Victory

for from Cartagena would not delay.

They hugged the land up to the one promontory and turning point between Cadiz and the strait, a fearful journey with the scattered reefs. L’Aurore showed true breeding, though, and they raised the bleak sand-spit within a few hours; further inland there was a bluff cliff with a tower. This was marked on the chart as Torre de Meca and the turning point – Cabo Taraf-al-Gar, Trafalgar on Kydd’s chart.

He was struck with a sense of poignancy that reached out to him from the lonely place, in the light airs the sinister gurgling of a roiling counter-current adding to the sense of desolation. The chart had a neat entry noting the current, adding that this was known locally as the ‘Risa de Cabo’, the laughter of the cape.

There were no reinforcements; Kydd sighted Cape Spartel on the African side of the strait and his mission was accomplished. He lost no time in wearing round for the return, dreading what he might find.

The unpredictable weather had turned squally and wet; towards the end of the day he had made it back to Cadiz through the curtains of rain and ragged bluster – and the port was empty. The enemy had left, taking with it the shadowing British frigates.

Kydd was in a desperate quandary as to what to do next but then, to his vast relief, there was a hail from a lookout. To the westward, out of sight from the deck, a fleet had been sighted.

Whether it was Nelson or the French didn’t matter: his duty was clear. As they bore down on the mass of ships an outlying frigate saw them, its challenge showing bright and clear against the dark grey of the clouds. It was the English Sirius.

Kydd closed with the vessel and, in a terse hail, was told developments. The enemy had been hampered in leaving by fluky winds and once to sea had suffered even further from the adverse winds. In all they were thirty- three of-the-line and five frigates and were heading south, towards the Strait of Gibraltar.

Lord Nelson, still in communication, was racing to intercept. Their immediate duty was to stay with the enemy fleet at all costs through the coming night, for it was now fast becoming a certainty that it would be the next day when that fateful clash would come.

Bowden had slept little during the dark hours of the middle watch – the irregular bass creaking at the rudder stock and endless shrill working of the steering tackle sheaves seemed more than usually intrusive. But he knew the real reason: as the day dawned it would unveil either an innocent, empty horizon or the dread sight of an enemy battle-fleet.

Unlike the majority aboard he had served under Lord Nelson in a major fleet action, the Nile, and knew at first hand of the chaos and injury, terror and fatigue – and the callous working of Fate that decreed this one go on to fame and glory and another be struck down.

He was not in a state of mortal fear of the new day for he had long ago concluded that his profession would always require he stand resolute in the face of personal danger, and if he was to aspire to higher things, an unreasoning terror would for ever be a millstone around the neck.

His problem was a sensitive and active imagination that had to be crushed in times of crisis, but now, lying in his hammock in the reeking blackness, it was galloping at full stretch, his restless mind reaching for certainties and assurance for the coming day.

It helped to serve under an unquestioned hero such as Nelson, whose only worry seemed to be that the enemy was not prepared to stand and fight. Now, there was a leader and an example! How could any fail to be inspired by his clarity of purpose, the single-minded objective of victory – and the warm humanity that underlay them?

And there was Captain Kydd, who had risen from fore-mast hand to frigate captain and was as much a natural seaman as Nelson. Bowden had seen L’Aurore’s name on the Pennant Board; at that very moment Kydd was somewhere out in the night, dogging Villeneuve, and whether or not the foe was there in the morning depended largely on whether he and the other frigate captains had done their job.

Or . . . during the night the French might very well have taken fright and returned to port as they had done so often before. Then all talk of a mighty clash would be so much vapour and dreams.

But then again . . . Villeneuve might have slipped his pursuers and was now ranging swiftly north to trigger the invasion.

Bowden tossed and turned restlessly until eventually a ship’s corporal came with his lanthorn to call the watch. He dressed quickly and made his way up the hatchways through the gun-decks of stirring men.

It was a moonless night with the pale immensity of canvas above and the muffled plash of the wake below. The cosy warmth of his hammock was soon forgotten in the chill night breezes. After the usual muted jocularity of handover, his friend Bulkeley, clearly of a mind for rest as he went through the ritual, hurried below.

Lieutenant Pasco was having an irritable exchange with the quartermaster. The officer appeared disinclined to indulge in trivialities and Bowden had to pace the decks alone in the long hours before an imperceptible lightening hinted at the coming sunrise.

The light increased, wave by wave extending out, the anonymity of early dawn slowly infused with colour until the technical requirement for daybreak was met – that a grey goose could be seen at a mile. Then the lookout’s thrilling hail came nearly simultaneously from a half-dozen throats – the enemy fleet was sighted!

There was now no more speculation, no more questioning: the French had not fled back to port, they had not vanished into the vastness of the ocean. Somewhere, soon, there would be enacted the greatest sea battle the world had ever seen.

In the whisper-quiet morning breeze, it was a long hour before they could be seen from the deck but then, stark against the fast brightening eastern sky, the topgallants and upper rigging of countless men-o’-war stretched from one side of the horizon to the other.

By now Victory’s decks were alive with men gazing out over the placid sea. Some mounted the shrouds to get a better view, but in laughing, devil-may-care high spirits – as if they were at a village fair instead of readying to fight for their lives.

Bowden stood at ease next to the wheel, still on watch. Nelson came on deck, avidly taking in the spectacle he had yearned for over so long a time.

‘A brave sight, my lord,’ Pasco said diffidently, offering his officer-of-the-watch telescope.

Nelson seemed not to hear as he focused on the distant masts.