Chapter V: The 'fighting' Temeraire (2)

The _Fougueux_ came on as though bent on rescuing the _Redoutable_. It did not look an impossible task. Both the _Victory_ and the _Temeraire_ showed signs of having undergone a very severe mauling, and there was the French _Neptune_ near by, apparently quite fresh and ready to lend a hand, only waiting for an opportunity to join in the fray. The _Temeraire_ particularly, looked in a bad way. Under the _Neptune's_ punishing fire, she had been reduced aloft to the appearance of a wreck. Her topmasts had gone, her foreyard was gone, her foremast was tottering, all her rigging was torn and tangled, her sails hung down in rags. Her ensign, too, had been shot away, or at least was down owing to the fall of the gaff; very few men were to be seen alive on her upper deck; not a shot came from her guns on the broadside facing the _Fougueux_.

Captain Baudoin, the captain of the _Fougueux_, seemed at first uncertain whether he would lie off to leeward, and with the _Neptune's_ help rake and cannonade the _Temeraire_ into submission, or come to close quarters at once and board. The second alternative seemed to promise quicker results, and he adopted it. He made up his mind to bring the matter to an issue on the spot before other British ships could interfere, and carry the _Temeraire_ by a _coup de main_. The few people he saw about on the _Temeraire's_ upper deck was one inducement to try boarding her. He could not know, of course, that Captain Harvey had ordered everybody who could possibly be spared to go below so as to avoid unnecessary loss of life from the _Redoutable's_ musketry. Another was that the _Temeraire's_ attention seemed to be wholly devoted to the _Redoutable_. Captain Baudoin put the _Fougueux's_ head directly for the _Temeraire_, and as they closed, the French ship's shrouds quickly became black with men, cutlass in hand, while more swarmed on the forecastle and gangways cheering and shouting 'A l'abordage! a l'abordage!' So the _Fougueux_ neared the _Temeraire_. For her part, as it befell, the _Temeraire_ had for some time foreseen what was coming. She was by no means so incapable of meeting a new antagonist as she looked.

The _Temeraire_, as it happened, had not yet fired a single shot from her guns on the starboard broadside. She had her triple tier of 32-pounders and long 18's ranged there all ready, all double-shotted and clear for action. To man these guns was quick work. Without checking the fire that the _Temeraire_ was keeping up into the _Redoutable_ and the _Neptune_, Lieutenant Kennedy, the first lieutenant, rapidly called away sufficient hands from the guns on the port side to man all the starboard batteries. Then the gallant officer and his men waited--the captain of each gun standing ready with arm raised and his firing lanyard out-stretched stiff as wire--all eagerly watching the coming on of the _Fougueux_. Not a sign that the guns were manned came from the _Temeraire's_ ports, as nearer and nearer the French seventy-four swept down on her. Now she was 200 yards off--now 150--now 100--now 80 yards! Confidently came the _Fougueux_ on as to certain conquest, amid wild tempestuous shoutings of 'A l'abordage!' 'Vive l'Empereur! Vive l'Empereur!' The supreme moment came.

'_Temeraires_--stand by--fire!'

Holding back until the yard-arms of the two ships all but touched, with a deafening thunder-burst that for the instant overpowered all other sounds of battle, the _Temeraire's_ whole starboard broadside went off at once, in one salvo, like one gigantic gun. A terrific crash re-echoed back, with yells and shrieks. There was no more shouting from the _Fougueux_. As the smoke drifted off, the _Temeraire's_ men looked and saw the enemy's rigging and forecastle and decks swept clean and bare. The next minute, with her whole side practically beaten in, crushed in like an eggshell trampled under foot, the hapless seventy-four ran, blundering blindly, in hopeless confusion, right into the _Temeraire_.[105]

Like the _Redoutable_ she was promptly lashed fast, and then--'Boarders away!' was the call. A master's mate, a little middy, twenty seamen, six marines, followed close behind Lieutenant Kennedy as he clambered into the _Fougueux's_ main rigging, and thence down on to the _Fougueux's_ quarter-deck. One of the seamen with the boarding-party had a Union Jack rolled round his neck. 'It'll come handy perhaps,' said the brave fellow as he followed his messmates over the side. There was a sharp tussle on the quarter-deck of the _Fougueux_, where Captain Baudoin, struck down by the _Temeraire's_ broadside, lay mortally wounded. Second-Captain Bazin hastily rallied seventy or eighty men, called up from below to meet the boarders, but the impetuous onset of the nine-and-twenty _Temeraires_ carried everything before it despite the odds. The _Fougueux's_ second captain was cut down. A lieutenant who took his place was shot dead with a pistol bullet through the heart. The Frenchmen then gave way and broke and were driven off the quarter-deck pell-mell. Slashing and stabbing their way, without a single fresh man from the ship, in less than twelve minutes Lieutenant Kennedy's party were masters of the _Fougueux_. They hustled the surrendered Frenchmen down into the hold, clapped the hatches on them, and then the Union Jack came in 'handy' to hoist over the tricolour on the _Fougueux_' ensign staff.

So the _Redoutable's_ would-be rescuer was added to the row of four ships, all fast to one another side by side, the _Victory_, _Redoutable_, _Temeraire_, and _Fougueux_.

Relieved from the hostile presence of the _Fougueux_, the _Temeraire_ turned her attention to finishing off the _Redoutable_, now plainly at her last gasp, though still unsubdued. Her guns were silenced, but musket shots still came from the tops. A few minutes later the _Victory_ broke herself clear and steered away from the group. She boomed herself off, leaving Captain Harvey to receive in due course the submission of the _Redoutable_.

But even now Captain Lucas would not give up. 'The _Temeraire_, to quote Captain Lucas's own words once more, 'hailed us to give ourselves up and not prolong a useless resistance. I ordered some soldiers near me to answer this summons by firing, which was done with alacrity.' The end, though, was at last really at hand. Scarcely had the British flagship broken away than the _Redoutable's_ main and mizen masts came down. The main-mast crashed over the _Temeraire's_ poop, and in its fall formed a bridge from ship to ship, across which a party of the _Temeraire's_ officers and men, headed by the second lieutenant, John Wallace, promptly clambered. With more than 500 of his original crew of 600 odd _hors de combat_, dead or wounded, there was no opposition possible, and Captain Lucas had to yield up his sword.

BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR. October 21, 1805--2.15 P.M.

After J.C. Schetky.]

No captain, perhaps, ever fought his ship better against overwhelming odds than Captain Lucas fought the _Redoutable_ at Trafalgar. Napoleon had him specially exchanged as soon as possible, and sent for him to St. Cloud where, in the presence of the assembled _Etat Major_, he decorated him with his own hand with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour.[106] 'Had my other captains,' said the Emperor, 'behaved as you did, the event of the battle would have been very different.' There is an ironclad _Redoutable_ in the French navy to-day which bears the name in remembrance of the gallant two-decker lost with honour at Trafalgar.

The _Temeraire_, however, had still one of her first foes left. The French _Neptune_ was still dangerously near. She was lying where she had been from the first, pounding away steadily into the _Temeraire_ from a short distance off, 'willing to wound but still afraid to strike.' It says little for the courage of the French captain that he had not ventured to force home an attack at close quarters, and less still for the gunnery of his men that it had not before this reduced the _Temeraire_ to a sinking state. Not far off, also, there was, as the _Temeraire's_ log notes, 'a Spanish two-decked ship ... on the larboard bow or nearly ahead, who had raked us during great part of the action.' On seeing the _Victory_ move off, the French _Neptune_ apparently took heart of grace. She now made as if she really meant at last to close with the _Temeraire_. It was not very brave of the _Neptune_, seeing how the _Temeraire_ was situated, with five-sixths of her guns blocked in by the two prizes alongside. But all the same the _Temeraire_ did her best to give the _Neptune_ a warm reception. By clearing away the wreckage from aloft that overlay most of the _Temeraire's_ upper-deck guns, Captain Harvey was able to get some of these into action and keep the _Neptune_ off. Then a few minutes later assistance arrived. The approach of the _Leviathan_, a British seventy-four, once more daunted the _Neptune_, and she sheered off and withdrew altogether from the scene.

After that came a well-earned breathing space for the _Temeraire_ and her gallant crew, a brief half-hour's pause that Captain Harvey and his men made use of in putting prize-crews in charge of the _Redoutable_ and _Fougueux_, and doing what they could towards repairing their own damages and clearing away their wrecked top-hamper. The _Sirius_ frigate during this spell, in response to a signal from Captain Harvey, took the _Temeraire_ and her prizes in tow.

A note in the _Temeraire's_ log shows how intermixed some of the British ships had now got. 'The _Royal Sovereign_,' it says, 'was a short distance to leeward, and the _Colossus_, dismasted, with one of the enemy's two-deckers on board of her, who had struck, and appeared to be Spanish.'

In the half-hour that the _Temeraire_ stood by, the battle passed 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 _Temeraire'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, 'a rempli sa tache, la mienne n'est pas encore achevee.'[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.

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? Helas!'

'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 _Temeraire'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 _Temeraire_ lay, making it appear as though they were coming down to attack. 'At 3,' says the _Temeraire'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 _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire_ a few moments previously, and allowed to swing athwart the _Temeraire's_ stern, end-on to Dumanoir's ships as they passed by,--but that was practically all they did.

'Half-past 4,' says the _Temeraire's_ log, 'ceased firing.' The _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire'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 _Temeraire_, 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 _Temeraire'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 _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire's_ boatswain, were the officers wounded. Forty-three more of the _Temeraire'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 _Temeraire'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 _Temeraire's_ men. She was in tow of the _Swiftsure_, which had relieved the _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire'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 _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire_, 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 _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire_ 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.

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 _Heros_[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 Provencal 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!

After J.C. Schetky.]

The _Temeraire_ 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 _Intrepide_. 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 _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire_ 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 _Temeraire_, 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_.

How for six years after Trafalgar the _Temeraire_ did her duty before the enemy, at one time helping to keep Marshal Soult out of Cadiz, at another taking her part in holding in check the powerful new fleet that Napoleon created in Toulon to avenge Trafalgar on some future day that never came--all that is another story. Her last shotted guns were fired to silence a French battery in Hyeres Bay, near the entrance to Toulon harbour, which rashly opened fire on the _Temeraire_ one day. The _Temeraire_ closed with the battery and gave the French gunners one tremendous broadside that practically cleared the battery out. Not a shot came from it again. The war story of the _Temeraire_ ends six months later with her final paying off at Plymouth.

There only remained for the _Temeraire_, after that, to complete her allotted span and await the striking of the inevitable hour.

For age will rust the brightest blade, And time will break the stoutest bow; Was never wight so starkly made, But age and time will bring him low.

She outlasted, indeed, her old captain at Trafalgar. In 1836, six years after Sir Eliab Harvey had been gathered to his fathers, his old ship entered on her last turn of duty, harbour service at Sheerness as Guardship of Ordinary, Captain-Superintendent's ship for the Fleet Reserve in the Medway. By an interesting coincidence, the officer who last of all hoisted his pennant on board the 'Fighting' _Temeraire_ was the man who had been her first lieutenant at Trafalgar, now a grey-headed old post-captain, holding his last appointment before retiring from the Service as Captain-Superintendent of Sheerness dockyard, Captain Thomas Fortescue Kennedy. Actually the last guns that were ever fired on board the 'Fighting' _Temeraire_ were for the Royal Salute in honour of Queen Victoria's Coronation Day. Six weeks after that, on the 16th of August 1838, the _Temeraire_ was put up for auction and sold for L5530 to Mr. Beatson, the Rotherhithe shipbreaker. She was sold out of the Navy 'all standing,' with her masts and yards still in her, just as her guard-ship crew left the vessel, as Turner saw her and has faithfully painted her: a fact, also, that explains what has puzzled many critics of the famous picture, the removal to be broken up of a man-of-war rigged and masted and with yards across.

So we come, at length, to the _Temeraire's_ final hour and her appointed end.

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood
And waves were white below;
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Nor know the conquered knee--
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea.

All the way up the river on her last day, we are told, the _Temeraire_ was cheered as she passed along by the crews of the merchant ships and the people on board the river steamboats 'surprised as well as delighted by the novel spectacle of a 98-gun ship in the Pool,'[117] while after they had begun to break the _Temeraire_ up at Rotherhithe numbers of people came to visit 'the ship that helped to avenge Nelson at Trafalgar,' attracted by reports of the finding of Trafalgar relics on board. One of these was a round-shot, found deeply embedded in the centre of one of the _Temeraire's_ main-deck beams with a French sailor's red cap, which had evidently been used as an improvised wad in the hurry of the fighting, stuck fast to it. Another was the brass memorial tablet (already spoken of), let into the quarter-deck near the wheel, and bearing the inscription, 'England expects that every man will do his duty.'[118]

Two gigantic figures, quarter-gallery decorations, taken from the _Temeraire_ during her breaking up, are still in existence, preserved by the successors to the firm at whose hands the old ship met her fate.[119] Any one, also, who cares to make a pilgrimage among the byways of riverside London on the south side, may come across a church within a stone's-throw of where the final scene in the _Temeraire's_ career was enacted--St. Paul's, Globe Street, Rotherhithe--in which the altar, altar rails, and sanctuary chairs are all made of heart-of-oak carved from the frame timbers of the 'Fighting' _Temeraire_.

Two quarter-gallery figures now in the possession of Messrs. H. Castle & Sons, Millbank.]

So the story reaches its close. It can hardly end better than with the eloquent passage in which Mr. Ruskin has delivered what is, in intent, the funeral oration at the passing of the 'Fighting' _Temeraire_.[120]

'This particular ship, crowned in the Trafalgar hour of trial with chief victory, prevailing over the fatal vessel that had given Nelson death--surely, if anything without a soul deserved honour or affection, we owed them here. Those sails that strained so full bent into the battle, that broad bow that struck the surf aside, enlarging silently in steadfast haste, full front to the shot, resistless and without reply, those triple ports whose choirs of flame rang forth in their courses into the fierce revenging monotone, which, when it died away, left no answering voice to rise any more upon the sea against the strength of England--those sides that were wet with the long runlets of English life-blood, like press planks at vintage, gleaming goodly crimson down to the cast and clash of the washing foam--those pale masts that stayed themselves up against the war-ruin, shaking out their ensigns through the thunder, till sail and ensign drooped--steeped in the death-stilled pause of Andalusian air, burning with its witness-clouds of human souls at rest--surely for these some sacred care might have been left in our thoughts, some quiet space amidst the lapse of English waters? Nay, not so, we have stern keepers to trust her glory to--the fire and the worm. Never more shall sunset lay golden robe on her, nor starlight tremble on the waves that part at her gliding. Perhaps, where the low gate opens to some cottage garden, the tired traveller may ask idly why the moss grows so green on its rugged wood, and even the sailor's child may not answer, nor know, that the night dew lies deep in the war-rents of the wood of the old _Temeraire_.'

There's a far bell ringing At the setting of the sun And a phantom voice is singing Of the great days done. There's a far bell ringing, And a phantom voice is singing Of renown for ever clinging To the great days done.

After the painting by W.L. Wyllie.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 79: Ruskin, _Notes on the Turner Collection_, p. 80.]

[Footnote 80: Thornbury's _Life of Turner_, vol. i. pp. 335-336.]

[Footnote 81: 'She was towed up the river by two steam tugs; every vessel that she passed appeared like a pigmy.'--_Gentleman's Magazine_, 'Domestic Occurrences,' September 16, 1838.]

[Footnote 82: Ruskin, _Notes on the Turner Collection_, p. 81.]

[Footnote 83: The _Temeraire_, of course, was fading _up_ the river, but the exigences of euphony no doubt required the inversion.]

[Footnote 84: The _Temeraire_, from which the Trafalgar _Temeraire_ took her name, was a French 74, captured by Admiral Boscawen in his battle with De la Clue off Lagos in August 1759. She served in the British navy for some years, and after being utilised as a floating battery at Plymouth during the American War, was finally sold out of the service in 1783.]

[Footnote 85: '"Thirty-six hours' calm, and England is ours," so says one of the French papers in announcing that the invasion of England is to be attempted before the 14th July. A division of the Imperial Guard has already arrived at Havre on its way to Boulogne, where the Emperor will arrive within a week.'--The _Observer_, June 24, 1804.

'By an American gentleman just arrived from the Continent, we have received positive and authentic information that the Boulogne flotilla is in a complete state of equipment and ready to embrace the first opportunity of putting to sea. Whether that opportunity will ever be permitted to the enemy by our blockading squadrons remains to be seen. The troops stationed on the uplands above Boulogne, and in its vicinity, amount to upwards of 160,000 men.'--The _Times_, August 14, 1804.]

[Footnote 86: Captain Mahan, _The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire_, vol. ii. p. 118.]

[Footnote 87: _Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Collingwood_, by G.L. Newnham Collingwood, p. 93.]

[Footnote 88: Says the _Observer_ for the 18th of December: 'The motto of Admiral Cornwallis seems to be that from Dryden: "Endure and Conquer." We could dwell upon this theme for ever. Others have simply taught the British Navy (apt scholars enough) to triumph. He has first instructed them in manly perseverance and endurance so opposite to the impetuosity of their natures. We could name the periods, and these too frequently occurring, when a damaged yard or topmast was a sufficient excuse for a good fortnight in port, and this with officers of acknowledged gallantry. What a contrast have we now! The hardy veteran deserves an Order of Merit to be invented on purpose for him.' Without detracting from the admiral's merits this is a little hard on some of Cornwallis's predecessors--on Hawke, for instance, who in the Seven Years' War blockaded Brest throughout 'one of the worst winters on record.' Says Horace Walpole, writing on the 14th of January 1760: 'What milksops the Marlboroughs and Turennes, the Blakes and the Van Tromps appear now, who whipped into winter quarters the moment their noses looked blue. There is Hawke in the Bay weathering _this_ winter, after conquering in a storm.']

[Footnote 89: The capture of Admiral Villeneuve's frigate the _Didon_, sent out on a mission of the highest importance, by the British frigate _Phoenix_, prevented Villeneuve's junction with another French fleet cruising in the Bay of Biscay. Hearing nothing of his colleague, Villeneuve, after leaving Ferrol, became nervous and turned south, instead of pushing on across the Bay for Brest as Napoleon expected him to do.]

[Footnote 90: Wrote Collingwood to his wife on the 21st of August: 'I have very little time to write to you, but must tell you what a squeeze we were like to have got yesterday. While we were cruising off the town, down came the combined fleet of thirty-three sail of men-of-war: we were only three poor things, with a frigate and a bomb, and drew off towards the Straits, not very ambitious, as you may suppose, to try our strength against such odds. They followed us as we retired, with sixteen large ships; but on our approaching the Straits they left us, and joined their friends in Cadiz, where they are fitting and replenishing their provisions. We, in our turn, followed them back, and to-day have been looking into Cadiz, where their fleet is now as thick as a wood' (_Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Collingwood_, by G.L. Newnham Collingwood, p. 109).]

[Footnote 91: Rear-Admiral Hercules Robinson's _Sea Drift_, p. 209.]

[Footnote 92: Narrative by Lieut. P. Harris Nicolas, Royal Marines, of the _Belleisle_, quoted in the _Memoir of Admiral Sir William Hargood, G.C.B._, Appendix E, p. 279.]

[Footnote 93: The 'Combined Fleet' was the everyday term in the Navy for the fleets of France and Spain while acting together. It was used also by the French and Spaniards themselves.]

[Footnote 94: Admiral Duncan at Camperdown, eight years before, attacked in a double column formation, but the circumstances otherwise were totally different.]

[Footnote 95: _Memoirs and Services of General Sir S.B. Ellis, K.C.B., of the Royal Marines_, p. 4. General Ellis was a second lieutenant of Marines in the _Ajax_ at Trafalgar.]

[Footnote 96: Letter from Lieut. W. Price Cumby, first lieutenant of the _Bellerophon_.]

[Footnote 97: _Personal Narrative of Events_, Vice-Admiral Wm. Stanhope Lovell (formerly Badcock), p. 45.]

[Footnote 98: James's _Naval History_, vol. iii. p. 391.]

[Footnote 99: Lieut. P. Harris Nicolas, Royal Marines, in the _Memoir of Admiral Sir William Hargood, G.C.B._, Appendix E, p. 279.]

[Footnote 100: Episodios Nacionales, par B. Perez Galdos. _Trafalgar_, p. 157. Octava edicion. Madrid, 1893.]

[Footnote 101: _Combat de Trafalgar. Rapport fait au Ministre de la Marine et des Colonies_, par E. Lucas, commandant le _Redoutable_, etc. Published by H. Letuaire. Hyeres, 1891.]

[Footnote 102: There were nearly 4000 French soldiers distributed among Admiral Villeneuve's fleet, mostly embarked for the West Indies when it originally sailed from Toulon.]

[Footnote 103: _Personal Narrative of Events_, Vice-Admiral Wm. Stanhope Lovell (formerly Badcock), pp. 46, 47.]

[Footnote 104: 'Les grenades pleuvent des hunes du _Redoutable_.'--_Monumens des Victoires et Conquetes des Francais_, vol. xvi. p. 174.]

[Footnote 105: A terrible account of the awful carnage and destruction caused on board the _Fougueux_ by the _Temeraire's_ broadside is given in a letter by Captain Pierre Servaux of the Marine Artillery on board the French ship, which was published in Paris in the _Figaro_ on the 21st of October 1898.]

[Footnote 106: 6th May 1806. _Biographie Maritime, etc._, par M. Hennequin, Chef de Bureau au Ministere de la Marine. Paris, 1837; vol. iii. p. 85. Captain Lucas was born in 1764, and died in 1819. Two pictures of 'The _Redoutable_ at Trafalgar' have been exhibited at the Salon.]

[Footnote 107: _Histoire de la Marine Francaise sous le Consulat et L'Empire_, par E. Chevalier, p. 214. See also _Monumens des Victoires et Conquetes des Francais_, vol. xvi.]

[Footnote 108: See Rear-Admiral Hercules Robinson's _Sea-Drift_, p. 208.]

[Footnote 109: _Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth_, by Edward Osler, Appendix A, p. 377.]

[Footnote 110: Vice-Admiral Alava in the _Santa Ana_, who had surrendered to Collingwood in the _Royal Sovereign_.]

[Footnote 111: Rear-Admiral Don B. Hidalgo Cisneros.]

[Footnote 112: Admiral Dumanoir, writing from Tiverton in Devon, where he was interned as a prisoner of war, to the _Times_ on January 2, 1806, in reply to certain adverse comments on his conduct, pleads that he was 'handled very severely' in his attack. Dumanoir and his ships were intercepted off Cape Finisterre, ten days after Trafalgar, and captured bodily by Sir Richard Strachan's squadron. One of his ships is afloat to this day, our only existing Trafalgar prize, and with the _Victory_ the last left of all that fought at Trafalgar--the Devonport training-ship _Implacable_. The _Implacable_ fought at Trafalgar as the _Duguay Trouin_. On being taken into the British service in 1806, the Admiralty gave the ship her present name.]

[Footnote 113: Marshall's _Naval Biography_, vol. i. part i. p. 275.]

[Footnote 114: Collingwood sent off his first short despatch announcing the battle and Nelson's death, by the _Pickle_, a 4-gun schooner, on the 26th of October. The completed despatch gave full details of the battle and the casualty lists from most of the ships.]

[Footnote 115: Vice-Admiral Pierre Charles Jean Baptiste Sylvestre de Villeneuve-Flayosc was born on December 31, 1763, five years after Nelson. He became _garde de la Marine_ at fifteen. At the Revolution he dropped the _particle nobiliaire_ from his name, and was thenceforward known simply as Villeneuve. Napoleon took a fancy to him after Villeneuve's escape from the battle of the Nile, as a 'lucky man,' and to that fancy Villeneuve owed his command at Trafalgar.]

[Footnote 116: Grand Master Helion de Villeneuve, Grand Master of Rhodes; buried at Malta: Sainte Roseleyne de Villeneuve, Abbess of La Celle Roubaud.]

[Footnote 117: _Gentleman's Magazine_, 'Domestic Occurrences,' September 16, 1838.]

[Footnote 118: See _Notes and Queries_, 7th Series, vol. vi. p. 371.]

[Footnote 119: Messrs. H. Castle and Sons, of the Baltic Wharf, Millbank, S.W., to whose courtesy the author is indebted for the photographs of the two figures here reproduced.]

[Footnote 120: Ruskin, _Notes on the Turner Collection_, pp. 81-82.]