Chapter 8

The Unfought Duel - a plea:

My name is, or perhaps more correctly, was, Horace Hornbreaker, Captain Horace Hornbreaker of His Majesty's Royal Navy. It has recently come to my attention that scurrilous stories about me are still being circulated after all these years. So I think it is time for me to set the record straight. This will, perhaps, be difficult since the events which I wish to relate took place over two hundred years ago and I have been deceased for most of the intervening years. However there is a wrong here which needs to be righted, so I will do my best.

It was on a late summer's evening in Portsmouth when I, in the company of some of my fellow officers decided, perhaps foolishly, and certainly with the added inspiration of having partaken of a considerable quantity of naval ration rum, to strip off and leap into the sea.
The water was cold but the experience bracing.
On returning ashore, a fellow officer , who was later to become a distinguished admiral, made a comment regarding certain of my attributes which he referred to as "a sprat amongst makerell".
Now even allowing for the fact that I had imbibed much liquor and that the sea was indeed very cold, I felt insulted, particularly since my fellow officers had the poor taste as to fall over themselves laughing at my embarrassment.

I had no alternative but to challenge the aforesaid officer to a duel. Pistols at dawn.

At dawn, at the Sally Port, with the sea mist still swirling across the Solent, we stood, back to back with our pistols cocked. It was at this moment that my opponent lowered his pistol and requested that we pause and reconsider the fairness of the situation.

His position was this. Now I was a slim lithe figure of a man weighing perhaps twelve stone, alert as a prowling tiger, and coiled as a taut spring, whereas he was a dissolute debauched wreck of a figure ruined by the excesses of the flesh and weighing, probably, near to twice my weight.

His contention was that it was scarcely fair that when we were to raise our pistols then his target was only one half the size of mine. It was considered that this was a valid point. So suggestions were made as to how to make it a more fair contest.

One officer suggested that my opponent should be allowed to shoot at me from a closer range than I at him. This, on the face of it, seemed to be a reasonable idea, since, in no way, did I wish to appear to be unfairly advantaged.

Another officer, my opponent's second, then suggested that to ensure this then perhaps, when we walked away from each other prior to shooting, then my opponent should then only walk ten paces while I walked twenty.

At this some other officers who clearly did not fully appreciate the gravity of the situation then began laughing.

It was my second who pointed out that this would still leave us the same distances apart and that furthermore it would give my opponent the unfair advantage of being able to make ready to fire whilst I was still pacing.

Another officer suggested that we should take turns at shooting at each other, each at the appropriate range.

A general discussion then ensued suggesting methods of determining who then should be given the right to shoot first. And if so then perhaps the range from which he fired should be increased to compensate for the undoubted advantage of shooting first.

I regret to say that in the following animated discussion the purpose of the exercise, which was clearly that I should have been given the opportunity to avenge the insult to my dignity, was forgotten.

Some, self proclaimed, wit suggested that if we could find a way to make me bigger then we could have a fairer duel. But then as an afterthought pointed out that if I was larger then there would have been no cause for a duel in the first place.
At this, amongst howls of unseemly laughter the meeting broke up, in disarray, with little groups of officers being heard discussing how to use the new calculus to refine the problem and others talking about the possibility of fighting duels from the new hot air balloons.
Yet others insisting that as artillery officers they were in the best position to calculate relative ranges.

Another officer was heard muttering something about uncomputable problems and yet another was attempting to write a sonnet about it.

              "Fair stood the wind for France and yet these men
              Proud men by manly doubt unseemly wracked
              Placed country's call to arms on hold and then
              Disputed what's a mackerell, what's a sprat
              ..........."

In short my contention is this. If I had been given the opportunity that I was denied on that day then history might have been different. If I had won this duel, which of course I confidently expected, then I might well have been the victor at Trafalgar.
The statue of Horace Hornbreaker could have been erected on its column in Trafalgar square. Ah me that would have been sweet justice indeed.

So perhaps, gentle reader, even at this late stage, one amongst you might suggest a way in which the "duel problem" could have been solved and my life could have been markedly different. I could then rest more easily in my anonymous paupers grave.

As a footnote I should add that one unkind reader of this note has suggested that it would be best to leave things as they are since otherwise there was the possibility, nay, probability that the statue in Trafalgar square might well have been that of Napoleon Bonaparte. Arrant nonsense of course.