Trafalgar: A Tale

by Benito Pérez Galdós

A vessel in the rear had been the first to fire on the Royal Sovereign, commanded by Collingwood, and while that ship carried on the fight with the Santa Ana the Victory came down on us. On board the Trinidad every one was anxious to open fire; but our captain would not give the word till he saw a favorable opportunity. Meanwhile, as if the ships were in such close communication that a slow-match was lighted from one to the other, the fire ran along from the Santa Ana in the middle, to each end of the line.

The Victory fired first on the Redoutable, and being repulsed, came up to the windward of the Trinidad. The moment had come for us; a hundred voices cried “fire!”—loudly echoing the word of command, and fifty round-shot were hurled against the flank of the English man-of-war. For a minute I could see nothing of the enemy for the smoke, while he, as if blind with rage, came straight down upon us before the wind. Just within gun-shot he put the ship about and gave us a broadside. In the interval between our firing and theirs, our crew, who had taken note of the damage done to the enemy, had gained in enthusiasm. The guns were rapidly served, though not without some hitches owing to want of experience in some of the gunners. Marcial would have been only too glad to undertake the management of one of the cannon, but his mutilated body was not equal to the heroism of his spirit. He was forced to be satisfied with superintending the delivery of the charges and encouraging the gunners by word and gesture.

The Bucentaure, just at our stern, was, like us, firing on the Victory and the Téméraire, another powerful English vessel. It seemed as though the Victory must fall into our hands, for the Trinidad’s fire had cut her tackle to pieces, and we saw with pride that her mizzen-mast had gone by the board.

In the excitement of this first onslaught I scarcely perceived that some of our men were wounded or killed. I had chosen a place where I thought I should be least in the way, and never took my eyes off the captain who stood on the quarter-deck, issuing his orders with heroic coolness; and I wondered to see my master, no less calm though less enthusiastic, encouraging the officers and men in his quavering voice.

“Ah!” said I to myself, “if only Doña Francisca could see him now!”

I am bound to confess that at times I felt desperately frightened, and would gladly have hidden myself at the very bottom of the hold, while, at others, I was filled with an almost delirious courage, when I longed to see the glorious spectacle from the most dangerous posts. However, I will set aside my own insignificant individuality and relate the most terrible crisis of our fight with the Victory. The Trinidad was doing her immense mischief when the Téméraire, by a wonderfully clever manœuvre, slipped in between the two vessels thus sheltering her consort from our fire. She then proceeded to cut through the line behind the Trinidad, and as the Bucentaure, under fire, had got so close alongside of the Trinidad that their yards touched, there was a wide space beyond into which the Téméraire rushed down and, going about immediately, came up on our lee and delivered a broadside on that quarter, till then untouched. At the same time the Neptune, another large English ship, ran in where the Victory had previously been, while the Victory veered round so that, in a few minutes, the Trinidad was surrounded by the enemy and riddled on all sides.

From my master’s face, from Uriarte’s heroic fury, and from a volley of oaths delivered by Marcial and his friends, I understood that we were lost and the idea of defeat was anguish to my soul. The line of the combined fleets was broken at several points, and the bad order in which they had formed after turning round, gave place to the most disastrous confusion. We were surrounded by the enemy whose artillery kept up a perfect hail of round and grape-shot on our ship, and on the Bucentaure as well. The Agustin, the Héros, and the Leandro were engaged at some distance from us where they had rather more sea-room, while the Trinidad, and the Admiral’s ship, utterly hemmed in and driven to extremities by the genius of the great Nelson, were fighting heroically—no longer in hopes of a victory which was impossible but anxious, at any rate, to perish gloriously.

The white hairs which now cover my old head almost stand on end as I remember those terrible hours, from two to four in the afternoon. I think of those five ships, not as mere machines of war obeying the will of man, but as living giants, huge creatures fighting on their own account, carried into action by their sails as though they were active limbs and using the fearful artillery they bore in their sides for their personal defence. As I looked at them then, my fancy could not help personifying them and to this hour I feel as though I could see them coming up, defying each other, going about to fire a broadside, rushing furiously up to board, drawing back to gather more force, mocking or threatening the enemy;—I can fancy them expressing their suffering when wounded or loftily breathing their last, like a gladiator who in his agony forgets not the dignity which beseems him;—I can imagine that I hear the voices of the crews like the murmur of an oppressed sufferer, sometimes eager with enthusiasm, sometimes a dull roar of desperation the precursor of destruction, sometimes a hymn of triumph in anticipation of victory, or a hideous storm of voices lost in space and giving way to the awful silence of disgrace and defeat.

The scene on board the Santísima Trinidad was nothing short of infernal. All attempt at working the ship had been abandoned, for it did not and could not move. The only thing to be done was to serve the guns with the utmost rapidity, and to do as much damage to the enemy as they had done to us. The English small-shot rent the sails just as if huge and invisible nails were tearing slits in them. The splinters of timber and of masts, the stout cables cut through as if they were straws, the capstans, spindles, and other heavy machinery torn from their place by the enemy’s fire, strewed the deck so that there was scarcely room to move. Every minute men, till then full of life, fell on deck or into the sea; the blasphemy of those who were fighting mingled with the cries of the wounded, till it was impossible to say whether the dying were defying God or the living crying to him for mercy while they fought.

I offered my services for a melancholy task, which was carrying the wounded into the cock-pit where the surgeons were busy doing their utmost. Some were dead before we could get them there, and others had to suffer painful operations before their exhausted bodies could be left to repose.