Famous Sea Fights, from Salamis to Tsu-Shima

by A. Hilliard Atteridge

The closing years of the eighteenth century and the opening years of the nineteenth represent the most splendid period in the annals of the British Navy. Howe destroyed the French fleet in the Atlantic on "the glorious First of June, 1794," Nelson died in the midst of his greatest victory off Cape Trafalgar on 21 October, 1805. Little more than eleven years separated the two dates, and this brief period was crowded with triumphs for Britain on the sea. The "First of June," St. Vincent, Camperdown, the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar are the great names in the roll of victory; but "the meteor flag of England" flew victorious in a hundred fights on all the seas of the world.

Men who were officers young in the service on the day when Rodney broke at once the formal traditions of a century and the battle-line of the Comte de Grasse lived through and shared in the glories of this decade of victory. A new spirit had come into the navy. An English admiral would no longer think he had done his duty in merely bringing his well-ordered line into cannon-shot of an enemy's array and exchanging broadsides with him at half-cannon range. Nor was the occupation of a port or an island recognized as an adequate result for a naval campaign. The enemy's fighting-fleet was now the object aimed at. It was not merely to be brought to action, and more or less damaged by distant cannonading. The ideal battle was the close fight amid the enemy's broken line, and victory meant his destruction.

The spirit of the time was personified in its greatest sailor. Nelson's battles were fought in grim earnest, taking risks boldly in order to secure great results. Trafalgar—the last of his battles, and the last great battle of the days of the sail—was also the final episode in the long struggle of Republican and Imperial France to snatch from England even for a while the command of the sea.

When Napoleon assembled the Grand Army at Boulogne, gave it the official title of the "Armée d'Angleterre," and crowded every creek from Dunkirk to Havre with flat-bottomed boats for its transport across the Channel, he quite realized that the first condition of success for the scheme was that a French fleet should be in possession of the Channel at the moment his veterans embarked for their short voyage. He had twenty sail of the line, under Admiral Ganteaume, at Brest; twelve under Villeneuve at Toulon; a squadron of five at Rochefort under Admiral Missiessy; five more at Ferrol; and in this last port and at Cadiz and Cartagena there were other ships belonging to his Spanish allies. But every port was watched by English battleships and cruisers. The vigilant blockade had been kept up for two years, during which Nelson, who was watching Toulon, had hardly been an hour absent from his flagship, the "Victory"; and Collingwood, in the "Royal Sovereign," did not anchor once in twenty-two months of alternate cruising and lying to.

Napoleon's mind was ceaselessly busy with plans for moving his fleets on the sea as he moved army corps on land, so as to elude, mislead, and out-manœuvre the English squadrons, and suddenly bring a concentrated French force of overwhelming strength into the narrow seas. The first move in these plans was usually assigned to the Toulon fleet. According to one project it was to give Nelson the slip, make for the Straits of Gibraltar, combine with the Cadiz fleet in driving off or crushing the blockading squadron before that port, sail north with the liberated vessels, fall on the blockading ships before Rochefort and Brest, and then sweep the Channel with the united squadrons. In other projects French fleets were to run the blockades simultaneously or in succession, raid the West Indies, draw off a part of the naval forces of England to the other side of the Atlantic, and then come swooping back upon the Channel.

In the plan finally adopted the first move was to be the escape of the Toulon fleet; the second, the threat against the West Indies. Its execution was entrusted to Villeneuve, because Napoleon, ever since the escape of his squadron from the disaster in Aboukir Bay, had regarded him as "a lucky man," and luck and chance must play a great part in such a project.

Nelson did not keep up a close and continuous blockade of Toulon with his fighting-fleet of battleships. He used Sardinia as his base of supplies, and there were times when all the heavier ships were in Sardinian waters, while his frigates watched Toulon. His previous experiences had led him to believe that if the French Mediterranean fleet came out it would be for another raid on Egypt, and this idea was confirmed by reports that Villeneuve was embarking not only troops, but large quantities of saddlery and muskets. The story of the saddles seemed to indicate an expedition to a country where plenty of horses could be obtained to mount a body of cavalry—horses, too, that when they were bought or requisitioned would not have saddles that a European trooper was used to. Nelson did not want to keep the French shut up in Toulon. He was anxious to catch them in the open sea, and with his fleet on the coast of Sardinia and his frigates spread out in a fan to the northwards he counted on bringing Villeneuve to action if he attempted to reach the Levant.

In January, 1805, the frigates brought news that the French were out, and Nelson at once disposed his fleet to intercept their expected voyage to Egypt. He found no trace of them in the direction he expected, and he was greatly relieved on returning from a hurried rush eastward to learn that bad weather had driven Villeneuve back to his port. "These gentlemen," he said, "are not accustomed to the Gulf of Lyons gales, but we have buffeted them for twenty-one months without carrying away a spar."

On 30 March Villeneuve came out of Toulon again with eleven ships of the line. This time, thanks to Nelson's fixed idea about Egypt, he got a good start for the Atlantic. As soon as his frigates brought the news that the French were out, Nelson strung out his ships from the south point of Sardinia to Sicily and the African coast. He thus watched every possible avenue to the Eastern Mediterranean, ready to concentrate and attack the enemy as soon as he got touch of them anywhere. But not a French sail was sighted.