Flag and Fleet: How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas

by William Wood

In October Admiral Duncan was made Lord Camperdown for destroying the Dutch fleet which was trying to help the French into Ireland. He caught it off Camperduin (on the coast of North Holland) and smashed it to pieces after a furious battle, in which the Dutch, with a smaller fleet, showed that they too were of the Viking breed. This victory stopped the danger from the north, just as St. Vincent's stopped it from the south. Both were fought in the only proper way to defend the British Empire on the sea when the enemy comes out, that is, by going to meet him in his own waters, instead of waiting to let him choose his own point of attack against the British coast.

Next year, 1798, Nelson was also made a peer for a glorious victory won on his own account. He had learnt from Lord Hood the first principle of all defence—that the real aim is not so much to stand on guard or even to win a victory as to destroy the enemy's means of destroying you. This chimed in with his own straight-forward genius; and he never forgot his old chief: "the best officer that England has to boast of." Hood had the misfortune never to have been in supreme command during a great battle. But, in Nelson's opinion, he stood above all other commanders-in-chief of his own time; and, as we look back on him now, we see that Nelson alone surpassed him.

Napoleon, like the Germans of today, hoped to make land-power beat sea-power in the East by stirring up rebellion against the British rule in India and making Egypt his bridge between Europe and Asia. With daring skill he crossed the Mediterranean and conquered Egypt. But his victory proved worse than useless; for Nelson followed the French fleet and utterly defeated it in the Bay of Aboukir at the mouth of the Nile on the 1st of August, 1798. The battle was fought with the utmost firmness on both sides, each knowing that the fate of Egypt, of the East, and of Napoleon's army as well as of his fleet, hung trembling in the scales. The odds were twelve British battleships to thirteen French. The French sailors, as usual, were not such skilled hands as the British, partly because France had always been rather a country of landsmen than seamen, but chiefly because the French fleets were, as a rule, so closely blockaded that they could not use the open sea for training nearly so much as their British rivals did. Still, the French fleet, though at anchor (and so unable to change its position quickly to suit the changes of the fight) looked as if it could defy even Nelson himself. For it was drawn up across the bay with no spot left unguarded between it and the land at either end of the line; and it was so close in shore that its admirals never thought anybody would try to work his way inside.

But that is just what Nelson did. He sent some of his ships between the van of the French and the Aboukir shoal, where there was just room to scrape through with hardly an inch to spare; and so skilful was the British seamanship that this marvellous manoeuvre took the French completely by surprise. Then, having his own fleet under way, while the French was standing still, he doubled on their van (that is, he attacked it from both sides), held their centre, and left their rear alone. By this skilful move he crushed the van and then had the centre at his mercy. The French gunners stuck to their work with splendid courage, driving the Bellerophon off as a mere battered hulk and keeping most of the rest at bay for some time. But the French flagship, Orient, which the Bellerophon had boldly attacked, was now attacked by the Swiftsure and Alexander; and the French admiral, Brueys, already wounded twice, was mortally hit by a cannon ball. He refused to be carried below, saying that "a French admiral should die on deck in a fight like this." His example encouraged the crew to redouble their efforts. But, just after he died, fire broke out on board the Orient and quickly spread fore and aft, up the rigging, and right in toward the magazine. The desperate battle was now at its fiercest, raging all round this furious fire, which lit the blackness of that warm Egyptian night with devils' tongues of flame. The cannonade went on. But even the thunder of two thousand guns could not drown the roar of that seething fire, now eating into the very vitals of the ship, nearer and nearer to the magazine. Every near-by ship that could move now hauled clear as far as possible; while the rest closed portholes and hatchways, took their powder below, sent all hands to fire stations, and breathlessly waited for the end. Suddenly, as if the sea had opened to let Hell's lightning loose, the Orient burst like a gigantic shell and crashed like Doomsday thunder. The nearest ships reeled under the terrific shock, which racked their hulls from stem to stern and set some leaking badly. Masts, boats, and twisted rigging flew blazing through the air, fell hissing on the watered decks, and set two British vessels and one French on fire. But the crews worked their very hardest, and they saved all three.

[Illustration: THE BLOWING UP OF L'ORIENT
DURING THE BATTLE OF THE NILE.]

For a few awed minutes every gun was dumb. Then the Franklin, the French ship that had taken fire, began the fight again. But the Defence and Swiftsure brought down her masts, silenced nearly all her guns, and forced her to surrender. By midnight the first seven ships in that gallant French line had all been taken or sunk; every man who could be saved being brought on board the victorious British men-of-war and, of course, well treated there. The eighth Frenchman, the Tonnant, still kept up the fight, hoping to stop the British from getting at the five astern. Her heroic captain, Thouars, had, first, his right arm, then his left, and then his right leg, smashed by cannon balls. But, like Brueys, he would not leave the deck, and calmly gave his orders till he died.

Dawn found the Tonnant still trying to stem the British advance against the French rear, and the French frigate Justice actually making for the disabled British battleship, Bellerophon, which she wished to take. But the light of day soon showed the remaining French that all they could do for their own side now was to save as many ships as possible. So the rear then tried to escape. But one blew up; two ran ashore; and, of all the fleet that was to have made Napoleon's foothold sure, only four escaped, two from the line of battle and two from the frigates on the flank.

Nelson had won a victory which was quite perfect in reaching his great aim—the complete destruction of Napoleon's power in Egypt and the East. Napoleon himself escaped to France, after a campaign in Palestine followed by a retreat to Egypt. But his army was stranded as surely as if it had been a wrecked ship, high and dry. Three years after the Battle of the Nile the remnant of it was rounded up and made to surrender. Moreover, Malta, the central sea base of the whole Mediterranean, had meanwhile (1800) fallen into British hands, where, like Egypt, it remains to this day.