thing as the boat climbed one side of the swells and then sledded down the other. The wind was brisk but fair. If I could keep from broaching and turning over it would be a sleigh ride to Gibraltar.
There was a crack. I looked back. The lines holding Redoutable to Swiftsure had snapped, and the French vessel’s stern was submerging in the waves, its shot-pocked bow rising. I could hear the last faint screams of terror from those still on board. A final British longboat was taking off its own prize crew and however many French could fit. The rest were doomed.
I made a broader survey. As far as the eye could see, the dismasted hulls of warships tossed on a gray horizon, some nearing the dangerous shore.
I learned from newspaper accounts months later that nine captured ships were wrecked in the storm, drowning 2,700 men. Five ships were burned and scuttled because they couldn’t be saved. Four more French ships would be captured by the British in the coming weeks, completing the Combined Fleet’s annihilation. Total French and Spanish dead and wounded were eight thousand, justifying the premonitory wails of the women of Cadiz.
Villeneuve’s attempt at personal honor had been purchased at high cost indeed. He’d retained command and led it to disaster. To survive this life, you have to understand that all men and women are fundamentally mad.
Eventually, the captured admiral would be exchanged for other prisoners and would then commit suicide in France, stabbing himself several times in a locked room rather than face Napoleon.
Lucas was also captured, but he survived imprisonment as a naval hero.
Those great events were a universe away. My world was a small stolen boat, the surrounding swells of an angry ocean, and a wind that blew me toward Astiza.
I felt danger, but also strange calm. I had a fundamental conviction that I was at last steering where I was supposed to steer and that Astiza and Harry were alive and waiting, whatever Catherine claimed. The storm was wicked, but hadn’t I already threaded the rocky fangs of a reef with Johnstone? I was sailing to reunite with my loved ones and perhaps find the best treasure of all: a machine that could foretell the future.
As the last light faded on that storm day, a swell lifted me high on the undulating dunes of the sea. Faraway lanterns shone on imperiled ships, signaling futilely for rescue. Cape Trafalgar looked like a smudge of smoke on my port side. Somewhere directly ahead was the great mass of Africa. Spray blew off wave tops like whipping streamers of gray.
I settled back with bread and wine, toasting escape and determination.
Somehow I knew my family was waiting.
The puppet had cut his strings.
Historical Note
History is life: complex, confusing, and inconclusive. Problems drag, personalities linger, careers meander, and love sometimes goes unconsummated.
The British naval victory at the Battle of Trafalgar is so celebrated because it is so different. England’s greatest sea victory was accompanied by the death of its greatest naval hero. Triumph and tragedy in a single afternoon! The twin events hit Britain like a thunderbolt and have inspired poets and painters ever since. While reminiscences of the battle differ in detail, its course has been tracked almost minute by minute, blow by blow, and ship by ship. The combat of Redoutable and Victory described here is based on the historical record, with the exception that the French ship’s mizzen did not fall on the English flagship, delivering an American with it. Nelson’s dying words in this novel are an abbreviation of what he actually said. Such perfect drama seldom occurs.
Ethan Gage is not alone in his awe of the drama that was Trafalgar. Survivors testified to the grand majesty of the approaching fleets and the horrific slaughter that followed. Perfect grace produced hideous destruction.
It’s ironic, then, that historians can (and occasionally do) argue that the battle need not have been fought at all. Napoleon had abandoned his plan to invade England, and the French and Spanish fleets were deteriorating because Nelson’s quest for sea superiority had already been achieved by tedious blockade. After weeks of hesitation, Admiral Villeneuve led his unready ships to sea only because he’d been warned of his own replacement. Risking catastrophe became a matter of honor. Napoleon had goaded his commander to self-destruction.
Nelson’s victory at the earlier Battle of Copenhagen may also have been unnecessary since the murder of the Russian czar ended the coalition in which the Danish fleet might have been