by Roy Adkins
Nelson’s aim had been to destroy the heart of the French and Spanish navies, and the task that he began was completed by a fierce storm that raged for a week immediately after the battle. By the time the weather subsided, a total of nineteen ships had sunk or been destroyed, and four more that escaped were captured soon afterwards. Around two and a half thousand French and Spanish seamen were killed and over seven thousand taken prisoner. The British did not lose a single ship and fewer than five hundred men were killed. It was a crushing blow that demoralised the French and Spanish navies. It was also a turning point in the war against Napoleon.
Now that his navy had suffered a serious defeat, there was no possibility of attempting an invasion of Britain in the immediate future. After Trafalgar, the French dominated Europe but did not manage to mount a serious challenge to Britain’s domination of the sea. Despite some successes against Britain in subsequent years, the threat from the French Navy was contained and diminished, helped by the disillusionment of Napoleon, who concentrated on his armies. Crawford remarked that shortly after hearing the news of Trafalgar, ‘it being ascertained that the frigates, which we were on the look-out for, had made their escape, and gone north-about, the Immortalité returned to the Downs. We had now done for a time with Boulogne. Work enough had been cut out for Bonaparte’s Grand Army in Germany: his threat of invasion was suspended sine die, and the Immortalité could be spared for other service.’27
For the people of Britain the long-term effects of Trafalgar were as yet unproven, and only two simple facts were recognised: there would be no invasion by the French, and Nelson was dead. Feelings of relief were mingled with sadness and gratitude towards the sailors who had obtained the victory. The newspapers were full of notices of fund-raising events for financial support of the dependants of those men killed or wounded in the battle, and for a time it seemed that everyone was involved. A newspaper for 16 November reported:On Friday morning Sir Sidney Smith went on board the Diligence sloop of war in Dover Harbour, and ordered the crew to be mustered. As soon as they were assembled, after a few prefatory observations, he read the Extraordinary Gazette to them with much firmness, until he came to that part of it which mentions the manner of Lord Nelson’s death, when his voice faltered, and tears were perceived to trickle down his cheeks. When he had concluded, he resumed his observations and informed the crew of the Diligence, ‘that in consequence of an address from him, the ships company of the Antelope had come to a determination to give ten days’ pay towards the relief of the sufferers in the glorious action off Trafalgar, and the families of those who fell in it.’ The whole crew of the Diligence immediately exclaimed, ‘ten, twenty, thirty days’ pay - any thing Sir Sidney pleases.’28
Even John Nicol, still hiding from the press-gang near Edinburgh, was affected by the news of Trafalgar. Despite his situation he remained patriotic and a staunch supporter of the government, constantly taunted by the men he worked with:One would ask what I thought of British freedom; another, if I could defend a government which did such things [as force men into the navy]? I was at no loss for my answer. I told them, ‘Necessity had no law’. Could the government make perfect seamen as easily as they could soldiers, there would be no such thing as pressing of seamen, and that I was happy to be of more value than them all put together, for they would not impress any of them, they were of so little value compared with me. When the news of Trafalgar arrived, I had my triumph over them in return. None but an old tar can feel the joy I felt. I wrought none [did not work] the next day, but walked about enjoying the feeling of triumph. Every now and then I felt the greatest desire to hurra aloud, and many an hurra my heart gave that my mouth uttered not.29
Nicol continued to be a fugitive, but at least he was not a prisoner, unlike Lieutenant William Dillon, who was still at Verdun. In December he was called upon to comment on the news of Trafalgar that had just arrived:I happened to enter the Caron Club about 11 o’clock one day when one of the committee came in with the English newspapers containing the account of Nelson’s victory over the combined fleets of France and Spain. Lord Yarmouth, Col. Abercromby and several others of my friends seized hold of me as if by one accord, and, lifting me on the table, desired me to read in a loud voice the official report of that splendid victory. The most perfect silence having been secured, I communicated the details of Collingwood’s letter to the Admiralty. When I had finished it, three hearty spontaneous cheers were given by at least one hundred members present, and those who were not near the table closed up and requested me to read the account a second time, to which I readily agreed to do.30
Afterwards Dillon found that the French just could not believe the news:Going out to the street, we met a crowd of French gentlemen who were anxious to know the reason of all that cheering. I told them of our splendid victory, and they were sadly cast down on the occasion. My French friends overloaded me with questions. They allowed they could not contend with us upon the ocean. ‘We do not doubt,’ they said, ‘that you have triumphed. But that you should have taken and destroyed so many ships without losing any is a case we cannot admit. Our seamen can fight as well as yours, and surely you do not mean to maintain that our shot has not sunk some of your ships?’ My only reply was that they might see Lord Collingwood’s official report for themselves, by which it was perfectly clear that they had lost twenty sail of the line: but not one on our side, either lost or taken, a British admiral not daring to send home a false report.31
A little later, Captain Mathieu-Anne-Louis Prigny de Quérieux, Villeneuve’s chief-of-staff, passed through Verdun, and Dillon learned from him more details of the battle:He had been wounded at the battle of Trafalgar, and had been sent to take the waters of that place (Barège), which had been beneficial in curing him. This gentleman’s name was Prigny. He was Adm. Villeneuve’s flag captain, and I do not recollect at any period of my life having enjoyed a more interesting conversation than I did in that officer’s company. I found in Capt. Prigny an amiable and well-informed officer who did not, at the meeting which took place between us, conceal any of the facts or principal incidents which occurred between the hostile fleets on that important occasion. His ship, the Bucentaure, was taken possession by the Mars, 74, commanded by my former captain, George Duff of the Glenmore (who was killed on that glorious day). After a conversation that lasted until 2 o’clock in the morning, wherein the gallant Frenchman made the most satisfactory replies to all my questions, I at length, fearing that I had made too many, said in conclusion, ‘I am truly sensible of your polite attention in conveying to me the interesting details which you have so frankly given.’ ‘Not in the least,’ he replied. ‘We did not gain the victory, and the truth will out [to the French people] in due time. Therefore it would be absurd to conceal the events as they really happened.’32
On 6 November, the same day that news of Trafalgar reached London, the death of Captain John Wesley Wright was announced in The Times. Wright had been in solitary confinement in the Temple prison for many months, but no doubt hoped that through the intervention of Sir Sidney Smith and Royalist agents he would be helped to escape. He kept in touch by letter with his first lieutenant, James Wallis, who was at Verdun, and six weeks before the Battle of Trafalgar he wrote: ‘I rejoice also to hear at length that you are near those dear boys [three young protégés on board the Vincejo] in whose progress my whole solicitude at present centres . . . I have taken the liberty to make you a sort of foster father to my little admirals in embryo’33 - he knew that he was unlikely to be sent to join them at Verdun, but was anxious they should be looked after. The three boys from his crew about whom he was so concerned were William Mansell, John Rogerson Wright (either his nephew or illegitimate son) and George Sidney Smith (Sir Sidney Smith’s nephew).
Six days after Trafalgar, on the night of 27 October 1805, the thirty-six-year old Wright was reported by the official French newspaper as having committed suicide. Dillon at Verdun recorded that ‘the article in the Moniteur stated that he was found
dead in his bed, having cut his throat whilst reading the bulletins announcing the victories of the French Army over the Austrians. What, in God’s name, had the victories of the French in Austria to do with Capt. Wright, an English officer?’34 General Mack and his fifty thousand Austrian troops surrendered at Ulm on 20 October, but it is also possible that Wright had just heard the news of the British naval victory at Trafalgar on the 21st. Nobody believed the suicide theory, and The Times commented: ‘We fear, there is no doubt of the fact of Captain WRIGHT’s decease, but we cannot believe that a gallant officer, who has so often looked death in the face, and was proverbial for courting danger, fell in the manner mentioned. They who ordered, and perpetrated the midnight murders of PICHEGRU, and the Duke D’ENGHIEN, can, no doubt, explain the nature of Captain WRIGHT’s death.’35
Years later, after the war was over, Sidney Smith made extensive enquiries of former prisoners and gaolers about what happened to Wright, and he discovered a damning story from the porter of the Temple prison:They found him extended in his bed, his eyes open, his body covered up to the chin with the sheets and counterpane, as if in a state of repose; that one of them . . . remarked an opening in the neck, which extended across the same from side to side . . . the edges as it were, stuck together. This opening appeared to him at first no more than a scratch, from whence death could not ensue . . . The captain was found as has been described, dead, in his bed-gown, (which he however never wore at night), holding in his right hand a razor with a white handle, the arm extended along the right thigh . . . the bed was narrow. Captain Wright’s head was between two pillows, and not bloody . . . By order of the steward, the deponent, with Savar, carried the body down stairs, to a room where it was customary to depose the dead, the one holding it by the head, the other (Savar) by the feet; in doing which the head became all at once so reversed, that he thought it was coming off. It was the deponent who (together with his wife) was charged with the burial, and to cleanse the chamber, that is to say, to remove the marks of blood from the ground near the bed, although there was none on or under the bed, unless it were a little on the edge of the sheet on the side where the ground was bloody. He ended by saying, that the captain, whose disposition was generous, and his heart endowed with sensibility, always treated him in a manner full of amenity . . . on the eve of Captain Wright’s death, the deponent heard him playing on the flute till an hour after midnight; which recreation did not indicate the despair of a person who had the intention to destroy himself.36
It was obvious that Wright had been murdered, unless a death by natural causes had been made to look like suicide. The same fate seems to have befallen Vice-Admiral Villeneuve. Following the Battle of Trafalgar, he was taken to England as a prisoner-of-war and was one of the few officers to be exchanged, but soon after arriving in France he was found stabbed to death.
During his journey to St Helena on board the Northumberland, Napoleon talked for many hours with the surgeon, William Warden, and insisted that he had no part in Wright’s death. On one occasion, Warden recalled, Napoleon ‘asked me, to my great surprise, if I remembered the history of Captain Wright. I answered, “Perfectly well; and it is a prevailing opinion in England, that you ordered him to be murdered in the Temple.” With the utmost rapidity of speech, he replied, “For what object? Of all men he was the person whom I should have most desired to live. Whence could I have procured so valuable an evidence as he would have proved on the trial of the conspirators in and about Paris? The Heads of it he himself landed on the French coast”’37
On St Helena, Napoleon repeated his assertions to Barry O’Meara, his physician there:If Wright was put to death, it must have been by my authority . . . If he was put to death in prison, I ordered it. Fouché, even if so inclined, never would have dared to do it. He knew me too well. But the fact is, that Wright killed himself, and I do not believe that he was even personally ill treated in prison . . . Sidney Smith, above all men, knew, from having been so long in the Temple, that it was impossible to have assassinated a prisoner, without the knowledge of such a number of persons as would have rendered concealment impossible.38
The memory of Wright preyed on Napoleon, and he was especially agitated when O’Meara showed him a copy of the Naval Chronicle with an engraving of an elaborate monument that had been set up by Sir Sidney Smith over the grave of Wright in the Père Lachaise cemetery (which Napoleon had established outside the walls of Paris). The Latin inscription included the uncompromising words: ‘Awhile successful in his career, at length, assailed by adverse winds, and on a hostile shore, he was captured, and being soon after brought to Paris, was confined in the prison, called the Temple, infamous for midnight-murders, and placed under the most rigid custody. But in bonds, and suffering severities still more oppressive, his fortitude of mind, and fidelity to his country remained unshaken. A short time after, he was found in the morning with his throat cut, and dead in his bed . . . To be lamented by his country - avenged by his God.’39 Napoleon retorted, ‘If I had acted properly, I should have ordered Wright to be tried by a military commission as a spy, and shot within twenty-four hours, which by the laws of war I was entitled to do.’40 Less than a century later one visitor to Paris remarked: ‘Strange to say this monument is now undiscoverable, and the cemetery keepers deny that Wright is on their registers.’41
By the last days of 1805 it was obvious that the struggle between France and Britain had entered a new phase. Nelson was dead, but the defeat of the French and Spanish at Trafalgar had given Britain the upper hand at sea. There would be no more major fleet actions between France and Britain, and increasingly the French Navy would become second in importance to the many privateers that preyed on British trade. But while Britain could now manage to keep control of the sea, France was tightening its grip on the land. John Wesley Wright was dead, and much of the network of British spies and French Royalists had been disrupted or destroyed. Napoleon’s position in France was becoming more secure, and he would shortly have control of Europe, so the immediate future presented an uneasy stalemate that would not be resolved until Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815. In December 1805 the words of Britain’s Prime Minister, William Pitt, were to prove eerily prophetic - when he heard that the Austro-Russian armies had just been decisively crushed by Napoleon at Austerlitz, he said of a map of Europe, ‘Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these ten years.’42
NINE
IN EVERY SEA
I used to say that there were four privations in my situation on board the Devonshire - fire, water, earth, and air. No fire to warm oneself on the coldest day, no water to drink but what was tainted, no earth to set foot on, and scarcely any air to breathe.
Mary Sherwood’s summary of her experience
as a passenger from England to India1
After Trafalgar there was a sense of relief and a tendency to relax. The continuous close blockade put a terrible strain on the ships and men involved, and the Admiralty now thought it safe enough to allow the Channel Fleet to take refuge from the winter weather in the shelter of Torbay rather than suffer constant battering by storms. This was a mistake. On 13 December 1805, less than two months after Trafalgar, the blockading British fleet withdrew from its station outside Brest because of foul weather, and the French seized their chance. A formidable battle fleet escaped, but the French were not looking for a pitched battle - they soon divided their forces, with one squadron heading for the West Indies, where it ran into a squadron commanded by Vice-Admiral Duckworth.
Less than four months after Trafalgar, Duckworth at the Battle of San Domingo engineered another resounding victory:The French admiral, who was greatly inferior in strength, endeavoured to make his escape on the appearance of the English squadron, but being speedily overtaken, an action commenced, which lasted with great fury for near two hours, at the conclusion of which three of the French line of battle ships remained prizes to the English, and two were driven on shore and burned. The two French frigates and corvette put to sea and mad
e their escape. The loss of the English in this engagement was 64 killed and 294 wounded. No officer above the rank of midshipman was killed, but several were severely wounded. The French had 760 killed and wounded on board of the three ships that were taken, and they no doubt lost a proportional number in the two others that were destroyed.2
