The Battle of the Nile

”Victory is not a name strong enough for such a scene” – Nelson, surveying the floating carnage the day after the battle.

The Battle of the Nile was one of the most decisive naval battles to ever have been played out -- in one night it altered the course of world history, denying Napoleon his Eastern Empire, and crippling him at sea. For its victors, the British under Admiral Nelson, it was also a textbook example of daring inventiveness, unconventional warfare, and the power of individual initiative.

When in 1798 a group American stragglers from Italy emerged in Cadiz, they promptly informed British warships who were blockading the Spanish there of what was going in the French coastal city of Toulon. The port, they said, was bristling with preparations for a massive French military expedition. The Royal Navy decided to send a young rear admiral, at the head of three 74-gun line-of-battle ships to investigate. Soon realizing the gravity of the situation, they added another ten ships, and Nelson sailed off to find his quarry in a vast Mediterranean. His guess was that they would be at Alexandria.

Normally, Nelson would have made use of smaller, faster frigates to aid him in reconnaissance, but during storms at Gibraltar the British had lost several, and Nelson was short-handed. He set sail for Alexandria, convinced the French were before him, though in fact they had dallied to sack the island of Malta. When on June 22nd his lookouts spied sails behind him, Nelson chose to ignore them, so firmly did he believe that he was behind the French. These were later confirmed to have been the ships he was seeking. Likewise, when he arrived at Alexandria on June 28th and found no sight of the French, he left hastily and in disgust, moving up the coast to Palestine. As the British sails eased over the eastern horizon, the French sails emerged over the western. Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt had begun.

Empty-handed, Nelson sailed back to Sicily. On July 28th, however, Greek fishermen reported that a giant fleet had been sighted south of Crete. Nelson headed back to Alexandria. To his great disappointment, he found it empty. The midday meal was eaten disconsolately. Luck, however, was with them -- at about 2:00 p.m. an officer of the watch reported that the enemy had been sighted 37 kilometres east of the city, in Aboukir Bay.

The French Admiral, Francois Paul Brueys, had anchored his fleet in a long crescent in the shallow sandy bay. The fleet consisted of three 80-gun frigates and nine 74-gun line-of-battle ships. In the centre of the line lay the 120-gun, 2,000 tonne l’Orient, Napoleon’s flagship and one of the largest fighting vessels of its time. To the west was an island surrounded by a large shoal and sporting a French battery, and the van, or head, of Bruey’s line was close up against it. The ships were moored in such a way that they could swing their aspect to rake assaulting ships with fire.

The original idea of Brueys layout was to draw the British along an irresistible wall of fire. When the Nelson's ships were able to penetrate behind the French, it was game over. Upon learning of the French presence, Nelson set off at once to join battle. The custom of the day discouraged naval battle at night, and Brueys did not anticipate attack. At 5:40 p.m. Nelson signalled close action. The British bore down on the van of the French ships, closest to the island.

The first British ship, the Culloden, struck the shoal and remained there for the duration of the battle, serving as a guide for the other ships. After Culloden came the Goliath, commanded by Captain Thomas Foley, and the Zealous. The first two ships in the French van, the Guerrier and the Conquerant, opened fire on the approaching ships. Sounding as he went, Foley began to edge his ship between the shore and the front of the Guerrier. He set anchor in front of the Conquerant, while the Zealous did the same in front of the Guerrier, assaulting them with fire.

After losing his legs, a dying French commander continues to direct the battle from inside a barrel of bran. The French line had been breached, and it was a disaster beyond all reckoning. The French, believing themselves safe from attack from the shoreward side, had moved all their cannons to face seaward. Bedding and supplies blocked their shoreward gun ports as they scrambled to respond to withering fire from both sides. Within 20 minutes, the three leading French ships had been silenced. By eight p.m., the first five ships had surrendered.

At the height of the battle, some 2,000 guns roared. Nelson’s ship, the Vanguard, bombarded the centre of the line. Nelson himself was struck by flying debris, and a flap of skin was torn from his head, falling over his one good eye. Temporarily blinded, he was led below under the impression he was dying. He nonetheless refused treatment ahead of his men, insisting on waiting his turn. At about 9:45, an unprecedented event took place, one which Nelson insisted on being led up to deck to watch.

The Orient explodes. Click on the image to see a larger version. The French flagship l’Orient had been mercilessly attacked, and by 9 o’clock flames were seen to be emanating from her. Poorly disciplined sailors had left buckets of tar and paint lying on deck, and now these blazed fiercely. Soon it was obvious that her vast stores of gunpowder would soon detonate, and later investigations would tell the tale of panicked ships that cut anchor and struggled to escape the vicinity before the explosion.

When l’Orient blew, the sound was heard at Rosetta 32 kilometres away, and the glow was seen in Alexandria. It was an explosion rarely seen in the days before weapons of mass destruction were invented. For some twenty minutes, the stunned ships desisted from fighting, horrified at the carnage that had just taken place. The British sent a ship to rescue what French sailors they could, and some 70 were saved. Admiral Brueys was one of the 800 casualties.

Fighting recommenced and continued till dawn. Three French ships in the rear cut their cables and headed for open sea, though one ran aground and was set on fire by its own men. The other two were the only French ships to escape. Not a single British vessel was lost, and only 218 British were killed. The French losses were estimated at around 1,700 lives. More than 3,000 prisoners were taken, though the majority were later released because the British lacked supplies to feed them.

They're now cut off in Egypt, unable to resupply themselves or to leave. His dreams of conquering India were shattered. Nelson himself became a baron, and hurried off to Sicily to join his beloved Emma Hamilton. As for l’Orient, she would lay undisturbed on the sea floor for another 200 years, surrounded by her ghosts and the debris of battle, waiting for a modern expedition which would seek to answer old questions about what really happened.