by Sam Willis
The ever to be lamented death of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson, Duke of Bronte, the Commander in Chief, who fell in the action of the 21st, in the Arms of Victory, whose memory will be ever dear to the British Navy, and the British Nation, whose Zeal for the honour of his King, and the Interests of his Country will be ever held up, as shining Example for a British Seaman, leaves to me a duty, to return my thanks to the Right Honourable Rear Admiral, the Captains, officers, Seamen, and detachments of Royal Marines serving on board His Majesty’s Squadron now under my Command, for their conduct on that day, but where can I find Language to express my Sentiments of the Valour, and Skill which was displayed by every Officer, every Seaman, and Marine in the Battle with the Enemy, where every individual appeared an Hero, on whom the Glory of his Country depended, – the attack was irresistible, and the issue of it adds to the page of naval annals a brilliant instance of what Britons can do, when their King and Country needs their Service.
To the Right Honourable Rear Admiral the Earl of Northesk, to the Captains, Officers, and Seamen, and to the officers, non-commissioned officers, and Privates of the Royal Marines, I beg to give my sincere and hearty thanks for their highly meritorious conduct, both in the action, and in the Zeal, and Activity, in bringing the captured ships out from the perilous situation in which they were among the Shoals of Trafalgar, in boisterous weather.
And I desire the respective Captains will be pleased to communicate to the Officers, Seamen and Royal Marines, this public testimony of my high approbation of their Conduct, and my thanks for it.
EURYALUS, 22ND OCTOBER 1805
Cuthbt Collingwood
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
REAR ADMIRAL THE EARL OF NORTHESK
AND TO THE RESPECTIVE CAPTAINS,
AND COMMANDERS.
Vice-Admiral C. Collingwood, 22 October 1805
Enclosed with this General Order is yet another that is important for its careful religious focus. Collingwood was devout and a regular attendant at his ship’s divine services and, if the weather prevented a public meeting, he would read the service in the privacy of his cabin. The signal described in this order, however, appointing a day ‘of general humiliation before God’, is unprecedented after a victory. Other admirals, including Nelson and Duncan, had ordered general thanksgivings, but this call to repentance is quite different.
The wording is also theologically significant. Collingwood talks of offering praise and thanks to the ‘Throne of Grace’, which is suggestive of evangelical piety, a practice and belief system that was then being popularised in the navy by leading evangelicals known as ‘Blue Lights’. No other evidence survives, however, to suggest that Collingwood was an evangelical, but his letter certainly indicates the extent to which any sense of triumphalism had been driven out by grief at Nelson’s death.
Tellingly, Collingwood had great difficulty in reconciling naval discipline with his Christian belief. In one of his few letters that mention his own beliefs, he wrote: ‘I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend the religion of an Officer who could pray all one day, and flog his men the next.’14 Collingwood’s personal Christian beliefs had a direct effect on his behaviour as a naval officer. He was renowned for being easy on his crew and that easiness increased as he aged.
GENERAL ORDER
The Almighty God, whose Arm alone is Strength, having of his great mercy been pleased to crown the Exertion of His Majesty’s Fleet with Success, in giving them a complete Victory over their Enemies, on the 21st of this Month; and that all praise, and thanksgiving, may be offered up to the Throne of Grace, for the great benefits to our Country, and to mankind. –
I have thought proper, that a day should be appointed, of general humiliation before God, and thanksgiving for this his merciful Goodness – , imploring forgiveness of Sins, a continuation of his divine mercy, and his constant aid to us, in the defence of our Country’s liberties, and Laws – without which the utmost Efforts of Man are nought, and direct therefore that be appointed for this holy purpose.
GIVEN ON BOARD THE EURYALUS OFF CAPE TRAFALGAR, 22ND OCTOBER 1805
Cuthbt Collingwood
TO THE RESPECTIVE CAPTAINS
AND COMMANDERS
NB.
The Fleet having been dispersed by a Gale of Wind no day has yet been able to be appointed for the above purpose.
The Order in which the British Fleet attacked, 21 October 1805
This list of ships is actually far more important than it first appears. We know from Collingwood’s letter (p. 257) that Nelson had insisted that the fleet go into battle in the order of sailing. This was designed to reduce the time lost when forming into a pre-determined order of battle, an operation that could take several hours for even the best fleets. This immediacy was central to Nelson’s plan. He wanted his attack to be impulsive and fast, a demonstration of resolve, confidence and certainty. But this document, which details how the fleet did get into action is very different from Nelson’s stipulated order of sailing. So what happened? What does this document tell us about Trafalgar?
The ‘Van’ division is more commonly known as the ‘Weather’ column, and the ‘Rear’ division as the ‘Lee’ column. The list of ships at the bottom left, beginning with Euryalus, are the small ships in the fleet – the frigates, schooners and cutters. The rest are ships of the line, of which there are 27. Faced with an allied fleet of 33 ships, the British fleet was outnumbered by six ships of the line, a significant margin.
Consider first the ships at the top of Collingwood's list. The divisions are led by flagships, followed by exceptionally powerful ships. In the ‘Van’ division, which attacked the formidable enemy centre, the 100-gun Victory was followed by two 98-gunners, Temeraire and Neptune; the ‘Rear’ division was not quite so powerful but it was still led by the 100-gun Royal Sovereign, which was followed by the Mars and Belleisle, two large 74s renowned for their sailing ability. This was central to Nelson’s plan of punching through the enemy line.
It was a very risky tactic and it is reasonable to argue that it only worked because of poor Allied gunnery. Nelson had anticipated that French and Spanish gunnery would be poor but it was exacerbated on the morning of 21 October by a deep swell that made the Allied ships pitch, roll, sway and surge as they struggled to hold their line. Gunnery in such conditions was always extremely difficult but the French would have found it especially so because they didn’t have gunlocks, a flintlock firing mechanism for cannon. These gunlocks made the ignition of the charge far quicker and more reliable than the alternative method of using quickmatch. A gunner using a gunlock could therefore choose the moment to fire with a much greater degree of certainty than a gunner with quickmatch. He could also stand directly behind his gun and sight along it before pulling a lanyard attached to the gunlock. The gunner with quickmatch, on the other hand, would fire his gun blind from alongside the cannon. Without gunlocks, therefore, direction and timing were both much more difficult to judge, particularly in a deep swell. The result was that, when they finally arrived at the Allied line, the leading British ships were relatively unscathed. A calm sea and an enemy equipped with gunlocks might have produced an entirely different result. But what of the other ships? What does their location in that list tell us about Trafalgar? All is not quite what it seems.
The approach to battle on 21 October was, even by the standards of sailing warfare, painfully slow. In the fluky, light winds, most British ships sailed down to the Allied line at around one and a half knots – that is, one and a half nautical miles per hour – but some sailed faster and some sailed slower. Moreover the distance and time involved were significant. At dawn the two fleets were eight or nine miles apart and firing did not begin until around midday. In the intervening time a difference in speed of no more than half of a mile per hour would have had a significant impact on the formation of the British fleet.
In Nelson’s division the first six ships were closely engaged within 15 minutes of each other. There was then a gap o
f between 40 and 50 minutes before the next group engaged. The final two came into action at anything between two and two and a half hours after Victory. Collingwood’s division was even more broken up. His first eight ships entered battle within minutes of each other but were followed by a gap of more than an hour and then another lengthy gap. The final ship in Collingwood’s line did not engage for at least two and a half hours.
During the approach, not only did these large gaps appear in the British lines, but several ships also swapped places. The most famous incident of this kind involved HMS Temeraire, the ship later immortalised in Turner’s famous painting ‘The Fighting Temeraire’. As the British fleet bore down on the French, the Victory led the weather column, although Nelson had originally placed the Temeraire at its head in his original Order of Sailing.
Henry Blackwood, a frigate captain and close friend of Nelson, suggested that the Victory let the Temeraire lead to offer some protection to Nelson and his flagship. At first Nelson agreed but, as the Temeraire began to surge past the Victory, he changed his mind, realising that he could not go into battle in second place if Collingwood continued to lead his line. Collingwood, for his part, was not about to sacrifice his position at the head of the line and studiously ignored all of Nelson’s signals to do so. Nelson therefore abandoned his plan to change places with the Temeraire and hailed her captain: ‘I’ll thank you, Captain Harvey, to keep in your proper station, which is astern of the Victory.’15 Thus it was that the Victory, rather than the Temeraire, led the weather line into battle.
Other ships changed places too, some because their captains were ordered to, others on their captains’ own initiative, and some because they were simply overtaken. Few of these instances are well known but they are far more significant than the famous exchange between Victory and Temeraire. The difficulty every captain faced was that, just as some people run faster than others, ships of the line did not sail at the same speed under the same sail plan. Their speed was the result of a complex equation of ship design, trim, sail plan and the condition of the ships’ hulls, some of which were newly scraped while others were encrusted with marine growth. Some ships, such as the Prince, the Dreadnought and the Britannia, all of whom appear towards the end of Collingwood’s list, were just downright bad sailers.
This was enough of a problem in itself but, when linked with the issue of fleet discipline, could become thorny. If you are in a speedy ship but stuck behind a lumbering one, what do you do? Do you leave your position to race into battle or hold your position to maintain the integrity of the line? Both are valid courses of action but we know that Nelson wanted his captains to leave the line in such situations, regardless of the potential consequences. Unfortunately, that message was either not understood or was ignored by several captains. The result was that some ships, although good sailers, stayed in line; some slower ships stayed in line and prevented good sailers getting at the enemy sooner; and some good sailers moved out of their allocated position to get at the enemy more quickly. By no means every captain did his utmost to get to the enemy as quickly as possible, however. As a result, there are several significant differences between Collingwood’s list which depicts what actually happened and Nelson’s of what was intended to happen.16
In Nelson’s list the Britannia is fourth in the ‘Van’ division but she went into battle second to last. She was, undoubtedly, a poor sailer but the behaviour and commitment of her commander, Northesk, was certainly suspect (p. 278). In addition Prince, Polyphemus, Agamemnon, Defiance and Defence should all have engaged in the leading groups but did not. The reasons are only partially known. The Defence, in the words of one of her midshipmen, was ‘one of the fastest ships in the service on all points of sailing’17 and yet finally joined the battle roughly two hours after the leading ship. This may have been because she had found herself significantly out of position at dawn on 21 October. The Agamemnon was also out of station at the start of the day because she had lost a foretopmast the day before, as was the Prince which had split a foretopsail.
The position of the 64-gun Africa, last in the Van division, also deserves an explanation. She was originally intended to place herself in the other division, four from the end, but on the morning of battle found herself a full six miles ahead of both fleets. As a result, she entered battle on a completely different bearing from both Nelson’s and Collingwood’s columns. She has therefore been ‘attached’ to the weather column in Collingwood’s list for administrative tidiness when, in reality, she was a soloist for much of the action.
Collingwood’s list, therefore, is far more than it seems. It is evidence of good and bad sailing performance; of different courses taken by different captains; of obedience to or defiance of Nelson’s wishes; of the scope and the limitations of Nelson’s command style; and of a mixture of competence and incompetence in the British fleet.
It is also worth noting that Collingwood’s list does not actually tally with other witness accounts. The Dreadnought, shown last in the weather column in Collingwood’s list, is a good example. According to Collingwood’s own journal, the Dreadnought actually overtook the Swiftsure, Thunderer and Prince on her approach to battle and then engaged six ships before the Prince, who engaged last. Indeed, if one compiles a list based on the timing that the ships engaged rather than on their location, a different order again emerges because some ships withheld their fire until at close range, others blazed away as soon as there was any chance of hitting the enemy and some even before that. We know, for example that the Africa, shown here as last in the weather column, actually opened fire only eight minutes after Collingwood in the Royal Sovereign and twelve minutes before the Victory, whereas the Minotaur, shown in the list as fourth from the rear, opened fire last in the weather column, no less than two hours and 28 minutes after Victory.
All of this, moreover, depends on how one measures time during fleet battle. Significantly, specific timings given in logs can be inaccurate, while periods within individual logs can often suggest the passage of time more accurately. Thus this ‘order in which the Ships of the British Squadron, attacked the Combined Fleets’ is by no means definitive and the debate over which ships engaged when, and the reasons for them doing so, continues to rage.
The discrepancy between Collingwood’s list and the actual order in which the ships attacked is also valuable evidence for the difficulty of comprehending battle. Clear bird’s eye images of fleets moving this way and that in perfect order are wholly fabricated. From sea level, or even from the top of a masthead, the positioning and identity of the combatants were very difficult to ascertain. It has been estimated that the overall battle space occupied by the Battle of Trafalgar was 49 kilometres square18 and, if one remembers that the majority of the combatants were wreathed in smoke – the French Lieutenant Gicquel des Touches was adamant that, once the attack began, ‘the entire fleet disappeared from our sight, enveloped by smoke’19 – then Collingwood’s inaccuracy is neither surprising nor reason for criticism.
Rear-Admiral C. Collingwood to W. Marsden, 24 October 1805
Two days after Collingwood had sat down to write his first letter in the shocking aftermath of the battle, he took up his quill again to tell the next part of the tale.
The poor weather, which had begun in the evening of the day after the battle, continued for two full days and in this letter Collingwood looks back on them. We can see his mind ranging across an ocean of chaos with dismasted ships being driven on lee shores, captured enemies retaking their ships and entire ships disappearing. One can almost hear him drawing breath; this is his first free moment for 48 hours. His crews have endured a truly horrifying experience as the helpless, shattered ships have been driven towards a lee shore while the wounded have been tossed mercilessly around inside them. Unfortunately for Collingwood, his ships and his men, the worst was still to come.
EURYALUS, OFF CADIZ
24 OCTOBER 1805
Sir
In my letter of the 22nd, I detailed
to you for the information of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, the proceedings of His Majesty’s Squadron, on the day of the Action, and that preceeding it, since which I have had a continued series of misfortunes – , but they are of a kind that human Prudence could not 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 (13, or 14), and towing them off to the Westward, where I ordered them to rendezvous round the Royal Sovereign, 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, in the dark, and boisterous night, got before the Wind, and have perhaps drifted upon the Shore, and sunk; – On the afternoon of that day, the remnant of the combined Fleet ten Sail of Ships, who had not been much engaged, stood up to leeward of my shattered, and straggled charge, as if meaning to attack them, which obliged me to collect a force out of the least injured Ships, and 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 Leewardmost that could be cleared of the Men considering that keeping possession of the Ships, 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 task, in the high Sea, which was running, I hope however it has been accomplished to a considerable extent; – I entrusted it to Skillful Officers, who would spare no pains to execute what was possible. The Captains of the Prince, and Neptune, cleared the Trinidad, and sunk her; – Captains Hope, Bayntun, and Malcolm (who joined the Fleet this moment from Gibraltar) had the charge of destroying four others: – The Redoubtable sunk astern of the Swiftsure, while in tow; the Santa Ana I have no doubt is sunk, as her side was almost entirely beat in; – and such is the shattered condition of the whole of them that unless the weather moderates, I doubt whether I shall be able to carry a Ship of them into Port: – if I had anchored such as had good Cables, they (having all their crews on board) would certainly have cut them, and run for Port in the Stormy weather, and there were ten Sail of the Line, and five frigates ready to come to their assistance in fine weather, so that I hope their Lordships will approve of what I (having only in consideration the destruction of the Enemy’s Fleet) have thought a measure of absolute necessity.