Nelson (120 page)

But then something unusual happened. Not far from the end of the British line one of the ships began to wear out of formation. Ignoring the admiral’s signals to tack in succession, her bow turned to larboard and came round to face in the opposite direction. Soon the ship was underway again, steering to leeward of the oncoming
Diadem
and then swinging once more to larboard and cutting through the British line ahead of the trailing
Excellent
. To the astonishment of many observers the errant warship then struck out boldly for the Spanish fleet.

That ship sailing into history was the seventy-four-gun
Captain
flying the broad pendant of Commodore Horatio Nelson.

Nelson had been reading the battle closely, taking the
Captain
a little to windward of the line of battle to get a better view. Through his telescope he swept left and right. To larboard he saw Moreno mounting his ultimately unsuccessful attack on the British centre from leeward, while to starboard Cordoba was trying to bear up against the rear. It flashed through his mind that the two movements, one on either side of the British line, were related.
¹²

He could see, too, Troubridge’s
Culloden
and the other ships of the British van striving to reach the rear of the Spanish windward division, a force that greatly outnumbered them, but doubted they would come up in time to frustrate Cordoba’s manoeuvre. Something had to be done. If Cordoba escaped, or even reunited his divisions to leeward, everything Jervis had done would stand for nought.

Nelson knew that the redundant British rear needed to support their van, and that could not be done trailing uselessly southwest to tack in succession. It was necessary to abandon the line and directly engage Cordoba’s division as it struggled to bear up. But breaking the discipline of the line was no light matter. It breached the prevailing fighting instructions, which forbade captains in black and white to quit the line of battle without authorisation. Even more, disobeying the specific orders of a commander-in-chief in the midst of combat flouted the
instincts of a service in which discipline was essential to survival. It risked the gravest personal consequences. Failures or disasters were liable to produce scapegoats, and none were more vulnerable than disobedient officers.

It is not surprising that even in the Mediterranean fleet, stuffed with fine captains, few were willing to stick their necks out in the presence of a superior. Close readers of this book will find examples of captains, good captains such as Fremantle and Troubridge, declining to exercise initiative without specific licence. At the battle of Cape St Vincent, even after Nelson’s audacious manoeuvre, not one fellow officer in the British rear followed him – not Thompson, Waldegrave, Towry, Whitshed or Collingwood. Indeed, some fifty minutes after Nelson wore to support the embattled van, Jervis had to fly signal eighty-five to encourage the remainder of his rear.

Supreme self-confidence, a willingness to accept responsibility, opportunism and sheer fighting spirit were hallmarks of Nelson, however. He prided himself on what he called ‘political courage’, and repeatedly acted on it, even in contravention of the orders of superiors. He had disobeyed Hughes in the West Indies, Hotham off the riviera, and even Jervis himself. The previous summer, when Nelson had been blockading Leghorn, Jervis had recalled the
Captain
to the fleet, ordering the commodore to transfer to a smaller ship so that he could remain on the station. Smelling a battle, Nelson had brought the
Captain
into the fleet personally, putting himself in the way of an impending battle but overturning his commander-in-chief’s plan to keep him off Leghorn. Later he had also taken Capraia without the specific orders of his superior.

Yet though Nelson’s decision to wear out of line was bold, it has to be seen within the context of his close relationship with Admiral Jervis. When it came to fighting the two men beat to the same heart. Both hungered for victory, and if Nelson acted against the strict letter of Jervis’s orders he most assuredly remained within their spirit. He explained later that the admiral was ‘too much involved in smoke to perceive of facilitating the victory which ensued’. In other words, a commander-in-chief could not be everywhere, and needed like-minded subordinates prepared to exercise initiative in order to achieve the intended result.
¹³

Nelson was probably also conversant, as many historians have not been, with Jervis’s general ideas about fleet tactics. In about 1796 the admiral had issued a set of ‘secret instructions’ relating to battle
manoeuvres, illustrated by seven diagrams. The circumstances they considered were not, of course, likely to be precisely replicated in a real battle, but at least they primed the admiral’s captains for the type of manoeuvres he would want to make. For example, they prepared the captains of leading ships to power through an enemy line to cut off its van, and then to tack in succession to envelop the isolated ships. What is more, this plan also involved an independent manoeuvre on the part of the British rear, which, it was suggested, might break the line and wear its ships directly to enter the battle. If Nelson was familiar with these instructions, he would have known that the admiral was by no means insensible of the value of rearmost ships occasionally wearing out of line to support an embattled van.
¹⁴

Nelson’s manoeuvre was, therefore, indubitably the result of insight, courage and initiative, but it was made by an officer who knew Jervis’s mind, and had a pretty good idea of what the admiral would have been doing with a fuller knowledge of the battle. It was the perfect union of commander and subordinate: the first inspiring and informing, and the second understanding, interpreting and acting to complete what had been begun.

And so a little before one o’clock on 14 February 1797 Commodore Nelson told Miller to wear out of the line of battle and switch to the larboard tack. Passing to leeward of the
Diadem
they crossed the bows of Collingwood’s
Excellent
and made straight for the Spanish fleet. Disregarding the danger of enemy broadsides Nelson struck the rear of their fleet at an oblique angle. Although his targets were among the rearmost of Cordoba’s ships, they were also the furthest to leeward, and would have been destined to lead their admiral’s attempt to double the end of the British line. No less important, Nelson focused his attack upon the command centre of the Spanish fleet. Crossing the hawses of some of the Spaniards he pitted his seventy-four against the enemy flagship itself, the massive
Santissima Trinidad
.
¹⁵

Watching in amazement from the
Lively
frigate at the rear of the British fleet, Colonel Drinkwater thought the duel a ‘preposterous’ mismatch. Nelson’s ‘gigantic’ adversary, her vivid yellow sides streaked in black as if to warn of danger, was one of the largest ships afloat. She was planked between the quarterdeck and forecastle to give her an additional gun platform, and carried no fewer than one hundred and thirty cannons firing eight-, eighteen-, twenty-four- and thirty-six-pound Spanish shot. Her double-headed shot for tearing down rigging weighed up to fifty English pounds. ‘Such a ship . . . I never saw
before,’ gasped Collingwood. Not only that but as Nelson opened a heavy fire on the fearsome four-decker he simultaneously engaged two 112-gun three-deckers (apparently the
Salvador del Mundo
and the
Mexicana
) ahead and astern of the flagship, and took occasional fire from two or three other battleships. Captain Miller had drilled the gun crews of the
Captain
daily, attending many of the exercises himself, and the
Santissima Trinidad
was poorly designed and her guns ill served, but Nelson was hopelessly under strength. Fortunately, at about the same time that Nelson manoeuvred into position Troubridge reached the tail end of the Spanish fleet with the
Culloden
, and piled into the fight astern of the
Captain
.
¹⁶

Their attack ‘staggered’ Cordoba and forced his ships to haul their wind to larboard, abandoning their plan to envelop the British rear. According to Miller ‘the whole van of the Spanish fleet’ was deflected by the
Captain
and
Culloden
. ‘We turned them . . . like two dogs turning a flock of sheep,’ he said. Others agreed. ‘The highest honours are due to you, my dear friend, and
Culloden
,’ Collingwood wrote to Nelson. ‘You formed the plan of attack. We were only accessories to the Dons’ ruin, for had they got on the other tack they would have been sooner joined, and the business less complete.’ In time even
Culloden
’s sterling contribution was forgotten. Had Nelson not joined the assault, remembered a midshipman of the
Britannia
, ‘we should probably not have taken a single ship’.
¹⁷

Soon the other leading ships were also reopening fire, the
Blenheim
,
Prince George
and
Orion
, though with diminishing available sea room. Action was occasionally interrupted as one ship or another backed topsails to hold back or filled its sails to move forward again. Nelson battered the hull and rigging of the Spanish flagship, reducing its fire, but his own sails and ropes were being cut to pieces. At about two o’clock, after some forty minutes of carnage, Troubridge nobly interposed his ship between the
Captain
and the Spanish vessels to give the battered seventy-four a temporary respite. For ten minutes Nelson’s guns fell silent, while his men furiously spliced and repaired damaged rigging, hauled more shot to the guns and carried broken bodies below. Then the
Captain
’s mizzen topsail filled, she resumed the lead from behind the
Culloden
and reopened her murderous fire. The efficiency of the British guns was telling cruelly, torturing the big Spaniards with shot after shot into the vitals, but physical exhaustion and the sheer durability of the opponents were draining. By two-thirty the sails and rigging of the
Captain
and
Culloden
were wasted
and their decks littered with wreckage from aloft. Troubridge hailed Captain Frederick of the
Blenheim
, inviting him forward while
Culloden
completed essential repairs. Eagerly the
Blenheim
slipped inside both the leading ships, briefly shielding them from shot as she took the advanced position.
¹⁸

But the Spaniards were suffering much more grievously. The
Santissima Trinidad
struggled ahead, slugging it out with the
Blenheim
, but the crippled
Salvador del Mundo
and
San Ysidro
both dropped astern, where fresh British warships fell upon them like a pod of hungry grampuses. Nelson’s battered
Captain
found herself engaging ‘different’ foes, the eighty-gun
San Nicolas
, and another of the large three-deckers, the
San Josef
of 112 guns, bearing the flag of a rear admiral, Francisco Winthuysen.
¹⁹

The
Captain
was more heavily armed than historians have realised. In addition to her nine-, eighteen- and thirty-two-pounders she now carried one or two sixty-eight-pound carronades, but both of her new opponents were markedly superior in the weight of metal fired. The smaller of the two, the
San Nicolas
, mounted eighty guns, and apart from eighteen-pounders pitted a battery of Spanish thirty-sixes against Nelson’s smaller thirty-twos. Despite her disadvantages, though, the
Captain
’s gunnery skills more than compensated. Young Oliver Davis told his parents that the Spaniards would ‘certainly’ have sunk the British ship ‘if they [had] activated their guns as they might, but the rogues did not know how’. Nelson pummelled the hulls of both adversaries, bringing yards crashing down on the
San Nicolas
and shooting away part of the
San Josef
’s main topmast and mizzen. The three-decker had already taken a drubbing from the
Blenheim
, and was also receiving fire from the
Prince George
, which had run up astern of the
Captain
. Almost blanketed in smoke she fell to windward, behind the
San Nicolas
.
²⁰

At three or after help came from Collingwood’s seventy-four-gun
Excellent
. Signalled into the melee by the commander-in-chief, she passed between the
Salvador del Mundo
and the
San Ysidro
at the rear of the Spanish fleet, mutilating them with brutal broadsides. Both ships, being hammered by more than one opponent, struck their colours, but Collingwood moved on towards Nelson’s duel with the
San Nicolas
and
San Josef
. He was probably responding to Jervis’s signal number sixty-six, which urged ships forward, but Nelson took it to be an independent act of brotherhood. Instead of taking possession of the prizes, Nelson wrote, Collingwood ‘most gallantly pushed
up to save his old friend and messmate, who was to appearance in a critical state’.
²¹

The
Excellent
’s sails, masts and rigging were already scarred by enemy fire, but her intervention was dramatic. Hauling up his mainsail astern of the
Captain
, Collingwood ran to windward between Nelson’s ship and the
San Nicolas
. As he did so, a ruthless rippling broadside from his larboard guns smashed through the Spanish ship at point-blank range. ‘You could not put a bodkin between us,’ said Collingwood, and some of the shot, he thought, exited the
San Nicolas
on the other side and ploughed into the adjacent
San Josef
. For a moment the
San Nicolas
was silenced by that vicious ship-smashing broadside, while her men desperately slaved to clear wreckage, but after the
Excellent
pressed forward towards the
Santissima Trinidad
, she bravely began to fire again. As the
Captain
luffed across her stern to renew the fight and the
Prince George
worked around towards her bows, the cornered and battered two-decker pluckily fought on.
²²