by Max Adams
By extraordinary chance, out of the forty thousand or so men (and one or two women) who took part in that battle, an account from an ordinary seaman, known only as Sam, survives as a witness to a unique moment. In a letter to his father written after the battle he wrote:
Our dear Admiral Nelson is killed! So we have paid pretty dearly for licking ‘em. I never sat [sic] eyes on him, for which I am both sorry and glad; for, to be sure, I should like to have seen him – but then, all the men in our ship who have seen him are such soft toads, they have done nothing but blast their eyes, and cry, ever since he was killed. God bless you! Chaps that fought like the devil, sit down and cry like a wench. I am still in the Royal Sovereign, but the Admiral has left her, for she is like a horse without a bridle, so he is in a frigate that he might be here and there and everywhere, for he’s as cute as here and there … and as bold as a lion, for all he can cry! -I saw his tears with my own eyes, when the boat hailed and said my lord was dead …62
Collingwood had indeed transferred to a frigate, Euryalus, whose captain, Henry Blackwood, took Royal Sovereign in tow late in the afternoon, with the wind rising and no cables to anchor her. Now Collingwood, having stood in the shadow of his friend and hero for thirty years, found himself shouldering a huge burden. His first concern was for his own ships. Nelson’s order to anchor could not be carried out (few ships had anchors or cables left), and in any case had Nelson been present he would probably have made the same decision as Collingwood under the same conditions. There is no doubting Collingwood’s seamanship. No doubting either the perilous state of the fleet: within a few miles of the treacherous shoals of Cape Trafalgar, and in a westerly wind that rose by the hour until it became a full-blown gale, and worse, lasting several days: some of the worst weather that many of the veteran captains of the battle had ever experienced. In the circumstances, it is amazing that not a single English ship was lost.
A ship of the line, at its best, behaved like a well-balanced upside-down pendulum, its slow corkscrew motion dampened below decks and exaggerated at the top of its masts. With the loss of topgallants, topmasts and in some cases lower masts themselves, that balance was destroyed. Even in a moderate swell the pitch and roll became violently uncomfortable, and in really bad weather the ship was in great danger of sinking – broaching-to and capsizing as she was turned broadside on to the Atlantic swell. Throughout the fleet those who were not severely wounded or dumbfounded with noise and shock worked through the evening and on into the night, jury-rigging topmasts, mending and splicing miles of cordage, bending what canvas they could spread in order to give their ships some steerage as the wind rose and the horrors of a leeward shore loomed a few miles to the east; carpenters plugged shot holes as well as they could; rudders were operated by steering ropes; dead and dying men were heaved overboard. Several ships were either taken in tow by others, or themselves towed prizes.
Collingwood’s next task was to ensure that, if he could not hold on to the enemy prizes, then at least they should not be allowed to return to Cadiz, or escape into the Mediterranean. So he ordered their destruction, an act that won him few friends among his fellow commanders, whose potentially vast share of prize-money he was casting to the wind. Those with a broader strategic outlook approved, however. Lord Eldon later remembered Earl St Vincent’s reaction: ‘Collingwood’s conduct after the Battle of Trafalgar in destroying, under difficult circumstances, the defeated fleet, was above all praise.’63 It is easy for historians to judge and criticise. Collingwood’s own terse account delivered to William Marsden, the Secretary to the Admiralty Board, gives an idea of what the new Commander-in-Chief had to face. He was constantly receiving reports from ships on their condition, their appalling casualty figures, and of course news of the deaths of friends and officers and men with whom he had served for thirty years. Frigates and smaller boats plied to and fro passing information, rumours, messages between friends, cousins, brothers. Since the end of the battle, wrote Collingwood:
I have had a continued series of misfortunes; but they are of a kind that human prudence could not possibly provide against, or my skill prevent. On the 22nd, in the morning, a strong southerly wind blew, with squally weather, which, however, did not prevent the activity of the officers and seamen of such ships as were manageable from getting hold of many of the prizes, (thirteen or fourteen) and towing them off to the westward, where I ordered them to rendezvous around Royal Sovereign, [then] in tow by the Neptune. But on the 23rd the gale increased, and the sea ran so high that many of them broke the tow rope, and drifted far to leeward before they were got hold of again; and some of them, taking advantage of the dark and boisterous night, got before the wind, and have perhaps drifted on the shore and sunk. On the afternoon of that day, the remnant of the combined fleet, ten sail of ships, which had not been much engaged, stood up to leeward of my shattered and straggling charge, as if meaning to attack them, which obliged me to collect a force out of the least injured ships, and to form to leeward for their defence. All this retarded the progress of the hulks; and the bad weather continuing, determined me to destroy all the lee-wardmost that could be cleared of the men, considering that keeping possession of the ships was a matter of little consequence, compared with the chance of their falling again into the hands of the enemy; but even this was an arduous charge in the high sea which was running. I hope, however, it has been accomplished to a considerable extent.64
There was a third task. Despite the terrible conditions, Collingwood ordered that as many enemy sailors as possible should be rescued from ships which were sinking, or in danger of running aground, or which were to be destroyed. It was this act of humanity which won Collingwood, that day, as much admiration among his enemies as he had earned respect from his own officers and men. Henry Blackwood, who came to know Collingwood over the next weeks, wrote to his wife:
Could you witness the grief and anxiety of Admiral Collingwood (who has done all that an admiral can do) you would be very deeply affected … [he is] a very reserved, though a very pleasing good man; and as he fought like an angel I take the more to him.65
Two weeks after the battle, Collingwood’s dispatch, having been brought by Lt Lapenotiere of the Pickle to the Admiralty the previous night after a dramatic journey of its own, was published on the front page of The Times. It was made up of two letters, written on 22 and 24 of October in Euryalus’s cramped cabin. The defeated Admiral Villeneuve was there: ‘a tallish thin man, a very tranquil, placid, English-looking Frenchman’, according to Hercules Robinson.66 The original drafts of those two letters have recently been discovered in Collingwood’s Secret Letter book covering the period 1805–1808.67 Both are written in his own hand, very fine and legible, despite the awful gale that was threatening to dash the British fleet on the shoals of Trafalgar. They contain several paragraphs which were excised from the published version, and which underline the extreme pre-cariousness of the fleet’s position. A full transcription of the draft dispatches is published for the first time in Appendix 1.68
The Trafalgar dispatch describes the battle, its aftermath, and the death of Nelson with all Collingwood’s cultivated delicacy and elegance of phrase: it is a masterpiece of understated concision. King George wept when he read it.69 On its publication the country was in uproar, torn between grief and joy. When the mail arrived in Newcastle the following day Sarah Collingwood was in a shop. The coachman, wearing a black hat band, shouted that there had been a great victory, but that all the English admirals were dead. Sarah fainted.70
9
Giddy with the multiplicities
1806–1808
Collingwood’s head was spinning too, and with good reason. In October 1805 he had been second-in-command to Nelson at a victory which was (and still is) seen as delivering the coup de grâce to Napoleon’s overseas ambitions. But it did not, and five short months later everything had changed. Trafalgar may have been morally decisive, but it left Britain tactically weaker than she had been before: her Mediterra
nean fleet was shattered; the enemy still had squadrons at Cadiz, Cartagena, Rochefort, Brest and Toulon. And even as news of an English naval victory filtered through the courts of Europe, so did word of Napoleon’s crushing defeat of the Russian-Austrian army at Austerlitz in December. Then in January 1806 William Pitt died, leaving a vacuum at the heart of Britain’s wartime strategy that the so-called ‘Ministry of all the Talents’ (an ineffective coalition) could not fill. With Pitt and Nelson gone, and Napoleon the master of Europe, who would be England’s saviour now?
By the spring of 1806, not yet half-way through a staggering seven-year unbroken tour of duty that would kill him, Cuthbert Collingwood had become Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean fleet, and effective viceroy at sea from Cadiz to Constantinople. He had been promoted to vice-admiral of the red. He had been created Baron Collingwood of Caldburne and Hethpool.1 He had been granted a pension for life and given any number of patriotic awards by his fellow countrymen, including the freedom of many cities and towns. He had even inherited a coal mine. And, because it now adorned his arms, he was reminded of his family’s ancient motto, which might have been chosen personally, so apt was it: Ferar unus et idem … Always one and the same.2
Collingwood was delighted with the professional praise given him by service colleagues (especially his old patrons Admirals Parker and Roddam). He can only have been amazed to receive a warm, even overly warm, letter of congratulations from his former antagonist Sir Roger Curtis, who addressed him as ‘my Dear Cuddy’.3 He was delighted too that Sarah was enjoying her new-found fame and social popularity. He was gratified by the kind words of the King, and at the Admiralty’s faith in his capabilities. His title amused him:
And so I have a great Barony – it may be called a Barreny to me – value 30s. a year, or thereabouts. But if I live long enough I will make it a place of consideration.4
This apparent indifference was not universal, though, as he admitted in a letter to Sarah:
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.5
Collingwood wrote to many of his acquaintances about the battle, and in particular about his grief at the death of Nelson. None understood their relationship better than Mary Moutray, to whom Collingwood wrote in December, saying:
You, my dear Madam, who know what our friendship was, can judge what I have felt. All the praise and acclamations of joy for our victory only bring to my mind what it cost.6
In a valediction to Nelson addressed to Sir Thomas Pasley, with whom he had fought in 1794, he wrote:
He possessed the zeal of an enthusiast, directed by talents which nature had very bountifully bestowed upon him – and everything seemed as if by enchantment, to prosper under his direction – but it was the effect of system – and nice combination, not of chance – We must endeavour to follow his example, but it is the lot of very few to attain to his perfection …7
To add to his grief, and his anxiety for the fleet, the military situation was grim. Between Gibraltar and Constantinople, where Russian and French diplomats were vying for political and military influence over the ‘Sublime Porte’,8 Britain had just one small base, at Malta, and one dubious ally, in the Neapolitan court. Malta at least was in good hands, having been recaptured by Captain Alexander Ball in 1800. Ball, highly esteemed by both Nelson and Collingwood, was now governor of the island, protecting the crucial Levant trade route to the east, and providing a well-defended base for the navy. He had been a midshipman with Collingwood as long ago as the battle at Bunker’s Hill in 1775. Naples had changed little. Queen Maria Carolina intrigued with diplomats in secret and in the open; her husband the King played the part of a country gentleman.
As Napoleon’s eye shifted away from Britain to the south and east, his ambitions once more began to revolve around the overland route to the Indian Ocean, and to domination of the Mediterranean. He could not hope to take Malta without a large-scale amphibious assault. So he turned his attention to Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean and the most vulnerable to attack from the Italian mainland. Like the English Channel, the Strait of Messina only needed to be held for a day to effect an invasion. Unlike the Channel, the Strait is a mere two miles wide.
Collingwood’s immediate task, after sending his unserviceable ships home (Victory, carrying Nelson’s pickled body; Royal Sovereign, Bellisle, Tonnant and Téméraire were the worst, and could not hope to be repaired outside their home ports) was to blockade the remains of the Combined Fleet in Cadiz, and prevent squadrons at Rochefort, Toulon and Cartagena from getting to sea. That he succeeded seems almost miraculous, especially since his obsession with detail and his inability to delegate were wearing him to a thread. The capture by Sir Richard Strachan’s squadron of four of the enemy ships which had escaped from Trafalgar was only a partial relief.
One of the many distractions faced by Collingwood is revealed in his correspondence with Vice-Admiral Don Ignatius Maria d’Alava, who had been critically injured during Royal Sovereign’s battle with Santa Anna.9 Although Collingwood had received his sword (or what he thought was his sword) in surrender, he had allowed d’Alava to remain in his ship, as he was not expected to live. Santa Anna was driven by the storms into Cadiz, where d’Alava slowly recovered. On 30 October Collingwood wrote to him:
It is with great pleasure I have heard that the wound which you received in the action is in a hopeful way of recovery, and that your Country may still have the benefit of your services. But, Sir, you surrendered yourself to me … and I expect that you consider yourself a prisoner of war…10
D’Alava replied that he was sorry Collingwood had been labouring under the misapprehension that he had surrendered himself. He still had his sabre, and it must have been another officer’s sword that had inadvertently been offered as his. It was a disingenuous response, and Collingwood thought it shabby. But he continued to correspond politely with d’Alava over the next months. Relations with the Marquis de la Solana, Captain-General of Andalucia, were more cordial. On 27 October Collingwood opened a correspondence with him:
Humanity, and my desire to alleviate the sufferings of these wounded men, dictate to me to offer to your excellency their Enlargement, that they may be taken proper care of in the hospitals on shore.11
The marquis responded with thanks and an assurance that English prisoners would be treated as courteously as their Spanish counterparts. He sent Collingwood a cask of wine as a token of esteem, and perhaps as proof that in an age when the rules of war were being reinvented, officers in England and Spain, at any rate, still thought of themselves as gentlemen. Collingwood responded as well as his meagre stores would allow:
I wish I had any thing half so good to send your Excellency: but, perhaps, an English cheese may be a rarity at Cadiz; and I accordingly take the liberty of begging your Lordship’s acceptance of one, and of a cask of porter.12
Collingwood’s gifts were apparently consumed at a single party. In return, the marquis sent by fishing boat ‘sixty melons, and some baskets of grapes, of figs, and of pomegranates’. The melons were especially for Richard Thomas (Collingwood’s captain in his new flag ship Queen, a 98-gun second-rate) whom Solana had heard was particularly fond of them. Thomas was the only one of his flag captains that Collingwood either liked or thought up to the job. He had been his signal lieutenant in Excellent many years before, and stayed with the Admiral until his death. Fat, stupid but brave Captain Rotheram had, luckily for Collingwood, returned to England in the shattered Royal Sovereign. Of him, in the aftermath of battle, Collingwood had written to William Marsden, the Admiralty Secretary, a thinly disguised damnation: ‘I cannot sufficiently recommend Captain Rotheram…’13 – so at least Collingwood’s wit w
as still intact.
Queen, and the five ships Collingwood could spare from other duties, spent the winter watching, in turn, Cadiz and Cartagena. The Rochefort squadron had got out into the Atlantic but been intercepted by a squadron Collingwood had sent under Sir John Duckworth. At San Domingo he destroyed them. It was one less worry, but still the rump of the navy’s Mediterranean fleet was wearing out fast at sea, while the Spaniards sheltered in their harbours and France continued to build new ships at Toulon. The Spaniards carried on their maritime trade under neutral flags, so unless they came out, which seemed most unlikely, there was little Collingwood could do against them. To make matters worse, the neutrals’ were being insured by English underwriters, as Collingwood pointed out to Sarah’s uncle:
It is a most nefarious practice, which has put me out of conceit with mercantile patriotism. They may give me fine vases and high praises, but they must shew the same regard for their Country which I feel, before they can gain my esteem.14
In the same letter Collingwood vented his spleen on another matter to which he had always been peculiarly sensitive: money. He did not dislike it, and frequently mentioned the possibility of its acquisition in his letters, but he abhorred the thought that he might appear to desire it. It looked as if the pension he had been granted by parliament had been supplemented by one for his wife and daughters, pleaded for by a kinsman, William Spencer-Stanhope. When he found out, Collingwood was furious, imagining that the King must think him very ill-bred to have his relatives plead his family’s poverty. He wrote, with leaden irony: