The sun was going down when the French flagship surrendered. The captured "César," set on fire by her crew, was blazing from stem to stern. The other prizes had been secured. Rodney attempted no pursuit of the scattered French ships that were sailing away to the southward and the north-westward. Enough had been done, he said. It was now his business to refit his fleet and take it to Jamaica. He had shattered the French power in the West Indian seas and made himself the master of the field of operations. A younger and more vigorous man would have perhaps marked down Vaudreuil's or Bougainville's fugitive divisions for utter destruction. But Rodney was content with the solid success he had obtained.
The losses of the French fleet had been very heavy. In their crowded decks the English fire had effected something like a massacre. On board the "Ville de Paris" more men had been killed and wounded than in the whole English fleet. Very few officers and men had escaped some kind of wound. Many of the ships that had got away were now very shorthanded, with leaking hulls, and spars and rigging badly cut up.
The effect of the victory was to enable England to obtain much better terms in the treaty that was signed next year. A disastrous war was closed by a brilliant success. But England owed to it more than this temporary advantage. It was a new beginning, the opening event of the period of splendid triumphs on the sea on the reputation of which we are still living. To quote the words of Rodney's latest biographer,[16] "it marked the beginning of that fierce and headlong yet well-calculated style of sea-fighting which led to Trafalgar, and made England undisputed mistress of the sea."
a three-decker of nelson's time
CHAPTER IX
TRAFALGAR
1805