through its crisis, although fighting went on fiercely at many points
for another two hours yet. Before half-past two, six or seven of the
enemy had given in and could be seen 'lying with British ensigns
displayed at the stern over tricolours or Spanish flags.' By three
o'clock nearly a third of the enemy's fleet had either struck their
colours or were on the point of striking them, and another third were
hauling out of line and preparing to quit the battle and run for
Cadiz. The Spanish flagship _Santa Ana_, with every mast down and her
starboard side shattered to matchwood, had surrendered to the _Royal
Sovereign_. The French flagship _Bucentaure_ had hauled down her ensign
and Admiral Villeneuve was a prisoner on board the British _Mars_.
The surrender of the _Bucentaure_--although perhaps it only comes
incidentally into the _Téméraire's_ story--was one of the most
dramatic events of Trafalgar. When the French flagship, beaten to a
standstill, with her three masts shot down, one after the other within
five minutes, was on the point of surrendering, Admiral Villeneuve
ordered a boat to be lowered to take him on board another French ship.
'Le _Bucentaure_,' said Villeneuve as he gave the order, 'à rempli sa
tâche, la mienne n'est pas encore achevée.'[107] But every one of the
_Bucentaure's_ boats was found to have been smashed to pieces. Then
Villeneuve's flag-captain, Majendie, hurried aft and clambering into
the wreckage of the ship's stern gallery with his speaking-trumpet
hailed the _Santisima Trinidad_ to send a boat at once. There was no
reply. The _Trinidad_ was lying quite close to the _Bucentaure_ at that
moment, so close that only a very few yards separated Majendie from
her as he hailed, but the tremendous thunder of the guns all round
completely overpowered his voice. Nor did any one on board the Spanish
ship see him. There was no means of attracting help from elsewhere.
The _Bucentaure_ had indeed done her work--and Villeneuve's too. There
was left now but one thing to do. The colours of the _Bucentaure_ were
hauled down to the nearest British ship,--a seventy-four named, by
something of a coincidence, the _Conqueror_,--'and a white handkerchief
was waved from her in token of submission.' Captain Israel Pellew was
in command of the _Conqueror_. He was at the moment unable to spare
Lieutenant Couch, his First Lieutenant, to whom in ordinary course
the duty of boarding the prize would have fallen, and being unaware,
from the absence throughout the battle of Villeneuve's flag from the
_Bucentaure's_ mast-head, that the enemy's Commander-in-Chief had
surrendered to him, he told Captain Atcherley of the _Conqueror's_
marines to go in the First Lieutenant's place and take possession of
the _Bucentaure_. Atcherley went off in a small boat with two seamen
and a corporal and two marines. He was pulled alongside and clambered
on board the prize, little dreaming whom he was going to meet and the
reception in store for him. This is what then took place.
[Illustration: VILLENEUVE'S SWORD]
As Atcherley gained the _Bucentaure's_ upper-deck and the British
officer's red coat showed itself on the quarter-deck of the French
flagship, four French officers of rank stepped forward all bowing and
presenting their swords. One was a tall, thin, sad-faced man of about
forty-two, in a long-tailed uniform coat with flat high collar and
dark green corduroy breeches, gold-laced at the sides. It was Admiral
Villeneuve himself. The second was a short, rotund, jolly-faced man, a
typical _boulevardier_ in appearance:--Flag-Captain Majendie.[108] The
third was Second-Captain Prigny of the _Bucentaure_; and the fourth a
soldier resplendent in the full-dress uniform--somewhat besmirched by
powder-smoke--of a Brigadier of the Grand Army, General de Contamine,
the officer in charge of the four thousand troops that were serving on
board the French Fleet that day.
'To whom,' asked Admiral Villeneuve in good English, 'have I the honour
of surrendering?'
'To Captain Pellew of the _Conqueror_.'
'I am glad to have struck to the fortunate Sir Edward Pellew.'
'It is his brother, Sir,' said Captain Atcherley.
'His brother! What; are there two of them? Hélas!'
'Fortune de guerre!' said Captain Majendie with a shrug of his wide
shoulders as he became a prisoner of war to the British Navy for the
third time in his life. Prigny and De Contamine said nothing, as far
as we know.
Captain Atcherley politely suggested that the swords of such high
officers had better be handed to an officer of superior rank to
himself--to Captain Pellew. He then went below to secure the magazines,
passing between decks amid an awful scene of carnage and destruction.
'The dead thrown back as they fell lay along the middle of the decks in
heaps, and the shot passing through these had frightfully mangled the
bodies.... More than four hundred had been killed and wounded, of whom
an extraordinary proportion had lost their heads. A raking shot which
entered in the lower deck had glanced along the beams and through the
thickest of the people, and a French officer declared that this shot
alone had killed or disabled nearly forty men.'[109]
Atcherley locked up the magazines and put the keys in his pocket,
posted his two marines as sentries at the doors of the Admiral's
and flag-captain's cabins, and then returning on deck, he conducted
Villeneuve, Majendie, and Second-Captain Prigny down the side into
his little boat which rowed off in search of the _Conqueror_. The
ship, however, had ranged ahead to engage another enemy, and as her
whereabouts could not be discovered in the smoke, the prisoners were
temporarily placed on board the nearest British ship, which happened to
be the _Mars_.
The battle, however, even though both the French Commander-in-Chief
and the Spanish Second in Command[110] and also the big _Santisima
Trinidad_ with the Spanish Third in Command,[111] had surrendered, was
not yet over. There were still a number of ships of the enemy that were
yet apparently unbeaten, besides one group that had hardly fired a shot
as yet.
At three o'clock, or a few minutes after that, the _Téméraire's_ men
had again to stand to their guns. Fresh foes were seen approaching.
These were five of the ships of Villeneuve's van squadron under
Rear-Admiral Dumanoir. Admiral Villeneuve's last signal had been to
order Dumanoir's squadron, which had been cut off by Nelson's tactics
and had so far not been engaged at all, to head round and come to the
rescue of the centre and rear. There were originally ten ships under
Dumanoir's command, but five of them, after they came round, broke
away, and edged off to leeward towards where Admiral Gravina (the
Spanish Commander-in-Chief, now left by Villeneuve's surrender the
senior officer on the enemy's side) was rallying some of the rear
ships to try and escape into Cadiz. What befell these does not concern
us.
Dumanoir's remnant of five (four French ships and one Spaniard) stood
along a little to windward of the ships engaged as far as where the
_Téméraire_ lay, making it appear as though they were coming down to
attack. 'At 3,' says the _Téméraire's_ log, 'observed five of the enemy
in good order, starboard side. Sent the men from the quarter-deck guns
to assist on the other decks. The _Sirius_ made sail from us, when
four of the enemy's ships opened their fire on our starboard side;
having but few guns clear of the prizes, cut them loose.' 'While they
were about three-quarters of a mile to windward,' says Captain Harvey
describing what happened in his letter home, 'they opened their guns
upon the _Téméraire_ and her prizes, and for some time I could return
no guns; but when those we could fight with were brought to bear upon
the enemy, the gentlemen thought proper to haul to a more respectable
distance, and thus towards evening with me ended this most glorious
action.'[112] Dumanoir's fire did little harm to the _Téméraire_
herself. It mortally wounded one of her midshipmen who was on board the
_Redoutable_, and cut away the _Fougueux_' main and mizen masts,--the
_Fougueux_ had been cleared away from alongside the _Téméraire_ a few
moments previously, and allowed to swing athwart the _Téméraire's_
stern, end-on to Dumanoir's ships as they passed by,--but that was
practically all they did.
'Half-past 4,' says the _Téméraire's_ log, 'ceased firing.' The
_Téméraire_ had now played her part. It only remained to house and
secure the guns.
The battle was over--although near by there were still some three
or four of the enemy who had not yet gone through the formality of
lowering their ensigns. They were feebly firing, though they could
neither fight nor fly. All could see that the inevitable end could
hardly be long deferred. The knife was already at the throats of the
last of the destined victims of the day. The _Téméraire's_ last gun,
as a fact, went at the same instant that Nelson, in the cockpit of the
_Victory_, breathed his last.
Three-quarters of an hour later all resistance on the part of the enemy
had ceased, and there was a silence on the sea. Trafalgar had been
fought and won. Seventeen of the enemy had surrendered--eight French
ships and nine Spaniards. One French ship, in addition, was on fire and
her crew were being rescued by the boats of the nearest British ships.
The remainder of the enemy had run out of the battle and were in full
flight, some in one direction, some in another.
The scene all round at that moment, as it appeared from the
_Téméraire_, was one that the last survivor of Trafalgar could hardly
have forgotten to his dying day--
Nobly, nobly, Cape Saint Vincent to the north-west died away,
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay,
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face, Trafalgar lay.
Cape Trafalgar was sighted from off the deck, we are told, just as the
battle was ending, and was made at about eight miles off. On either
hand lay ships with shattered bulwarks and hulls gashed all over
and riddled from the water-line upwards with gaping and splintered
shot-holes, the yellow strakes between the ports seared and scorched
by the back-blast from the guns and crusted over with half-burned
powder. Some also had several of their ports knocked into one, or their
port-lids unhung or wrenched away; others had their figure-heads clean
gone, and their bowsprits smashed off short; others, in addition, had
their stern and quarter galleries beaten in; and there were ugly smears
and stains down the sides of all where the scuppers opened overboard.
No fewer than nine ships were lying entirely dismantled--'ras comme
des pontons,' as a Frenchman put it. In these everything on deck
above the bulwarks was gone, shorn roughly off--rigging, spars,
masts--everything. A short stump, only a few feet high, remained in
one or two of the ships to show where a tall mast had that morning
stood--that was all. All else had disappeared--smashed down, shot by
the board and lying over the sides amid the tangled confusion of broken
spars, torn rigging, and ragged sails. Eight of the dismasted ships
were trophies of the battle, French or Spanish prizes--the _Bucentaure_
and the _Santisima Trinidad_ among them. The ninth was a British ship,
the cruelly battered _Belleisle_, which had undergone a terrific
mauling. The burning ship was the French _Achille_, which lay not far
off--a mass of flames from end to end. She had been set on fire by
accident in the last hour of the battle, and was now blazing fiercely
from stem to stern, sending off heavy volumes of dense black smoke into
the clear evening air, as the hapless vessel lay burning to the water's
edge, or until the flames should reach the magazine. Over yonder a
group of British ships, several with topmasts and yards gone, were
closing on a big three-decker that had only her foremast left standing,
Collingwood's _Royal Sovereign_. Nearer, the battered ships of
Nelson's column formed another group, collecting round the _Victory_.
Far to the north-west, towards Cadiz, could be seen the sails of eleven
ships that were escaping with Gravina. Among these fugitives was
the _Téméraire's_ first antagonist, the French _Neptune_, which, by
carefully avoiding every attempt to bring her to close action, had got
through the battle with a loss of only 13 men killed and 37 wounded.
Black dots against the western sky, now ablaze in all the wild glory of
a stormy October sunset, Dumanoir's flying ships could be seen--four in
number--standing away into the Atlantic. The fifth ship of the group,
the Spanish _Neptuno_, had been cut off and taken as the battle closed
by the British _Minotaur_ and _Spartiate_.
All the while during the final scene Nelson's flag remained flying
at the _Victory's_ mast-head--although the Admiral had for nearly
an hour now been lying dead. Those on board were, perhaps, loth to
lower it before they must. In accordance with one of the old fighting
instructions of the navy, the commander-in-chief's ship in action kept
her Admiral's flag flying in all circumstances until the battle was
over, whatever might have happened to the Admiral meantime. Whether he
was disabled or whether he was killed, the flag must still fly to the
end of the action in its accustomed place. As a fact, at Trafalgar,
Flag-Captain Hardy of the _Victory_ had had the entire handling of
the British fleet from the moment that Nelson was struck down until
the last shot had been fired. His descendants treasure to this day
the silver pencil-case that Hardy 'used to write down signals during
the battle of Trafalgar, _with the marks of his teeth on it made in
moments of excitement_!' It was shown at the Naval Exhibition at
Chelsea in 1891, one newspaper speaking of it as 'something like a
relic!' Nelson's flag flew till sunset, and, in consequence, except the
_Victory_ and the _Royal Sovereign_, to which Captain Hardy, of course,
had sent the news specially, and Captain Blackwood's _Euryalus_, barely
half a dozen ships of the fleet were aware of Nelson's death that
night; or even that he had been wounded. In the _Téméraire_ herself
the news was not known, owing to the dispersal of the fleet caused by
the stormy weather of the three following days, until the 24th, when
Captain Harvey first learnt what had happened by a casual signal from
the _Defiance_.
This is what was said on the spot of the way the _Téméraire_ had done
her work. 'I congratulate you most sincerely,' wrote Collingwood to
Captain Harvey, on the 28th of October, 'on the noble and distinguished
part the _Téméraire_ took in the battle; nothing could be finer; I
have not words in which I can sufficiently express my admiration of
it.'[113] This from a man so temperate in his language as Collingwood
was at all times was indeed high praise.
Her day's work at Trafalgar cost the _Téméraire_ in casualties exactly
123 killed and wounded; or as Captain Harvey put it: 'Killed, 47; badly
wounded, 31; slightly wounded, 45--in all, 123.' Captain Busigny and
Lieutenant Kingston of the Marines, one midshipman (John Pitts) and
Mr Oades, the carpenter, were the officers killed; one lieutenant of
the Royal Navy, the surviving lieutenant of Marines, a master's-mate
and a midshipman, with the _Téméraire's_ boatswain, were the officers
wounded. Forty-three more of the _Téméraire's_ men were drowned on
board the _Fougueux_ and the _Redoutable_, in the storm after the
battle.
As everybody knows, all Nelson's Trafalgar prizes except four
perished in the storm after the battle, or were set on fire or
scuttled. Whose fault it was, or how it came about that Nelson's
dying order to anchor immediately the battle was over, which would
probably have preserved all the prizes, was set aside, we need not
discuss. Both the _Téméraire's_ prizes were among the ships that
were lost--the _Fougueux_ being wrecked a few miles south of Cadiz
and the _Redoutable_ foundering in deep water. The _Redoutable_
foundered during the night of the 22nd, carrying down with her 13
of the _Téméraire's_ men. She was in tow of the _Swiftsure_, which
had relieved the _Téméraire_ of her, when, about five on the previous
afternoon, she made signals of distress. The straining of the
dismasted hull as it pitched and rolled in the heavy seas had reopened
the shot-holes below the water-line and the ship was filling. The
_Swiftsure_ hove-to and lowered her boats, which in two trips brought
off safely many of the prisoners and the wounded, and part of the
_Téméraire's_ prize crew. Then, however, the attempt had to be given
up. 'The weather was so bad and the sea so high,' that, in the words of
the _Swiftsure's_ log, 'it was impossible for the boats to pass.' They
were still, though, keeping the _Redoutable_ in tow, hoping she might
live out the night, when, at half-past ten, all of a sudden, the prize
foundered by the stern. The sinking was so sudden at the last that the
_Swiftsure's_ men had no time to cast loose the tow-rope and had to
chop it in two with axes. During the night a few of the _Redoutable's_
men were picked up floating on rafts that they had made, but upwards of
190 hapless fellows went down in the ship.
The _Téméraire_ herself had a bad time of it in the storm. All Tuesday,
the 22nd, the _Sirius_ kept her in tow, but it was so rough that little
could be done on board towards refitting the ship or attempting to rig
jury-masts or repair damages. On the 23rd the _Sirius_ was called off
by signal to recover prizes adrift which the sortie that the refugee
ships in Cadiz attempted that day was threatening. The _Africa_ was
told off to take the _Téméraire_ in tow, but the storm came on worse
than ever during the afternoon, and the _Africa_, whose badly damaged
masts were threatening to roll over the side every minute, could do
nothing but stand by. 'The state of the _Téméraire_ is so bad,' wrote
Captain Harvey, that night, 'that we have been in constant apprehension
of our lives, every sail and yard having been destroyed, and nothing
but the lower masts left standing, the rudder-head almost shot off and
is since gone, and lower masts all shot through and through in many
places.'
The _Téméraire_, however, managed to come through all safely, and she
again held her own by herself throughout the 24th and all the next day.
Unaided, she brought up in the end in safety off San Lucar, at the
mouth of the Guadalquivir some 25 miles north of Cadiz, at seven on
the morning of the 25th. Here the men stopped shot-holes above water,
cleared away wreckage and completed the knotting and splicing of the
damaged rigging and cleaning up of the ship, and got up jury-masts
and lower yards:--five days' hard work. On the 30th of October, the
_Defiance_ took the _Téméraire_ in tow for Gibraltar, where the ship
let go anchor on the afternoon of the 2nd of November, twelve days
after Trafalgar.
At Gibraltar the _Téméraire_ was patched up and refitted sufficiently
to enable her to proceed to England under sail. The _Victory_ had
arrived four days before, and was lying at anchor with Nelson's flag
and her ensign at half-mast, as were the other ships of the fleet,
upwards of a dozen, that had as yet come in. Four days afterwards
the _Euryalus_, from which Admiral Collingwood had removed into the
_Queen_, sailed for England, carrying on board Collingwood's completed
Trafalgar despatch,[114] the captured French and Spanish ensigns (to be
hung up in St. Paul's and left there to perish through neglect), and
Admiral Villeneuve himself, going to meet his doom. Within six months
the hapless French Admiral was dead--by his own hand. The story, so
long believed in England, that Admiral Villeneuve's death was another
foul murder to be charged against Napoleon has every probability
against it. Paroled on his arrival at Spithead, and exchanged on the
usual terms, Villeneuve had landed at Morlaix in Brittany, and was on
his way to report himself in Paris, when one evening a sealed letter
from the Minister of Marine was handed to him. Next morning he was
found in his bedroom at the inn where he had put up, stabbed to the
heart. A letter taking leave of his wife was found in the room. He was
buried that night without any honours.
[Illustration: VILLENEUVE'S SIGNATURE]
Poor Villeneuve! It was a pitiful and hapless closing to a career
that had opened with such bright promise for a certain young _garde
de la Marine_ on the quarter-deck of De Suffren's _Héros_[115];
a sad, unworthy ending for one in whose veins ran the blood of
eight-and-twenty knights of St. Louis, St. Esprit, and St. Michel; for
one who in his own right was of the highest of the old _noblesse_ of
Royal France, for a member of a House that had given one of the most
famous of Grand Masters to the Order, and a Saint and ten Bishops
to the Church.[116] Poor Villeneuve!--where moulders his unhappy
dust? The summer visitor from England, at the price of a cheap
ticket, may see where the poor remains of the vanquished of Trafalgar
rest to-day--if, that is, he can find the place. Beneath no storied
monument is it, among his country's greater dead; not in the vault of
the Villeneuves where his high-born kinsmen sleep:--not there. In a
forgotten spot in the old burial-ground at distant Rennes, a Provençal
he among stranger Bretons, the most luckless of his line lies there in
a suicide's desolate grave. And it is all the more pitiful too, when
one thinks of our own Trafalgar chiefs laid to their rest together in
honour in St. Paul's. Side by side in the vaulted crypt beneath the
Cathedral dome rest our three Trafalgar admirals in honour evermore.
Brothers-in-arms in life, like brothers in death they lie; till,
pealing out on land and sea, the dread Archangel's trump shall sound
their final call to quarters. Poor Villeneuve! What a contrast!
[Illustration: THE _TÉMÉRAIRE_ ENTERING PORTSMOUTH HARBOUR ON HER
RETURN FROM TRAFALGAR. Dec. 20, 1805
After J.C. Schetky.]
The _Téméraire_ followed the _Euryalus_ to England some days later.
She brought on board, like the other returning ships, three hundred
French prisoners, together with, as her special passenger. Captain
Infernet of the French _Intrépide_. She arrived at Spithead on the 5th
of December, the day after the _Victory_, with Nelson's remains on
board, had anchored at St. Helens, and on the 20th of December went up
Portsmouth Harbour to go into dock. It so chanced that an artist,
John Christian Schetky, afterwards marine painter to King George the
Fourth, William the Fourth, and Queen Victoria, was at Portsmouth on
the day the _Téméraire_ came in, cheered to the echo on all sides by
crowds on the Platform and Point batteries and by every boat and ship
that she passed. Sketchbook in hand Mr. Schetky made good use of his
opportunity.
Captain Harvey arrived in England to find himself a Rear-Admiral, one
of the officers specially promoted in honour of Trafalgar, included in
the promotion caused by the creation of the rank of Admiral of the Red.
He handed over the _Téméraire_ to Acting-Captain Larmour who, six weeks
later, paid the ship off for a refit and repair in Portsmouth dockyard
which lasted several months. Admiral Harvey was one of the pall-bearers
at Nelson's funeral. When in January 1815 he became a K.C.B. he was
granted as a special motto above his crest, the name _Téméraire_,
together with as supporters to the Harvey family arms,--a triton with a
laurel-wreathed trident, and a sea-horse with a naval crown inscribed
'Trafalgar,' bearing underneath all as an additional motto the legend
_Redoutable et Fougueux_.