Nelson (119 page)

Only gradually did the full extent of the enemy fleet appear. At nine the man at the masthead of Jervis’s flagship, the
Victory
, counted thirty-one sail, twenty of them ships of the line. If true, the Spaniards outnumbered the British, but even that report actually understated the enemy’s capital ships. As reports from
La Minerve
and
Bonne Citoyenne
came in the number of enemy ships climbed – eight, twenty, and (at ten-forty-nine in the morning, when the Spanish fleet was
becoming clearly visible) twenty-five ships of the line. Moreover, it became clear that they included some very big warships indeed, looming ‘like Beachy Head in a fog’. Their flagship was the world’s only four-decked battleship, the awesome
Santissima Trinidad
of one hundred and thirty or more guns, and she was supported by no fewer than six three-deckers of 112 guns each, every one of them larger than the most powerful of Jervis’s ships, the hundred-gun
Victory
. ‘By my soul, they are thumpers!’ called the signal lieutenant of the
Barfleur
. But for all their apparent power the Spanish ships were in obvious disorder. Crossing ahead of the British line, they had broken into two divisions. The leading but smaller group was to leeward and consisted of two ships of the line and four or more merchantmen, but Cordoba and his main force lagged six or seven miles behind and to windward of the advancing British line. Though their numbers were great they ‘looked a complete forest huddled together’, and some rode two or three abreast with their broadsides neutralised. The Spanish commander-in-chief was signalling feverishly to get them into line but ‘they seemed confusion worse confounded’.
⁴

Jervis saw an opportunity and made his most important contribution to the oncoming battle. The Spanish fleet was superior in numbers, and the armed merchantmen in the leeward division made it seem even larger than it really was. Confronted with such a force some admirals might have blanched at combat, but not Jervis. About eleven in the morning signal thirty-one flew from the
Victory
. The fleet was ordered to form a single line of battle ahead or astern of the flagship as each captain found convenient, and to steer a course south-southwest to intercept the main body of the Spanish fleet some four miles away. They were going to attack. The British ships had already been preparing for battle, clearing partitions and furniture for the gun crews and flinging impedimenta overboard, strewing the sea with casks, supplies and struggling livestock. At eleven-twenty they ran up their colours.

Nelson’s happy moment had come.

The wind was light but there was no sea, and the fifteen British ships of the line were soon in formation, sliding through the lifting haze under topgallants at a speed of some five knots. The
Captain
’s position was towards the rear of the line, third from the end at number thirteen. Immediately ahead were the ninety-eight-gun
Barfleur
carrying the flag of Vice Admiral William Waldegrave, and the ninety-gun
Namur
captained by James Hawkins Whitshed, while astern came
the last two ships of the British line, the
Diadem
sixty-four under the durable Towry and the
Excellent
seventy-four with Cuthbert Collingwood. But as Nelson fell into his place he most envied the ships at the other end of the line, nearest the enemy. Leading the fleet into the fight were the
Culloden
seventy-four under the enterprising Troubridge, Captain Frederick’s ninety-gun
Blenheim
and the ninety-eight-gun
Prince George
flying the flag of Admiral Parker.
⁵

Jervis was presented with an obvious opportunity to divide the Spanish ships, and steered straight for the gap between the leeward and windward divisions of the enemy fleet. The more they saw, the greater the British grew in confidence. Their adversaries clearly suffered from a gross want of experience and skill. Cordoba’s fleet was thousands of hands short, even after the enlistment of a thousand soldiers, and the proportion of practised seamen aboard was distressingly small. The flagship itself was said to have had fewer than eighty skilled sailors in a complement of nine hundred, with the balance consisting of soldiers, landsmen and short-term levies. Such deficiencies showed. The master of the British
Prince George
was unable to discern ‘any plan’ in the Spanish movements, ‘nor did it appear . . . there was sufficient skill or discipline to execute any orders their commander might have given’. When firing began the qualitative difference between the two fleets was confirmed. One British observer felt that Jervis’s fire was ‘superior in the proportion of five or six to one’, while Cordoba himself marvelled at ‘the rapidity and accuracy with which the English handle their guns’.
⁶

While the British advanced the Spanish leeward division continued to bear away southeasterly. It was, in fact, more important than Jervis supposed, because it included several plodding merchantmen laden with mercury, an essential ingredient for the fusion of the precious metals Spain shipped from the Americas. Cordoba’s main force to windward was down to twenty ships of the line, but when the British wedge began to push in front of them, he tried to swing them northwesterly onto the larboard tack. Thus his rear division would pass along the starboard side of the British fleet, steering in the opposite direction, and exchange broadsides with it at a range of a thousand yards or less. Though the Spanish commander-in-chief kept the advantage of the wind, his manoeuvre created immense confusion among his unpractised crews. Three of the Spanish ships, the
Principe d’Asturias
, flying the flag of Teniente General Joaquin Moreno, the
Regla
and the
Oriente
, sheered off towards the leeward division, while
the remaining seventeen only completed the turn in ragged groups rather than a respectable line of battle.

Nevertheless, it was entirely satisfactory to Commodore Nelson as he hungrily paced the quarterdeck of the
Captain
towards the rear of the British line. At last the battle was coming his way. Cordoba’s wind-ward division was heading towards him on the opposite tack, even though the further it proceeded the more it veered to the northwest and increased the gun range between the opposing fleets.

But the advantage still lay with Troubridge at the head of the British line. He took the
Culloden
into the gap between the two Spanish divisions, double-shotting the guns on both his larboard and starboard sides to fire at both. As soon as the signal to engage went up on the
Victory
, Troubridge opened a disciplined and deadly fire. His starboard guns savaged the Spaniards of the windward division as they passed on their new course, and one by one the other British ships followed suit, spitting fire and shot in succession, their timbers shaking with the thunder, and their decks enveloped in thick black clouds of stinking powder smoke.
⁷

The Spaniards replied, but feebly. One of their officers admitted that it was ‘impossible . . . to persuade any of the crew to go aloft to repair the injured rigging. Threats and punishment were equally ineffectual . . . The panic-struck wretches, when called upon to go aloft, fell immediately on their knees, and in that posture cried out that they preferred being sacrificed on the spot to performing a duty in the execution of which they considered death as inevitable.’ Nevertheless, not every Spanish shot fell harmlessly into the sea. The
Colossus
was reduced to relative impotence when her foresail and fore topsail yards were shot away and her fore topmast mangled.
⁸

At about noon it was the turn of the
Captain
, as a large Spanish three-decker approached her on the opposite tack. Nelson’s guns blazed at the enemy ships for forty or fifty minutes until the last of them had passed, giving far more than she received. Yet for him it was an insubstantial repast, and he fumed in dismay as the Spanish ships receded in one direction while the rear of the British fleet proceeded doggedly in the other.

At this point Jervis had kept the Spanish fleet divided, but it remained to be seen if he could turn an advantage into a victory. The crucial stage of the battle of Cape St Vincent was only just beginning to unfold.

At about the time Nelson began firing at the rear of the British
line, action was subsiding in the van as the last of the Spanish ships passed the
Culloden
. It was now necessary for the British ships to turn in pursuit of the Spaniards, but not until 12.08 did Jervis fly signal eighty, ordering his capital ships to tack in succession as they reached the head of the line. Troubridge did so smartly. Anticipating the signal, he was already putting the
Culloden
about and turning after the retreating Spaniards on the larboard tack as the signal flags ran up on the
Victory
. In due course the
Blenheim
,
Prince George
and
Orion
followed suit, turning in the wake of the
Culloden
as they reached the front of the line, but so sprightly did Troubridge swing towards his prey that a gap of half a mile opened between his and the following ship.

Sir John Jervis, commanding from the quarterdeck of the
Victory
in the centre of the British line, was absorbed by the considerable dangers ahead of him. Cordoba’s windward division had been deflected northwesterly onto the larboard tack, but to the British left there still remained the Spanish leeward division, now reinforced and commanded by Admiral Moreno. There was every chance it would beat back to rejoin the main body under Cordoba, either by weathering the head of the British line or even cutting through it. In fact, within a quarter of an hour of Jervis signalling his ships to tack in succession Moreno did lead a spirited assault on the British centre from leeward, trying to break through in front of the
Victory
. For several minutes the Spaniards tried to carve a passage through the tightly bunched British ships, facing a ferocious fire from the
Colossus
,
Irresistible
,
Victory
,
Egmont
and
Goliath
with terrific courage, but finally they were forced to recoil and bear away to southward under a press of sail.
⁹

Probably Jervis delayed ordering his van to tack after Cordoba until 12.08 because he anticipated the attack from leeward, or perhaps he was far clearer about what was happening in front of him than behind. The
Victory
was, after all, blanketed in black powder smoke, spurted to starboard in the firing and blown back across the British line by the westerly wind. According to one of the many unsupported stories spawned by this renowned combat Sir John went up to his poop deck to get a clearer view of the action. While there he was spattered by the blood and brains of a man slain at his side by a round shot, but he grimly wiped the gore from his face before resolutely stumping back to the quarterdeck to resume control of the battle.
¹⁰

However, that control was beginning to unravel as the heart of the
battle moved northwest towards the rear of the British fleet. Coming a few minutes after noon Jervis’s order to his ships to tack at the head of the line did not give them sufficient time to turn, chase and engage the flying Spaniards of the windward division. The rear of the British line was to starboard of Cordoba’s flying ships, but its ships were under orders to continue southwest in an orderly queue, away from the Spaniards, until each reached the turning point and could tack in succession to join the pursuit.

Sir John did not miss the problem and tried to speed matters up. At about twelve-fifty, with his leading ships already in pursuit of the enemy, he repeated the signal to tack in succession for those still waiting to turn, but this time directed the movement to begin with the
Britannia
under Vice Admiral Sir Charles Thompson, the sixth ship from the rear. A minute later signal forty-one also ran to the flagship’s masthead, instructing the ships to ‘take suitable stations and engage as [you] arrive up in succession’. The commander-in-chief was obviously trying to do two things: he was creating a new turning point closer to the rear of his line to get it into action more rapidly, and he was granting ships that had tacked and caught up with the enemy the freedom to choose the best positions to engage.
¹¹

But even this failed to meet the emergency that was developing. Had Jervis’s rear division strictly responded it would still have wasted precious minutes proceeding in the wrong direction before tacking at the new turning place. As it was it did not even do that. For some reason the officers on the
Britannia
missed the commander-in-chief’s signal, and failed to tack. The ship merely carried on as before, in obedience to previous instructions, and those behind followed meekly in her wake, completely frustrating Sir John’s new intentions.

After so fair a beginning the prospects of victory were dissolving. Continuing southwest, the rearmost British ships of the line opened the expanse of sea behind them to Cordoba’s retreating windward division. Nor were the Spaniards blind to their emerging advantage. Noting also that the last British ship of the line – Collingwood’s
Excellent
– was lagging, Cordoba saw an opportunity to work around the British rear, or perhaps to slice it between the last two capital ships. If he succeeded he could either rejoin his leeward division or escape to Cadiz with the westerly breeze at his back, leaving Jervis with nothing more than a spirited but indecisive exchange of broadsides to his credit.

Many of Cordoba’s ships were still milling in abject confusion, but
some responded to the commander-in-chief’s signals and began to bear up to close with the British rear. With the Spaniards breaking for freedom, the head of the British line trailing astern and the British rear still obligingly creating sea room for their enemies to the north, Sir John’s chances of victory were paling.