last a signal ran up Villeneuve’s mast. “Open fire.”
A marine checked his watch. At noon, the first cannon boomed.
CHAPTER 30
Perched a hundred feet above the sea, I had a strange sense of detachment as the battle began. I felt wedged into a box seat, watching an elaborate stage production. The long, greasy swells kept us sharpshooters lazily rocking as if we were nested in a tree, the ships moving with the stately sway of giraffes. The quick thud of the French and Spanish guns seemed disconnected from this nautical minuet at first, too excited to fit the panorama’s languorous mood. But the gunfire slowly rose in frequency to become a rolling thunder, its urgency reminding me why we were here. The ocean began to erupt from splashing cannonballs. The shooting also settled the crews of the Combined Fleet, putting them to work. They cheered each rippling broadside, gray-white clouds of gunsmoke hanging like fog because there was almost no breeze to disperse it. As a result our hulls were gradually shrouded, and the shooting became half-blind.
The British ships sailed directly toward us in ominous silence, firing not a shot. Many of the French and Spanish cannons initially missed, demonstrating their lack of practice, and the Nelson columns glided ahead in a corridor of geysers. As the distance narrowed to five hundred yards, however, accuracy grew. I began to see splinters fly, ropes snap, and holes open up in sails, perforated into lace. Seven different vessels blasted away at the lead ship of Nelson’s southern column, chips spinning as if she were being whittled.
“Royal Sovereign,” a French marine sergeant reported after peering through his glass. “Not Nelson, but someone just as eager. Collingwood, perhaps.”
“Where’s Nelson then?”
He pointed to the lead ship of the northerly column, every possible sail set as it drifted downwind. “The one coming for us.”
Lucas had failed me, putting us in the path of the dangerous admiral instead of on the battle’s periphery.
You can never find a coward when you need one.
Fifteen minutes after the opening shots to the south the Victory came under our own fire, our guns rippling and our ship heeling to their kick. But the English flagship sailed majestically on, utterly silent, masts scraping heaven, sails swelling like a proud chest, and its sides bulging like a bicep and studded with guns. We were frantic to stop the enemy flagship before it pierced our line, and yet it seemed impervious to anything we did. Guns roared in broadside after broadside, and the sound boomed up to us in claps of air. Sailors’ ears would bleed even when wrapped in kerchiefs, and some would go deaf for days or a lifetime.
Finally, our attempt to slow and blind the enemy by blasting away at its rigging became successful. The studding sails that extended from the main yards of Victory were shot away, fluttering down like tumbling ducks. The foresail turned to ribbons. With stays cut, the mizzen topsail of the English ship snapped and tumbled, hanging awkwardly against lower lines and poised like an arrow at the helm below. A cannonball bounced off one of the English anchors and it sagged.
I could see the blue-coated English officers standing stiffly on their quarterdeck with little to do but demonstrate courage. The flagship’s great wheel disintegrated in a cloud of splinters. They flinched and stayed standing, even as the helmsmen died. The fresh black and yellow paint was beginning to be gouged with scars of raw wood. Nonetheless, Victory swung to starboard, obviously steered from somewhere below, and calmly passed down our line. Damnation! The perfect place to pierce our line was between Bucentaure, directly ahead, and Redoutable. This was as bad luck as at the Nile.
Victory seemed almost impervious to the punishment it was taking, plowing ahead through a rain of cannonballs, but then a group of red-coated marines suddenly tumbled like pins in a bowl. A still-cradled ship’s boat erupted into pieces, its planks whirling like scythes. I heard English screams. Surely they’d turn away? The enemy flagship was taking a terrible pounding, and maybe we could really hammer it to a halt before Nelson achieved his melee. But no, for the first time the Victory’s port batteries let loose in return as she cruised down our line, the wood of French ships flinching from their punch. Stout wood quivered. Masts reeled.
Redoutable had yet to receive any fire.
My mouth was dry, and I had to remember to swallow.
Then Victory turned again, to pierce our formation, and