Trafalgar

by Nicholas Best

  ‘I observed with regret that I was followed only by the Spanish Neptuno,’ recalled Infernet, ‘four French ships keeping to the wind on the larboard tack standing south and south-south-west, which took them a gunshot to windward of the enemy fleet, under full sail.’ The four recalcitrant ships included Dumanoir’s Formidable, all of them keeping well to the west, clear of the main action. The Neptuno eventually joined them, leaving only the San Augustin to follow the Intrépide.

  Three other ships did actually follow the Intrépide for a while, but veered to the east as soon as they came under British fire. Among them was the 100-gun Rayo, commanded by the Irishman Henry Macdonnell. They were still in the fight, yet keeping the way open for a retreat to Cadiz, if need be. Discretion was definitely the better part of valour for the ships under Dumanoir’s command.

  CHAPTER 38

  VILLENEUVE SURRENDERS

  The fight was becoming general now, with most ships engaged one way or another. A few were still delayed by the lack of wind, but the majority had found a target and were shooting at each other with varying degrees of success. A number of French and Spanish ships had been dismasted, but so had several British. The battle was going the British way, yet was far from one-sided. With the exception of Dumanoir’s squadron, the French and Spanish made up in courage what they lacked in seamanship. Their tactic of sniping from the tops had proved unexpectedly effective, clearing the British decks and forcing them onto the defensive. The British did not employ similar tactics. Lord Nelson refused to allow sharpshooters in the rigging, in the belief that guns were too much of a fire hazard among the sails. Musket fire only added to the slaughter without influencing the outcome of the battle, in his opinion.

  It was the big guns that would decide the outcome, and there the British had the edge. The French and Spanish ships were bigger and better armed, but the British were better sailors. With Nelson and Collingwood coming straight at them, the French and Spanish should have closed their line, forming a solid wall of wood with no gaps for the British to break through. A few ships had managed to close up, but most had not. The British outmanoeuvred them instead to attack from the stern, the least protected part of a ship. It was no accident that both Nelson and Collingwood broke the enemy’s line at the stern of a flagship, firing a broadside without hindrance into a rival commander’s rear end. No accident either that they had the advantage of the wind at their backs as they manoeuvred. It was seamanship of a high order.

  The guns would decide it, but they hadn’t done so yet. The cannon were so powerful that they displaced the air around them and were said to have stilled the wind across the sea. They were so loud that they could be heard in Cadiz, far away on the horizon. All afternoon, the people of the city stood listening to them, anxiously crowding the ramparts and shading their eyes to view the distant pall of smoke to the south-west. According to a contemporary account:

  The ships were not visible from the ramparts, but the crowd of citizens assembled there had their ears assailed by the roaring of the distant cannon; the anxiety of the females bordered on insanity; but more of despair than hope was visible in every countenance. At this dreadful moment, a sound louder than any that had preceded it, and attended with a column of dark smoke, announced that a ship had exploded. The madness of the people was turned to rage against England; and exclamations burst forth, denouncing instant death to every man who spoke the language of their enemies. Two Americans, who had mixed with the people, fled, and hid themselves, to avoid this ebullition of popular fury.

  The guns were heard south of Cadiz also, across much of Andalusia. The sound carried well inland, passing over the cork woods and orange groves to the hilltop town of Medina Sidonia, a name loathed by the English since the days of the Spanish Armada. People all over the tip of Spain stopped what they were doing and listened to the rumbling out to sea, wondering uneasily what it might signify for them.

  The noise was heard in Tangier as well, along the northern coast of Morocco. They could see the smoke from the hills above the town. The guns were heard at sea too, by ships not involved in the fight. The Canopus was on her way back from Gibraltar with 300 tons of water for Nelson’s fleet. Passing another ship, she learned that firing had been heard off Cape Trafalgar for ‘five hours’. To Captain Frank Austen, that could mean only one thing: the French and Spanish had finally put to sea. Just as he had feared, Austen had missed the big battle and all the prize money and promotion that would go with it. Lord Nelson’s promise that the Canopus would be back in time for the fight had not been fulfilled.

  Aboard the Bucentaure, Villeneuve wished he was dead and said as much to his senior officers. He had conducted the battle with coolness and courage, making the best of a bad situation, but he bitterly resented the fact that he was still alive, while so many around him had fallen. He wanted to be killed as well, spared the ignominy of survival. Far better to die bravely now than live to rue so black a day.

  With his masts shot away by the Conqueror, Villeneuve had given orders for his barge to be lowered, to take him and his flag to another ship. But the barge was full of holes and buried under a mass of fallen spars and rigging. All the other ship’s boats had been destroyed as well. Villeneuve and his flag were effectively marooned, stuck on a ship with no masts while the rest of his fleet carried on the fight without him.

  Villeneuve’s men hailed the Santissima Trinidad and asked them to send a boat for him. But the Santissima was under fire as well and didn’t reply. Villeneuve looked round for his repeating frigate to give him a tow, as Blackwood was doing for Collingwood. But the Hortense was too far away to reach him in the light breeze. Her captain couldn’t see in the smoke and was excessively cautious anyway. None of the other frigates wanted to help either. Villeneuve was on his own.

  It was always going to come to this. The whole enterprise had been doomed from the start, right from the day the French fleet left Toulon six months earlier. Villeneuve had hinted as much in countless dispatches to Admiral Decrès, pointing out the deficiencies in his force, begging him to make sure they were put right. Decrès had spoken to Napoleon on numerous occasions, but Napoleon had never listened. And now here they were, despite the best efforts of Villeneuve and many others to prevent the inevitable from happening.

  What to do? With so many dead, and no means of defending the Bucentaure, the choices were stark. Further resistance would only lead to more slaughter. Villeneuve’s duty now was to those still living. He owed it to them to bring the killing to an end, before any more of them died to no purpose.

  Being now without any means of repelling the enemy, the upper works and the twenty-four-pounder deck strewn with dead and wounded, the lower-deck guns dismounted or blocked by fallen masts and rigging, the ship isolated in the middle of the enemy and unable to move, I had to yield to fate. It remained only to prevent any further bloodshed. The slaughter was already vast. Any more would have been quite useless.

  Villeneuve looked at Lieutenant Fulcran Fournier and gave him the nod. It was time to surrender. He turned away, unable to watch as Fournier lowered the colours and ordered the broken pieces of the Imperial eagle to be thrown overboard. By Villeneuve’s account, the Bucentaure had lost all of her masts by then. The Conqueror’s log, written after the battle, agreed. But William Hicks, a midshipman watching from the Conqueror’s quarterdeck, remembered it slightly differently.

  We engaged her single-handed for an hour, and she struck to us; after her colours were hauled down two guns from her starboard quarter began to play on us. Sir Israel Pellew, thinking that they were disposed to renew the fight, ordered the guns which could bear on her foremast to knock it away, and her masts were cut away successfully in a few minutes. The officers of the French ship waving their handkerchiefs in sign of surrender, we sent a cutter and took possession of the Bucentaure. Then we moved on.

  Whatever the truth, Captain Pellew failed to realise that it was the enemy’s commander-in-chief who had fallen into his hands. Instead of s
ending the Conqueror’s first lieutenant to take possession of the Bucentaure, as was customary, he detached a Marine officer instead. With three other Marines and two seamen, Captain James Atcherley climbed into the cutter and was rowed across to the Bucentaure. He was stunned to discover four very senior French officers waiting for him on the quarterdeck. One was Villeneuve, another Captain Jean Magendie. The third was Captain Mathieu Prigny and the fourth Brigadier-General Théodore de Contamine, who had succeeded General Lauriston as commander of the 4,000 troops aboard the French fleet. All four were bowing to Atcherley and offering him their swords.

  Villeneuve spoke in halting English. ‘To whom have I the honour of surrendering?’

  ‘To Captain Pellew of the Conqueror.’

  ‘I am glad to have struck to the fortunate Sir Edward Pellew.’ Sir Edward was a distinguished admiral, well known to the French. But Villeneuve had got the wrong man.

  ‘It is his brother, sir,’ said Atcherley.

  ‘His brother? What, are there two of them? Hélas!’

  ‘Fortune de la guerre,’ shrugged Magendie, who had been captured by the Royal Navy twice before.

  Atcherley told them to keep their swords until they could surrender to the more senior Captain Pellew. Leaving the French on deck, he took his men below to secure the magazines. They were staggered by what they saw:

  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 400 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.

  But not everyone was dead. Atcherley’s arrival, in his bright red coat, had been noticed by the British deserters on the lower deck. A British officer was the last person they wanted to see. Capture by the Royal Navy meant only one thing for them – execution by hanging. They would be court-martialled and strung up from the yardarm without any hope of clemency. There was no mercy for deserters in time of war, particularly not ones who had fought against their own side.

  With nothing to lose, one of these desperate men attempted to fight his way out. Grabbing a sword, he lunged out of the gloom at Atcherley’s party. But they were too quick for him. One of his seamen hit back with a cutlass, virtually decapitating the man with a single blow.

  Atcherley locked up the magazines and pocketed the keys. Posting the Marines as sentries on the admiral and flag-captain’s cabins, he went back on deck to take Villeneuve and the others across to the Conqueror. Prigny was too badly hurt to go, but Villeneuve, Magendie and de Contamine climbed into the cutter, along with two aides. The Conqueror had moved on by then to attack the Santissima Trinidad, so Atcherley needed another British ship for his prisoners. Looking around, he spotted the Mars not far away and ordered his men to pull towards her.

  A few minutes later, Admiral Villeneuve was climbing aboard. The first thing he saw on deck was Captain Duff’s headless body, as Midshipman Thomas Robinson recalled:

  The French commander-in-chief came aboard about the middle of the battle and seeing Captain Duff lying dead upon Deck began to smile to some of his attendants which one of our sailors observing came running up to him and laid hold of him and said when my captain lived he was able to avenge an insult now he is dead it is my duty to revenge it for him at the same time throwing Villeneuve from him covered the dead body with a flag that was laying near him.

  With Duff gone, Lieutenant William Hennah was now in command of the Mars. He received Villeneuve politely and accepted his sword in token of the French commander’s surrender.

  The Conqueror meanwhile had joined the British ships surrounding the Santissima Trinidad. She arrived just in time to see the Spanish four-decker dismasted, as one of her officers later recounted:

  The Bucentaure had just surrendered and the Conqueror passed on to take a station on the quarter of the Trinidada, while the Neptune continued the action with her on the bow. In a short time this tremendous fabric gave a deep roll with the swell to leeward, then back to windward; and on her return every mast went by the board, leaving her an unmanageable hulk on the water. Her immense topsails had every reef out, her royals were sheeted home but lowered, and the falling of this mass of spars, sails and rigging, plunging into the water at the muzzles of our guns, was one of the most magnificent sights I ever beheld. Immediately after this a Spaniard showed an English Union on the lee gangway, in token of submission.

  That was not quite the end of it. The little Africa, at sixty-four guns less than half the Santissima’s size, lay to windward and didn’t see the Union Jack. The Spanish were showing no colours of their own, though, and had ceased firing, so the Africa assumed they wanted to surrender. Captain Henry Digby impudently sent Lieutenant John Smith over in a boat to take possession.

  Smith arrived to find that the Spanish had changed their minds about surrendering. They had just noticed Dumanoir’s squadron in the distance, heading back towards the battle. Smith was received with courtesy, but was assured that the Santissima had no intention of giving up. The ship had only stopped firing, they told him, because they were busy getting more ammunition up from the magazines. It was just an oversight that their colours were no longer showing. Politely escorting Smith back to his boat, the Spanish retained command of their floating hulk and remained in the fight for a while longer, hoping to hang on until the new arrivals came to their aid.

  But Dumanoir’s squadron had also been spotted by Captain Hardy. He immediately hoisted a signal from the Victory ordering his column to keep their wind and engage the enemy’s van. Seven British ships acknowledged and brought their bows round, turning slowly northwards to meet this new threat. The remainder either didn’t see the signal or were in no state to go anywhere.

  Dumanoir’s ten ships were already dividing into three groups, each going their own way. He had intended the whole squadron to sail southwards to the west of the battle, from where they would be well placed to turn to port at length and advance towards the action on the swell, with the wind at their backs, as the British had done. If Dumanoir had given that order hours earlier, the battle would have been looking very different by now. But only four of Dumanoir’s ships had obeyed the order to follow him. Two more were heading straight for the British and the other three were hanging back towards the east, looking nervously over their shoulders towards Cadiz. Dumanoir’s force was fatally divided just when it needed to be together.

  Dumanoir pressed on anyway. Immediately in front of him lay the Minotaur and Spartiate. They were the last two ships of Nelson’s column and were still proceeding towards the battle. Dumanoir headed towards them, intending to cut them off with his five ships before they could reach what remained of Villeneuve’s line.

  CHAPTER 39

  GRAVINA ORDERS A RETREAT

  While Dumanoir headed south, Captain Hardy found time at last to go below to visit Nelson. It was more than an hour now since the admiral had been hit. Hardy was glad to find him still alive when he reached the cockpit.

  ‘How goes the battle?’ demanded Nelson.

  ‘Very well, my Lord. We have twelve or fourteen of the enemy’s ships in our possession, but five of their van have tacked and show an intention of bearing down upon the Victory. I have therefore called two or three of our fresh ships round us, and have no doubt of giving them a drubbing.’

  ‘I hope none of our ships have struck, Hardy?’

  ‘No, my Lord. There is no fear of that.’

  Nelson was fading rapidly. ‘I am a dead man, Hardy. I am going fast. It will be all over with me soon. Come nearer to me. Pray let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair, and all other things belonging to me.’

  Embarrassed by this, Burke the purser moved away, not wanting to intrude. But Nelson told him to stay.

  ‘I hope Mr Beatty can yet
hold out some prospect of life,’ Hardy ventured.

  ‘Oh no.’ Nelson knew he was dying. ‘It is impossible. My back is shot through. Beatty will tell you so.’

  Hardy didn’t reply. He couldn’t stay any longer with Dumanoir closing fast. Gripping Nelson warmly by the hand, he left him and went back to the battle. Nelson insisted that Beatty should leave as well to attend the rest of the wounded. But he sent for him again a few minutes later to say that he had lost all power of movement or feeling below his chest.

  It was a bad sign. There had been a similar case aboard the Victory a few months earlier – a seaman paralysed with a broken back who had taken thirteen days to die. Nelson understood the implications all too well.

  Beatty felt Nelson’s legs without getting any response. ‘My Lord,’ he admitted, ‘unhappily for our country nothing can be done for you.’ He turned away to hide his tears.

  ‘I know it,’ Nelson agreed. ‘I feel something rising in my breast which tells me I am gone.’

  He was fanned and given something to drink. ‘God be praised,’ he kept repeating. ‘I have done my duty.’

  Beatty asked if the pain was still bad. Nelson replied that it was so severe he wished he was dead. ‘Yet one would like to live a little longer, too.’ He lay sunk in thought for a while before speaking again. ‘What would become of poor Lady Hamilton if she knew my situation?’

  Beatty had no answer to that. He returned instead to the rest of the wounded, who still needed his attention.

  A mile to the west, Dumanoir’s five ships had reached the tail end of Nelson’s line and were bearing down on the Minotaur and Spartiate. The two British ships were unimpressed. Keeping steadily to their course, they hove to in front of Dumanoir’s bows and began firing at him from a range of only fifty yards. ‘At the distance of pistol-shot, they did me considerable damage,’ he later commented. His column also came under fire from the seven British ships ordered north by Hardy. The Spanish Neptuno was badly damaged, her captain knocked out by a falling mast. Seeing her predicament, the Minotaur and Spartiate closed in for the kill, forcing the Neptuno to surrender while the rest of Dumanoir’s ships abandoned her to her fate and continued hurriedly southwards.