Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Trafalgar

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Things went no better elsewhere for the allies. Rear Admiral Pierre R.M.E. Dumanoir de Pelley, commanding the cut-off van of 12 ships, was still out of the fight, struggling to reverse course in a contrary breeze, and had to plod perhaps five miles to aid his compatriots.

Bucentaure, briefly hammered by half a dozen British ships as they passed, suffered considerable losses before HMS Conqueror approached to do serious battle. From 100 feet or so, the two ships traded broadsides, their gunners screaming, noses gushing blood form the repeated concussive blasts, their ears deafened — many permanently — from the crashing salvoes. According to one of Conqueror’s officers, not only was the British gunnery twice as rapid as that of the French, but ‘every shot flew winged with death.’ Sailors, almost maddened by the grisly cacophony and coated with sweat and black powder dust, sprinted through wreaths of smoke like demons, swabbing red-hot gun barrels to avoid ‘cooking off,’ or exploding when the next powder charge was inserted, toting powder and ball, dragging away the wounded and throwing the dead overboard. The scene was truly hellish. Within 15 minutes Villeneuve’s flagship was both dismasted and gutted, with 209 men — one-third of its crew — down. With tears in his eyes, the admiral permitted the ship’s captain to strike the colors at about the same time as Santissima Trinidad’s surrender. A tribute to Conqueror’s gunners can be seen in that ship’s casualty list: three killed, nine wounded.

Spanish Admiral Gravina’s flagship, Principe de Asturias, traded half a dozen broadsides with the almost equally powerful HMS Dreadnaught, the admiral himself dying early in the clash. Rear Admiral Antonio Escano took over Principe de Asturias, which fought back with unusual efficiency — Dreadnaught, starting to take significant damage while not seeming to inflict any, abandoned the fight to tackle the weaker, already damaged San Juan Nepomuceno, whose Captain Come Churruca was soon directing the fight with a gloomy calm in spite of one leg being all but severed by a cannon ball. When Churucca finally surrendered his battered command at about 2:30, almost half his men and most of his guns were out of action. He did not live to greet the British prize crew.

As the melee continued, some ships, such as Neptune or Principe de Asturias, avoided protracted shootouts in favor of roaming about and sending a few broadsides at targets of opportunity. By 3 p.m. Dumanoir was approaching the fight with his as yet unbloodied van, which included his flagship Formidable and Macdonnel’s powerful Rayo. By then, however, the issue had largely been decided, with the majority of the other allied ships disabled or captured.

Mars, skitterring around the edges of the melee and firing whenever the smoke parted to reveal an enemy, eventually fetched up on Fougueux, which put several broadsides precisely on target before it surrendered. Among Mars‘ 98 casualties was its captain, George Duff, decapitated by a French cannon ball.

Bahama, an ably served Spanish ship, absorbed punishment from a number of passing British vessels, after which it gamely tackled HMS Bellerophon in a close-range shootout. It should not have; in a mere 20 minutes the British ship virtually shredded Bahama, killing or wounded in more than 400 of the crew and forcing its surrender. The hitherto-nearly untouched Bellerophon took 152 casualties in those minutes, its Captain John Cooke being among the 27 dead.

While Bahama was disintegrating, Dumanoir’s first ships entered the fray. Since much of the allied fleet was out of action by that time, there were many lightly damaged British ships unemployed and Dumanoir ran into the buzzsaw. In short order he lost Neptuno and San Agustin took massed British fire and soon after that, Intrepide was battered, settling and raising the white flag.

Still the battle alternately flickered and raged. The British Colossus traded fire with Formidable and several other allied vessels, suffering some 200 casualties but taking no prizes. The French Achille settled down to slug it out with Revenge at close rang. As the battle wound down, those two ships were locked within the smoke of their own batteries. Achille, taking the worst of it, soon had a fire blazing on its sail-littered decks. The fire spread along the deck and into the rigging, feeding upon the fallen sails and igniting the powder sacks laid by each gun. As the blaze spread, scattering the gun crews, HMS Defiance also came up to batter Achille. Burning splinters took the flames below, ever closer to the main powder magazine. Long after the battle was over Achille, drifting and burning brightly, literally blew apart in a majestic explosion. The only ship actually sunk at Trafalgar, it took with it all but a dazed handful of its 650-man crew.

By 4:15 or so, only sporadic firing — most of it directed at Achille — was to be heard. Dumanoir had broken off the action to save his remaining ships. Rayo, probably the only ship at Trafalgar that failed to fire a single gun, slipped away from the fight with only a few casualties caused by stray British shot. San Justo followed with even fewer losses. Almost as unscathed were San Francisco de Asis, Scipion, which suffered no casualties, Formidable, with 65 men down, Mont Blanc, Héros and Duguay Trouin. Of the rest of the allied fleet, only stout Principe de Asturias, Montanez, San Leandro, Neptuno, Indomitable, Pluton and Argonaute, some badly mauled, got away under their own flags.

Victory’s logbook recorded: ‘Partial firing continued until 4:40, when a Victory having been reported to the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Nelson, [Knight of the Bath] and Commander-in-Chief, he then died of his wound.’

The fleeing French and Spanish left behind them some 6,000 seamen killed and captured, the detritus of sad Achille and 17 of their damaged ships as prizes. That Britannia would now rule the waves was clear to all — she was to do so for more than a century. Nelson, who had innovated so daringly and successfully before at the Battle of the Nile, at Copenhagen, had done so again. And in winning so spectacular a Victory at Trafalgar, he had changed naval tactics forever. The days of parallel lines trading broadsides in rarely decisive slugfests were over.

With no rivals left upon the seas, Britain could and did act accordingly. In 1806, it invaded and took South Africa’s Cape Colony from the Dutch. Britain briefly held Buenos Aires and Montevideo in Spanish South America. Two years later, with confidence born of overwhelming sea power, Britain landed an army in Portugal under General Arthur Wellesley — the future Duke of Wellington — and began the famous Peninsular Campaign that, with Portuguese and later Spanish help, would bleed Napoleon’s army white.

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

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