Soon after, several other enemy ships joined in, the sound of firing building as the deadly cannonade intensified. Strikes could now be heard forward, and the whirr and slam of invisible projectiles overhead were chilling.
A quick shriek came as a seaman paid with his life for doing his duty; other anonymous screams penetrated above the continuous fearful thunder of guns from now six or eight ships, furiously hammering at the oncoming column. It was a race that would turn on whether the ships now at their mercy were smashed to submission and stopped, or whether they could get inside the enemy firing arc, pierce the line and deliver a battle-winning raking of the stern and bow each side as they passed through.
On the poop Bowden’s vitals froze at the awful feeling of exposure: at the ship’s side there were only deal boarding and rolled hammocks to keep out the storm of shot and, with nothing to do but keep at his post, a rising feeling of helplessness threatened to engulf him.
One of the marines was knocked sprawling as if kicked by a horse and his musket slid across the deck. He sobbed, writhing, and Adair motioned to another two to take him below.
Imitating Pasco, Bowden began a regular calm pacing. A strange detachment stole over him, a feeling of unreality that separated him from the chaos and fear. Through his feet he sensed Victory’s own guns opening up, their heavy thump quite distinct from the sharp concussion of a shot-strike. Nothing now could be seen of the enemy except the upper masts above the smoke – but Villeneuve’s pennons were still giving Victory her mark.
Bowden reached the poop rail and glanced down on the quarterdeck. One unfortunate had taken a ball squarely, his body flung grotesquely, its half-human features and an appalling amount of blood-soaked innards scattered widely. Nelson looked on sadly as it was dragged away.
Straightening, Bowden turned back, suddenly acutely aware of the whites of the eyes of the files of marines. Then, as if in a dream, the entire rank was torn down in a welter of blood and kicking limbs. Choking sobs were cut off and parts of half-clothed bodies were left lying on each other, like so many joints in a butcher’s shop.
The carnage was indescribable but the remaining marines held firm until a breathless midshipman arrived from the quarterdeck, ordering Captain Adair to disperse his men about the ship. Eight men killed with one shot! It couldn’t go on.
But it did: with the splinters still flying from a boat hit by a round-shot, Victory’s wheel was smashed, the big first-rate now in an uncontrollable lurch towards the enemy line until emergency tackles on the tiller in the gunroom could be rigged – but the ship fought on with undiminished fury.
Bowden felt the wind buffet of a cannon-ball. Next to him a seaman turned, apparently with a question: his mouth opened, and as it did so, blood spurted in a gush of scarlet from where his arm had been – carried off invisibly and without warning. The man gave a piteous moan and sank to his knees.
Dispassionately Bowden recognised that the intensity of the slaughter was such that it was more reasonable not to expect to survive – at some point one of the invisible whirling scythes of death would seek him out and put an end to his existence. Strangely, he felt peace, the resolution of hope against fear, but a deep sadness that for him the future was now shut off.
A seaman beside him was suddenly spun around, falling without a sound, and as he was dragged to the side there was an ear-splitting crack aloft. When Bowden looked up to see, his world turned dark and he was savagely pressed down.
It was some seconds before he realised he was suffocating under a smother of canvas. Near panic with claustrophobia he struggled for his knife and in a frenzy sawed and hacked at the cloth until the smoky daylight emerged.
A seaman helped him out; the mizzen topmast had been shot away and hung along the side suspended by the upper rigging, the sail draped over the poop. ‘Axes! Get this clear!’ he roared. ‘You, Clayton – on the lee side, Nicolson on the weather!’
He worked a bayonet free from a dead hand and began sawing at the tarred strands of a shroud. Panting, he stopped to look out – there was gun-smoke everywhere, a rain of splinters and stranded lines whipping down, but what froze him was the awesome sight of the enemy ships so very close.
Wreathed in smoke with livid gun-flash stabbing, they lay across Victory’s path but she was steering now for a gap astern of Villeneuve’s flagship and its next in line. Mesmerised by the terrible sight, he saw other ships beyond the gap equally as big and quite untouched.
The noise was appalling – a crescendo of violence that paralysed his thoughts. Hacking away the remains of the fallen rigging in a demented fury, he was utterly unprepared for what happened next.
The guns were falling silent.
He stared forward – they had at long last passed inside the firing arcs of the enemy guns. These could no longer bear on their ship and the long agony of her approach was over. The ornamented stern of the flagship – the name Bucentaure in gilt across it – now lay quiet and unresisting as Victory glided inexorably forward into the gap.
A furious cheering began, for now a terrible revenge would be taken on the enemy. Her guns ceased their fire. Bowden knew that they were being reloaded with double shot and wicked canister for what was to come; the enemy must know it too – he felt a wash of pity, for in all conscience they were only doing their duty.
But war was a merciless dictator – he could see French boarders forlornly massing, but right forward on the fo’c’sle Victory’s boatswain was carefully sighting along the immense bulk of the sixty-eight-pounder carronade, the firing lanyard in his hand.
The distance narrowed; heroes stood in Bucentaure, still firing muskets, anything – aware of what Fate would bring they must know what was to happen in the next moments. The magnificent arch of stern windows loomed, a diamond-shaped tricolour escutcheon in its centre, the midday sun glinting on its interior appointments – and the boatswain yanked on the gun-lock lanyard.
The entire structure dissolved in a deadly blast of glass and splinters, a cloud of reeking dust and fragments bursting out to flutter down on Victory’s decks. Then, as they passed slowly, the three decks of guns below began their frightful rolling crash.
At point-blank range and double-shotted, they fired in succession into the length of the wounded ship, smashing their lethal iron balls into the holocaust of its gun-decks. Shrieks and screams came from the dense, acrid gun-smoke but the cannonade mercilessly went on and on until an entire fifty-gun broadside had crashed into Villeneuve’s flagship.
Victory glided on beyond. Then her opposite broadside opened up to pound a vague shape in the drifting gun-smoke.
As Bowden saw the last rigging-entangled wreckage over the side he was knocked staggering by the sudden grinding lurch of a collision to starboard. He steadied himself and twisted round to see a French ship-of-the-line locked solid into Victory’s side. She appeared very ready for the encounter, her decks crowded with men; he could just make out her stern and the name Redoutable in gold.
Victory fought back: her marines levelled their muskets and blazed away at the swarming men assembling for boarding – but the ship’s tumblehome, the inward curving of her side – formed an unbridgeable cleft between the two vessels.
Muffled blasts from below told of terrible gun duels fought in the blackness of the touching sides and then came a hail of French musket fire from the vessel’s fighting tops. Grenades arced down causing dreadful injuries on Victory’s decks and the vicious whuup of musketry intensified.