From his leaking cabin, the imperial paymaster, Guillaume Peyrusse, wrote to his father about being rocked so violently by the waves that he fell out of bed and smacked his head on the wet floor. The sounds of overnight hammering had him convinced the ship wouldn’t survive the crossing. When he voiced his concerns about the rough weather to some midshipmen on watch, they laughed and told him winds ten times stronger could hardly be called a storm by their reckoning. He spent the rest of the trip sulking in his cabin, trying to soothe his seasickness with ham, tea, and sweet Málaga wine.
Napoleon enjoyed a more comfortable night than did his paymaster. The ship’s captain, Thomas Ussher, had given the deposed emperor the run of his quarters, which spanned the Undaunted’s stern, while he shared a smaller night cabin with Generals Henri Bertrand and Antoine Drouot, the Frenchmen’s beds separated from his own by a flimsy screen.
Out on the bridge the next morning, cup of black coffee in hand, Napoleon reported that he’d never slept so soundly and that he felt in excellent health. The ailments from which he was silently suffering (gallstones, hemorrhoids, urinary infections, stomach cramps, and swollen legs—not an unusual list for that era) would have been exacerbated by the sea journey, and Napoleon wasn’t a great sailor. Yet the farther south he traveled the happier he seemed to be. His official allied overseer, the young Scottish officer Neil Campbell, overheard some French officers saying they had never seen their emperor looking so relaxed.
