Intelligence in War: The Value--And Limitations--Of What the Military Can Learn About the Enemy by John Keegan Page A

pass round the
Guerrier
at the head of Brueys’ line, and so down the inside of the anchored enemy.
    Foley had intended to anchor alongside
Guerrier,
into which he fired as he rounded her bow, but his crew ran out too much cable.
Goliath
ended up farther down the French line, opposite
Conquérant
and
Spartiate.
The mistake did not really matter, for the British ships next astern were following fast,
Zealous, Audacious, Orion
and
Theseus.
They also joined in the cannonade against
Guerrier
—which collected fire from all of them as they passed by and was quickly dismasted—while
Theseus
positioned herself to fire into both
Spartiate
and
Aquilon;
Miller of
Theseus
was a New Yorker, one of two North American Loyalists among Nelson’s captains.
    The head of the French line was now solidly engaged by anchored opponents.
Vanguard,
which was following
Theseus,
took a different course, steering to pass on the seaward rather than inshore side of the French and to anchor opposite
Spartiate,
which was thus taken between two fires.
Minotaur
engaged
Aquilon,
also caught between two fires, while
Defence
stopped opposite
Peuple Souverain,
which was being fired into by
Orion
on the other side.
    The centre of the French line was composed of the heaviest ships,
Franklin,
80 guns,
L’Orient,
120, and
Tonnant,
80; the other 80,
Guillaume Tell,
was some distance away, third from rear. Darkness had fallen as the centre’s British opponents began to appear, first
Majestic,
which was mishandled and ended up opposite another 74 farther down, then
Bellerophon,
then
Alexander,
then
Swiftsure.
The last two, positioning themselves skilfully in the gaps astern of
Franklin
and
L’Orient
respectively, were able to do serious damage without suffering heavily themselves.
Bellerophon,
coming alongside
L’Orient,
suffered terrible damage and loss by choosing to engage the heaviest ship present. In an hour of fighting she lost her main and mizzen masts, while her foremast also was damaged. By ten o’clock her ordeal began to abate as fire from
Swiftsure
and
Alexander
raked the French flagship from bow and stern. They did terrible slaughter; Admiral Brueys, badly wounded, insisted on remaining on deck until struck by a shot that killed him. Below decks the spaces were full of wounded, including Captain Casabianca’s young son. They were also cluttered by flammable stores, Lieutenant Webley, of
Zealous,
noted when
L’Orient
took fire.
Swiftsure
’s captain ordered his crew to fire into the seat of the blaze to stop the French crew from fighting the flames. Soon it became obvious that
L’Orient
’s magazine would be set off, and both her British and French neighbours cut their anchor cables to reach what was hoped to be a safe distance.
Alexander
drifted off, so did
Tonnant, Heureux
and
Mercure,
either to anchor again or to ground in shallow water.
Swiftsure,
close ahead of
L’Orient,
was judged by its captain to be safer where it was; he calculated that the coming explosion would pass over his ship.
    So it did; the enormous detonation sent the debris of broken timbers, masts, cordage and bodies hundreds of feet into the air, to rain down detritus into the waters of the bay for a mile around, while the noise, heard in Alexandria nine miles away, temporarily brought the battle to a stop. When it resumed, after a quarter of an hour, the scene of battle had been decisively altered. The disappearance of
L’Orient
and the shift of
Tonnant,
which had drifted dismasted towards the rear, left a large gap in the middle of the French line, widened by the falling away of
Heureux
and
Mercure,
which had cut their cables also and gone aground, though their crews continued to serve the guns. The French were thus in almost total disarray, with their admiral dead, flagship destroyed and surviving ships separated into two groups. In the forward group,
Guerrier,
whose crew had fought heroically while her captain had refused to surrender twenty times, at last struck