TRAFALGAR
AUTHORITIES.—The last and the most complete collections of the
evidence for the events dealt with in this chapter will now
be found in _Projets et Tentatives de Débarquement aux Iles
Britannique_, and in the supplementary volume, _La Campagne
Maritims de 1805—Trafalgar_, by Captain E. Desbrière. See also
_Trafalgar and the Nelson Touch_, a series of articles with
ensuing correspondence in the _Times_ for September and October
1905.
The peace signed at Amiens in March 1802 served two useful purposes.
It gave the nation a breathing space, and it allowed Napoleon an
opportunity to convince all Englishmen who were not beyond being
taught by experience that with him no lasting peace was possible.
His annexations, his insolent denial to England of any right to a
voice in the affairs of the Continent, his dishonesty in the matter
of the withdrawal of the French troops from Holland, his persistence
in calling on England to evacuate Malta, and the hostile measures
against English trade which he adopted, soon convinced all but a few
that war with him was inevitable. There could be no peace with a ruler
who endeavoured to force England to adhere to the letter of a treaty
which he was himself violating daily in spirit and substance. He did
not believe that peace could be permanent, but trusted that it would
last till he had found the means to arm against us at sea. In the hope
that he could revive French shipping by means of a colonial trade, he
sent a great armament to reoccupy the French part of the island of San
Domingo, which had been lost by a revolt of the slaves. Another was
sent to the East Indies provided with instructions how to attack our
possessions. The English Government, urged by public opinion, defeated
his plans by forcing on war in May 1803.
The brevity of the suspension of hostilities allowed no time for
important internal changes in the navy, but this interval saw the
beginning of administrative reforms which were to produce their chief
fruits after 1815. St. Vincent, who had become First Lord in the
Addington Ministry in 1801, was profoundly conscious of the waste and
corruption which prevailed in the Navy Office. He persuaded, indeed
it may be said that he forced, his colleagues to pass the Act of the
43rd George III., which appointed Commissioners “for inquiring into
irregularities, frauds, and abuses in the Navy Departments, and in
the business of prize agency.” The Commissioners produced a series of
reports between 1802 and 1805, which revealed much mismanagement and
the existence of not a little pilfering. The Commission of 1802 was
succeeded in 1806 by another “for revising and digesting the civil
affairs of the Navy,” which also made reports in 1809. These documents
are full of instruction, but they cannot be analysed and extracted
here. Their immediate effect was good, for they terrified evil-doers
and aroused the temper of the country. But they produced their main
fruits as late as 1830, and during the administration of Sir James
Graham.[6] St. Vincent, intent on reform, was obstinate in refusing to
believe in the renewal of war with France. He was accused of allowing
the strength of the navy to fall to a dangerously low figure. His
enemies did their best to raise public anger against him, and Pitt
attacked him hotly in the House of Commons.
A little sober investigation reduces these charges to moderate
proportions. St. Vincent’s critics were as unmeasured, and as
indiscriminating in criticising him, as he and his followers were in
scolding the Navy Office. In Parliamentary and other public discussions
our English respect for truth is qualified by a lively sense of the
value of loud-mouthed and hectoring accusations of stupidity and
turpitude as instruments of controversy. In March 1803 there were
perhaps not so many vessels in commission as there might have been,
and it is possible that St. Vincent had carried economy too far in
the dockyards. But the French dockyards were empty, and Napoleon was
taken completely by surprise—as indeed he confessed. He had exhausted
his resources by fitting out the fleet sent to San Domingo, and his
naval arsenals had been stripped bare. Some of the vessels he sent out
were unable to reach French ports before the renewal of hostilities.
Six of the line took refuge in the Spanish port of Ferrol, and another
hid at Cadiz. Even including these seven, he had only thirteen sail of
the line ready for sea, and they in bad condition. We had thirty-nine,
and the superiority in frigates was much greater. Thus we were able to
blockade our enemy with overwhelming forces from the beginning. Nelson
took the command in the Mediterranean; Pellew off Ferrol; Cornwallis
off Brest; Sir Sidney Smith in the North Sea; while Keith took the
command of the reserve in the Downs. As for the condition in which
these squadrons were, we have the word of Sir Edward Pellew, a very
competent witness. Speaking in the House of Commons on the 15th March
1804, he said:—
“I know, Sir, and can assert with confidence that our navy was never
better found, that it was never better supplied, and that our men were
never better fed or better clothed. Have we not all the enemy’s ports
blockaded from Toulon to Flushing? Are we not able to cope anywhere
with any force the enemy dares to send out against us? And do we not
outnumber them at every one of those ports we have blockaded? It would
smack a little of egotism, I fear, were I to speak of myself, but as a
person lately having the command of six ships, I hope I may be allowed
to state to the House how I have been supported in that command. Sir,
during the time I was stationed off Ferrol I had ships passing from
the fleet [_i.e._, the fleet in the Channel] to me, every three weeks
or a month, and so much was the French commander shut up in that port
deceived by these appearances that he was persuaded, and I believe is
to this very hour, that I had twelve ships under my command, and that
I had two squadrons to relieve each other, one of six inside, and one
of six outside.”
When Pellew was speaking, a year after the war began, the whole
sea-going naval force at Napoleon’s disposal, including vessels
belonging to the Batavian Republic and stationed at the Cape or in the
Indian Ocean, did not exceed, and except on paper did not reach, 48
of the line and 37 frigates. At that time England had in commission
88 ships of the line, 13 ships of 50 guns, 125 frigates, and a swarm
of sloops, gunbrigs, cutters, and “armed ships”—hired merchant-ships
carrying guns. We had every means of collecting stores, and the French
had few. The disproportion of force in our favour was so overwhelming,
and was so well known, that it is hard not to feel some contempt for
the flushings of apprehension and spasms of clamorous terror into which
our fathers were thrown by the fear of invasion.
The disposition of our[7] forces was admirably calculated to place
concentric barriers, elastic, mobile, but tough and impenetrable,
between the shores of Great Britain and a Continental assailant. The
inner barrier consisted of the fleet under the command of Lord Keith,
who had his headquarters in the Downs. He had 21 sail of the line and 6
ships of 50 guns, 29 frigates, 26 sloops, 12 bomb-vessels, 25 gunbrigs,
32 cutters and luggers, 19 armed ships. These vessels watched the
coast of France, and the dependent Batavian Republic from Havre to the
Texel. There was on our own coast a swarm of armed boats:—135 between
Yarmouth and Leith; 149 between Southend and Orfordness; 181 between
Hastings and the mouth of the Thames; 138 from Poole to Newhaven; 21
at Liverpool, Glasgow, and Greenock; 114 on the coast of Ireland: in
all, 738. Keith’s fleet was also the reserve on which other fleets
could fall back in case of need. Next, outside of Keith, came the Brest
blockade under Cornwallis:—20 sail of the line, 5 frigates, 1 sloop, 5
cutters, or luggers, or schooners. Beyond Cornwallis was the squadron
watching Rochefort:—5 sail of the line, 1 frigate, 1 cutter. Then
came 7 sail of the line, 2 frigates, 1 sloop, 1 cutter, which watched
Ferrol. In the Mediterranean, Nelson had 13 sail of the line, 1 50-gun
ship, 11 frigates, 10 sloops, 3 bomb-vessels, 6 gunbrigs, 2 cutters. In
the East Indies were 6 sail of the line, 2 50-gun ships, 7 frigates, 5
sloops. In the West Indies were 8 sail of the line, 1 50-gun ship, 11
frigates, 20 sloops, and 15 small craft. The vessels doing convoy work
may be left aside at present.
As we had no such army as could assail Napoleon at home, this mighty
force could only cruise and watch till such time as the Emperor of the
French (to give him the title he assumed on the 18th May 1804) put
its strength to the test. He threatened invasion by arrogant word and
ostentatious deed. There were then, there are now, it is probable that
there always will be, disbelievers in the sincerity of his threats.
He wrapped himself in clouds of lies, and he is not to be believed
on his bare word, either when he said he would invade, or when he
declared that he had never seriously contemplated invasion. As he said
himself, he served a merciless taskmaster, “the nature of things,” and
it was in the nature of things that his empire was subject to attack
by the powers of Central and Eastern Europe. He cannot have meant to
attempt an invasion of England at a time when the armies of Austria
were actually marching against him. We know that during the last months
of 1804 and the first of 1805, when war with Austria seemed imminent,
he suspended his preparations for an invasion of England, and resumed
them only when a letter from the Emperor Francis II. gave him assurance
that he would not be interrupted. But though he was bound to bow to
necessity, and turn from England when the frontier of the Rhine was in
danger, it by no means follows that he would not have made the attempt
had it been at any time possible. He had promised the French to rid
them of their hereditary enemy England, and he could only make sure of
keeping his word by invasion. His power depended on his popularity, and
that depended on victory. He had risen to a towering height by running
great risks, and he went on running them to the end, to keep what he
had won. If he believed anything, he believed that his presence in
England at the head of an army would bring the country to submission at
once, and even to revolution. Assuredly he did mean to run the hazard
of making an invasion, subject always to the leave of “the nature
of things,”—if, that is to say, the forces at his command and the
circumstances around him allowed of the venture.
It is not necessary to produce reasons for believing that he never
meant to risk a crossing of the Channel with a flotilla alone. He
had given conclusive reasons for not running that hazard when the
Directory made him General of the Army of England in 1797. The swarm
of flat-bottomed boats he collected between the spring of 1803 and the
autumn of 1805, and the army he encamped at Boulogne, were never meant
to act by themselves. The flotilla might be used under protection of a
fleet. The army was very well placed to be drilled, and kept under his
own eye and influence for all service. His assurances that he meant
to invade with the flotilla and army by themselves were designed to
satisfy public opinion in France, and inspire fear in England. It
must not be forgotten that Napoleon was betrayed, and knew he was
betrayed, by people about him who dreaded the consequences of his rule
to France. Their identity is uncertain, though Talleyrand has been
supposed to have been one of them. Whoever they were, these persons
known as the “he-friend,” and the “she-friend,” and the “son of the
friend,” had access to Napoleon’s most secret papers, and communicated
the substance of them to a certain Count d’Antraigues, an exiled French
Royalist attached to the Russian mission in Saxony. Through Antraigues
the information came to the English Government. Napoleon, who knew he
was betrayed but could not detect the traitors, used countermines to
confuse and mislead them. Many of the minutes he made and the orders he
issued have much the air of having been designed to reach his enemies
and put them on a false scent.
When the preliminaries of October 1801 were signed, there were 250
flat-bottomed boats in existence of the model brought to France by
Muskeyn. In March 1803 only 136 were available. Napoleon began at once
to repair and strengthen this remnant. His first plan was to add a
moderate number of flat-bottomed boats, and to draw largely on fishing
and coasting craft for his transports. It was soon found that these
resources would be insufficient. By July 1803 he had adopted plans
for building 1410 flat-bottomed vessels, and in August the number was
fixed at 2008. They were to be divided into _frames_ of 110 feet by 25,
drawing 8 feet, rigged as barques; _chaloupes_ of 76 to 80 feet by 17,
drawing 5 to 6 feet, rigged as brigs; _bateaux cannoniers_ of 60 by 14
feet, drawing 4½ feet, rigged as luggers; _caiques_—small luggers and
schooners; bomb-vessels, and _péniches_, a species of fishing-boats.
All carried guns, from the twelve 24-pounders of the _frames_ down to
the single _obusier_ or shell-firing gun of the _péniches_. They were
built all along the north coast of France, at Paris, on the Rhine and
in Holland. They were brought to their headquarters at Boulogne, down
rivers and canals and by voyages along the coast from fort to fort and
creek to creek. Harbours were cleared for them, and batteries built for
their protection. The most determined efforts on the part of our naval
officers failed to prevent these craft from collecting in and about
Boulogne. But there Napoleon’s success with them ended. They could not
be sent to sea. The fine schemes for combining troops and transports
remained mere schemes. The ports cleared for the transports silted up
again as fast as they were made. When the vessels were anchored in
the harbours, they could only get out in driblets. When they anchored
outside, they were harassed by English attacks, and injured by gales.
Napoleon was eye-witness to the destruction of a number of them by
a gale in June 1804. It is true that we did them but little harm.
Our sea-going ships could not push their attacks home on a shallow
coast, and we did not build corresponding vessels for the purpose. An
attempt to make an end of them by a species of floating mines called
“catamarans,” much favoured by Mr. Pitt, proved a failure in October
1804. Yet the utmost they could do was to escape destruction. They
could not go out, as Napoleon knew from the first. His naval officers
told him the truth with perfect candour.
Something else must be done to clear the way for an invading army, and
there was only one thing which promised success. A force of sea-going
ships must be collected to protect the transports. Therefore, from the
end of 1803 till late in 1805, the correspondence of Napoleon is filled
with elaborate plans for concentrating a fleet in the Channel. These
plans of campaign and the letters written in combination with them
fill hundreds of pages in the vast compilation of Captain Desbrière.
This most competent French authority is inclined to believe that much
of the vast correspondence was meant to be betrayed and to mislead the
English Government. No other rational explanation can indeed be found
for the confusing way in which proposals for expeditions to Scotland,
Ireland, and the East Indies are mingled with plans for bringing
squadrons from Brest, Rochefort, Ferrol, Cadiz, and Toulon together in
the Channel. These alternative schemes, eccentric in every sense of the
word, were never acted on. If they were designed to deceive the British
Government, they failed.
The solid core of a mass of mere words was the design to concentrate
a strong fleet in the Channel. A squadron, or squadrons, of the ships
at Napoleon’s command was, or were, to cross the Atlantic in order
to distract the attention of the English Government and induce it to
send ships in pursuit. Napoleon’s intention was that his vessels should
come back and unite in the Channel, where they would have a superiority
over the English who, he calculated, would be weakened by detachments.
The English Government had early warning that this was in fact his
plan, and prepared to defeat it by a counter policy of concentration.
The penury of the French dockyards and the time required to build the
flat-bottomed boats compelled Napoleon to delay the application of
his plan. Seven of his ships were blockaded in Spanish ports, and his
relations to Spain were peculiar. She was bound by treaty to join him
in the war, but was allowed to compound for armed help by the payment
of a subvention. England might fairly have considered this contribution
to the funds of its enemy, and have declared war on Spain at once. But
it refrained until 6th October 1804, when it seized the home-coming
Spanish treasure ships in the Straits of Gibraltar. Spain declared war
in December. Napoleon’s plans may be divided into those laid before
and those laid after October 1804. It is enough to say of the first,
which were never put to the test, that after a variety of hypothetic
suggestions had been made and rejected, Napoleon decided in favour of
the comparatively simple scheme that Latouche-Tréville, who commanded
at Toulon, should elude Nelson and head for Rochefort, drive off the
English blockading squadron, and be then ready to co-operate with the
fleet at Brest. There was nothing impossible, or even very hazardous,
in this plan. Nelson made it his boast that he did not blockade Toulon.
He only watched the port by frigates, remaining on the coast of
Sardinia with his liners, hoping that the French would come out, and
that he would be able to bring them to battle. He had every right to
rely on victory if a battle could be secured; but, as the future was
to show, he was not entitled to calculate on meeting the Toulon fleet.
Success would depend on the receipt of prompt information from his
frigates, but Nelson remained far from Toulon, he allowed his squadron
to drive in the north-easterly winds, and was seldom at his rendezvous,
and so days often passed before the frigates could find his flag. It
was, too, a fixed idea of his, that if the French left Toulon, it
would be for the purpose of renewing their disastrous adventure in
Egypt. Napoleon, who read his mind with remarkable sagacity, and who
ranked his judgment low, had calculated on this very fixed idea of
the English admiral’s as an element in his own favour. It is by no
means improbable that the concentration at Rochefort might have been
effected if the resources of the Toulon yard had been greater. But the
squadron was fitted for sea with difficulty. Latouche-Tréville died on
the 20th August 1804. His successor had to be selected, and then came
the war between Spain and England, which brought a new element into the
problem. At that moment, too, there was a strong probability that war
would break out with Prussia and Austria. The invasion schemes were
hung up, and in September Napoleon was intent on organising attacks on
England’s colonies. Even these were designed to draw off English forces
from home waters and leave the road free for a push from Brest and
Boulogne. Their real purpose was known to the English Government, which
was warned by its secret agents, and showed itself well aware of its
enemy’s purpose.
Villeneuve was chosen to succeed Latouche-Tréville, mainly because
the emperor looked upon him as a lucky man, and because that was a
valuable quality in the prevailing dearth of capable admirals. On
the 12th December 1804 orders were sent to Villeneuve to prepare for
a great expedition to the West Indies, where he was to be joined by
Missiessy with the squadron from Rochefort. They were to capture
colonies, and after a stay of sixty days to come back to Rochefort.
Nothing was said of ulterior movements in the instructions to them.
But orders of nearly the same date were sent to Ganteaume at Brest to
get to sea, make a commerce-destroying cruise on the coast of Ireland,
go to Ferrol, pick up the French and Spanish ships there, and join
Villeneuve and Missiessy on their return from the West Indies. If the
concentration was effected, Napoleon would have, so he thought, that
command of the Channel which, as he told Latouche in July, would make
him master of the world. But he was trying to overreach his taskmaster,
“the nature of things.” Such a scheme could succeed only by a truly
wonderful combination of capacity on the part of his officers, of
incapacity on the part of the English officers, and of good fortune.
Two parts out of three of the scheme failed. Missiessy did indeed get
away from Rochefort on the 11th January 1805, reached the West Indies,
did considerable damage to our trade, and got safe back by the 20th
May. Ganteaume was unable to get to sea without a battle with the
blockading fleet, and he was forbidden to fight. Villeneuve got to sea
on the 17th January, when a north-easterly gale had forced the English
look-out frigates off the coast. The result did to some extent justify
Napoleon’s foresight. Nelson, who heard on the 19th that Villeneuve
was at sea, acted on his fixed idea that Egypt was the object of the
French, went to look for them in the Levant, and was not back to his
rendezvous in Sardinia till the 27th February. But Villeneuve had been
driven back on the 20th January by bad weather. On the 22nd he wrote a
letter to his friend the Minister of Marine, Decrès, which if Napoleon
had seen it and had known where to look for a more resolute officer
would have caused his instant dismissal. It can be compared only with
the piteous letter in which the Duke of Medina Sidonia implored Philip
II. not to give him the command of the Armada. Villeneuve declared
that he had always longed for a useful but not for a glorious career;
that this enterprise he was sent on could end in nothing but disgrace;
that his ships looked very well in harbour, but were helpless at sea;
that the troops given him to attack the English islands were a pest;
and that he wished the emperor would name his successor. Napoleon
was exasperated with the admiral’s “lack of decision.” Yet he had to
accept Villeneuve also as part of “the nature of things.” At first the
proposed combination was given up. Orders were sent to Missiessy to
consider himself independent, and they reached him. In a short time
Napoleon received assurance from Austria which convinced him that he
was for a time safe from molestation. In March the great combination
scheme was taken up again. Counter orders to wait for Villeneuve were
sent to Missiessy, but failed to reach him. On the 2nd March orders
were sent to Ganteaume to sail for Ferrol, pick up the French and
Spanish ships, go to Martinique to join Villeneuve, and then head
back for the Channel. On the same day orders went to Villeneuve to
sail to the West Indies, and wait for Ganteaume at Martinique for
forty days. If he failed to appear, Villeneuve was to return by San
Domingo and the Canaries, waiting for him there once more, and on
his failure to appear, was to go to Cadiz. All was to depend on the
success of Ganteaume in getting away. “The nature of things” was to be
overreached. But it is not so easy to overreach “the nature of things.”
The concentration broke down first because Missiessy did not receive
his counter orders, and therefore did not wait for Villeneuve, and then
because Ganteaume failed to leave Brest. He was too closely watched by
Cornwallis.
On the 30th March, Villeneuve got away from Toulon with eleven sail of
the line. Nelson’s policy of no-blockade produced the effect which some
naval officers at least had foreseen. The French fleet was sighted on
the 31st March, thirty-five miles south of Toulon, by the =Phœbe= and
=Active= frigates. The =Phœbe= went in search of Nelson, who was at the
Gulf of Palmas, in Sardinia, on that day; but she did not report to him
till the 4th April, for he had left Palmas on the 3rd to water at Pula.
Villeneuve, who had heard that Nelson was at Palmas, steered to the
west of the Balearic Islands, and was missed by him. It is strange that
the British Government knowing what it knew of Napoleon’s intentions,
and having adopted the proper counter-policy of concentration in the
Channel, had not ordered its admiral in the Mediterranean to disregard
the imaginary danger to Egypt. Once more Nelson manœuvred to protect
what the French were not attacking. He stretched his look-out ships
from the south of Sardinia to the coast of Africa, and went to Palermo.
On the 16th April he was at the south end of Sardinia, and on that
date he learned that Villeneuve had passed the Straits of Gibraltar
eight days before. The French admiral had stopped outside the Spanish
harbour of Carthagena on the 7th, and had called on Admiral Salcedo to
join him. The Spaniard excused himself, and Villeneuve went on to Cadiz
that night. He drove off the blockading squadron of Sir John Orde—six
sail of the line and frigates. Orde retired to a safe distance, and
then sailed to join Cornwallis in the Channel. On the 9th, Villeneuve
reached Cadiz, where he was at once joined by the _Aigle_ and the
Spanish admiral, Gravina. Most of the Spanish vessels, six in number,
were unable to be in time to sail with the French. The allies
straggled across the Atlantic, and had the good fortune to unite their
eighteen sail at Fort de France in Martinique by the 16th May.
When the French admiral reached the Antilles, he had no other orders
than those dated the 2nd March, which directed him to wait for
Ganteaume at Martinique for forty days, and then to cruise among the
Canary Islands. He therefore waited, and undertook no other operation
than the recapture of the Diamond Rock, then held by an English naval
detachment which was a thorn in the side of the French island. The Rock
was retaken on the 31st May, but on the previous day Villeneuve had
been joined by the _Didon_ from Rochefort. She brought orders which
were well calculated to disturb him. They were dated the 14th April,
and after informing him that he was to be joined by Rear-Admiral Magon
from Rochefort with two sail of the line, instructed him to wait in the
islands for another month, to distinguish himself by taking English
islands, to come to Ferrol, join the French and Spanish ships there,
and head for Brest and Boulogne. These orders implied that Villeneuve
must be prepared to fight a battle in the Channel. The admiral, who
well knew the defects of the ships with him, and who could judge that
the raw ships at Ferrol would be still less capable of meeting the
English, was sorely disturbed at the prospect of having to undertake
such a venture at the head of such a force. He knew, too, that lack
of provisions would make it impossible for him to remain for a month
in the West Indies, while he had every reason to fear that his enemy,
who must by this time have learned his whereabouts, would attack him.
He was aware that Admiral Cochrane, who had been sent from before
Ferrol in March, was in the West Indies with six sail. It was a simple
enough business to attack the English islands. When, therefore, Magon
joined him on the 4th June, Villeneuve embarked more soldiers from the
garrisons of the islands, and sailed to assail Antigua. On the 10th
he captured an English convoy near the island, and learned from his
prisoners that Nelson had reached Barbadoes in pursuit of him on the
4th.
The English admiral had paid dearly in anxiety for the looseness of
the watch he kept on Toulon. When he was informed that the French
squadron had left the Mediterranean, he hurried in pursuit. But the
wind was against him. He reached Tetuan on the 4th April, and left
next day, but it was not till the 10th that he anchored in Lagos Bay.
He had had every cause for anxiety. The French had escaped from the
Mediterranean, and he had no indication whither they had gone. He was
almost equally disposed to sail to the West Indies lest they should be
bound to Jamaica, or to steer for the Scilly Islands in order to be at
hand in case their destination was the Channel or the coast of Ireland.
His troubles were aggravated by the fact that a convoy of transports
carrying General Craig and a body of troops bound to Sicily and Naples
had left England on the 17th April, under protection of Admiral Knight,
with two line-of-battle ships, the =Queen= and the =Dragon=. It might
have fallen in with Villeneuve. On the 10th his doubts were removed.
Rear-Admiral Campbell, the officer in the Portuguese service who had
warned Jervis of the neighbourhood of the Spaniards on the day before
the battle of Cape St. Vincent, now gave Nelson information which
convinced him that Villeneuve had sailed for the West Indies. The
convoy with General Craig’s expedition came in, and was sent on its way
to Sicily. Nelson left Bickerton in command in the Mediterranean, and
with ten ships pursued Villeneuve on the 11th.
Orde had sent home information of Villeneuve’s escape, and had also
given warning to the West Indies. The Admiralty was taking measures
to send Collingwood, then serving in the Channel, in pursuit of
the French, when it was informed that Nelson had gone on his own
responsibility. Collingwood was ordered to Cadiz to replace Orde, who
had shown a lack of precision, and a counter concentration of naval
forces was prepared in the Channel and the approaches to it. The
anxiety in the country was keen. It was said in the press that nobody
in England slept quietly, for there was a very general appreciation
of the real significance of Villeneuve’s cruise. There was so little
doubt on the subject that on the 9th May a London paper, the _Morning
Chronicle_, stated that many were of opinion that the French admiral
would join the ships at Cadiz and Ferrol and then enter the Channel.
The public was relieved when it learned that Jamaica was in more danger
than the mother country.
When Nelson reached Barbadoes, he was misled by circumstantial but
unfounded reports given him by Major-General Brereton into the belief
that the French had gone south to attack Trinidad and Tobago. He went
immediately in pursuit to the Gulf of Paria, only to learn that he
had been misinformed. He at once returned, and was off Martinique on
the 10th, the very day on which Villeneuve, after hastily sending the
troops he had drawn from the garrison of Martinique and Guadaloupe back
in frigates, had sailed for Ferrol. Nelson heard of the departure of
Villeneuve at Antigua, and on the 13th he also sailed for Europe. The
Frenchman was undoubtedly right in leaving the West Indies at once.
Even a successful battle (and he did not look upon success as possible)
would have destroyed his power to carry out what Napoleon in a letter
to him dated the 29th April called the “essential operation,” the union
of the French squadrons in the Channel. But he took too northerly a
course, and therefore lengthened his voyage unduly. His mistake had
disastrous consequences for him. Nelson, when starting to return to
his proper station in the Mediterranean, despatched the =Curieux=
brig, Captain Bettesworth, with information for the Admiralty. On the
19th June, Bettesworth sighted the allies 900 miles N.E. of Antigua.
He pressed on, and in the early hours of the 8th July gave Lord
Barham, the old naval officer who was then First Lord, the news that
Villeneuve was on his way back. The Government was well aware of the
real purpose of the French fleet. Lord Barham had only to carry out
a settled policy when he at once ordered Calder, who had succeeded
Cochrane in command of the Ferrol blockade, to call in Rear-Admiral
Stirling, who was watching Rochefort, and to bar Villeneuve’s road to
Ferrol. Calder received his orders on the 15th, called Stirling to
his flag, and stationed himself 90 miles west of Finisterre. On the
22nd he sighted the allies to the south of him. Nelson, sailing on a
more southerly route, had reached Cape St. Vincent on the 17th. He had
good professional cause for returning to his proper station. Yet it
is strange that even at that hour he remained firm in the faith that
the ultimate aim of the French was Egypt. If he had read the mind of
Napoleon as Napoleon read his, he would surely have steered for Ferrol.
In that case, he would have headed Villeneuve, and would have united
his ten ships to the fifteen then with Calder. The twenty-five would
have made an end of the twenty French and Spanish ships and of the
great invasion scheme at a blow.
The mountain fell in labour, and produced a ridiculous mouse. When
Calder saw the allies to the south of him on the 22nd July, he rightly
decided to attack their twenty sail with his fifteen. His intention
was to cut through their line and destroy their rear. Calder cannot
be blamed for failing to carry out his plan, for a dense fog settled
down on the two fleets. It was so thick that the combatants could not
see where the vessels nearest to them were save by the flash of their
gun-fire. After preliminary movements of no significance, the fleets
engaged in line ahead, standing to the south. The English to leeward
engaged the van, composed of the Spaniards, and the centre of the
allies. The fire of the Spaniards was so wild that when the English
frigate =Egyptienne= reconnoitred them before the battle, they failed
to hit her, though by the testimony of her first lieutenant, she went
close enough “to see the moustachios of the Dons.” Two of the Spanish
ships, the _San Rafael_ and the _Firme_, leewardly tubs, sagged through
Calder’s line, and were taken. The fleets separated in the dark after
a cannonade which did some damage to masts and spars. The charge of
weakness brought against Admiral Calder is based on his conduct in the
days following the battle. He showed no desire to renew the action, and
was very unduly nervous about the part which might be taken against him
by the French and Spanish ships in Ferrol. Yet an officer of a daring
spirit (and at such a crisis it was the duty of every officer to show
the utmost daring) would have calculated that his fifteen vessels were
quite able to ruin the eighteen enemies in front of them long before
help could come out of the land-locked harbour of Ferrol. Even if his
own fleet was to be shattered in the act of destroying the enemy, it
would still have put a stop to any further movements of theirs in the
direction of the Channel. Calder was unduly cautious, and it is to be
feared that he was also unduly over anxious for the safety of his
prizes, the reward of toil and danger. He went off to put them in the
way of safety, very complacently calculating that Villeneuve would go
south to Cadiz where Nelson would be waiting for him.
Villeneuve was well disposed to go to Cadiz, and had Napoleon’s leave
to go if his fleet suffered such injury in battle as should render
it incapable of carrying out the essential operation—which, said the
Emperor sanctimoniously, may God forbid. He had no confidence in his
command. On the 6th August, when the impression made on him by the
action of the 22nd July was fresh, he told his friend Decrès that the
French and Spanish Navies were incapable of producing large squadrons
fit to meet the English. And such as his force was it was sickly and
had been weakened by desertion in the West Indies. The decision to go
to Cadiz was to be taken later. When Villeneuve was assured by Gravina
that their fleets could enter Vigo in the then prevailing wind he
decided to go thither, and he anchored in the spacious Spanish harbour
on the 26th July.
When Napoleon heard that the English squadron blockading Rochefort
had disappeared from before the port, he concluded that Villeneuve
must be already on his way back, and that the English knew it. The
squadron brought home in May by Missiessy, and now commanded by
Allemand, was then in Rochefort. It had orders to escape to sea, to
go on a commerce destroying voyage on the coast of Ireland, and to
meet Villeneuve if he came back at the time first fixed. The Emperor
now proposed to send Allemand to meet Villeneuve at once. But he had
sailed before the counter order reached Rochefort. To Villeneuve orders
were sent almost in profusion. Following a practice which grew on
him, and was the despair of his generals during the Peninsular War,
Napoleon wanted to regulate everything from a distance, and would keep
suggesting alternative courses. Yet the general drift of his orders was
plain enough. Villeneuve was not to be enticed into Ferrol, which is
difficult to leave except in certain states of the wind, was to call
out the French and Spanish ships there, join Allemand, and come on to
Boulogne. If he had been resolute enough to leave the Emperor to answer
for the consequences in this world and the next, Villeneuve might
have made a bold stroke, and might at least have failed with honour.
On the 28th July, six days after the battle off Ferrol, this was the
position. Keith’s fleet was in the Downs and the North Sea, where,
during the westerly winds, it could do little to help the ships in the
Channel. Cornwallis, with twenty sail of the line, was watching the
twenty-two ships of Ganteaume at Brest. There were fourteen French and
Spaniards in Ferrol. Calder, who had not yet divided his force, was
not far from that port. Allemand, who had sailed later than had been
intended, had wisely not gone to cruise on the coast of Ireland, but
had placed himself 120 miles to the west of Ferrol, to meet Villeneuve,
who was at Vigo with eighteen sail, of which, however, three, two
Spaniards and one French, were unfit for further service. Nelson,
who had been persuaded at last that the French were not aiming at
Egypt (apparently by the arguments of Collingwood), was off Cape St.
Vincent on his way home with eleven sail, carrying out spontaneously,
though tardily, the Government’s policy of concentration. Collingwood,
with four sail, remained off Cadiz to blockade six Spaniards. Sir R.
Bickerton, with another four of the line, was watching another six
Spaniards at Carthagena. On the 1st August Villeneuve left Vigo and
went to the outer Bay of Ferrol, leaving his three lame ducks behind.
Calder had been forced north by south-westerly winds. Then it was
that he detached the ships originally taken from before Rochefort. He
returned with nine sail, and, finding the enemy in force, fell back
on the 9th on Cornwallis. Nelson was on his way north, well out at
sea tacking against head winds. On the 11th he was off Ushant, and on
the 13th he joined Cornwallis. The allies, who were in great need of
stores, did not sail till the 11th. Villeneuve distrusted his fleet
more profoundly than ever, for, when anchoring in Arosa Bay, his ships
had all come into collision with one another. He had been told that
Allemand was cruising in search of him, but the _Didon_, which he sent
to meet the Rochefort squadron, was taken by an English frigate. He
could hear nothing. The wind was against him. Success appeared to him
impossible, and he was not stern enough to sail to destruction since
his master would have it so. The weak man, heavily laden, grasped at
the qualified leave given him to go south, and on the 15th August,
being then 200 miles W.N.W. of Finisterre in a N.E. wind, he bore up
for Cadiz.
With the retreat of Villeneuve the great concentration scheme came
to an end. He retired to Cadiz followed by the screaming abuse of
Napoleon, who was justly angry, if only because this ignominious end
to his grand schemes tended to make him the laughing stock of Europe.
Whether he was as angry as he pretended to be is another matter.
Rage was one way of persuading the gallery that the failure was not
his fault. He had a great and thoroughly vulgar capacity for working
himself into fits of hysterical fury, and for falling to cursing like
a very drab. He did not altogether resign the hope of making use of
Villeneuve’s fleet. While washing his hands of all further attention
to details, he gave orders that the combined fleets were to undertake
operations in the Mediterranean. He also decided that Villeneuve was
too great a coward to be trusted with the command any longer, and that
he must be replaced by Admiral Rosily.
So far the initiative had belonged to the French, who were the
assailants. Their attack had broken down, and now came the turn of
the English to assail. When the arrival of Nelson raised the fleet,
under Cornwallis, to forty sail of the line, the admiral felt so sure
of his position that he did not hesitate to divide his forces. Nelson
went home to rest, taking two liners with him. Two others were sent
in for repairs. Eighteen were despatched on the 16th, under Calder,
to go in search of Villeneuve. Napoleon called this separation an
_insigne bêtise_, in view of the fact that Villeneuve might have burst
into the Channel with a force very superior in numbers to the eighteen
sail with Calder, or the seventeen which remained with Cornwallis. He
would have had thirty-four if he had joined both the Ferrol ships and
Allemand. If fleets and armies were pieces on a draft board, with fixed
unvarying powers, the speculation would be worth following up. But
they are composed of weapons handled by men who can do but what they
can. Will an obese man who has one leg shorter than the other and weak
lungs be much the better (he will, of course, be somewhat the better),
if he meets two professional fighters separately, and not together.
It is quite possible that if Villeneuve had come on, he would have
passed Calder without a meeting. In these very months, Nelson came from
Cape St. Vincent to Ushant, through seas crossed by the squadrons of
Villeneuve, Allemand, and Calder, but met none of them. Allemand ranged
down the coast of the peninsula to the latitude of Cape St. Vincent,
went back to the Channel, came to the Penmarks, cruised, and waited
for Villeneuve, till no hope remained that he could come, then turned
to commerce destroying in the Atlantic with immense success, until he
anchored at Aix on the 24th December. But Panic and Flight were our
allies. Cornwallis suffered nothing by the division of his forces. On
the 20th and 21st August he easily beat back the Brest ships, which
were forced to make a show of coming out by Napoleon. Villeneuve had
run for Cadiz before Calder left Ushant. He sighted Cape St. Vincent
on the 17th, Allemand being then barely out of sight behind him. On
the 21st he entered Cadiz observed by Collingwood, who was watching
the port with three sail of the line, his fourth being then at Tetuan.
Collingwood fell back slowly, just ahead of the pursuing French,
resolved that if they drove him into the Mediterranean, they should be
“backstrapped” into it with him. The allies gave up the pursuit, and
Collingwood, with his three, resumed the watch on Cadiz. He was joined
by the detached ship at Tetuan, by Bickerton from Carthagena, and at
last by Calder. On the 30th August thirty English sail of the line
were collected outside Cadiz. It was on the 2nd September that Nelson,
then at his house at Merton, heard that the allies were in Cadiz. He
hurried to town, and offered his services. It would have been strange
if the Government had declined the offer of its greatest fighter of
battles at such a moment. Nelson left Spithead with the =Victory= and
the =Euryalus= frigate on the 15th September, picked up the =Ajax= and
=Thunderer= on the 18th, and joined Collingwood on the 28th.
The battle he came to fight was offered him primarily by the obstinacy
of Napoleon, but immediately by the wounded vanity of Villeneuve. The
Emperor had ordered his fleet, and the Spaniards whom he ordered about
as his own, not to suffer themselves to be blockaded by an inferior
force, but he allowed his orders to sail to stand when he knew that
Collingwood had been reinforced. Decrès, the minister of Marine, did
not tell Villeneuve that he was to be recalled when Rosily reached
Cadiz. The truth reached the unhappy man indirectly, and by public
rumour. In a fit of selfish vanity, he, who had been so cautious in
avoiding risks when a great end was to be obtained, now decided to rush
to sea, when no great advantage was to be gained, and when the danger
of destruction was closer than it had been at any moment since he
sailed from Toulon in March—and did it wholly and solely that he might
escape a personal disgrace. By his orders the allied fleet prepared to
put to sea on the 18th October.
Nelson was then cruising some twenty miles west of Cadiz, in a position
to steer for the Straits and intercept the enemy whenever he should
come out, if, as was nearly certain, he headed for the Mediterranean.
He had with him twenty-seven sail, and six were at Gibraltar watering
and provisioning. It was on the 19th, when he had just sent Collingwood
an invitation to dinner, that he learnt, through the vessels watching
in shore, that the enemy were coming out. The wearing of the flagship
and the signal for a general chase to the east told the fleet that the
allies were moving. The English ships pressed on to head the enemy,
each at its best rate of speed, so that the fast sailers outstripped
the slow. The allied fleet had worked out of Cadiz with difficulty.
On the afternoon of the 20th it was to the south of Cape Trafalgar,
and the English fleet was so near that a battle could not be avoided.
During the night our look-out vessels saw the long “lighted street”
of lanterns which marked the position of the allies. The fleet had
returned from the position attained by the general chase of the 19th,
and was almost back to its cruising ground. The weather had been
variable from squall and haze to calm. The ships were scattered on
the morning of the 21st October—a day of very light breeze from N.W.,
a heavy swell, and a falling barometer, signs of a coming storm. The
enemy was seen in the E.N.E. about nine miles off, heading south. The
scattered condition of the English ships did not signify much. They
knew what they had to do, and they knew that their enemy was incapable
of baffling any vigorous attack. Immediately after joining the fleet
Nelson had held a meeting of senior officers in his flagship and had
explained his method for disposing of the allies—the Nelson touch. The
memorandum in which he laid down the principles of his attack remains
to tell us what they were. If the enemy were found to windward, then
the English fleet was to attack from leeward, which it must do in
close-hauled lines ahead, and was to be disposed in three such lines.
One, the lee line, led by the second in command, was to cut off a
smaller number of the enemy at the rear. The second or weather line,
led by himself, was to cut the formation of the enemy at the centre,
where his flagship would be. A third, or advance squadron, was to cut
through the enemy ahead of the flagship. Nelson displays his contempt
for his opponents by two assumptions. One is, that the enemy drawn out
in one very long line would not meet this attack by a counter move,
as D’Orvilliers had baffled Keppel’s menace to the rear of his line
in the battle of Ushant in 1778. The other is that the ships of the
enemy thus cut off, amounting to just more than half, could not be
succoured by their van before they were crushed. Supposing the enemy
to be to leeward, then the three lines were to be drawn up opposite
his centre. The lee line, under the second in command, was to fall all
together on a smaller number of the enemy’s rear. The weather line
and advanced squadron were to be used by himself so as to prevent the
centre and van from turning to support the rear. In this case Nelson
does his enemy the compliment of supposing him to be capable of making
a counter move. If he inverts his line by wearing together, the English
lee line is to continue to attack the same ships, though they would
now be van, and not rear. It is clear, however, that if this was done
(and it was the obvious thing to do), the enemy’s rear and centre
had only to let all draw in order to come at once to the help of the
ships assailed. Nelson’s manifest conviction that his enemy could not
manœuvre, and that his gunnery was bad, was thoroughly justified. It
has become rather the fashion to affect a “chivalrous” respect for the
enemy at Trafalgar. That is a very pretty sentiment, and is the easier
to feel because the more we make of our foe the more do we make of
our victory. But though the thirty-three ships of the line which left
Cadiz with Villeneuve unquestionably carried thousands of gallant men,
they constituted a very bad fleet. Less than half of them belonged to
the squadrons which had crossed the Atlantic with Villeneuve. The rest
were the raw ships from Ferrol, or Spanish vessels manned at Cadiz from
hand to mouth, and at the last moment. Even the most experienced of
them were incapable of manœuvring, and that by the confession of their
own chiefs. Their gunnery was not only inaccurate, which in very close
fighting was not of the first consequence, but was slow in the case of
the French, and very slow in the case of the Spaniards. Their powder
was of inferior quality and fouled the guns quickly.
It has become so much the custom to speak of everything Nelson did
as in some sort miraculous that the memorandum has been treated as a
revelation of original genius. Yet when we look at it coolly it is
obviously only a plan to do deliberately what Duncan did on the spur of
the moment, and under the pressure of circumstances, at Camperdown. The
resemblance between the battles becomes still closer when we look at
what was actually done on the 21st October.
After the sweeping movements and variable weather of the last few
days, the fleet was in some apparent disorder. The division into three
of the memorandum was not attempted. The ships were in two swarms,
Collingwood’s lee division of fifteen sail, and Nelson’s weather
division of twelve.
Nelson’s Division.
{ Vice-Admiral Lord
=Victory= 100 { Nelson.
{ Capt. T. M. Hardy.
=Téméraire= 98 " Eliab Harvey.
=Neptune= 98 " T. F. Fremantle.
=Conqueror= 74 " Israel Pellew.
=Leviathan= 74 " H. W. Bayntun.
=Ajax= 74 Lieut. J. Pilford.
=Orion= 74 Capt. E. Codrington.
=Agamemnon= 64 Sir E. Berry.
=Minotaur= 74 Capt. J. M. Mansfield.
=Spartiate= 74 Sir J. Laforey.
{ Rear-Admiral Lord
=Britannia= 100 { Northesk.
{ Capt. C. Bullen.
=Africa= 64 " Digby.
Collingwood’s Division.
=Royal { Vice-Admiral Collingwood.
Sovereign= 100 { Capt. E. Rotheram.
=Mars= 74 " G. Duff.
=Belleisle= 74 " W. Hargood.
=Tonnant= 80 " C. Tyler.
=Bellerophon= 74 " J. Cooke.
=Colossus= 74 " J. N. Morris.
=Achille= 74 " R. King.
=Polyphemus= 64 " R. Redmill.
=Revenge= 74 " R. Moorsom.
=Swiftsure= 74 " D. G. Rutherford.
=Defence= 74 " G. Hope.
=Thunderer= 74 Lieut. J. Stockham.
=Defiance= 94 Capt. P. C. Durham.
=Prince= 98 " R. Grindale.
=Dreadnought= 98 " J. Conn.
In the feeble wind and allowing for the scattered state of the ships,
together with the slow sailing of some of them, the task of forming
the two into one regular line, or each one itself into a regular line,
would have taken hours. In the meantime the enemy would have been
slipping off. It was ever Nelson’s way to trust to the spirit not
the letter, the substance and not the mechanical order. “Lord Nelson
determined to substitute for exact order an impetuous attack in two
distinct bodies.” So said Collingwood, writing to a brother seaman,
Admiral Pasley, and he may really be supposed to have known what his
lifelong friend, who thought him fit to be entrusted with the entire
management of the lee line, meant. “It (Nelson’s plan) was executed
well and succeeded admirably; probably its novelty was favourable to
us, for the enemy looked for a time when we should form something
like a line.” There were men in the fleet who thought the plan was
not executed, because the mere order of going of the memorandum was
not observed. There was no drawing up in three lines before the
enemy’s centre, no attack in line abreast, or all together at the same
moment, on an inferior number of the rear ships. Captain Moorsom of
the =Revenge= thought the plan had been wholly thrown over. So did
Israel Pellew of the =Conqueror=. But Collingwood, and Codrington of
the =Orion=, who said they all scrambled into action as best they
could, inspired by the example of their leaders and the spirit of the
memorandum, thought overwise. Whatever dubitations there may have
been in the minds of men here and there, the whole fleet knew well
enough that they were not asked to display “the froth of discipline
and the tricks of parade.” When signal 72, “Form the order of sailing
in two columns,” went up at seven o’clock, and was followed in a few
moments by 76, “To bear up and sail large on the course steered by the
admiral or that pointed out by him,” and the compass direction E.N.E.
was given, they knew they were to steer for the enemy and fall on his
centre and rear in such order as time and distance, wind and speed,
and the formation of the allies should allow. To the look-out ships
of the French the English seemed to come up from the W.S.W. in a long
string of groups of ships stretching from north to south. The allies
were lying in a concave line also stretching from north to south. They
turned to bring their heads on Cadiz. Their advance squadron, commanded
by the Spanish admiral, Gravina, which had been to windward of the
van before the fleet turned, and was now the rear, was trying to fall
in behind the centre, and formed the projecting southern point of the
crescent. They were not in exact order, for some were to leeward of
others, so that the whole seemed to form two lines. Beginning from the
north they lay thus:—
_Neptuno_ 80 Spanish Capt. Don Cayetano Valdés.
_Scipion_ 74 French " C. Berenger.
_Intrépide_ 80 " " L. A. C. Infernet.
_Formidable_ 80 " { Rear-Admiral Dumanoir-le-Pelley.
{ Capt. J. M. Letellier.
_Duguay-Trouin_ 74 " " C. Touffet.
_Mont Blanc_ 74 " " G. J. N. La Villegris.
_San Francesco de Ases_ 74 Spanish " Don Luis de Flores.
_Rayo_* 100 " " Don E. Macdonel.
_Hèros_ 74 French " J. B. J. R. Ponlain.
_San Agustin_* 74 Spanish " Don F. X. Cagigal.
_Santissima Trinidad_ 130 " { Rear-Admiral Don B. H. Cisneros.
{ Commodore F. de Uriarte.
_Bucentaure_ 80 French { Vice-Admiral Villeneuve.
{ Capt. J. J. Magendie.
_Redoutable_ 74 " " J. J. E. Lucas.
_San Justo_ 74 Spanish " Miguel Gaston.
_Neptune_ 80 French " E. T. Maistral.
_San Leandro_ 64 Spanish " Don J. Quevedo.
_Santa Ana_ 112 " { Vice-Admiral J. M. de Alava.
{ Capt. J. Gardogui.
_Indomptable_* 80 French " J. J. Hubert.
_Fougueux_ 74 " " L. A. Beaudouin.
_Pluton_ 80 " " J. M. C. Kerjulien.
_Monarca_* 74 Spanish " Don T. Argumosa.
_Algesiras_ 74 French { Rear-Admiral Magon.
{ Capt. G. A. Bronard.
_Bahama_ 80 Spanish " Don D. Galiano.
_Aigle_ 74 French " P. P. Gourrège.
_Montañes_ 74 Spanish " Don J. Salcedo.
_Swiftsure_ 74 French " C. E. L. H. Villemadrin.
_Argonaute_ 74 " " J. Epron.
_San Ildefonso_ 74 Spanish " J. Bargas.
_Argonanta_* 80 " " A. Parejas.
_Achille_ 74 French " G. Denieport.
_Principe de Asturias_ 112 Spanish { Admiral F. Gravina.
{ Rear-Admiral A. Escaño.
_Berwick_ 74 French Capt. J. G. F. Camas.
_San Juan Nepomuceno_ 74 Spanish " Don C. Churruca.
* The vessels marked with an asterisk were those lying inside.
As the day wore on to noon the string of groups forming the confused
looking English line began to collect into two “distinct bodies.” At
the northern end ships fell in behind the =Victory=, which was steered
for the allied van. To the south they collected behind Collingwood.
The enemy looked in vain for a time when each should form something
like a line. As the whole approached the curve where the allies were
forging slowly ahead, ready to show at least the passive and defensive
courage of brave men who had not the skill to display active valour,
Collingwood ordered his squadron to form the leeward line of bearing.
If the order could have been executed it would have brought all the
ships of his division into a line on his starboard side deflected from
him at an angle and stretching from N.N.E. to S.S.W. Then his ships
would infallibly have come into action in such a way that the most
southerly of them would have struck on the projecting southern point
of the allied crescent, before the most northern reached her point
of attack near the centre. But the order cannot have been intended
to produce exact obedience, Collingwood even made exact obedience
impossible. The =Royal Sovereign=, his flagship, at the northern end
of his line, a clean swift-sailing ship, curved all sail and swept
on ahead. Nobody stopped for the heavy sailers. The signal was meant
to tell the captains to advance along lines parallel to the course
of the flagship as well and as fast as they could, and between her
and the rear of the enemy. They did advance in a string, the quick
sailers close to the =Royal Sovereign=, and the tubs struggling in the
rear. The =Defence= was two hours later in getting into action than
the =Royal Sovereign=, a clear proof that she never was even nearly
on the larboard line of bearing. Nelson, for his part, did less than
Collingwood to satisfy any expectation the enemy may have entertained
of seeing a line formed. Captain Blackwood of the =Euryalus=, the
frigate which had rendered excellent service in watching the allies,
has left a memorable picture of the admiral’s bearing and conduct on
this last morning of his life. Blackwood was summoned early to the
flagship, and came in the hope of hearing that Nelson had decided to
give him the command of the =Ajax= or the =Thunderer=, then in charge
of lieutenants, because their captains had gone to England to attend
a court-martial on Sir R. Calder. He was mistaken. Nelson had called
him to act as witness to the codicil to his will he had just written,
wherein he left to the nation the legacy he perhaps ought not to have
left, but which ought not to have been refused. Then the admiral wished
to make his wishes clear, and to pour his heart out with all the
freedom of his expansive nature among friends, now when the approach
of peril and of the decisive hour were producing the exhilaration they
never failed to arouse in his soul of flame. Blackwood, speaking for
himself and for all the officers, urged Nelson to allow other vessels
to pass ahead of the =Victory= to meet the first shock, and leave him
free to direct the general movements of his fleet. He consented. He
even allowed Captain Blackwood to row to the =Leviathan= with a message
to Captain Harvey to take the head of the line. But when Blackwood
returned he found that nothing had been done to render obedience
possible. The =Victory= was still carrying on. She was headed at the
enemy’s van and then at his centre. Her swaying course added to the
confusion prevailing among the ships behind her. But it kept the enemy
in doubt as to the exact point on which the attack would fall. At
11.40 Nelson signalled that he meant to pass through the enemy’s line
and bar the road of retreat to Cadiz. A quarter of an hour later he
sent up the famous signal which, as some authorities tell us, was to
have been, “_Nelson_ expects that every man will do his duty.” If I
may be permitted to express a personal preference, I wish it had been.
That England expects every man to do his duty is at best a copy-book
heading, and we cannot quite forget that she stands in expectation
with the articles of war in hand, and death or other punishment
denounced against all who fail. The personal appeal of Nelson, who
of all admirals did most by his personal influence, would have been
appropriate and heroic. When the weather division was all but touching
the enemy’s line, Nelson sent Blackwood and his brother-captain, Prowse
of the =Sirius=, back to their ships. He told Blackwood to hail the
captains of the ships behind the =Victory=, and tell them to break in
on the enemy where they could, standing not upon the order of their
going—and parted from him with the prophecy that they were not to meet
again, for he did not believe that he would survive the battle.
It was a little before noon of the 21st October that England began
to reap the reward of generations of wise effort honestly made,
while France and Spain began to pay for unwisdom and neglect of long
standing. The famous plan of battle was comparatively a small matter, a
clever device which a clever enemy could have baffled, or at the best
a more effectual way of doing what Howe had done on the 1st June—of
producing a mêlée in which the better quality of the English fleet
would have full play. The chief gave that superiority entire freedom.
In his memorandum he had frankly told his officers that unforeseen
conditions might make it impossible to carry out his plan exactly as
he designed it, but that no captain could be wrong who laid his ship
alongside an enemy. And the men knew their superiority—not in valour,
the quality which is indispensable to a good force, but will not itself
make a good fighting force. The valour and intellectual alertness of
the French had never left themselves without witness in their fleets.
The Spaniards, less active and intelligent than the French, could at
their best fight the batteries of their ships with the same sort of
courage they showed in defending Saragossa or Gerona. The superiority
lay in the power to strike quick and hard, to repair damage, to use
their weapons.
In the little wind there was the English came on at the rate of about
a mile and a quarter an hour. The effective range of fire of the guns
of the time was from a thousand to twelve hundred yards. Therefore, as
our leading ships came on they were under fire for half an hour or so
before reaching the line. Until they were within four to five hundred
yards they would be liable to the concentrated fire of two or more of
the enemy, while as they approached the enemy’s line, through which
they meant to steer, the danger of a raking broadside increased with
their proximity. If the fire of the allies had been what the fire of
the well-drilled English ships was, two broadsides in five minutes
(some could fire three), the leading ships of both divisions must have
undergone ten or twelve broadsides before they were in a position to
reply. If the aim of the enemy had been good they would have been torn
to shreds. The =Royal Sovereign=, the first to cut the line, passed
astern of the _Santa Ana_, raking her with great effect, and ahead of
the _Fougueux_. She ranged up on the starboard side of the Spaniard,
who made but a feeble reply, but she was fired into by the _Fougueux_,
the _Monarca_, and the _Indomptable_. The time seemed long to her
officers and men before relief came. But in some ten minutes, the
=Belleisle=, which had been left three-quarters of a mile behind the
=Royal Sovereign= broke in astern of the _Fougueux_ and took off part
of the fire. A few minutes later help came from the weather division.
The =Royal Sovereign= was relieved of most of her assailants, and was
left to fight it out with _Santa Ana_ whose side she fairly battered
in. In the course of the battle she was rendered unmanageable, and she
lost 141 killed and wounded. But she was not shattered beyond repair,
and her loss was four less than the loss of the =Ardent=, 64, out
of a far smaller crew at Camperdown.[8] As much may be said of all
the vessels which lost heavily, the =Victory=, the =Téméraire=, the
=Belleisle=, =Mars=, =Tonnant=, =Bellerophon=, =Colossus=. They came
in early against fresh opponents, they were engaged with several at
once, they were roughly handled; but in such conditions and against
equal skill they would have been destroyed. The most striking proof of
the poor gunnery of our opponents is afforded by the fortunes of the
=Africa=, 64. She was separated, and to the north, before the battle
began. She joined Nelson’s division by passing in front of the enemy’s
van within range, and she took part in the hottest fighting at the
centre. Yet her loss was only sixty-two, less than half the loss of the
=Ardent= at Camperdown.
The =Royal Sovereign= had broken the enemy’s line astern of the _Santa
Ana_ a little before twelve. There were sixteen French and Spaniards
of the line between her and the last ship in the curved formation of
the allies to be dealt with by Collingwood’s fifteen. The =Victory=,
with the =Neptune= on the port and the =Téméraire= on the starboard
side, broke in two ships ahead of the _Santa Ana_. The =Victory= passed
astern of the _Redoutable_, the =Neptune= ahead of her and astern of
the _Bucentaure_, the =Téméraire= attacked the Spanish _San Justo_
astern and to leeward of the _Redoutable_. Thus a concentration was
effected on the enemy’s centre as the ships of the weather division
came up. The allies astern of the _Santa Ana_ moved ahead to help
friends, or because the wind carried them slowly on. The ships of the
English lee division broke in among them, or, in the case of the heavy
sailers who came in late, swept round the end of the line. There was
here no concentration of superior numbers by us, but a development of
superior power of gunnery which shattered the enemies within reach and
broke the whole, so that the last comers of the English finished the
action with little loss to themselves, and indeed, in the case of the
=Prince=, with no loss at all. When the weather division fell on the
group of the allies about the _Bucentaure_ it stopped their way. The
ten ships ahead of the central group stood on leaving a break between
themselves and the hard-pressed centre. In vain did Villeneuve hoist
signals to bring them into the action, so long as he had a mast to
hoist signals on. Dumanoir signalled that he had no enemy to engage,
and he behaved as if he had no wish to find one. He could bring his
ship’s head round with the help of their boats, and could find wind to
take a sweep out to the west, and run away with all who would follow
him at the close of the battle. All did not. Some of the ten came
voluntarily into action comparatively early, turning back manfully
to help their friends. Two refused to follow Dumanoir at the end—Don
Cayetano Valdés of the _Neptuno_, and Captain Infernet of the French
_Intrépide_ were found faithful and struck for honour, when they could
no longer strike for victory. But the chivalry which does not recognise
that the feeble bearing of Dumanoir-le-Pelley was no small aid to our
success, is a chivalry which has forgotten that a regard for truth is
one of the qualities of a knight and a gentleman.
Every child in the English-speaking world knows how the death
which Nelson saw coming to him struck him down on the =Victory’s=
quarter-deck, and how he died in her cockpit—thanking God that he
had done his duty. He had also done his work. He had so directed
the long acquired superiority of the English fleet that it could act
untrammelled by pedantry and could despise vain shows. It had exercised
its whole strength and had swept hostile fleets off the sea. When the
battle of Trafalgar ended at five o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st
October, the epoch of battles at sea was over for long years. There
was plenty of work for the navy to do. There were no more battles
to fight. Of the thirty-three ships of the allied line, four—the
_Formidable_, _Mont Blanc_, _Scipion_, and _Duguay-Trouin_—escaped
seaward and steered for France, only to be captured off Cape Ortegal by
five English ships of the line under Sir Richard Strachan: the =Cæsar=,
80, Strachan’s own ship; the =Hero=, 74, Captain Alan Hyde Gardner;
the =Namur=, 74, Captain Halsted; the =Courageux=, 74, Captain Lee;
and the =Bellona=, 74, Captain Pater. Observe that in this action,
where no English ship was isolated amid several opponents, we lost 24
killed and 111 wounded in all. The loss of the enemy was 730. Eleven
ships escaped into Cadiz, where the French among them remained till
they were taken by the Spaniards in 1808. Eighteen were taken, one of
them, the French _Achille_, caught fire and was destroyed. Four—one
French and three Spanish—remained as prizes in our hands. The others
were wrecked, destroyed by us, or recaptured in the storm following the
battle. Nelson had decided to anchor. Collingwood, to whom the command
fell, elected not to do so. Perhaps he thought that the most seriously
injured vessels could not anchor, and that the less injured must keep
under way to help them. It was a question of seamanship, and of that
art he was a master. Our total loss was 1690. The loss of the allies
cannot be accurately fixed, but it was very much greater. Villeneuve,
who fought his flagship bravely, remained a prisoner till he was
released on parole, and killed himself in France.