Ричард Вудмен - 1805

Drinkwater looked round. The wooden tubs were full of amputated limbs and still men arrived and were ministered to by Masson as he hacked and sawed, bound and bandaged. The surgeon was awash in blood and the foul air of the orlop was thick with the stink of it. Above their head Bucentaure was raked again, and then again at intervals as, following Victory, Tememire and then the British Neptune crossed her stern.

Another body appeared under the glimmer of the lanterns and Masson looked at his assistant busy amputating the arm of a negro. He called some instructions and then shouted at Drinkwater, 'Assistance, Captain. This one we will have to hold!' Masson tore the blood-soaked shirt off the frail body of the boy, a powder monkey or some such.

'Hold him, Captain! He is fully conscious! They are always difficult!'

The white body arched as Masson began his curettage. 'We may save him, it's a fragment from a ball, perhaps it burst when it hit a gun, but it is deep. Hold him!' There was demonic strength in the tiny body and it wailed pitifully. Drinkwater looked at the face. It was Gillespy.

'Dear God…' The boy was staring up at him, his eyes huge and dark and filled with tears. Blood seeped from his mouth and Drinkwater was aware that he was biting his lip. Masson's mate had seen it and as Gillespy opened his mouth to scream, he rammed a pad of leather into it. Masson wrestled bloodily with the fragment, up to his wrist in the boy's abdomen until Drinkwater found himself shouting at the boy to faint.

'He will not stand the shock…' Drinkwater could see Masson was struggling. ' Merde!' The surgeon shook his head. 'I cannot waste time… he is finished…'

They dragged Gillespy aside and Drinkwater picked him up. He made for the cot in his cabin, but it was already occupied and, as gently as he could, Drinkwater laid the boy down in a dark corner and knelt beside him.

'There, there, Mr Gillespy…' He felt desperately inadequate, unable even to give the midshipman water. He could not understand how it had happened. The boy had been helping them… and then Drinkwater recollected, he had withdrawn, his hand over his mouth as though about to vomit. He looked at Gillespy. He had spat the leather pad out and his mouth moved. Drinkwater bent to hear him.

'The… the pain has all gone, sir… I went on deck, sir… to see for myself. I wanted to see something… to tell my grandchildren… disobeyed you…' Gillespy's voice faded into an incoherent gurgle. Drinkwater knew from the blood that suddenly erupted from his mouth that he was dead.

Another broadside raked Bucentaure and Drinkwater laid the body down and straightened up. He was trembling all over, his head was splitting from the noise, the damnable, thunderous, everlasting bloody noise. He stumbled over the recumbent bodies of the wounded and dying. Reaching into the cabin he had occupied, he picked up his sword and made for the ladder of the lower gun-deck. Nobody stopped him and he was suddenly aware that Bucentaure 's guns had been silent for some time, that the continued bombardment was the echo in his belaboured head.

The lower gun-deck was a shambles. Swept from end to end by the successive broadsides of British battleships, fully half its guns were dismounted, their carriages smashed. The decks were ploughed up by shot, the furrows lined by spikes of wood like petrified grass. Men writhed or lay still in heaps, their bodies shattered into bloody mounds of flesh, brilliant hued and lit by light flooding in through the pulverised and dismantled stern. Drinkwater could not see a single man on his feet throughout the whole space. He made for the ladder to the upper deck and emerged into a smoke-stifled daylight.

Drinkwater stared around him. Bucentaure was dismasted, the stumps of her three masts incongruous, their shattered wreckage hanging all about her decks, over her guns and waist where a vain attempt was being made to get a boat out. A man was shouting from the poop. It was Villeneuve.

' Le Bucentaure a rempli sa tâche: la mienne n'est pas encore achevée .' Amidships a lieutenant gestured it was impossible to get a boat in the water. Villeneuve turned away and nodded at a smoke-begrimed man whom Drinkwater realised was Magendie. All together there were only a handful of men on Bucentaure 's deck. Magendie waved his arm and shouted something. Drinkwater was aware of the masts and sails of ships all around them, towering over their naked decks, and in the thick grey smoke the brilliant points of fire told where the iron rain still poured into Bucentaure . It was quite impossible to tell friend from foe and Drinkwater stood bemused, sheltered by the wreckage of the mainmast which had fallen in a great heap of broken spars and rope and canvas.

A wraith of smoke dragged across Bucentaure 's after-deck and Drinkwater saw Villeneuve again. He had been wounded and he stood looking forward over the wreckage of his ship. 'A Villeneuve died with Roland at the Pass of Roncesvalles,' Drinkwater remembered him saying as, behind him, the great tricolour came fluttering down on deck.

Bucentaure had struck her colours.

Drinkwater stood dazed. At times the surrounding smoke cleared and he caught brief glimpses of other ships. On their starboard quarter a British seventy-four was slowly turning—it had been she that had last raked Bucentaure —and, to windward, yet another was looming towards them. Beneath his feet the deck rolled and Drinkwater came to his senses, instinct telling him that the swell was building up all the time. He turned. Ahead of them another British battleship was swinging, presumably she too had raked Bucentaure , though now she was ranging up to leeward of the Santissima Trinidad . And still from the weather side British battleships were coming into action! Drinkwater felt his blood run chill.

'God!' he muttered to himself, 'what a magnificent bloody risk Nelson took!' And he found himself shaking again, his vision blurred, as around the shattered Bucentaure the thunder of battle continued to reverberate. Then suddenly a double report sounded from Bucentaure 's own cannon. Two guns on the starboard quarter barked a continued defiance at the British ship that had just raked them. Drinkwater saw splinters dance from her hull and an officer point and shout, clearly outraged by such conduct after striking. He saw muzzles run out and the yellow and scarlet stab of flame. The shot tore over his head and, with a crash, what was left of the Bucentaure 's foremast came down. The two quarter-guns fell silent.

Drinkwater clambered aft. No one stopped him. Men slumped wounded or exhausted around the guns, their faces drained of expression. Bucentaure 's company had been shattered into its individual fragments of humanity. Pain and defeat had done their work: she was incapable of further resistance. He hesitated to climb to the poop. This was not his moment, and yet he wished to offer Villeneuve some comfort. On her after-deck officers were waving white handkerchiefs at the British battleship. He turned away below. It was not his business to accept Bucentaure 's surrender. He reached the lower gun-deck. Running forward from aft came a party of British seamen led by two midshipmen.

'Come, Mr Hicks, we've a damned Frog here!'

Drinkwater turned at the familiar voice. The young officer was partially silhouetted against the light from the shattered stern, but his drawn sword gleamed and from the rapidity of his advance Drinkwater took alarm. His hand went to his own hanger, whipping out the blade.