Sovereign’s_ figure-head was an immense full-length carving of the King,
represented in the battle-day panoply of a Roman Emperor, his sword at
his side and a sceptre in hand, his red war cloak (_paludamentum_) on his
shoulders, with two attendant winged figures, Fortune and Fame, blowing
trumpets on either side.
* * * * *
As the _Sovereign_ closed on the enemy, a French ship, the _Fougueux_,
ranged up close under the stern of the _Santa Anna_, as though to bar
the passage through the line to Collingwood. Captain Rotherham noted
this, and pointed it out to the Admiral. Collingwood’s reply was: “Steer
straight for the Frenchman and take his bowsprit!” So they closed,
and then, driving through the line just under the towering Spanish’s
ship’s stern, the _Sovereign_ opened the fight with her full broadside
treble-shotted. The terrific discharge, at one blow, it has been related,
disabled fourteen guns, and put a large part of the crew _hors de
combat_. “El rompio todos” were the words of an officer of the _Santa
Anna_. After that the Sovereign ranged alongside the big Spaniard to
leeward to fight the battle out gun-muzzle to gun-muzzle.
[Illustration: TRAFALGAR—12 NOON: AS SKETCHED ON THE SPOT BY A FRENCH
OFFICER
_French flagship, “Bucentaure,” 80 guns._
_“Redoutable,” 74 guns, from which Nelson was shot._
_Collingwood in the “Royal Sovereign” opening the attack._
_The “Victory” (Nelson’s flag should be at the fore, not as here.)_
_From a photograph of the original sepia drawing now in the possession of
a descendant of Captain Lucas of the “Redoutable.”_]
“In passing the _Santa Anna_” relates Mr. Newnham Collingwood, “the
_Royal Sovereign_ gave her a broadside and a half into her stern, tearing
it down, and killing and wounding 400 of her men. Then, with her helm
hard a-starboard, she ranged up alongside so closely that the lower yards
of the two vessels were locked together. The Spanish Admiral, having seen
that it was the intention of the _Royal Sovereign_ to engage to leeward,
had collected all his strength on the starboard, and such was the weight
of the _Santa Anna’s_ metal, that her broadside made the _Sovereign_ heel
two strakes out of the water.”
Even a moment like that, though, did not in the least perturb
Collingwood. “Her studding-sails and halliards were now shot away, and
as well as a top-gallant studding-sail were hanging over the gangway
hammocks. Admiral Collingwood called out to Lieutenant Clavell to come
and help him to take it in, observing that they should want it again some
other day. These two officers accordingly rolled it carefully up and
placed it in a boat.”
No sooner was the _Sovereign_ alongside the _Santa Anna_ than four other
enemies—two French ships, the _Fougueux_ and the _Indomptable_, and two
Spanish, the _San Leandro_ and the _San Justo_—closed round and joined in
to help the _Santa Anna_.
So hot a cross fire did these four ships keep up on the single British
ship during her, at first, unsupported fight, that, in the words of those
on board the _Sovereign_, “We could see their shots meeting and smashing
together in mid-air round us.” The _Fougueux_, we are also told, “at
one time got so much on the quarter of the _Sovereign_ that she almost
touched.” It was indeed a battle of the giants—a heroic defiance of
heroic odds.
So magnificent, indeed, did the situation of the _Royal Sovereign_
appear, fighting single-handed in the thick of the enemy, that it drew
remarks from some of our captains, for the time being lookers-on, on
board the nearest ships that were then coming up astern. “The English
ships,” to quote Admiral Collingwood’s biographer again, “were pressing
forward with their utmost speed in support of their leader, but doubtful
at times of his fate, and rejoicing when, on the slackening of the _Santa
Anna’s_ fire, they discerned his flag still flying above the smoke. One
of his most gallant followers and friend, the captain of the _Tonnant_,
has often expressed the astonishment with which he regarded the _Royal
Sovereign_ as she opened her fire, which, as he declared, ‘so arrested
his attention, that he felt for a few moments as if he himself had
nothing to do but to look on and admire!’”
How Collingwood bore himself in the battle we hear from two sources. Both
accounts speak of Collingwood’s unmoved demeanour and cool courage under
fire.
“The Admiral,” says one, “directed Captain Vallack, of the Marines, an
officer of the greatest gallantry, to take his men from off the poop,
that they might not be unnecessarily exposed; but he remained there
himself much longer. At length, descending to the quarter-deck, he
visited the men, enjoining them not to fire a shot in waste; looking
himself along the guns to see that they were properly pointed, and
commending the sailors, particularly a black man, who was afterwards
killed, but who, while he stood beside him, fired ten times directly into
the portholes of the _Santa Anna_.”
“The Admiral spoke to me,” related Smith, Collingwood’s servant, “about
the middle of the action and again for five minutes immediately after
its close; and on neither occasion could I observe the slightest change
from his ordinary manner. This, at the moment, made an impression on me
which will never be effaced, for I wondered how a person whose mind was
occupied by such a variety of most important concerns could, with the
utmost ease and equanimity, inquire kindly after my welfare, and talk of
common matters as if nothing of any consequence were taking place.”
Twenty minutes after the _Sovereign_ had by herself beaten off the
_Fougueux_, the leading British ships following astern of the _Sovereign_
began to reach the spot, and to take off her enemies one by one, except
the _Santa Anna_. With Admiral Alava’s flagship the _Royal Sovereign_
continued in close encounter, until the _Santa Anna’s_ colours came down.
It was just at that moment that Collingwood received, by an officer of
the _Victory_, Captain Hardy’s first message that Lord Nelson had been
“dangerously wounded.”
The stubborn stand that the _Santa Anna_ made was a disappointment,
it would appear, to the _Sovereign’s_ men. Their terrible raking
broadside at the outset had plainly “sickened” the Spaniards—as our
men expressively put it—and many on board believed that the enemy must
surrender forthwith. Captain Rotheram, indeed, “came up to the Admiral,
and, shaking him by the hand, said: ‘I congratulate you, sir; she is
slackening her fire, and must soon strike!’” The gallant fellows who
were fighting at the _Royal Sovereign’s_ guns actually thought, it is on
record, that their ship would have the proud distinction of capturing an
enemy’s flagship in the midst of her own fleet before another British
ship had got into action. In the end, though, they had this consolation:
when at length the _Santa Anna_ did surrender; “No ship besides ourselves
fired a shot at her,” wrote one of the _Sovereign’s_ officers, “and you
can have no conception how completely she was ruined.” “Her side,” wrote
Collingwood himself, “was almost entirely beat in.”
“The _Santa Anna_,” to quote Mr. Newnham Collingwood, “struck at
half-past two o’clock, about the time when the news of Lord Nelson’s
wound was communicated to Admiral Collingwood, but the _Royal Sovereign_
had been so much injured in her masts and yards by the ships that lay on
her bow and quarter that she was unable to alter her position. Admiral
Collingwood accordingly called the _Euryalus_ to take her in tow, and
make the necessary signals. He dispatched Captain Blackwood to convey the
Spanish Admiral on board the _Euryalus_, but he was stated to be at the
point of death, and Captain Blackwood returned with the Spanish captain.
That officer had already been to the _Royal Sovereign_ to deliver his
sword, and on entering had asked one of the English sailors the name of
the ship. When he was told that it was the _Royal Sovereign_, he replied,
in broken English, while patting one of the guns with his hand, ‘I think
she should be called the _Royal Devil_!’”
The _Royal Sovereign_, on the _Santa Anna_ surrendering, pushed off from
her giant prize—so big a ship, indeed, that, in Collingwood’s own words,
she “towered over the _Sovereign_ like a castle.” She moved away to seek
another enemy. But the fall of her main and mizen-masts, cut through
and through by shot, prevented her from taking a further part in the
battle until after being taken in tow by the _Euryalus_ frigate, Captain
Blackwood’s ship. The _Sovereign_ was able after that, during the rest
of the action, to employ her broadsides here and there. Her last piece
of work was at the very close of the battle, when she formed one of the
group of ships that Captain Hardy summoned round the _Victory_ to support
the dying chief’s flagship against a threatened attack on the _Victory_
from the fresh ships of the French van squadron as they passed down the
line.
The _Royal Sovereign’s_ list of casualties, as officially reported on
the morning after Trafalgar, amounted to forty-seven men killed and
ninety-four wounded.
* * * * *
How Collingwood first heard of Nelson’s fate he himself has told us:
“When my dear friend received his wound,” wrote the Admiral, “he
immediately sent an officer to tell me of it, and give his love to me.
Though the officer was directed to say the wound was not dangerous, I
read in his countenance what I had to fear, and before the action was
over Captain Hardy came to inform me of his death. I cannot tell you how
deeply I was affected; my friendship for him was unlike any thing that I
have left in the Navy—a brotherhood of more than thirty years.”
Writing to the Duke of Clarence, an old service friend of Collingwood’s
and of Nelson’s as well, he said this:
“He (Nelson) sent an officer to inform me that he was wounded. I asked
the officer if his wound was dangerous. He hesitated, then said he hoped
it was not; but I saw the fate of my friend in his eye, for his look told
what his tongue could not utter. About an hour after, when the action was
over, Captain Hardy brought me the melancholy account of his death.”
Another detail of Trafalgar that may be news to some of us is the fact
that Collingwood was wounded in the battle. He said nothing about himself
to any one in any of his letters at the time, nor did he include himself
in the return of wounded sent to the Admiralty. It was only in response
to an anxious inquiry from his wife, who, some months afterwards, heard
a rumour about it and wrote to inquire, that Collingwood, five months
after the battle, first made mention of the matter. His letter to Lady
Collingwood is dated March 29, 1806, and in it the Admiral says:
“Did I not tell you how my leg was hurt? It was by a splinter—a pretty
severe blow. I had a good many thumps, one way or the other: one on
the back, which I think was the wind of a great shot, for I never saw
anything that did it. You know nearly all were killed or wounded on the
quarter-deck or poop but myself, my Captain, and Secretary, Mr. Cosway,
who was of more use to me than any officer after Clavell.
“The first inquiry of the Spaniards was about my wound, and exceedingly
surprised they were when I made light of it, for when the captain of the
_Santa Anna_ was brought on board, it was bleeding and swelled, and tied
up with a handkerchief.”
What was really troubling the frugal north-country mind of Admiral
Collingwood at that moment, as far as he was individually concerned, far
more than his wound, was his out-of-pocket expenses owing to the damage
that the enemy’s shot had done in his steward’s store-room. Writing to
Lady Collingwood, he tells her this:—
“I have had a great destruction of my furniture and stock. I have hardly
a chair that has not a shot in it, and many have lost both legs and
arms, without hope of pension. My wine was broke in moving, and my pigs
were slain in battle, and these are heavy losses where they cannot be
replaced.”
One gets an idea of the kind of man Collingwood was also from the
characteristically sympathetic way in which he wrote in a private letter
about one of his officers (Mr. William Chalmers, the master of the _Royal
Sovereign_) who was killed near the Admiral, on the quarter-deck, at his
post by the wheel.
“I have written to Lloyd’s about Mr. Chalmers’ family. He left a mother
and several sisters, whose chief dependence was on what this worthy man
and valuable officer saved for them from his pay. He stood close to me
when he received his death. A great shot almost divided his body; he laid
his head upon my shoulder, and told me he was slain. I supported him till
two men carried him off. He could say nothing to me, but to bless me; but
as they carried him down, he wished he could but live to read the account
of the action in a newspaper. He lay in the cockpit, among the wounded,
until the _Santa Anna_ struck, and joining in the cheer which they gave
her, expired with it on his lips.”
* * * * *
The only personal description of Collingwood’s appearance in existence
is from the pen of a young officer (Midshipman Crawford, of the _Royal
George_) who had an audience of him, to present a letter of introduction,
in October, 1806, just a year after Trafalgar:
“Being provided with a letter of recommendation to Lord Collingwood,
the Commander-in-Chief, I took an early opportunity to wait upon his
Lordship.... Lord Collingwood was between fifty and sixty, thin and
spare in person, which was then slightly bent, and in height about five
feet ten inches. His head was small, with a pale, smooth, round face,
the features of which would pass without notice, were it not for the
eyes, which were blue, clear, penetrating; and the mouth, the lips of
which were thin and compressed, indicating firmness and decision of
character. He wore his hair powdered, and tied in a _queue_, in the
style of officers of his age at that time; and his clothes were squared
and fashioned after the strictest rules of the good old sea school. To
his very ample coat, which had a stiff, stand-up collar, were appended
broad and very long skirts—the deep flaps of his single-breasted white
waistcoat, descending far below his middle, covered a portion of his
thighs; and blue knee-breeches, with white stockings, and buckles to his
shoes, completed his attire....
“On entering his presence, he took a rapid searching survey of me from
head to foot; then ... in a quiet tone, amounting almost to gentleness,
he put a few questions to me in nautics, which I believe I answered to
his satisfaction.”
Of Collingwood in lighter vein we also get a glimpse. How, a short time
after Trafalgar, he got one of his officers to write up his biography for
a pertinacious newspaper editor is a story that the Admiral himself tells
in a letter to his wife.
“The editors of the _Naval Chronicle_ have written to me for the history
of my life and progress, for which they are pleased to say the world is
very impatient. Now this rather embarrasses me, for I never could bear
the trumpeter of his own praise. So, to get rid of it as well as I can,
I have employed ⸺ to write a history for me. For my birth and parentage
he has selected two or three chapters of Bamfylde Moore Carew; for my
service in the West Indies and on the Spanish Main he has had good
assistance in the _History of the Buccaneers_; and for my shipwreck he
has copied a great deal out of _Robinson Crusoe_; all which, with a few
anecdotes from the _Lives of the Admirals_, a little distorted, will
make, I am inclined to think, a very respectable piece of biography.”
Collingwood’s dog, Bounce, was on board the _Royal Sovereign_ at
Trafalgar, tied up out of the way below, in comparative safety, on the
orlop deck. According to Collingwood himself, Bounce did not like cannon
firing. Wrote Collingwood about him, before the battle: “Bounce is my
only pet now, and he is indeed a good fellow; he sleeps by the side
of my cot, whenever I lie in one, until near the time of tacking, and
then marches off, to be out of the hearing of the guns, for he is not
reconciled to them yet.” After the battle, on his master being raised to
the peerage, Bounce—as Collingwood whimsically describes in one of his
home-letters—seemed to grasp the new situation and took to giving himself
airs. “I am out of all patience with Bounce. The consequential airs he
gives himself since he became a right honourable dog are insufferable.
He considers it beneath his dignity to play with commoners’ dogs, and
truly thinks that he does them grace when he condescends to lift up his
leg against them. This, I think, is carrying the insolence of rank to the
extreme, but he is a dog that does it!”[19]
* * * * *
As all the world knows, Collingwood never set foot in England after
Trafalgar, doomed, poor homesick fellow, never more to see—
The pleasant strand of Northumberland
And the lordly towers thereby.
He wore out his life on duty, waiting and watching at sea for nearly five
long and weary years, for an enemy who did not dare to face him. The
Admiralty could not spare him to come home.
“He stepped into his boat from Plymouth Dock,” says the writer of a
biographical sketch of Collingwood published shortly after the Admiral’s
death, “on the last day of April, 1805, and returned, five years after,
a peer and a corpse.” Immediately before he embarked, Collingwood
had been conversing with a brother officer, who records an affecting
incident. “The last time I ever saw Lord Collingwood,” wrote Sir T.
Byam Martin, “he was on the point of stepping into his boat, never
again to touch the British shore. We walked together for half an hour,
and as long as I live I shall remember the words with which, in his
accustomed mildness of expression, he alluded to the sacrifices our
professional duties exact of us. He told me the number of years he had
been married, and the number of days he had been with his family since
the war commenced (then of many years duration). ‘My family are _actually
strangers to me_.’ He was greatly overcome by the feelings thus excited,
and, taking me by the hand, he said, ‘What a life of privation is
ours—what an abandonment of everything to our professional duty, _and how
little do the people of England know the sacrifices we make for them_!’
With this he turned from me to hide the tear which ran down his manly
cheek, and saying ‘Farewell!’ walked to his boat.”
Slowly killed, if ever man was, by downright hard work, Collingwood died
on the 7th of March, 1810, on board his flagship in the Mediterranean.
On the day before he died his old spirit flickered up once more, and he
murmured to his captain, who bent down over the brave old face, “I may
live to fight the French once more.” The end drew on apace after that,
and the soul of one of the grandest veterans of England at her best,
passed calmly away to the presence of the God in Whom throughout every
hour of his blameless life his trust had been as that of a little child
for its earthly father. “He met death,” said the surgeon who attended
Collingwood, “as became him, with composure and a fortitude which have
seldom been equalled and never surpassed.”
We know something of how his sailors loved “Old Cuddy,” as the whole
fleet called Collingwood, from what happened at Collingwood’s funeral on
that May day of 1810, when Nelson’s brother-in-arms was laid to his rest
beside his old messmate, friend, and companion in the crypt of St. Paul’s
Cathedral. Lord Chancellor Eldon, beside whom, as a little boy of nine,
the Admiral had sat in class at school, was a mourner at the funeral.
“It was very affecting,” he describes, “his sailors crowded so around,
all anxious to see the last of their commander. One sailor seized me by
the arm, and entreated that I would take him in with me that he might be
there to the end. I told him to stick fast to me, and I did take him in;
but when it came to throwing some earth on the coffin (you know the part
of the service ‘dust to dust’), he burst past me and threw himself into
the vault!”
No truer description of the man as a fact was ever penned than the words
that Thackeray years afterwards used of Collingwood: “Another true knight
of those days was Cuthbert Collingwood, and I think since heaven made
gentlemen, there is not record of a better one than that.”
* * * * *
Collingwood’s officers at Trafalgar, those who served with him on board
the _Royal Sovereign_, were these. According to the muster book the ship
was two lieutenants short on the 21st of October.
Captain—Edward Rotherham.
Lieutenants—John Clavell, Joseph Simmons, James Bashford (wounded),
Edward Barker, Brice Gilliland (killed), Francis Blower Gibbes.
Master—William Chalmers (killed).
Surgeon—Richard Lloyd.
Purser—Brinsley S. Oliver.
Chaplain—Rev. John Rudall.
Secretary—W. R. Cosway.
Gunner—Nicholas Brown.
Boatswain—Isaac Wilkinson (wounded).
Carpenter—George Clines.
Marine officers:—
Captain—Joseph Vallack.
Lieutenants—Robert Green (killed), Armiger W. Hubbard, James Le Vescomte
(wounded).
Assistant Surgeons—Primrose Lyon, Henry Towsey.
Master’s Mates and Midshipmen—Thomas Altoft, Charles A. Antram, Richard
Davison Pritchard, William Sharp, William Watson (wounded), John
Aikenhead (killed), John Doling Morey, Sam Weddle, Thomas P. Robinson,
Charles Coucher, Joseph Del Carrotto, John Chaldecott, Henry Davis,
William Budd Boreham, Gilbert Kennicott (wounded), Thomas Currell,
Granville Thompson (wounded), George Castle, John Parr, Thomas Dickinson
(wounded), John Campbell (wounded), Thomas Braund (mortally wounded),
John Farrant (wounded), John Redwood, John Dobson, William Stock, James
Rudall.
First Class Volunteers—Meredith Milnekoff, Robert Julian, Archibald
Nagle, Robert Duke Hamilton, John Hill, Claudius Charles, William Lloyd,
Charles Lambert, Charles Chiswick.
* * * * *
From the officers we proceed in natural sequence to the men, and with
regard to these, at the outset, there hangs a tale.
A very curious story is related of Collingwood on the morning of
Trafalgar Day which most of those who have written about him have
repeated. Collingwood, we are told, as the British fleet was approaching
the enemy, went round the decks of the _Royal Sovereign_ and bade the men
at the guns “show those fellows what the tars of the Tyne can do!” More
than that, there is an old print in existence (a copy of which is in the
possession of Earl Nelson) artistically depicting the story, and labelled
with the legend, “Tars of the Tyne.” The ship’s books unfortunately
give quite another version. There were fewer North countrymen on board
the _Royal Sovereign_ at Trafalgar, perhaps, than in any other ship
of the British fleet. Altogether, according to the muster book, there
were in the ship hardly thirty all told, including Collingwood himself
and Captain Rotherham and the youngsters, “the northern boys,” as
Collingwood called them. Of the seamen—A.B.’s, ordinary, and landmen—the
_Sovereign’s_ books name only four as coming from Newcastle, two as
coming from Shields, and one as coming from “Northumberland” at large.
Sunderland sent four men, and the rest were from Durham, three men, with
from Berwick-on-Tweed two, Whitehaven six, Westmorland one. That exhausts
the North-country contingent in the _Royal Sovereign_.
More than a third of the entire ship’s company on board were Irishmen—240
men and boys. Scotland, including Shetland and the Hebrides, contributed
forty men, and Wales twenty-one. The London contingent with Collingwood
at Trafalgar was the next largest after the Irishmen—seventy-five men
and boys altogether. Lancashire was represented by forty-six men, Devon
by thirty-four, Hampshire with thirty, Cornwall with twenty-four,
Gloucester (Bristol) and Somerset each by eighteen, Yorkshire and Kent by
ten men each; Lincolnshire, Cheshire, and Dorset each by eight; Norfolk
and Suffolk by seven men each; and so on down to Cambridge, Bedford,
Leicester, Hertfordshire, and Worcester with one man each.