The Admiral: A Romance of Nelson in the Year of the Nile

by Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen

Chapter VIII.—Of the Battle of the Nile, on the First of August, 1798.

A FEW days later, when a breeze, blowing right out of the Great Port, sprang up, as was its wont, in the afternoon, the fleet made all haste to stand out and away after the French, not before the Admiral had read Master Will a sharp lecture for his folly in getting into such a scrape, and suspended him from personal attendance for two weeks—a sentence which was never finished, for in the meantime events happened of such a magnitude that all everyday matters, except such as had regard to the ships being in their best fighting and sailing trim, were forgotten as completely as if they had been swallowed in the Deluge.

I don’t believe that Will was half sorry at the prospect of having to spend the two weeks with his fellow-officers in the ward-room. In the case of friendship between a man of forty and a boy of eighteen, it is almost inevitable that the man must like the boy far more strongly than the boy likes him, and that the man should crave for the boy’s society while the boy accepts or tolerates the man’s. In the long chase after the French, from the time he left Syracuse on July 25th to the time that he sighted their tops in the afternoon of that memorable August 1st, there were tedious hours, when he felt an intense craving for the boy whom he had adopted more completely than his own stepson, Josiah Nisbet, who was also a lieutenant on the ship.

But for Will these were pleasant hours. He had up to that minute not only seen but little of his fellow-officers—he had hardly even been on speaking terms with them outside of professional duties. But they could not help feeling that he had done the ship and the service credit by the way in which he had maintained his quarrel against the Prince. And while they regarded the offence of serenading in jest as a very venial one, they regarded his fortnight’s suspension as a purely formal punishment. Will might have been quite a hero if his pride had allowed him to be “hail fellow, well met.” But it was as impossible for him to change it as it is for a leopard to change his spots or his skin (I forget how the phrase runs), and so he enjoyed a modified kind of popularity, and a much heightened respect from the ward-room at large, while some of the older men, like the First Lieutenant, Mr. Galwey, who had acted for him, made a friend of one who clearly had exceptional qualities. It produced a most unexpected and notable passage in my life; for the Admiral, having accustomed himself to the keeping of Will at his elbow, ready to perform whatever little duty might present itself, was lost without him, and being accustomed to the sight of me, whom he had often admitted as company for Will, used me as a kind of supernumerary until Will’s offence should have been condoned.

I must not be taken to imply that he extended to me the strong personal interest which he felt in Will. I had the duties, not the confidence. But nevertheless I saw much of him during that very critical week of his life, and it was at this time that the change came over him—the black shadow of doubt which had kept him irritable and depressed giving way to one of his irresistible convictions.

Not that he had ever been in doubt as to his principles of action, for he had never had but one principle, and that was to have his cannon within pistol-shot of the French. But he was fearful of not getting there in time; for the French, in his opinion, had two objective points to strike at—the Neapolitan kingdom, which was defenceless without his fleet, and India which was also defenceless if the army in the French fleet should arrive in Egypt with ships of Tippoo Saib waiting at Suez to embark them for India, and no British ships at the mouth of the Nile to prevent their disembarking. I think the greatest ambition in all his life was to destroy Buonaparte and his army of 40,000 men, whom he knew to be in the convoy guarded by the French fleet. We had thirteen ships of the line, but none above seventy-fours—one fifty-gun ship and one brig. Had we had frigates we should have found the French long ere that; for frigates, as even landsmen know, are the eyes of a fleet, and had we possessed frigates they would have been of the highest service in capturing the transports of the convoy. But had we met them I am convinced that the absence of frigates would not have prevented the most terrible calamity which ever befel the French army. The convoy we knew to be immense, to convey such an army and its supplies for a distant expedition; and we knew it to be guarded by a fleet far superior, on paper, to ourselves. I say advisedly on paper, because the presence of our Admiral was of itself sufficient to neutralise the disparity, and because of the disadvantage at which any fleet fights which has not only to defeat an enemy, but also to save its helpless transports.

As far as we could judge from various sources of information, their fleet consisted of sixteen of the line, one of them the tremendous L’Orient of 120 guns, and three or four others of eighty, but three of them Venetian and not French, and therefore not likely to be so well served. Besides which they had frigates and a cloud of small armed vessels, gunboats and the like.

But their superiority of force hardly entered into the Admiral’s calculations. His orders were the same for whatever force, and had we fallen in with the French the scene must have been appalling; for recognising the impossibility of rapidly taking possession of so many prizes, especially as they were crowded with armed men and we were without frigates, his orders were to destroy and not to capture.

He may, too, have been urged to this by the belief that the army was commanded by Buonaparte, whom he considered to be the arch-fiend, as he considered all French to be the enemies of the human race.