Years of Victory 1802 - 1812

by Arthur Bryant

  The wind was gradually failing and shifting into the west, and the pace of the British Fleet slackened from three to two knots. But it was still gaining on the French and Spaniards who, from their thickening line and resolute bearing as they forged, close-hauled, slowly to the north-north-west, clearly meant to make a fight of it. Nelson from the poop watched them grimly, then observed, "I'll give them such a dressing as they've never had before!" Blackwood, seeing that the flagship from her leading position would be unduly singled out for attack, suggested the propriety of letting one or two ships go ahead as was usual in line, of battle. With a rather grim smile Nelson assented and ordered the Temeraire and Leviathan to pass the Victory. But, as the Victory continued to carry every stitch of sail she possessed and as neither Captain Hardy nor Nelson would consent to shorten it, her consorts made little headwav. Finally, as the Temeraire vainly struggled to pass, Nelson called out to her through his speaking-trumpet, "I'll thank you, Captain Harvey, to keep in your proper station!" Thereafter the Victory, like the Royal Sovereign in the lee line, continued in indisputed possession of the lead. The order of sailing remained the order of battle.

  About an hour before the time when the opposed lines seemed likely to converge, Nelson left the poop and retired to his dismantled cabin. Here Pasco, the flag-lieutenant, coming in with a message, found him on his knees composing the prayer which was part of his legacy to England:

  " May the Great God whom I worship grant to my Country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious Victory; and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it; and may humanity after Victory be the predominant feature in the British Fleet. For myself, individually, I commit my life to Him who made me, and may His blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my Country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend."

  Afterwards he made a codicil to his will, committing his child and Lady Hamilton to his country's keeping, and got Blackwood to witness it. Elsewhere, while the crew of the French flagship was taking a solemn oath to die with Villeneuve to the last man, other Britons were indulging in home thoughts; Captain Duff of the Mars scribbled a line to tell his wife that he was praying that he would behave as became him and still have the happiness of taking her and his children in his arms. Meanwhile, with the rich diversity of England, Codrington of the Orion was sitting down to a leg of turkey, and Cumby, the First Lieutenant of the Bellerophon, was piping the ship's company to dinner, "thinking that Englishmen would fight all the better for a comfortable meal."

  Shortly after Nelson reappeared on the poop, land was sighted. At first, since the Fleet had been sailing for several days on a dead reckoning, it was thought to be Cadiz, and the Admiral, fearful lest the enemy should escape, signalled that he would go through the end of the line to cut off their retreat. A few minutes later it was identified as Cape Trafalgar, and he reverted to his original plan. The Victory was now closing towards the centre of the enenry's van where the Santissima Trinidad and the French flagship, Bucentaure, towered up among their fellows. There was no desultory firing at long range, and it became plain that the enemy was holding himself in for a grim fight.

  After signalling to make "all possible sail," Nelson remarked to Pasco that he would amuse the Fleet with a signal. "I wish to say Nelson confides that every man will do his duty." After a brief consultation about the capacity of Popham's code, this was altered to "England expects." Soon after it had been hoisted, and just as the first ranging shot from the Fougueux ploughed up the water in front of the Royal Sovereign, No. 16—"Engage the Enemy more closely"—was seen flying at the Victory's masthead where it remained till it was shot away.1

  The advance was over: the battle about to begin. The British Fleet had been brought in accordance with the terms of Nelson's

  1 The account of Trafalgar is based on Rear-Admiral A. H. Taylor's brilliant paper on the battle in Vol. LXXXII, No. 528 (Nov., 1937) of the Journal of the Royal United Service Institution; the Admiralty Committee's Report on the Evidence relating to the Tactics employed by Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar (1913); Thursfield's Nelson and Other Studies; Mahan's Nelson; Clarke and M'Arthur'siVc/ron; Nicolas, Vol. VII.; Corbett's Campaign of Trafalgar; Newbolt's The Tear of Trafalgar; Conrad's Mirror of the Sea; Codrington's Memoir; Collingwood's Life; Mark Kerr's The Sailor's Nelson; James's Naval History.

  Memorandum "nearly within gunshot of the enemy's centre." The time had now come for the Lee Division to fall on his rear while Nelson prevented the van from coming to its aid. Judging that the disproportion of force and the enemy's in versed sailing order justified a modification of his original instructions, Collingwood decided to cut the line at the sixteenth instead of the twelfth ship from the rear, He thus set his fifteen battleships to engage not an inferior but a superior force. But he relied on British gunnery and discipline to give him the necessary ascendancy. Nelson approved, for as the Royal Sovereign bore down under a hail of fire on the great black hull of the Santa Ana, he cried out, "See how that noble fellow Collingwood carries his ship into action!" His Second-in-Command, who, a few minutes before had been muttering," I wish Nelson would stop signalling: we know well enough what we have to do," was now feeling the exaltation which alwa)'s came to him in the hour of danger. Munching an apple like the countryman he was and pacing the quarterdeck as the shot splashed the water all round him, he remarked, " Now gentlemen, let us do something to-day which the world may talk of hereafter." What seemed to give him most delight was the resolute bearing of the French. "No dodging and manoeuvring," he wrote afterwards in ecstatic recollection. "They formed their line with nicety and waited our attack with great composure. Our ships were fought with a degree of gallantry that would have warmed your heart. Everybody exerted themselves and a glorious day they made it."

  The fight between the Lee Division and the enemy's rear began just before midday. At eight minutes past twelve, after enduring the fire of six French and Spanish ships for nearly a quarter of an hour, the Royal Sovereign broke the line, discharging as she did so one broadside into the bows of the Fougueux, Then she ran alongside the former, with the muzzles of the guns almost touching, and simultaneously engaged the Indomptable to leeward, evoking from the watching Nelson a slap of the thigh and a shout of " Bravo! Bravo! what a glorious salute!"

  Five minutes later Collingwood's second ship, the Belleisle, followed the Royal Sovereign through the gap and ran aboard the Fougueux. Thereafter she took on seven ships in turn as they drifted by and, with her colours still flying at the stump of her shattered mainmast, ended by capturing a Spanish seventy-four. Within a quarter of an hour eight of Collingwood's fifteen ships were in action, all breaking the line but the Mars, which lost her captain, Duff, at the first impact. At one moment no less than five enemy ships, fighting with the utmost gallantry, were pounding away at the Royal Sovereign, while Collingwood with his customary frugality helped one of his officers to take up an old studding-sail from the gangway hammocks and roll it up. But the terrific intensity of the British fire soon told: in three and a half minutes the Royal Sovereign discharged three broadsides. No ship, Collingwood had told his men, could stand up to three in five minutes, and he was proved right. "A glorious day for old England!" he was heard to shout as the French rear began to crumple, "we shall have one apiece before night."

  By now it was half-past twelve, and the Victory had opened fire on the enemy's centre. For the first half hour Nelson had been performing his essential task of containing and deceiving the French van while the Lee Division did its work. He had been steering to close with the Santissima Trinidad, the eleventh ship in the line, meaning to break through between her and the Bucentaure, two ships in rear, But while he did so he retained his option of ranging up to the enemy's advanced ships, keeping their flag-officer, Rear-Admiral Dumanoir, in a state of impotent uncertainty till the last possible moment. At one time he made a feint of hauling out towards them, eliciting from Codrington the tribute, " How beautifu
lly the Admiral is carrying his design into effect!" Then, when it was too late for Dumanoir to save the rear, he turned again to starboard and opened fire on the cluster of great ships in the centre which he bad marked as his special prey. At this point he threw prudence to the winds and, bearing up so as to pass under the lee of the Bucentaure, ran straight at the enemy's line, bringing down upon the Victory's bows the fire of hundreds of guns.

  Because of the obtuse re-entering angle at which the enemy's van was sailing, Nelson's approach, instead of being oblique like Colling-wood's, had of necessity far more of the perpendicular in it than normal discretion allowed. But, having served his primary purpose, his object was now to get as quickly alongside the enemy as possible and complete the work of destruction before it was too late. He did so regardless of his own safety and left the rest of his Division to scramble into the fight as best it could. For, with the short October afternoon beginning to run, there was not a second to be lost. As Blackwood left him to warn each captain to take whatever course he thought fit to get quickly into action, Nelson wrung his hand and bade him farewell. "God bless you, Blackwood," he said, "I shall never speak to you again."

  When Villeneuve saw the British flagship's sudden turn he knew that his hour had come. Never, he wrote after the battle, had he seen anything like the irresistible line of the British approach, but the final charge of the Victory, closely supported by the Neptune and Temeraire, was something he could not have conceived had he not actually witnessed it. It unnerved him. In sudden desperation he hoisted the signal for every ship not engaged to get into action without delay but failed to give the specific order to Dumanoir to tack and come to the aid of his encircled rear and centre. As a result the latter, still uncertain, continued to stand to the northward until it was too late to effect the course of the battle.

  At 12.40 p.m. the Victory, within musket-shot of the French flagship, put her helm to port and steered for the stern of the Bucentaure. The line was at this point so close that the Redoutable's jib boom was actually touching her leader's taffrail. Puzzled, the flag-captain asked the Admiral which of the two ships he should run down, only to receive the reply, "Take your choice, Hardy, it does not much signify which." As the Victory passed astern of the Bucentaure her mainyard, rolling with the swell, touched the vangs of the Frenchman's gaff: then with a terrific explosion her port broadside opened, while the forecastle carronade, raking the crowded deck, swept down a hundred of his crew. A moment later she ran aboard the Redoutable and broke the line. Behind her the Temeraire, Neptune, Leviathan and Conqueror, supported by Britannia, Ajax and Agamemnon, followed in quick succession.

  By one o'clock the centre as well as the rear of the Franco-Spanish Line was a mass of flame and billowing smoke. For nearly a mile between the two British flagships the ridge of fire and thunder continued. Codrington who, taking advantage of Nelson's order, had hauled out of line to starboard to reach the fight by the shortest route, calmly reserving his fire as he did so till he* found an object worthy of it, described "that grand and awful scene"—the falling masts, the ships crowded together, the broadsides crashing into blazing timbers at point blank range as rival boarding parties vainly sought an opportunity. For this was a sea battle of a pattern never previously attempted—more terrifying and more decisive. In the Victory, her mizzen topmast shot away, her wheel broken, and her sails torn to shreds, the decks were swept continuously by rifle fire from the Redoutable’s tops, while every now and then a broadside from the Bucentaure or the Santissima Trinidad struck home with terrific force. A single shot killed eight marines on the poop: another, narrowly missing Nelson, flung his secretary, a mangled heap spurting blood, at his feet. "This is too warm work, Hardy," he said, " to last long." Down in the crowded cockpit the scene of horror was so awful that the chaplain, Scott, could bear it no longer and stumbled up the companion-ladder, slippery with gore, for a breath of fresh air. There, "all noise, confusion and smoke," he saw Nelson fall.

  As they bore him down, his shoulder, lung and spine shot through and his golden epaulette driven deep into his body, the Admiral covered the stars on his breast with his blood-soaked handkerchief lest his men should see and be discouraged. "They have done for me at last, Hardy," he said. In the cockpit, gasping from pain and exhaustion, he told the surgeon in broken sentences that he was past help. Five minutes later, as he lay there in the blinding darkness, the Bucentaure's last mast fell, and Villeneuve, "a very tranquil, placid, English-looking Frenchman, wearing a long-tailed uniform coat and green corduroy pantaloons," sought for someone to whom he might surrender. A marine officer with five men from the Conqueror went aboard the French flagship to take him, while the British Admiral was being stripped of his clothes and covered with a sheet that the surgeon might probe his wound. As each French and Spanish ensign fluttered down, rounds of cheering broke from the Victory's gundecks, faintly audible amid the cries and groans of the cockpit. "It is nonsense, Mr. Burke," Nelson whispered to the purser who bent over to fan him and give him water, "to suppose that I can live. My sufferings are great but they will soon be over."

  By five minutes past two, little more than two hours after firing began, the action in the centre was all but done. Eight French and Spanish ships had been beaten out of the fight by five British, and, despite the heroism of their officers and crews, three after suffering appalling losses 1 had been forced to surrender. About the same time, the Santa Ana struck to the Royal Sovereign in the Lee Division. Half an hour later the number that had yielded had increased to five, while seven more were isolated and doomed. To the north the ships of the French van were struggling, with the aid of rowing boats, to get round on the starboard tack, but remained cut off from the battle by the rear ships of Nelson's Division entering the fight from windward. About this time, after repelling a last despairing attempt to board by the survivors of the shattered Redoutable, Hardy went below in response to the Admiral's .repeated inquiries. He found him in great pain and weakness but with a mind still intent on the progress of the battle. " I hope none of our ships have struck, Hardy," he said when he had been told of his captures.

  "No, my Lord, there is no fear of that!"

  "I am a dead man, Flardy. I am going fast; it will be all over with me soon. Come nearer to me. Pray let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair and all other things belonging to me."

  1Thc casualties in the Rcdoutable—the Victory’s- staunchest opponent—were 490 killed and 81 wounded out of a crew of less than 600.—Taylor, 707.

  About three-thirty the fight flared up again as Dumanoir's squadron stood down to rescue the last French and Spanish ships resisting in the centre and rear. But the Victory, calling a few undamaged consorts around her, barred the way. As her starboard guns opened fire, Nelson, clinging vainly to life, murmured, " Oh, Victory, how you distract my poor brain!" Within twenty minutes the counter-attack had failed, and three more prizes had fallen to the British Weather Division. On this Hardy again went below and congratulated the Admiral on his victory, telling him that fourteen or fifteen enemy ships had surrendered. "That is well," whispered Nelson, "but I had bargained for twenty." Then the prescient mind of the great sailor, reverting to the thoughts of the morning and that steady, ominous swell out of the west, began once more to range ahead. "Anchor, Hardy, anchor!" he cried with a sudden spasm of energy. Afterwards he begged the captain not to throw his body overboard, bade him take care of Lady Hamilton and his child and, with some flash of childhood's tenderness battling against the delirium of pain, asked him to kiss him.

  After Hardy had left, the Admiral began to sink fast. His voice became very low and his breathing oppressed. His mind now seemed to be running on his private life. " Remember," he told the chaplain, Scott, who was rubbing his chest to ease his pain, " that I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter Horatia as a legacy to my country." "I have not," he said a minute later, "been a great sinner, Doctor." But towards the end he reverted to the battle, now dying around him. "Thank God," he kept repeating, "I ha
ve done my duty." The last words he said were, " God and my Country."

  About the same time Dumanoir called off his four last uncaptured ships and hauled out of the fight. A quarter of an hour later the Spaniard Gravina, mortally wounded, hoisted the signal to retire and withdrew towards Cadiz with ten crippled ships, leaving the remainder in the victors' hands. As he did so, Nelson's spirit passed and became "one with England and the sea."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Last Days of Pitt

  " Now is the stately column broke, The beacon-light is quench'd in smoke, The trumpet's silver sound is still, The warder silent on the hill !"

  Scott.

  D

  URING the two weeks that followed Trafalgar few realised the victory's magnitude. In the Fleet off Cadiz men had little time to think of anything but the great storm which, driving them towards the rocks, robbed them of all but four of their prizes. Because of the failure to obey their dead Admiral's last order while there was still time, they struggled for days in blinding rain and darkness clawing their riddled ships off a lee shore.1 In England, where the idea of a naval victory had almost been abandoned, public morale had reached a lower point than at any time in the war. The hopes of the autumn had been transformed into despair.

  For the military initiative which Pitt had won with such patience and self-denial for his allies had been lost. When Nelson lay dying he was sustained by the belief that he had won a victory which would give his country not only permanent security at sea but an advantage on land capable of overwhelming the mushroom dictator and bringing the world peace. He did not know that on the previous day England had learnt that her allies had suffered a crushing blow nor that a still worse disaster—of which the news had yet to reach London—had befallen them on the banks of the Iller. Had he done so, even he might have died in despair.