The next British ship to join the action, Mars, came under fire from both Santa Ana and Pluton. Mars traded broadsides with Pluton for about 20 minutes. The latter got the upper hand, ending up on Mars‘ starboard quarter, from where it pounded the British ship unmercifully. About that time, Fougueux also turned its attention to Mars. Now under fire from three ships, Mars was in a tight spot. While trying to pinpoint the positions of the enemy ships from the quarterdeck, its captain was decapitated by a cannonball fired from Fougueux.

The arrival of the 80-gun British Tonnant at about 1 p.m. turned the tide in favor of the British. First Tonnant silenced Monarca with a several effective broadsides. Next it turned its attention to Algesiras, the 74-gun flagship of French Rear Adm. Charles Magon. Like Redoutable’s Captain Lucas, Magon also believed boarding was the way to capture an enemy vessel. While Tonnant was firing double shot at the French ship, Algesiras collided with it amidships. Immediately Tonnant’s carronades, which were packed with grapeshot and musket balls, swept Algesiras‘ upper deck, resulting in heavy casualties. During an hour-long battle, the crew of each ship attempted to board the other. Finally 60 of Tonnant’s crew, armed with cutlasses, pikes and tomahawks, scrambled aboard Algesiras and captured it. The boarders found Admiral Magon at the foot of the poop ladder, dead from a bullet in the chest.

Collingwood’s squadron had attacked the Franco-Spanish rear in four separate groups, cutting it in three places. Royal Sovereign led the first group, while the 74-gun Bellerophon led the second. The attack of the second group initially seemed promising, but quickly deteriorated. As Bellerophon passed through the Franco-Spanish line it reeled from the broadsides of five enemy ships. When Bellerophon rammed the 74-gun French Aigle, the crew attempted to subdue the British by firing muskets and tossing grenades from the ship’s tops. Through a freak accident, a grenade thrown through a port exploded in Bellerophon’s storeroom, blowing open its door and, fortunately for its crew, blowing shut the magazine door. When the 74-gun Defiance came to Bellerophon’s assistance, Aigle struck its colors.

The third and fourth groups focused on the front and rear of the squadron of observation, led by Gravina aboard Principe de Austurias. The most significant action in this sector occurred when the 98-gun Prince engaged Gravina’s flagship, nearly forcing the Spanish ship to surrender. It was saved, however, when the 74-gun Spanish San Justo and Neptune came to its rescue.

The plight of the Franco-Spanish center and rear might have been alleviated if Rear Adm. Dumanoir, who was commanding the Combined Fleet’s vanguard when Nelson struck, had turned the van around in the opening stage of the battle. He ignored two signals from Villeneuve to come to the assistance of the main body of the fleet. The first signal was made shortly after noon at the outset of the engagement, while the second was given an hour later, at about 1 p.m. Dumanoir had seven ships under his command as well as two ships that had been leading Villeneuve’s division, Héros and San Augustin, and one ship, Intrepide, that had been unable to get into position at the start of the battle. No longer able to ignore the fleet’s desperate plight after two hours, Dumanoir ordered his ships to turn around.

The 74-gun French Intrepide and 74-gun Spanish San Augustin were the only two ships to head for the thick of the battle, trying to assist Bucentaure and Santisima Trinidad, respectively. Hardy, aboard Victory, spotted the movement and signaled for all available British ships to meet the threat. As it bore down on Bucentaure, Intrepide was shredded by cannon fire from seven ships of the line that had responded to Hardy’s signal. Intrepide, however, did not easily succumb to the British gunnery. Under the skillful command of Captain Edward Codrington, Orion took up a position on Intrepide’s starboard quarter from where his ship could inflict heavy damage and avoid return fire. After a two-hour fight, Intrepide struck its colors at 5:30 p.m.

San Augustin met a similar fate. Its advance was checked by the 74-gun British Leviathan under Captain Henry Bayntun. When the two ships became entangled, Bayntun ordered Leviathan’s carronades to sweep the Spanish ship’s upper deck to prepare it for boarding. On the third try, Leviathan’s crew managed to board and capture the Spanish ship.

After he was shot, Nelson was carried by a sergeant major and two seaman from the quarterdeck down to the orlop deck. Dr. Beatty, the ship’s surgeon, instructed them to place the admiral on a bed of spare sails and old canvas. In the dim candlelight, the doctor probed Nelson’s chest wound. Finding no exit hole in his back, Beatty concluded the bullet had lodged in his spine. For nearly three hours, Beatty and the others present attempted to keep the admiral informed of the battle’s progress and as comfortable as possible. During a visit from Hardy at 4 p.m., Nelson said, ‘Thank God, I have done my duty.’ Thirty minutes later he was dead.

The battle was drawing to a close as Nelson breathed his last. Franco-Spanish ships not already captured by the British either surrendered or managed to escape to the north or south. Bucentaure struck its colors around 4:30 p.m., and Santisima Trinidad did the same a few minutes later. Although mortally wounded, Gravina led 11 ships to Cadiz, while Dumanoir led four ships south. A total of 17 ships, eight French and nine Spanish, surrendered to the British. The explosion of the French 74-gun Achille, which had caught fire, marked the end of hostilities at 5:30 p.m.

Assuming command of the British fleet upon Nelson’s death, Collingwood ordered the prizes taken into tow and the fleet to sail for Gibraltar. The following day a terrific storm with gale-force winds that would last six days engulfed the fleet. Collingwood signaled the fleet to destroy or disable the ships under tow and concentrate on saving the ships with masts. The captured ships were either sunk, burned or run aground. The British ships that survived the battle intact all arrived safely in Gibraltar.

British casualties in the Battle of Trafalgar totaled about 450 men killed and about 1,240 wounded, while the French suffered about 3,650 killed and wounded and the Spanish 2,000 killed and wounded. Nelson was not the only flag officer among the casualties — half of the admirals in the Combined Fleet were either killed outright or later died of battle wounds. Alava, Gravina and Magon died, while Dumanoir and Villeneuve survived.

It is said that Nelson and nature destroyed Napoleon’s fleet. The storm following the battle served as a metaphor for the emperor’s ruined ambitions. Napoleon’s dreams of invading Britain and controlling the high seas were shattered by British naval fire during the battle and by the treacherous shoals of Cape Trafalgar thereafter.

Preserved in a cask of brandy, Nelson’s body was taken home to England, where he was buried with full honors in a coffin made from the wood of Orient, a French ship of the line destroyed in an earlier key Nelson victory, the Battle of the Nile. Villeneuve was held as a prisoner of war by the British for six months. He died under suspicious circumstances shortly after his return to France in 1806. Napoleon claimed he committed suicide to avoid court-martial, but the half-dozen knife wounds in his body made it more likely that Napoleon had arranged his’suicide’ as retribution for his failure to defeat the British.

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This article was written by William E. Welsh and originally published in the October 2005 issue of Military History magazine.

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