slid into a fog of French gunsmoke to slip at no more than walking pace between Villeneuve’s flagship and our own Redoutable. The three-decker was only eight feet higher, but it seemed to tower over us. The English were so close that I could clearly hear the calls of the British helmsman below, a calm, “Steady! Steady as she goes!” The hats of the officers were visible through the smoke as they paced like toy soldiers in a toy courtyard. The French marines began to fire at them.
“Shoot, shoot, American!”
There, could that be Nelson? I aimed at his foot and squeezed, hoping to chase the idiot to safety below. The shot struck the planking, and the man jumped but didn’t retreat. Why the pointless bravado?
To combat fear, I knew.
At the bow of the British ship I could see a crew crouched around an enormous sixty-eight-pound carronade, essentially a gigantic shotgun packed with five hundred musket balls. It was aimed not at us but at the windowed stern of Bucentaure on Victory’s other side, the mullioned glass glinting in the low, hazy sunlight of late October.
I wanted to shout warning, but it was pointless. Villeneuve knew his doom.
The English carronade fired.
The stern of Bucentaure dissolved into a penumbra of flying glass and window sash. The swarm of musket balls shot down the interior of the ship as if into a bag. There was an agonized bellow. The screams signaled to the lower decks of the English ship that they’d come within range, and as Victory slid across the stern of the French flagship, every other port gun, each loaded with two or three cannonballs, fired at point-blank range as it passed. More than a hundred round shot systematically crashed into Villeneuve’s command, creating havoc I could scarcely imagine. Cannon flipped and shattered. Companionway ladders dissolved into wooden splinters. The ship’s stern became a gaping cave, its interior splashed with blood like paint. Smoke rolled out from the ruins as if from a horizontal chimney.
In a single broadside, the French flagship was half-wrecked.
There was quiet as the British reloaded, enough so that I could hear the curses of French wounded floating across the water.
Then it was our turn. Captain Lucas shouted orders, the sound faint from my aerie, and we tried desperately to swing. Our bow strained to turn east so we could get our own guns parallel to the immense British flagship that was cutting our line ahead of us. But the wind remained feeble, the rudder sluggish, and we were too late. We’d punished the British ship as it had charged, and now it would have revenge.
Our bow slid into view of the cannon on Victory’s starboard side and once again its guns barked in turn, a steady thump like the pounding on a drum. Redoutable actually seemed to stutter and slow as the balls hit our prow, huge chunks of wood spiraling upward in crazy corkscrews. I saw cannonballs bounding off stout timbers and ricocheting out to splash. One of Redoutable’s two anchors was shot from its perch and plunged into the sea. Our foremast swayed in the storm of shot, yardarms and sails tumbling like limbs in a storm and punching through the netting to hit the deck with a crash. Sharpshooters on the foretop platform yelled as they fell, hitting the deck with a sickening thud. The mainmast swayed ominously, and the mizzen where I stood shuddered, meaning some of the cannonballs passed entirely through the Redoutable’s length and struck the base of our mast. I felt like a squirrel waiting while woodsmen chopped at my tree.
Better men than me report a strange coolness in battle, a sharpening of senses and attention to the business at hand that gives them robust courage.
Not today. This wasn’t my fight. I felt hideously exposed, caught in a nightmare from which I could not awake, my mind whirling.
“Reload, American!” Muskets went off in my ears, smoke stinging.
I did so mechanically but with deliberate slowness, not wanting to kill either English or French. The men around me shot ever more frantically, swearing in frustration as they sought to slow the English onslaught. Victory had raked two French ships at once, but now it was swinging parallel to Redoutable.
It was time to try the French tactics. “Hoist the grapnels!” Lucas cried.
We were about to collide and tie ourselves to the huge English flagship. Madness, madness! Yet the French soldiers and marines packed around me cheered lustily, anxious to wreak revenge against cannon with