Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Trafalgar — Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson Did His Duty

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A clear blue sky and a light wind from the west-northwest greeted the officers and sailors of the two wooden sailing fleets who eyed each other warily 20 miles from the cliffs of Cape Trafalgar in southern Spain. It was the morning of October 21, 1805. The scattered rainsqualls that swept through the previous night had vanished by sunrise and would not disrupt the historic sea battle that would soon unfold. Despite the calm weather, however, experienced sailors in both fleets knew that the heavy swells the ships rode foretold the approach of a gale within a day.

Two days before, on October 19, the Franco-Spanish Combined Fleet, commanded by Vice Adm. Pierre Charles Jean-Baptiste Sylvestre Villeneuve, had raised anchor and inched its way out of the great harbor of Cadiz. Emperor Napoleon had ordered the fleet to ferry 4,000 soldiers to Naples, to capture any ships or convoys of the Third Coalition it found in the region. The wind was so still that only seven of the 33 ships of the line managed to clear the harbor. It was not until the following day that Villeneuve was able to get his flagship, the 80-gun Bucentaure, and the rest of the fleet into the open ocean. Once under sail, the fleet set a course southeast for the Strait of Gibraltar.

The British squadron responsible for the blockade of Cadiz, under Vice Adm. Horatio Viscount Nelson, stalked its prey closely. By dawn on October 21, Nelson had closed to within nine miles of his adversary. In his place of command aboard the 100-gun flagship Victory, Nelson signaled his 27 ships of the line to form two columns, one behind Victory and the other behind the 100-gun Royal Sovereign, flagship of Vice Adm. Cuthbert Collingwood, and to prepare for battle.

Upon receiving the order, the British crews sprang to action. They tore down the partitions that formed officers’ quarters around the aft guns, stowed mess tables and stools, and stuffed hammocks into nettings above the bulwarks to protect those on the upper deck. They also distributed fuses, powder charges and cannonballs to those manning the guns. The French and Spanish gun decks were already cleared for action. Knowing Nelson’s reputation as a fighter, Villeneuve had ordered his fleet to prepare for battle as soon as it was at sea.

Nelson stood with Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy on Victory’s poop deck. He wore a threadbare frockcoat, embroidered on the left breast with the stars of the four knighthoods that had been bestowed upon him during his lengthy naval career. He had been blinded in his right eye in Corsica in 1794 and had lost his right arm storming Tenerife in the Canary Islands in 1797. He may have been physically handicapped by the wounds, but his mental faculties were as sharp as ever.

Nelson, together with his fellow countrymen, longed for the destruction of the Franco-Spanish fleet. Such a knockout blow, they believed, would put a finish to Napoleon’s dream of global domination. To this end, Nelson planned a two-pronged attack that went against conventional tactics, which usually called for two fleets sailing in line opposite each other and trading broadsides. Nelson’s ships would keep the weather gauge — that is, stay upwind of the Combined Fleet. When the Combined Fleet was sighted, the British would bear down on it in two columns, with one column punching through the enemy’s center and the other column smashing through its rear. As the British ships broke through the Franco-Spanish line, they would engage their enemies from the leeward, or downwind, side. That would separate the main body of the Combined Fleet from its vanguard and allow the British to attain superiority in numbers. The plan, put down on paper October 8 in a document known as the Trafalgar memorandum, was dubbed ‘The Nelson Touch.’

Judging that his fleet would be unable to make it to the Strait of Gibraltar before Nelson fell upon his rear, Villeneuve signaled his ships at 7:30 a.m. to return to Cadiz. By 10 the Combined Fleet had reversed direction and was bracing for the British attack. In an effort to overtake the Combined Fleet before it could regain Cadiz, the British hoisted auxiliary sails.

Nelson would lead the 12 ships of the British weather column, while Collingwood aboard Royal Sovereign would lead the 15 ships that formed the British lee column. Nelson directed Victory to steer toward the 12th ship from the Combined Fleet’s front, which turned out to be Bucentaure, and Royal Sovereign, which was positioned a mile and a half off Victory’s starboard beam, headed for the 16th ship from the enemy’s front. In the final moments before the battle began, Nelson sent a signal to the fleet: ‘England expects that every man will do his duty.’ As each captain passed the message along to his crew, it was greeted with cheers.

Nelson’s plan was full of risk. As the two British columns bore down on the Combined Fleet, the bows, masts and rigging of lead ships in each column would be exposed to enemy broadsides, with no chance to return fire until they began to pass through gaps in the enemy line. The admirals and captains of the Combined Fleet were confident that they could break up Nelson’s attack by dismasting the British ships before they could break through the line. The British had one decisive advantage over the Combined Fleet, however. British gun crews could fire at least two or three times as fast as either the French or Spanish. Thus, if Nelson’s bold plan of attack succeeded and the British could isolate parts of the Combined Fleet and outnumber it, then the British gunnery might administer a mortal blow to Napoleon’s principal fleet.

As Victory advanced, Nelson realized to his dismay that the Combined Fleet was not in one orderly line as he had expected. Instead, it was in clumps of three or four ships, with no gaps through which his column could pass. Shortly before noon, the 74-gun French Fougueux fired a full broadside from 1,000 yards at Royal Sovereign. Collingwood ordered men on all three decks to lie flat, but the shells fell short, doing no damage. The vice admiral had ordered the ships in his division to follow Royal Sovereign into battle on his starboard side. The ships fanned out and began to advance abreast rather than in column. Royal Sovereign was greeted by broadsides from Fougueux, the 80-gun French Indomitable and the 74-gun Spanish Monarca. Once within range, Royal Sovereign was largely dismasted as it steered toward a gap between the Spanish 112-gun Santa Ana and Fougueux.

Victory received a similar reception. As soon as Nelson’s flagship closed to within 1,000 yards, it was fired on by the 74-gun French Héros, Bucentaure and the gigantic 140-gun Spanish Santisima Trinidad. The solid shot toppled Victory’s mizzen topmast, tore off its studding sails, cut the tiller ropes and broke the ship’s wheel. Victory’s advance was much slower than Nelson would have liked, but he exercised no control over the capricious winds that were barely blowing. As Nelson and Hardy strode the quarterdeck, a cannonball passed between them. Each man looked at the other to see if his friend had been injured, but neither had. Nelson said, ‘This is too warm work, Hardy, to last long.’

Napoleon had tried with varying degrees of determination to get a French army across the English Channel for an eight-year period between 1797 and 1805. At Boulogne the French emperor managed to assemble about 2,000 boats to carry nearly 112,000 of his best troops across, but the various parts of his fleet were bottled up by blockading British squadrons in the French ports of Brest, Rochefort and Toulon.

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Tags: 19th Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, Napoleonic Wars

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