Sails On The Horizon A Novel Of The Napoleonic Wars

ONE St. Valentine's Day, 1797 Eight leagues southwest of Cape St. Vincent, Portugal "The f-flagship's signaling again, sir. 'engage the enemy,' I think it says." The adolescent midshipman stood in an oversized jacket and flapping trousers at the top of the forward ladderway, squinting into the distance along the line of British warships, each laboring more or less one cable's length behind the other, pointed toward a gap between two large Spanish squadrons. He fairly danced with excitement. "Thank you, Mr. Bowles. You may come down now," said Charles Edgemont, the second lieutenant aboard His Britannic Majesty's sixty-four-gun ship of the line Argonaut. At twenty-five, Edgemont's career in the navy had already spanned thirteen years, seven as a midshipman himself and six as a commission officer. His responsibility with the ship at quarters was the upper gundeck and its twenty-eight brightly painted black twelve-pounder cannon, neatly aligned on their carriages, fourteen to a side. The smallish and outdated Argonaut, captained by Sir Edward Wood, had taken her position as the last in the nearly mile-long fifteen-ship English line. Charles had watched as the fleet arranged itself into formation earlier in the morning and knew the order of battle. Leading the van was Culloden, seventy-four guns, under Captain Thomas Troubridge, and then the Blenheim and the Prince George, both grand ninety-eights. The flagship, Victory, with its hundred guns and Admiral Sir John Jervis, took station seventh in the line, near the center. The fleet sailed on an easy gray sea, through intermittent gray mist, under gray skies with a chill wind blowing steadily if moderately from the west. The Argonaut's crew had long since been ordered to quarters, the sails shortened, the topgallant masts struck down, and the courses brailed up in preparation for battle. Sand had been scattered on the wetted decks to improve footing and reduce the chance of fire. The guns were charged, double-shotted, primed, and run out, each of their six-man crews standing anxiously beside them. "My G-God, there's a lot of 'em," Bowles reported, his voice breaking. "There must be near a score in the group awindward. T'other bunch alee ain't but about half that large." Billy Bowles was fourteen, a pimply youth with sallow skin and unruly hair, assigned to the gundeck. Charles had taken a liking to the boy but thought him too tender for a life in the navy. He was easily bullied by his messmates in the gun room and Charles had come across him bruised and reduced to tears more than once. "The Culloden's almost up to them," the boy bubbled on. "Can't be more than a mile and a half afar." "Come down from that ladder and take your station," Charles said. "We'll be up to them soon enough." "I see a four-decker, sir, and a bunch of three-deckers! Oh, my God." Exasperated, Charles jumped to the ladderway and grabbed the apparently deaf midshipman by the back of his coat. "Look, the flagship's signaling again," the boy squealed. Charles looked down the line of ships until he saw the signal flags on Victory's halyards, repeated by the frigate Niger standing to windward: "Admiral intends to pass through enemy line." At the same moment he saw clouds of smoke erupt from the sides of the nearest Spanish warships, answered immediately by a broadside from Culloden. A moment later, the sounds of the great guns rumbled like distant thunder. "Get to your station," he said to the boy, pulling him down the ladderway. "You can watch through a gunport." The roll of cannon fire slowly grew louder and more intense as the British line engaged the Spanish fleet in sequence and larger numbers from both sides became involved. It had been cold anWorrall, Jay is the author of 'Sails On The Horizon A Novel Of The Napoleonic Wars', published 2005 under ISBN 9781400063055 and ISBN 1400063051.