardy, now First Sea Lord, had signed the order to scrap her. He went home and told his wife that he had given the order. She burst into tears told him to return to his offices at once and cancel the order. While the story may be apocryphal, the duty log containing the orders for the day in question has a page torn out of it.