Battle of the Nile

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of the Nile ended with Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson standing on his flagship the morning after the fighting. Looking out over Aboukir Bay, he told his officers, "Victory is not a name strong enough for such a scene." The battle was fought at anchor off the coast of Egypt in 1798. A British fleet under Nelson faced a French fleet that had escorted Napoleon Bonaparte's army across the Mediterranean. Napoleon had already marched his soldiers inland when the fighting began. He was confident that the ships he left behind were safe. Nelson had spent more than two months hunting for that fleet without success. On several occasions he missed it by only a matter of hours. What finally brought him to Aboukir Bay? And what flaw in the French anchorage turned a position their admiral believed was formidable into a trap that cost him nearly his whole fleet?

• 2. A Secret Invasion

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  Napoleon Bonaparte's victories over the Austrian Empire in northern Italy in 1797 left Britain as the only major European power still fighting the French Republic. The French Directory, the government running France, weighed several ways to strike back. Options included invasions of Ireland and Britain, and a bigger navy to challenge the Royal Navy directly. British control of the seas around northern Europe made those plans impractical for the moment.

  Since 1796, when war broke out between Britain and Spain, the Royal Navy had withdrawn from the Mediterranean. That left the French navy dominant there instead. Bonaparte proposed invading Egypt as an alternative to fighting Britain head on. He gambled that an expected Irish uprising would keep the British too distracted to interfere in the Mediterranean.

  Egypt was nominally part of the neutral Ottoman Empire, but Bonaparte saw it as a future staging point against British India. He hoped for an alliance with the Tipu Sultan of Seringapatam to help drive Britain from the war. Cutting the line of communication between Britain and India threatened the trade that funded Britain's war effort. The Directory approved the plan partly because it wanted the politically ambitious Bonaparte far from France. It also wanted his fiercely loyal veterans out of the country.

  During the spring of 1798, Bonaparte gathered more than 35,000 soldiers across Mediterranean France and Italy. He built up a powerful fleet at Toulon. He also created the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, a body of scientists and engineers meant to help found a French colony in Egypt. Most of his own officers were not told the expedition's destination until its first stage was already complete.

  That secrecy left the officer sent to intercept the convoy, Nelson, with no idea where in the Mediterranean to even begin looking.

• 3. The Chase

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  Bonaparte's armada left Toulon on the 19th of May, moving quickly through the Ligurian Sea. It picked up more ships at Genoa, rounded the Sardinian coast, and passed Sicily on the 7th of June.

  On the 9th of June the fleet arrived off Malta. Malta was then ruled by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, under Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim. When the Knights refused Bonaparte's demand for entry into Valletta's harbour, Bonaparte ordered an invasion of the Maltese Islands. His forces overran the defenders within 24 hours. The Knights surrendered on the 12th of June, handing over the islands and the property of the Roman Catholic Church there in exchange for compensation. Bonaparte resupplied and sailed toward Alexandria on the 19th of June. He left 4,000 men at Valletta under General Claude-Henri Vaubois.

  While Bonaparte was at Malta, Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson led a squadron sent to investigate French movements. Nelson had already lost the sight in one eye at Corsica in 1794. He lost an arm at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in July 1797. A gale off Toulon on the 21st of May had nearly wrecked Nelson's flagship on the Corsican coast. It took until the 7th of June for Captain Thomas Troubridge's reinforcements to rejoin him.

  Nelson had no frigates to scout ahead and no firm intelligence on the French destination. At Naples, the British ambassador Sir William Hamilton reported that the French had passed Sicily heading toward Malta. King Ferdinand of Naples refused to lend his own frigates, fearing French reprisals. On the 22nd of June a brig from Ragusa brought word that the French had sailed east from Malta on the 16th of June. Nelson concluded that Egypt was their target.

  Convinced the French were five days ahead rather than two, Nelson sailed a direct route without pausing to search. On the night of the 22nd of June, his fleet actually passed the slower French convoy in the darkness. Neither side realised how close they were. Nelson reached Alexandria on the 28th of June to find no French ships there. He swung north to the coast of Anatolia before turning back toward Sicily. The French vanguard reached Alexandria the following evening, the 29th of June, less than a day after Nelson had given up and left.

  At Syracuse on the 19th of July, Nelson wrote in frustration. "I cannot find, or at this moment learn, beyond vague conjecture where the French fleet are gone to," he wrote. "All my ill fortune, hitherto, has proceeded from want of frigates." It was not until the 28th of July, at Coron, that Nelson finally got intelligence of the French attack on Egypt. He turned his fleet south. On the afternoon of the 1st of August, his scouting ships sighted the French transport fleet anchored at Alexandria.

  By then, Brueys had already been forced to abandon Alexandria's harbour for open water at Aboukir Bay. That choice would decide how the coming battle unfolded.

• 4. A Flawed Anchorage

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  Alexandria's harbour turned out to be too shallow and narrow for the larger ships in Brueys' fleet. His surveyors steered him instead toward Aboukir Bay, a stretch of water 16 nautical miles across. It ran from the village of Abu Qir to the town of Rosetta, 20 miles northeast of Alexandria.

  Bonaparte had suggested that if the bay proved too dangerous, Brueys could sail north to Corfu instead, leaving only transports at Alexandria. Brueys refused, believing his ships could support the army on shore. He gathered his captains aboard his 120-gun flagship to plan a defence. Counter-admiral Armand Blanquet argued for fighting in open water instead. The rest agreed to anchor in a line of battle inside the bay.

  Rocky shoals guarded the western end of the bay, running 3 miles out from a promontory. A small fort there was armed with at least four cannon and two heavy mortars. Brueys placed his thirteen ships of the line along the edge of a further shoal to the south. He positioned an inner line of four frigates roughly 350 yards to the west. He ordered cables run between each ship's bow and stern to turn the line into one unbroken barrier.

  Ships were ordered to anchor only at the bow, which let them swing with the wind. That widened the gaps between them to about 160 yards each. Not every captain had followed the order to run connecting cables. Worse, Brueys left just enough open water between his lead ship, Guerrier, and the shoal for an enemy vessel to slip through. An attacker could then strike from the unprotected landward side, where gun ports stayed closed and the decks were left uncleared.

  None of those weaknesses were visible to the British fleet that appeared off the bay on the afternoon of the 1st of August.

• 5. Breaking the Line

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  At 14:00 on the 1st of August, British lookouts spotted the French fleet anchored in Aboukir Bay. They miscounted 16 ships of the line instead of the actual 13. Brueys' own lookouts, aboard the ninth ship in the French line, spotted the British fleet at almost the same moment. The British were then nine nautical miles off the mouth of the bay.

  Brueys hurried to recall his shore parties, though most had not returned by the time firing began. He pulled men from his frigates to fill out the crews of his ships of the line. He briefly ordered his fleet to set sail, then reversed the order. Nelson had slowed his approaching ships, wrongly convincing Brueys that the British meant to wait until the next day.

  Nelson used the pause to rig "springs" on his ships' anchor cables. This let his ships swing their broadsides toward an enemy while still at anchor. His plan was to sail down the seaward side of the French van and centre. Each French ship would then face two British opponents at once, and the giant French flagship Orient would face three. Before the fighting began, Nelson told his officers over dinner, "Before this time tomorrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey."

  At 18:20 the lead French ship, Guerrier, opened fire as two British ships, Goliath and Zealous, bore down on the line. Captain Thomas Foley of Goliath noticed an unexpected gap between Guerrier and the shoal. He steered his ship straight through it, raking Guerrier's unprepared port side. Goliath then passed on to anchor near the French ship Conquérant. Captain Samuel Hood's Zealous followed through the same gap. Within five minutes, Guerrier's foremast had come down.

  By 18:40, Nelson's own flagship, Vanguard, had anchored opposite the French ship Spartiate. Minotaur and Defence engaged the French ships behind it. Two other British ships, Bellerophon and Majestic, pushed on to attack the previously unengaged French centre. Both found themselves badly outgunned. Bellerophon drifted directly under the massed guns of the French flagship, Orient.

  Captain Troubridge's ship, Culloden, ran aground on the shoal near Aboukir Island in the darkness. Despite the efforts of the brig Mutine and the ship Leander, the grounded vessel could not be freed. Waves drove it further onto the sand, damaging its hull.

  Aboard Vanguard, Nelson himself was about to become one of the battle's casualties.

• 6. Nelson's Wound

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  At around 20:30, an iron splinter thrown off by a shot from the French ship Spartiate struck Nelson above his blinded right eye. A flap of torn skin fell across his face, leaving him completely and temporarily blind. He collapsed into the arms of Captain Edward Berry.

  Certain the wound was fatal, Nelson cried out, "I am killed, remember me to my wife." He asked for his chaplain, Stephen Comyn. Vanguard's surgeon, Michael Jefferson, examined the injury and found it was a simple flesh wound. Jefferson stitched the skin back together.

  Nelson ignored the surgeon's advice to rest and returned to the quarterdeck before the night was over. Captain Antoine René Thévenard of the French ship Aquilon had raked Vanguard, wounding Nelson and causing more than 100 casualties aboard. Thévenard was killed defending against the British ship Minotaur, and his crew was forced to surrender.

  Bellerophon lost its mizzenmast and main mast at 19:50 as fires broke out on deck. The ship suffered more than 200 casualties before Captain Henry Darby cut the anchor cables. Aboard Orient, French Admiral Brueys had already been wounded in the face and hand by flying debris. He stayed at his post.

  Orient's crew fought on, unaware that within the hour, fire would reach their own ship's magazines.

• 7. The Flagship Burns

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  At 21:00 the British spotted flames on the lower decks of Orient, the French flagship. Captain Benjamin Hallowell of Swiftsure ordered his gun crews to fire directly into the blaze. The fire spread up through the rigging and into the sails within minutes.

  Nearby British ships, Swiftsure, Alexander, and Orion, stopped firing and sealed their gunports. They pulled sailors off the guns to soak their own decks in seawater. They braced for the huge stores of ammunition aboard Orient to detonate. French ships still able to move, including Tonnant and Heureux, cut their anchor cables and drifted south away from the burning wreck.

  One account traces the fire to jars of oil and paint left on the poop deck after recent repainting. Burning wadding fired from a British ship is thought to have ignited them. Fleet Captain Honoré Ganteaume instead blamed an explosion on the quarterdeck. Whichever was true, a second fire broke out at the bow, trapping hundreds of sailors in the ship's waist.

  Admiral Brueys was struck in the midriff by a cannonball, nearly cutting him in half. He died fifteen minutes later on deck, refusing to be carried below. Orient's captain, Luc-Julien-Joseph Casabianca, was knocked unconscious by flying debris. His twelve-year-old son lost a leg to a cannonball while standing beside him.

  At 22:00 the fire reached Orient's magazines and the ship exploded, flinging burning wreckage in a wide circle. New fires started on Swiftsure, Alexander, and Franklin, all extinguished by sailors with water buckets. Archaeologists later found debris scattered across 500 metres of seabed and evidence of two separate blasts. Of more than 1,000 men aboard, fewer than 100 survived, including Captain Casabianca and his son, Giocante, who both died.

  For ten minutes afterward, not a single gun fired on either side, sailors on both fleets too stunned to continue.

• 8. Reckoning and Legacy

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  Firing resumed at 22:10 when the French ship Franklin, under the wounded Admiral Blanquet, opened on Swiftsure. By dawn on the 2nd of August, only the French southern division under Counter-admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve remained able to fight. Two grounded French ships, Heureux and Mercure, surrendered within minutes once British ships closed in. Villeneuve managed to bring the surviving vessels to the mouth of the bay by 11:00.

  On the morning of the 3rd of August, the last two French ships of the line still in the bay met their end. Tonnant, its decks crowded with 1,600 survivors from other ships, surrendered as British ships approached. Timoléon was set alight by its own crew and exploded shortly after midday. Of 17 French ships engaged, only two ships of the line and two frigates escaped to open sea.

  British losses were recorded at 218 killed and roughly 677 wounded. French casualties, harder to pin down, are estimated between 2,000 and 5,000. Nearly 2,000 were killed, half of them aboard Orient. For weeks afterward, bodies washed up along the Egyptian coast in the dry heat.

  News of the victory did not reach Britain until the 2nd of October. Captain Thomas Bladen Capel delivered it to Lord Spencer at the Admiralty, who collapsed on hearing it. Within four days, Nelson was made Baron Nelson of the Nile and Burnham Thorpe. He privately felt the honour fell short of what he deserved.

  Nelson's own captains presented him with a sword and a portrait as a mark of their esteem. On the 29th of September 1798, he described them as "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers." The line borrowed from Shakespeare's Henry V. From that toast grew the Nelsonic Band of Brothers, the officers who served alongside him for the rest of his career.

  Nearly three decades later, in 1826, Felicia Hemans published the poem Casabianca, built around the death of the flagship captain's son on Orient's burning deck.