Trafalgar: The Fog of War by Seth Hunter

Trafalgar: The Fog of War by Seth Hunter

Author:Seth Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McBooks Press
Published: 2022-08-25T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter 11 The Infernal Machines

Through his Dollond glass in the foretop of the Falaise, Nathan watched the late-afternoon sunshine glinting on the helmets of the French cuirassiers drilling on the parade ground of what had become known as the Great Camp at Boulogne. Above them on the heights above the port and stretching inland as far as the eye could see were tents for up to sixty thousand soldiers of the French army. Similar, if smaller, camps were to be seen all along the coast, providing accommodation for an army of two hundred thousand men, including cavalry and artillery, with a fleet of over two thousand flatboats and barges to ferry them across the English Channel. According to the British journals, Bonaparte was to take personal command of the operation, which would secure the subjugation of Great Britain and its transformation into a republic on the French model—or a province of republican France, depending on which journal you read. His battle headquarters were said to be in the chateau of Pont-de-Briques, on the outskirts of Boulogne, though to date he had confined himself to a few short visits to make speeches and hand out medals for heroism during earlier campaigns. He had assured his troops that once they had landed, they would make short work of an army that could call upon fewer than the fifty thousand regulars based in the British Isles. Only the Royal Navy prevented a victory march on London. But they had been here for two years now, and the only marching they had done had been on the parade ground.

Thus far, Britain’s response had been limited to a series of defiant editorials and mocking cartoons depicting Bonaparte’s preparations, which were said to include barges powered by windmills, hot-air balloons, and even a tunnel under the English Channel. But all that was about to change. The British navy was about to go on the offensive, and with its own wondrous devices.

Since the failed demonstration off the Kent coast, Fulton had made a number of improvements to his infernal machines. Instead of the crude coffer aimed at the Flying Fish, he had developed a craft he called a ‘torpedo-catamaran’, based on the outrigger canoes of the South Sea islanders, ballasted with lead to make it ride low in the water, and with the explosive balanced on the platform between the two wooden hulls. Eighteen of these vessels were now available for an attack on the invasion fleet at Boulogne, each steered to its target by a lone helmsman equipped with a paddle and dressed in dark clothing to make him all but invisible to the enemy lookouts at night. After hooking the torpedo to the ship’s cable, he would activate the firing mechanism before paddling away on the catamaran. Additionally, Fulton had invented a smaller device called a ‘carcass’, which was a copper-lined cask filled with gunpowder and combustible ‘fireballs’ and detonated by clockwork. These would be floated down to the target on the tide, like his



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