Chapter V: The 'fighting' Temeraire (1)

WHERE, HOW, AND WHEN SHE MADE HER NAME

Heard ye the thunder of battle
Low in the south and afar?
Saw ye the flush of the death-cloud,
Crimson o'er Trafalgar?
Such another day never
England will look on again,
When the battle fought was the hottest,
And the hero of heroes was slain.

Francis Turner Palgrave.

In England's song for ever
She's the _Fighting Temeraire_.

Henry Newbolt.

Trafalgar was her day. It was at Trafalgar that the _Temeraire_ made her mark and won undying fame.

First of all--

She came to Nelson's aid,
The battle's brunt to bear,
And nobly sought to lead the van,
The Brave Old _Temeraire_.

Then she was 'the _Victory's_ companion in her closing strife,' as Mr. Ruskin has called the _Temeraire_, 'prevailing over the fatal vessel that had given Nelson death.'[79] That is one of the reasons why people remember the _Temeraire_. There is another--that all the world knows. To learn it one has only to visit the National Gallery. Turner's masterpiece has made the _Temeraire's_ name a household word all the world over. But, all the same, had Turner never painted his picture at all, even without the aid of Turner's magic brush, the _Temeraire_ must surely, for the part she took in the greatest sea-fight of history, have achieved for her name an immortal renown.

How Turner came to paint his 'Fighting _Temeraire_' is a story in itself. The famous picture came into being by the merest accident; as the outcome of a happy chance, as the result of a casual meeting with the old ship at a water-picnic on the Thames one autumn evening of the year 1838.[80] Turner, with Clarkson Stanfield and some friends, was boating off Greenwich marshes in Blackwall Reach when the old ship passed them, coming up the river from Sheerness to meet her destined end off Rotherhithe, where the shipbreaker Beatson's men were waiting for her. She had been sold out of the service some days before for L5530, barely the market value of the copper bolts that held her timbers together--just a twelfth of the prime cost of the ship's hull in labour and materials, or one-twentieth of the total value of the ship, gunned and equipped for sea. Forlorn enough, and a thing for pity, looked the grand old man-of-war as the Sheerness men had left her, her sails stripped from the yards, her tiers of ports without guns and closed down, her hull with its last coat of dockyard drab all rusty-looking and weather-stained, cast off and discarded, as it were a broken warrior being borne to a pauper's grave.

Emery Walker, sc.

'Turner saw the tug and ship just before entering Greenwich Reach, and when before rounding the Isle of Dogs she would be steering about South-South-East up Blackwall Reach, with the summer setting sun astern of her in the North-North-West.'--Mr. R.C. Leslie in the _Athenaeum_.]

Two tugs had the ship in tow, as contemporary accounts of the _Temeraire's_ arrival in the river relate, not one, as Turner has painted the memorable scene.[81] In Turner's picture the _Temeraire_ is shown passing the water-party before she rounded the Isle of Dogs, when heading south-south-east up Blackwall Reach, with the September sun setting astern of the ship to the north-west. 'There's a fine picture, Turner,' said Stanfield, pointing to the war-worn veteran of the sea as she stemmed her way past them, and Turner went home full of the idea to reproduce the scene on canvas, with touches of his own, to give the world a picture 'of all pictures of subjects not involving human pain,' says Mr. Ruskin, 'the most pathetic that ever was painted.'[82]

Now the sunset breezes shiver, _Temeraire! Temeraire!_ And she's fading down the river, _Temeraire! Temeraire!_ Now the sunset breezes shiver, And she's fading down the river, But in England's song for ever She's the _Fighting Temeraire_.[83]

The Fighting _Temeraire_ tugged to her last berth to be broken up,' was the title Turner gave his picture when he sent it in to the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1839. He added these lines, composed apparently by himself--

'The flag that braved the battle and the breeze
No longer owns her.'

The 'Fighting' _Temeraire_ was an Essex ship, built--nine-tenths of her--of oak cut in Hainault forest and sent across to Chatham dockyard, where the _Temeraire's_ keel was laid in July 1793.[84] Tuesday, the 11th of September 1798, was the day of her launch, 'a squally day with drenching rain.' She was a three-decker, a second-rate, 'a ninety-eight,' in the Navy parlance of the time, a ship carrying ninety-eight guns (32-pounders, 18's, and long 12's, with twelve carronades as well), throwing a broadside weight of metal at each discharge of 1336 lbs., very nearly twelve cwts.--three-fifths of a ton of solid cast iron. 'She is one of the finest ships that we have seen,' wrote an officer who inspected the _Temeraire_ on the stocks a little while before she was launched.

An Essex man captained the _Temeraire_ at Trafalgar, Eliab Harvey, of Rolls Park, Chigwell, Essex. He was a great-grandson of Eliab Harvey, brother of Dr. William Harvey the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, by whose side he now lies buried in the family vault under the Harvey Chapel in Hempstead Church, near Saffron Walden. All Essex, we are told, was represented at the funeral, or followed the coffin to its last resting-place. Captain Harvey, during the time that he commanded the _Temeraire_, had also a seat in Parliament for the county of Essex, in accordance with a political usage of those days which enabled officers on active service to represent constituencies at Westminster, although Ministers apparently did not always find it satisfactory. 'I don't like your M.P. Navy Captains,' said Castlereagh once; 'they are always off Cape Finisterre when they are wanted, and when they are sent for they say they don't like being "whistled up merely to give a vote."' Those who know their Marryat will remember the case of the Hon. Captain Delmar, M.P., of H.M.S. _Paragon_, a frigate in the Channel Squadron, 'which was never sea-going except in the Recess.' It was better though than this with the _Temeraire_, which Captain Harvey commissioned for the 'Western Squadron,' as in those days the Channel Fleet was generally called, at Plymouth, in November 1803, six months after the outbreak of the Great War with Napoleon.

Strange as it may seem to us, the _Temeraire's_ name at that moment had for most people an unpleasant ring about it. The shadow of a terrible tragedy rested just then over the name _Temeraire_. The public had not yet got over the shock with which, barely two years before, the whole country had learnt that the crew of one of the flagships of the Channel Fleet, while lying in Bantry Bay, had mutinied, and offered violence to their Admiral and officers, using ugly threats and proposing to point guns loaded with grape-shot to sweep the quarter-deck. Nor had people forgotten the grim sequel, the relentless severity of the retribution that fell on the ringleaders; how eleven of the _Temeraire's_ men had been hanged at the yard-arm, two flogged through the fleet at Spithead, receiving two hundred lashes each, seven sent to the hulks for life. The newspapers had been full of the terrible story, as related day by day in the evidence at the two courts-martial that sat at Portsmouth to try the mutineers. The trial lasted five days, and the report of it in the _Times_ of the 13th of January 1802 took up the whole paper, all but two columns. Nor had the following paragraph which appeared in the _Naval Chronicle_, done any good to the _Temeraire's_ reputation:--'Plymouth, October 7th, 1802; The seamen of the _Temeraire_ of 98-guns, Rear-Admiral Campbell, paid off, put on crape hat-bands round their straw hats in memory of the mutineers in that ship who were executed for the mutiny in Bantry Bay last year.' That unhappy episode in the ship's story was, however, as far as the _Temeraire_ herself was concerned, now past and done with. Now the _Temeraire_ had a new ship's company throughout; captain, officers, and men, with a future of their own before them.

Captain Harvey manned his ship to a large extent with Liverpool men, sent round from the Mersey by tender, and sailed from Cawsand Bay on the 11th of March 1804, to join Admiral Cornwallis off Brest.

It was perhaps the most critical period in our national history. On the heights above Boulogne lay Napoleon's Grand Army, 160,000 men, waiting for the French fleet to put to sea and secure its passage across the Straits of Dover.[85] The fate of England depended on the British Navy. There were twenty-one French line-of-battle ships in Brest, six others at Rochefort, and five sheltering in the Spanish port of Ferrol. At Brest, also, there were known to be upwards of 20,000 French soldiers; and another 20,000 under Augereau were under canvas at Rochefort, 'supposed against Ireland,' according to Admiral Cornwallis's instructions from the Admiralty. It was the business of the Channel Fleet to hold the enemy in check at all points from Ushant Island, off Brest, to Cape Finisterre, and prevent aid from elsewhere arriving to enable them to put to sea. At the same time, as his appointed part in the great strategic plan of campaign, Nelson off Toulon kept his tireless watch over the French Mediterranean Fleet. Thus the toils were set, the gambit was opened.

'They were dull, weary, eventless months,' says Captain Mahan in one of his most telling passages,[86] 'those months of watching and waiting of the big ships before the French arsenals. Purposeless they surely seemed to many, but they saved England. The world has never seen a more impressive demonstration of the influence of sea-power upon its history. Those far-distant storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world.'

It was Napoleon with all the resources of his Empire in its full vigour at his back, Napoleon at the zenith of his intellect and genius for war, Napoleon in the year before Austerlitz--baffled and held at arm's length by the British Navy. One has only to glance at the daily newspapers of 1804 to realise the superb self-confidence with which Great Britain braced herself to meet the threatening peril. The nation knew its strength and on what, under Providence, it relied; the nation knew it and the Navy knew it--as we too, after forgetting it for a time, have in these later years at length come again to recognise the vital root-fact of Great Britain's existence--

No track of men, no footsteps to and fro Lead to her gates. The path lies o'er the sea Invincible.

Six months of pitching and rolling in the dreary Bay of Biscay was the _Temeraire's_ lot at the outset, as one of Vice-Admiral Calder's squadron watching Rochefort. The most disliked of all billets perhaps was blockade duty off the Basque Roads, ever facing the dreary sand dunes of Aix and Oleron, stretching wearily along the featureless coast, there and back, between Sables d'Olonne and the mouth of the Gironde, buffeted week in week out by persistent gales and rough weather. All there was to do, practically, was now and again to stop some wretched neutral passing by--usually a Portuguese trading brig, or a Prussian galliot, for or from Bordeaux--and examine her papers; but for days together sometimes--

The Wind at the West or thereabout, Nothing gone in and nothing come out,

was all that went down in their logs, according to the refrain on the dull routine of their daily life of a gun-room ditty composed on board one of the ships blockading Rochefort. Every two or three months, as her turn came round, one or other of the ships would part company for a week or ten days and proceed to Cawsand Bay--communicating on the way with the fleet off Brest to take letters for England--to fill up her water-casks and take in fresh stores and provisions, overhaul spars and rigging, and then return bringing bullocks and bread and vegetables for the squadron. That was their only relaxation. In her turn, towards the end of May, the _Temeraire_ went in to Cawsand Bay, as the 'Plymouth Report' of the Naval Chronicle records.

_May 26._--Came in from the Channel Fleet, which she left all well, last Wednesday, the _Temeraire_ of 98 guns. The enemy as usual. Our frigates frequently go in to reconnoitre within a mile and a half of the outer-most ships, and within range of their shots and shells of which the enemy give them plenty but without damage.

In August, when Collingwood had relieved Calder, a closer watch on the enemy than before was maintained, owing to the prevalence of rumours that the French were on the point of putting to sea. Collingwood, we are told, frequently passed the night on the quarter-deck of his flagship, at intervals lying down on a gun-carriage to snatch a short sleep, 'from which Admiral Collingwood would rise from time to time to sweep the horizon with his night glass lest the enemy should escape in the dark.'[87] The French, though, remained quiet all the time. One or two of their ships would come out now and then and exercise at sail drill in Basque Roads, and they had a small sham fight once, but no attempt was made to run or force the blockade.

September saw the _Temeraire_ transferred from the Rochefort squadron to 'the Team' off Brest, as the big ship division of Cornwallis's main fleet was familiarly called in the Navy. There was more to do and see off Brest, perhaps, but the life there was no less hard and toilsome. The three-deckers cruised by themselves outside Ushant, patrolling night and day; keeping far out to seaward when the wind was from the west, and, as the standing order ran, 'well up with Ushant in an easterly wind.' Off Black Rocks, between Ushant and the mainland, cruised four or six two-deckers, the 'Inshore Squadron'; while close in, off the mouth of Brest Harbour itself, just out of gunshot of the shore batteries, watching every move in the French fleet as it lay at anchor in the roadstead, were frigates and cutters on the look-out. Every day they expected the enemy to leave port, but, as it had been off Rochefort, in vain.

Then the winter storms set in, hard gales continuously and squally weather. Twice during October severe storms from the south-west compelled Cornwallis to stand off the coast and bear up for Torbay: to lie there with the 'Blue Peter' at the fore, and not a soul allowed on shore, until at the first sign of the wind shifting anchors were weighed for Brest again. In November a rough north-easter drove part of the fleet off the station many leagues out into the Atlantic. The rest found shelter on the enemy's own coast, in Douarnenez Bay, less than twenty miles from Brest, and rode the storm out there. 'It is with great satisfaction,' says the _Times_ of the 16th of November 1804, 'we understand that our fleet off Brest, has withstood the violent gales which have of late prevailed, and continues to maintain that vigilant position, which, we trust, will effectually obstruct the designs of the enemy.'[88] December and the January of the New Year (1805) brought worse weather still, a succession of fierce gales--'it blows harder than ever we remember,' wrote the _Naval Chronicle's_ Portsmouth correspondent in January--that crippled half the fleet and forced Cornwallis to spend all February and half March repairing damages in Torbay. Seven of the big ships, leaking seriously, with hulls strained, gear swept overboard, masts sprung, spars carried away, had to go into dock at Plymouth, among them the _Temeraire_, whose repairs took two months to make good.

From a sketch by a British naval officer in the blockading squadron.

[The tents north of the harbour (to the reader's left) belong to Vandamme's Division of Marshal Soult's Army Corps (the 4th). Those to the south belong to an outlying brigade of Marshal Ney's Corps (the 6th). The camp inland is that of Suchet's and St. Hilaire's Divisions of Soult's Corps. Napoleon's headquarters were near Mont Lambert, the hill crowned by a signal station. In the centre of the sketch are seen the masts of the 'Invasion Flotilla' behind a breakwater mounting heavy guns.]]

She rejoined the flag off Brest in April, just as the startling news came to hand that the French Toulon Fleet had appeared off Cadiz, joined hands with the Spanish Fleet there and gone off westward. Their destination was unknown and there was no news of Lord Nelson. All that month of May the _Temeraire_ and her consorts off Brest held themselves ready to clear for action at the shortest notice, daily expecting the sails of Admiral Villeneuve's fleet to appear on the horizon to the south-west. As if awaiting Villeneuve's arrival, also, the whole of the Brest fleet had come out of harbour and was riding at single anchor, twenty-one sail of the line completely equipped for sea, under the cliff batteries of Bertheaume Bay. The British fleet off Brest for the moment could only muster seventeen sail. In England, meanwhile, the newspapers were full of accounts of how the Grand Army at Boulogne, now vauntingly styled _l'Armee d'Angleterre_, was duly holding embarkation and landing parades and drills on the sea-shore under the eyes of Soult and Ney. At the end of the month intelligence arrived that Villeneuve was in the West Indies, and that Nelson had gone in pursuit of him. June passed in waiting for information of Villeneuve's return to Europe, the Channel Fleet being continuously reinforced from England, which enabled Collingwood and a 'Special Service' squadron to be detached to keep guard off Cadiz and the Straits of Gibraltar. On the 11th of July came the news that Villeneuve had been sighted in Mid-Atlantic, homeward bound; after which, a fortnight later, came the further news that Admiral Calder had had an indecisive battle with the enemy off Cape Finisterre, and that Villeneuve had put into Ferrol. Calder himself rejoined Cornwallis a few days afterwards, and then Nelson came in with his fleet.

Cornwallis, from the ships now at his disposal, immediately made up a new fleet of eighteen sail of the line to blockade Villeneuve in Ferrol. It was placed under Calder's orders and sent off on the 16th of August. The _Temeraire_ sailed with Calder, and so the story of her service with the 'Western Squadron' ends.

Before they arrived off Ferrol they heard from a frigate that Villeneuve had left the port. He had put to sea as though intending to cross the Bay of Biscay direct to Brest, but when two days out, had suddenly, for some unfathomable reason of his own, gone about and stood southward. Whither he was bound could only be guessed, but Calder's orders were to follow the French wherever they might go, and he made for the Straits of Gibraltar under all sail.

Did he pass over a certain spot, some ninety miles north-west of Cape Finisterre, where a mass of frigate wreckage and splinters and jagged chips was floating about--like the ring of fluttered feathers that one sometimes sees at the corner of a wood on an autumn afternoon telling how a sparrow-hawk has passed that way? That flotsam off Finisterre, could it have spoken, would have told a tale; the story of the incident on which the campaign of Trafalgar hinged:--_why_ Admiral Villeneuve had gone south instead of north.[89]

Off Cadiz Calder found Collingwood with half a dozen ships, and learned that the French were refitting in that port. Collingwood had had the narrowest of narrow escapes of being cut off and overpowered by the enemy's sudden appearance off Cadiz,[90] but he had cleverly got out of their way in the nick of time, and was now 'observing' them, making believe by sham signals every day that he was in touch with a large British fleet in the offing. Collingwood as the senior officer took Calder under his orders, and the united forces continued to watch Cadiz until at the end of September Lord Nelson himself arrived from England to take the supreme command.

For three weeks, as we all know, Nelson kept watch and ward over the enemy in Cadiz, until on the morning of Saturday the 19th of October his look-out frigates off the mouth of Cadiz harbour at last made the longed-for signal that the combined fleet was coming out of port.

They began to come out between seven and eight o'clock on Saturday morning, and from that time until the two fleets were in presence of each other off Cape Trafalgar on Monday morning, every move the enemy made was signalled to Nelson, lying out of sight from Cadiz, off Cape St Mary, by flag signals passed along a chain of ships in the day-time, and with rockets and blue lights and the firing of guns at night. 'For two days,' writes Midshipman Hercules Robinson of the frigate _Euryalus_, Captain Blackwood's ship, in charge of the look-out squadron, 'there was not a movement that we did not communicate, till I thought that Blackwood, who gave the orders, and Bruce our signal mid, and Soper our signal man who executed them, must have died of it; and when we had brought the two fleets fairly together we took our place between the two lines of lights, as a cab might in Regent Street, the watch was called and Blackwood turned in quietly to wait for the morning.'[91] So close to the enemy did the _Euryalus_ keep all Sunday night that, in the words of one of the men on board (a marine named Pearce) in a letter home, 'their lights looked like a street well lighted up.'

Monday was Trafalgar Day. The enemy when first sighted from the British Fleet at daybreak were about eleven or twelve miles off, 'a forest of masts to leeward,' as one officer described them, standing along the coast towards the Straits of Gibraltar. Nelson at once headed eastward, straight for them:--'ere it was well light the signals were flying through the fleet to bear up and form the order of sailing in two columns.' Then, immediately after that, up went the flags 'Prepare for battle,' Signal No. 13, and in response throughout the fleet, the drums on board every ship at once struck up the stirring old war-beat of the Navy, 'Hearts of Oak'--

Come cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer, To add something more to this wonderful year.

By seven o'clock every ship in the fleet had been cleared for action and all were ready for the enemy. A quarter of an hour was sufficient to clear for action on board a smart ship in 'Eighteen hundred and War time,' as our grandfathers called the days when the 'Fighting' _Temeraire_ was at sea.

So admirably had Nelson organised his fleet and arranged things beforehand that three signals were all that he needed to make to set the day's work in train. At twenty minutes to seven the _Victory_ signalled--'Form the order of sailing in two columns.' Then, a moment later, up went 'No. 13,'--the fighting flags--two flags, the upper one comprising three horizontal bands, yellow, red, yellow; the lower, three vertical bands, blue, white, blue--'Prepare for battle.' Ten minutes later another signal went up--'Bear up and sail large on the course steered by the Admiral.' The whole fleet on that headed directly for the enemy under all sail. These three signals were all that were necessary for the tactics of the battle, and all that Nelson made. What other signals were made from the _Victory_ during the day, until after the fight had been won, dealt with subsidiary points and were merely incidental.

Here is the opening entry for the day in the _Temeraire's_ log. 'At daylight saw the enemy's fleet in the S.E. Cleared ship for action and made all sail. Light airs. Standing for the enemy.'

At eight o'clock all hands throughout the fleet were piped to breakfast. 'The officers,' we are told by one of them, 'now met at breakfast, and though each seemed to exult in the hope of a glorious termination to the contest so near at hand, a fearful presage was experienced that all would not again unite at that festive board.' More than one seemed 'particularly impressed with a persuasion that he would not survive the day.... The sound of the drum, however, soon put an end to our meditations; and, after a hasty, and, alas, a final farewell to some, we repaired to our respective posts.'[92]

All on board now went to quarters, to their stations for the battle; the cooks' fires were put out, and the magazines opened and powder sent up to the guns.

At nine o'clock the two fleets were about six miles apart. It was a gloriously fine morning, with the sky almost cloudless. A light breeze blew from the north-west, before which, with every sail set, the fleet bore down towards the enemy, the ships lifting on the swell as the long surging rollers from the ocean bore them forward.

At this point we may for one moment glance across at the enemy and see how they on their side have been faring. With the Combined Fleet,[93] as it happened, the situation was by no means promising. The coming event was already casting its shadow before. Things had already begun to shape themselves awkwardly. Admiral Villeneuve had found it advisable to go about, and the Combined Franco-Spanish Fleet was now standing northward, heading back towards Cadiz, and forming into line of battle as they went along. The sight of the British fleet that morning had been an unpleasant surprise for Admiral Villeneuve. His look-out ships on the previous evening had reported the British fleet to him as not more than eighteen sail of the line, and to leeward. There were now in sight,--he could see them with his own eyes--upwards of ten sail of the line, including several three-deckers, more than that. Also--what weighed even more with Admiral Villeneuve--they were to windward of him. That meant that a stronger force than Villeneuve cared to meet was within striking distance of him and had the weather gage. Whether he went on or whether he went back, he would have to fight. He had cast the die. He had crossed the Rubicon.

'Twas vain to seek retreat and vain to fear, Himself had challenged and the foe drew near.

As the best thing, if not indeed the only thing he could do in the circumstances, he decided to turn back and make for Cadiz. If he could not avoid a battle, he trusted to be able to get sufficiently near Cadiz to have the port open to him after the battle, for his damaged ships or as a place of general refuge should things go wrong.

With such thoughts in his mind, Villeneuve, just about the time that Nelson was sitting down to breakfast, issued orders for the Combined Fleet to go about, every ship independently, and form in line of battle on the port tack, with half a cable interval between ships. They were still in the middle of the manoeuvre at nine o'clock. It was not till after ten o'clock that anything approaching the line of battle as ordered had been formed, and then hardly half-a-dozen ships were in station. All the enemy's efforts, at the end of two hours, resulted in the formation of a crescent or bow-shaped array of ships, sagging in the centre away to leeward like a slack cord, with the ships distributed irregularly along its length, here in single file and with wide gaps between, there in two's and three's. As things turned out this malformation proved ideal for the occasion; but it was entirely by chance.

It has been said, indeed, that Admiral Villeneuve had already begun to anticipate defeat. As he took in the grouping and disposition of the British fleet, the double column of attack and how the leaders were pointing, there broke from his lips, we are told, an exclamation of blank dismay. Before a shot was fired Villeneuve had already admitted himself beaten. There was no precedent known to him for a battle formation such as Nelson was adopting.[94] There was nothing like it in Paul Hoste, nothing like it in the pages of De Morogues or Ramatuelle. No text-book could help him, and to improvise a new order of battle for himself on the spur of the moment was beyond Admiral Villeneuve's capacity. Practically he could only await events and meet an absolutely new form of attack, specially devised for the occasion by the greatest master of the art of naval war that ever lived, with an order of battle that was not new in the days of the Grand Monarque, with tactics such as Tourville had employed at La Hogue. It was like the Prussian General Ruechel at Jena opposing Napoleon with the tactics of Frederick at Kolin; attempting to foil Ney and Murat by giving the order 'Right shoulders up.'

There were on the Franco-Spanish side thirty-three ships (eighteen French and fifteen Spanish); in the British fleet twenty-seven. Nelson's plan of battle at the outset, as we shall presently see, reversed the odds and turned them into odds in his own favour, of twenty-seven against twenty-three. That is, the odds reckoned numerically, by counting ships. The average British ship of the line in 1805 could fire three broadsides while a French ship was firing two, which vastly increased the odds in Nelson's favour. The British fleet came on in two columns; one (Nelson's own) comprising twelve ships; the other (Collingwood's column) of fifteen. Nelson's plan of battle was for Collingwood to break the enemy's line at about a third of its length from the rear, and hold fast in close action the ships cut off. He himself, after that, would break through the remaining two-thirds of the Franco-Spanish line midway, and fall on the enemy's centre, joining hands with Collingwood. With the wind as it then was, a little to the north of west, the ten ships of the enemy's van squadron would be cut off by these tactics and thrust to leeward, out of the battle. They would have to work up round laboriously against the wind before they could get to the aid of their consorts, a business that must take a considerable time. Meanwhile the whole force of the British fleet would have been brought to bear on two-thirds of the enemy with, as Nelson confidently trusted, decisive results.

Throughout the British fleet the men were in the highest spirits, eager and ready for the fray, and at the same time cool and confident. 'As we neared the French fleet,' an officer in the _Ajax_ relates,[95] 'I was sent below with orders, and was much struck with the preparations made by the bluejackets, the majority of whom were stripped to the waist; a handkerchief was tightly bound round their heads and over the ears, to deaden the noise of the cannon, many men being deaf for days after an action. The men were variously occupied; some were sharpening their cutlasses, others polishing the guns, as though an inspection were about to take place instead of a mortal combat, whilst three or four, as if in mere bravado, were dancing a horn-pipe; but all seemed deeply anxious to come to close quarters with the enemy. Occasionally they would look out of the ports, and speculate as to the various ships of the enemy, many of which had been on former occasions engaged by our vessels.' Elsewhere, we are told, the men kept pointing out various ships in the Franco-Spanish line, as seen through the open ports, and calling to one another, 'What a fine sight them ships will make at Spithead!' Particularly keen was every man that his ship should if possible get alongside the huge Spanish four-decker which all could see, near the centre of the enemy's fleet, the _Santisima Trinidad_. On board the _Bellerophon_, one of Collingwood's leading ships, the men at quarters on the main deck chalked '_Billy Ruff'n_, Victory or Death' on their guns.[96]

How keen was the rivalry among the ships at the head of Nelson's line, as the morning advanced, is shown by two incidents in which the _Neptune_--a 98-gun three-decker like the _Temeraire_, the ship next in the line to her--and the _Temeraire_ herself, both figured.

The _Temeraire_ had the post of honour in Nelson's line, that of 'second,' or chief supporter to the _Victory_, but the _Neptune_ had gradually drawn up level with her. Not content with that, the _Neptune_ began to edge past the _Temeraire_, until, forging ahead, she had come up alongside the flagship herself. Indeed, it appeared as though she was ambitious of passing ahead of the _Victory_, and leading Nelson into the battle. The Admiral himself stopped her. Nelson at the moment that the _Neptune_ began to draw up level with the _Victory_, happened to be in the stern gallery leading out of his cabin, observing how the rear ships of the fleet were coming on. He saw what was taking place, and at once hailed the _Neptune_. '_Neptune_ there,' he called out in a sharp, rasping tone, 'take in your stu'ns'ls and drop astarn. I shall break the line myself!'[97] The _Neptune_ had to comply forthwith, and on her falling back the _Temeraire_ pushed up and resumed her allotted berth as the ship next to the _Victory_.

Then came the incident that specially concerned the _Temeraire_. A little time after the _Neptune_ had resumed her station the _Temeraire_ was herself hailed from the _Victory_ and ordered to pass the flagship and lead the line. Captain Blackwood of the _Euryalus_, who with the other frigate captains was on board the flagship, in his anxiety for Nelson's personal safety that day, on having his first suggestion that Nelson should direct the battle from on board the _Euryalus_ set aside by the admiral, next suggested that the _Temeraire_ should be allowed to lead the _Victory_ into battle, to help in drawing off some of the enemy's fire. The enemy's fire, urged Blackwood, would be certain to fall with exceptional severity on the leader of the line, particularly when the leading ship was so easily recognisable a vessel as the British flagship. Nelson assented--or seemed to assent. 'Oh yes,' the admiral answered, with a significant smile and giving a look towards Captain Hardy, 'let her go ahead--if she _can_!' Blackwood went aft and himself hailed the _Temeraire_ to move up, and she was also signalled to do so.

The hail was heard. Blackwood had a voice about which a number of good stories used to be told in the Navy. 'It could,' one of his officers once said, 'carry half a mile.'

At once the _Temeraire_ made every effort to press forward. She was, as the sailors said, 'flying light' that day; having been away from port for some time she was carrying less dead-weight than usual, most of her sea-stores and heavy casks of beef and water having been used up. Fast sailer as the _Victory_ was--she was admittedly the fastest three-decker in all the Royal Navy--the _Temeraire_ before long began to close on the flagship and overlap her, by degrees working up closer to the _Victory_, and finally racing her side by side, almost abreast. It was a grand moment for Captain Harvey and his gallant _Temeraires_. But the goal was not yet won.

Nelson's mood had yet to be taken into account, and Nelson was in no humour to see his flagship passed. No ship in the world should give the _Victory_ a lead on the day of battle. As the _Temeraire_ sheered alongside, the admiral stepped up briskly to the _Victory's_ poop and from there hailed across in a curt tone to the quarter-deck of the _Temeraire_. Speaking with a strong nasal twang, in his Norfolk accent, as we are told, he called over: 'I'll thank you, Captain Harvey, to keep your proper station, which is _astarn_ of the _Victory_!'

The _Temeraire_ had to drop back, exactly as the _Neptune_ had previously had to do, and content herself with following in the _Victory's_ wake. She closed up astern and kept so near that her jib-boom, in Captain Harvey's own words, 'almost touched the stern of the _Victory_.'[98]

The same spirit of eager anxiety to get early into battle prevailed everywhere, coupled with the utmost friendliness and good-comradeship. The _Tonnant_, the second ship in Collingwood's line, was ordered in the course of the morning to give up the place of honour to the faster _Belleisle_. As the _Belleisle_ was passing her. Captain Tyler of the _Tonnant_ on a carronade slide and called across to the other captain (Hargood): 'A glorious day for old England: we shall have one a-piece before night!' A moment later the _Tonnant's_ band, by way of greeting to the _Belleisle_, began to play 'Britons Strike Home.'[99]

Such was the spirit in which Nelson's Captains went into battle at Trafalgar as the hour for the opening of the fight drew on.

There is, as it happens, no note in the _Temeraire's_ log of Nelson's famous signal, 'England expects that every man will do his duty'; but it is on record that it was received by Signal Midshipman Eaton, who acknowledged it to the _Victory_. We know from Captain Blackwood, who was with the Admiral at the time, how it was received by all the ships near by with 'a shout of answering acclamation,' and the _Temeraire_ was the nearest ship of all to the _Victory_ at that moment. After the battle the _Temeraire's_ officers had the words engraved on a brass plate which was let into the quarter-deck in front of the steering wheel, where it remained till the ship came to her end.

* * * * *

At noon, almost to the minute, the first shot was fired--by the enemy. It came from a French ship lying nearly opposite the head of Collingwood's line, the _Fougueux_. It was aimed at the _Royal Sovereign_--to try the range. The shot went home, and at once other French and Spanish ships near by took up the firing. The _Royal Sovereign_ was about 400 yards off at the moment, about three-quarters gunshot.

At the same time the enemy all along their line hoisted their colours, the Spaniards in addition hanging up large wooden crosses at their gaffs. Why they did so has never been explained. Some of the Spanish captains had held special religious services on board their ships at an earlier hour that morning,[100] but it is not known that that had any connection with the display of the crosses.

A midshipman fired the first shot on the British side at Trafalgar--by accident. It came from the _Bellerophon_. To the surprise of the whole fleet, as they were nearing the enemy a spurt of smoke flew out from the side of the _Bellerophon_ followed by the boom of a single gun. It was, according to the _Spartiate's_ log--the _Bellerophon_ herself does not record it--just as Nelson's great message was going up. On board every other ship they were holding their hands: the officers of the batteries had orders to wait until their ship was in the act of passing through the enemy. A boy midshipman of the _Bellerophon_ tripped, or caught his foot, in the loose end of a gun-lock lanyard and let off one of the ship's 32-pounders. His name is not on record, nor what they did to him. The shot had the unfortunate effect of drawing the enemy's attention specially to the _Bellerophon_, and as they got the ship's range a little later they turned their guns on her and pounded at her heavily, under the impression that the gun had been meant as a signal, and that some officer of distinction was on board that particular ship.

Collingwood opened the battle on the British side and first of all broke the enemy's line at Trafalgar, as all the world knows. All the world knows also how he did it. The _Royal Sovereign's_ first broadside, as she broke through immediately astern of the Spanish flagship _Santa Ana_, struck down 400 men and dismounted fourteen guns. 'Il rompait todos,' it smashed down everything--as a Spanish officer on board the _Santa Ana_ afterwards wrote. 'What sheep,'--asked in broken English the Spanish officer who came on board Collingwood's flagship on the surrender of the _Santa Ana_ to give up his sword on behalf of the wounded Vice-Admiral Alava,--'What sheep is dis?' He was told. '_Royal Sovereign!_' the Spaniard exclaimed, 'Madre de Dios! she should be named de _Royal Devil_!'

The ships immediately facing Nelson as he advanced began their firing a few minutes after the others, the _Victory_ and _Temeraire_ and the leading ships of that column being farther off from the enemy. The _Bucentaure_, an 80-gun ship, on board which Admiral Villeneuve was, led off here.

Of the opening scene on the enemy's side at that point, we have a vivid narrative from a French officer--Captain Lucas of the _Redoutable_, a ship destined to fill a large part in the _Temeraire's_ story.[101] 'At half-past eleven,' says Captain Lucas,--giving the time, as it would appear, according to his own watch, which was slow,--'the fleet hoisted its colours, and those of the _Redoutable_ were done in an imposing manner, the drums and fifes playing, and the soldiers[102] presenting arms as the flag was hoisted. The enemy's column, which was directed against our fleet, was now on the port side, and the flagship _Bucentaure_ began firing. I ordered a number of the chief gunners to mount to the forecastle and told them to notice how many of our ships fired badly. They found that all their shots carried too low. I then ordered them to aim at dismasting, and above all to aim well. At a quarter to twelve the _Redoutable_ opened fire with a shot from the first gun-division which cut through the foretopsail yard of the _Victory_, causing it to lie over the foremast, whilst shouts of joy resounded all over the ship.'

Lord Nelson held his fire. No notice was taken of the firing of the French and Spaniards, except that, in response to the enemy's opening shots, the whole British fleet simultaneously hoisted their colours. Nelson showed a Vice-Admiral of the White's flag at the fore in the _Victory_; Collingwood the flag of a Vice-Admiral of the Blue at the fore in the _Royal Sovereign_; Lord Northesk, the third in command, a Rear-Admiral of the White's flag at the mizen of the _Britannia_. All the ships in both divisions displayed the White Ensign at the peak, and, by Nelson's particular order, to ensure that there should be no firing into friends in the smoke and confusion of battle, and in case colours got shot away, every ship flew at least two other British flags besides their ensigns: Jacks or Union flags, one on the foretopmast stay and one on the main-topmast stay. Some ships showed more; the _Victory_, for instance, flew five British flags; the _Orion_ flew (including her ensign) four.

A young officer of the _Neptune_, the ship next astern to the _Temeraire_, Midshipman Badcock, thus describes what things were like near him about this time. 'Lord Nelson's van was strong: three three-deckers--_Victory_, _Temeraire_, _Neptune_--and four seventy-fours, their jib-booms nearly over the others' taffrails, the bands playing "God Save the King," "Rule, Britannia," and "Britons Strike Home"; the crews stationed on the forecastle of the different ships, cheering the ship ahead of them when the enemy began to fire, sent those feelings to our hearts that ensured victory.'[103] 'The _Temeraire_ at this moment,' Captain Harvey himself says, in a letter to his wife after the battle, 'almost touched the stern of the _Victory_, which station she had taken about a quarter of an hour previous to the enemy having commenced their fire upon the _Victory_.'

The _Temeraire's_ log thus describes the opening of the battle:--

P.M. Variable light winds. Running down with lower topmast and topgallant studding sails set, on the larboard side, within a ship's length of the _Victory_, steering for the fourteenth ship of the enemy's line from the van. Quarter past noon, cut away the studding sails and hauled to the wind. At 18 minutes past noon the enemy began to fire. At 25 minutes past noon the _Victory_ opened her fire. Immediately put our helm a-port to steer clear of the _Victory_, and opened our fire on the _Santisima Trinidad_ and two ships ahead of her, when the action became general.

Nelson broke through immediately astern of the French _Bucentaure_, the ship on board which he had himself made up his mind, from her position, Villeneuve would most likely be found. For some unknown reason the French admiral's flag was not flying that day. Nelson, however, as they advanced, had kept the _Victory's_ bowsprit pointing for the _Santisima Trinidad_. Something instinctively told him that he should find the enemy's Commander-in-Chief on board one of the two ships immediately astern of the big Spanish four-decker, probably in the ship next astern. He was right. Villeneuve was on board that ship; the next astern to the _Santisima Trinidad_, the _Bucentaure_.

As the _Victory_ steered through the enemy's line the _Temeraire_ put her helm over to port and drew out from her leader's wake. She had to find a passage through the enemy for herself. It was not easy. Immediately ahead of her the French _Redoutable_, a seventy-four, the ship following the _Bucentaure_, barred the way. The _Temeraire_ for some little time drifted along slowly. She had received serious damage aloft to sails and rigging during the previous half-hour as she and the _Victory_ were nearing the enemy under fire, and the breeze was dropping lighter every minute. She opened a brisk cannonade on the _Redoutable_ and on the French _Neptune_, a large 80-gun ship that came next astern of her.

The _Redoutable's_ fire shot away the head of the _Temeraire's_ mizen-topmast. She held on, however, standing to the south-east and outside the enemy's line, until at length she bore up to avoid being raked by the _Neptune_ and to go through the line. There was scarcely any wind at all now, and the smoke hung heavily all round. Slowly the _Temeraire_ forged her way ahead, groping her course forward in some little uncertainty as to her own whereabouts. As she passed through the line, she unavoidably gave a chance to the French _Neptune_, which ship, getting her port broadside to bear on the _Temeraire's_ starboard bow, attacked her fiercely. The _Neptune_ shot away the _Temeraire's_ main-topmast and foreyard, and crippled the foremast and bowsprit, besides causing other damage which rendered the _Temeraire_ almost unmanageable. In the dense smoke all round her officers hardly knew for the moment where they had got to. 'We were engaged with the _Santisima Trinidad_ and the other ships,' wrote Captain Harvey in his letter home, 'when for a minute or two I ceased my fire, fearing I might, from the thickness of the smoke, be firing into the _Victory_.'

Then for a brief space there was a rift in the smoke. It showed the _Victory_ alongside a French two-decker (the _Redoutable_), and foul of her. The two ships were seen not far off and were drifting down directly on to the _Temeraire_. Every effort was made to move out of the way and keep clear, but in her disabled state it was impossible to get the _Temeraire_ under control. Within the past few minutes, under the _Neptune's_ punishing fire, all three of the _Temeraire's_ topmasts had been shot away, her mizen yard had come down, the rudder head had been smashed off. All that could be done was to cannonade the _Redoutable_ as she gradually drifted nearer until the actual collision came.

That took place just as Captain Lucas was about to make an attempt to board the _Victory_. His musketry from the tops seemed to have almost cleared the _Victory's_ upper decks of men, and, mad as was the idea of so settling with a British first-rate, and Lord Nelson's flagship to boot, the captain of the _Redoutable_ actually entertained it. A sweeping _mitraille_ of grape from the 68-pounder carronade on the _Victory's_ forecastle, fired into the thick of the French boarders as they crowded on the gangways from below, did not daunt him, and he still persevered after the first rush had been checked by the impossibility of getting across the space between the bulwarks of the two ships. That difficulty Captain Lucas saw his way to meet. 'I gave the order,' he says, 'to cut the supports of the main yard and to cause it to serve as a bridge. Midshipman Yon and four seamen sprang on board by means of the anchor of the _Victory_, and we observed that there was no one left in the batteries. At that moment, when our men were hastening to follow, the ship _Temeraire_, which had noticed that the _Victory_ fought no longer, and that she would be captured without fail, came full sail on our starboard side, and we were subjected to the full fire of her artillery.'

It proved for the _Redoutable_, in the language of the prize-ring, a 'knock-out' blow. As the _Temeraire_ came into collision with the _Redoutable_ she fired her entire broadside, double-shotted, full into the French boarding-parties as they stood massed thickly and packed along the _Redoutable's_ upper decks from end to end. It meant instant annihilation. It was a massacre. The awful tornado of the _Temeraire's_ fire swept the _Redoutable's_ crowded decks clear of men, as a garden broom sweeps a path clear of autumn leaves. It struck down everything. At one blow it hurled into eternity nearly a third of the _Redoutable's_ whole crew. Midshipman Yon, we are told, disappeared, and was never seen again. Lieutenant Dupotet, at the head of the boarders, was struck down, mangled and dying. Captain Lucas himself received an ugly flesh wound--his first after seeing service in nine battles.

Speaking of the _Temeraire's_ onslaught Captain Lucas in his official report says: 'It is impossible to describe the carnage produced by the murderous broadside of this ship; more than 200 of our brave men were killed or wounded; I was wounded also at the same time, but not sufficiently to prevent me staying at my post.'

(From the Portrait in Hennequin's _Biographie Maritime_)]

The gallant captain of the _Redoutable_ stayed at his post. He set his teeth and refused to admit that his ship had received her _coup de grace_. In spite of his awful losses the gallant fellow still tried to make a show of fight. 'I ordered the rest of the crew to place themselves promptly in the batteries and fire at the _Temeraire_ the guns that her fire had not dismounted. This order was carried out.' At the same time the _Redoutable_ met the _Temeraire_, as she swung alongside, with a hail of bullets from the tops that almost cleared the upper deck of Captain Harvey's ship, while the topmen also flung down hand grenades and fire-balls. The _Redoutable's_ topmen, indeed, flung the fire-balls about with criminal recklessness.[104] They endangered their own ship. Some of the fire-balls falling short rebounded back on board the _Redoutable_ and set the French ship herself on fire. One fell blazing on board the _Temeraire_ and caused a fire below that nearly led to a catastrophe which threatened to involve _Temeraire_, _Redoutable_, and _Victory_ alike in one common destruction. The pluck and presence of mind of the _Temeraire's_ master-at-arms, Mr. John Toohig, saved the after-magazine, and with it the ship. The fire-ball, as it was, caused a serious explosion and loss of life on the main deck. At the same time the _Temeraire_ was set ablaze elsewhere, on the upper deck, by a fire that had been caused on board the _Redoutable_ by one of her own fire-balls falling short, and had spread across to the _Temeraire_, and also to the _Victory_ on the other side, but the flames in all three ships were fortunately got under before they had time to take serious hold.

The _Temeraire's_ captain very soon had something else to think of besides the _Redoutable_. Hardly had the _Redoutable_ been lashed fast alongside than another enemy came on the scene, and one that was apparently approaching with the fixed intention of attacking the _Temeraire_ at close quarters. The French _Neptune_ was at the same time remaining near by, barely a ship's length off, firing her hardest into the _Temeraire_.

The newcomer was the French _Fougueux_, the ship that had fired the first shot in the battle. She had already had a rough time of it elsewhere, but she was still full of fight, and with nearly 700 men on board, was likely to prove a dangerous foe to a ship situated as was the _Temeraire_ at that moment. The _Fougueux_ had been _matelot d'arriere_, or 'second astern' to the Spanish flagship _Santa Ana_, just as the _Redoutable_ had been the _Bucentaure's_ second. In that capacity she had experienced some hard knocks at Collingwood's hands, and then, after a brisk exchange of fire with the British _Belleisle_, as that ship followed Collingwood into the fight, she had had a sharp set-to with the _Mars_. Through all this the _Fougueux_ had not come unscathed, but she was still a very formidable opponent for the _Temeraire_ to tackle.