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One man sees this, and that man is Horatio Nelson. It is now 12:50 p.m. Without a second's hesitation, disregarding his commander's signal, he veers the Captain away from the wind, he breaks the line. The audacity of it, the impetuous logic! To recognize absolute necessity and act on that instant of recognition. Now again, in this silent room, as I send the Captain into the attack and her colours glint on the dark surface, I feel a constriction in the throat and my heart beats faster at the dash and defiance of it. The move has brought us, at a stroke, across the bows of at least seven Spanish ships, among them the huge Santissima Trinidad, the San Josef, the Salvador del Mundo, and the San Nicolas, these four alone possessing 440 guns against Horatio's 74.
At the moment that he swung away from the wind and broke the line, risking the outcome of the battle and his whole career on this one throw, at that moment, in his thirty-ninth year, Horatio became an angel. He entered a different sphere. I will say what I think angels are. They can be dark or bright, but they all have the gift of spontaneity, of creating themselves anew. This is a pure form of energy, and Horatio was winged with it. All the same, angels are not complete, they need their counterparts, the dark needs the bright, the hidden needs the open, and vice versa. Sometimes they meet and recognize each other. Sometimes, as with Horatio and me, the pairing occurs over spaces of time or distance. He became a bright angel on February 14, 1797, during the Battle of Cape St. Vincent. I became his dark twin on September 9, 1997, when I too broke the line.
I had nopresentiment of this on that February afternoon, as I moved my model ships about on their glass ocean. Since my father's death I had been experiencing bouts of gloom--not sorrow--and at times a sort of excited restlessness that made it difficult for me to keep still. And I had run into a difficult patch in the book I was writing, The Making of a Hero. I had got bogged down in the events of June 1799 in Naples and Horatio's part in them. This book had been going on for more than five years, ever since December 1991. I started it on Boxing Day, the anniversary of his mother's death. The Naples business was worrying me; I could not leap over it. Progress was slow; lately, in fact, there hadn't been any. I kept retreating, rewriting pieces of his earlier life. It was for this reason that I began to feel slightly uneasy now, as I went on with the battle. Because at this point I had to bring Troubridge into the action, and at the time I did not much care to dwell on Troubridge, Horatio's brother officer and friend, closely associated with him in this battle but also in the treatment, two years later, of the Jacobin rebels in Naples--the business that was holding me up with my book.
Certainly there is no doubt of his fighting spirit. Horatio is not left long to fight alone. He is joined by Troubridge in the Culloden, the leading English ship, which has now completed the turn ordered by Jervis and come within range. For nearly an hour these two exchange broadsides with the Dons, superior discipline and gunnery making up for inferiority of armament. Now here is the gallant Blenheim coming up to give them a respite, passing between them and the enemy, pouring fire as she goes. The Culloden is crippled, she falls astern. Collingwood ranges up in the Excellent, last ship of the line. He passes within ten feet of the San Nicolas, eighty guns, and blasts her in masterly fashion with two broadsides in succession.
Ten feet. The length of this table. That would be about it. Almost jumping distance. These towering ships, fighting so close, hardly more than the length of a man between them, launching their thunderous fire, shuddering from stem to stern with the repeated recoil of the guns--the English gun crews could deliver a broadside every seventy-five seconds. Dismemberment and maiming inflicted almost within range of an embrace. Hard even for a landsman of the time, the notion of such closeness, such promiscuous intimacy of destruction. How much more so for us now, with our concept of war as distant erasure, a button touched, a figure or a thousand figures obliterated on a screen.
The close-quarter fighting gives Horatio his second great triumph of the day. The San Nicolas, reeling from Collingwood's fire, falls foul of her compatriot, the huge San Josef, three decks, 112 guns. The two Spanish ships, both badly damaged, are inextricably locked together. I set them together here, side by side, to the windward of Horatio. His own ship by now is completely disabled. She has lost her fore topmast; her wheel has been shot away; neither sail nor rigging is left. She is incapable of fighting in line, incapable of giving chase.
Again Horatio demonstrates the promptness of genius. The genius of a hero lies in his extreme readiness to action--which is not the same as rashness. He lays his ship aboard the starboard quarter of the San Nicolas. His sprit sail passes over the Spaniard's poop and locks in her mizzen shrouds. Three ships tangled together now; here they are, side by side. Horatio calls for a boarding party. Short of stature--he is only five feet six inches--slight of frame, with one eye more or less useless to him after the wound he suffered in the Corsican campaign two and a half years before, newly fledged angel with bright sword in hand, he leads the way, passing from the fore chains of his own ship into the quarter gallery of the San Nicolas. In the exchange of fire that follows, the Spanish commander is mortally wounded. The Spaniards surrender, but while Horatio is receiving the officers' swords, his party is fired upon. Seven English seamen are killed in this fusillade. Where is it coming from? From above and beyond, from the stern gallery of the San Josef, still helplessly tangled aloft. Without a flicker of hesitation, Horatio orders his mariners to return the enemy fire, stations sentinels at the hatchway to keep the enemy belowdecks, and charges on. He will board an enemy ship from the deck of another already boarded and taken!
His friend Berry is at hand, helping him into the main chains, keeping beside him during the headlong scramble from ship to ship. But on board the San Josef there is no resistance. A Spanish officer hails from the quarterdeck to say that she surrenders. The flag captain, on bended knee, presents his sword. The admiral is dying of wounds below. With his own ship disabled, Horatio has captured two enemy ships, both more heavily armed, using one as a stepping stone to the other. An action without parallel in the annals of naval history.
Luck, some might say--the right man in the right place at the right time. But angels make their own luck. Otherwise, how can it be explained that it was always he who broke the mold? Collingwood was equally well placed to veer out of line and throw himself across the bows of the Spanish. Not a question of courage or skill; Collingwood had plenty of both. But he stayed in line.
Late afternoon; the light is failing. Jervis has only twelve ships now that are capable of fighting. The Spanish have been defeated, four of their ships have been taken. It is time to disengage. Gradually the fire ceases, the fleets separate, the English stand for Lagos, the Spanish for Cadiz. After this terrible local storm, these hours of thunder and slaughter, peace settles down, the ocean comes to herself again and swallows the corpses and the drifting spars.
I sat on there, after the battle. I have never been at sea, except twice on the cross-Channel ferry. That was a long time ago, before my illness. No, I am his land shadow. I have been abroad only once since then, just once in twenty years. That was when I went with my father to Tenerife to see the place where Horatio lost his right arm.
