Trafalgar: A Tale

by Benito Pérez Galdós

“His spirit revolted against death and he did all he could to conceal the terrible sufferings of his mutilated frame, while his heart beat more feebly every instant. We wanted to carry him down into the cabin, but nothing would persuade him to quit the quarter-deck. At last he yielded to our entreaties and understood that he must give up the command. He called for Moyna, his lieutenant, and was told that he was dead; then he called for the officer in command of the first battery, and the latter though himself seriously wounded at once mounted the quarter-deck and assumed the command.

“But from that moment the men lost heart; from giants they shrank to pigmies; their courage was worn out and it was plain that we must surrender. The consternation that had possessed me from the instant when our hero fell into my arms had not prevented my observing the terrible effect that this disaster had produced in the minds of all. A sudden paralysis of soul and body seemed to have fallen on the crew; they all stood petrified and speechless and the grief of losing their beloved leader quite overpowered the disgrace of surrender.

“Quite half of the men were dead or wounded; most of the guns were past serving; all the masts except the main-mast were gone by the board and the rudder could not be used. Even in this deplorable plight we made an attempt to follow the Príncipe de Astúrias which had given the signal to retreat, but the Nepomuceno was mortally wounded and could not move nor steer. Even then, in spite of the wrecked state of the ship, in spite of the dismayed condition of the men, in spite of a concurrence of circumstances to render our case hopeless, not one of the six English captains attempted to board us. They respected our ship even when she was at their mercy.

“Churruca, in the midst of his agony, ordered that the flag should be nailed to the mast, for the ship should never surrender so long as he breathed. The delay alas! could be but brief, for Churruca was going rapidly, and we who supported him only wondered that a body so mangled could still breathe; it was his indomitable spirit that kept him alive added to a resolute determination to live, for he felt it his first duty. He never lost consciousness till the very end, nor complained of his sufferings, nor seemed to dread his approaching death; his sole care and anxiety was that the crew should not know how dangerous his condition was, so that no one should fail in his duty. He desired that the men should be thanked for their heroic bravery, spoke a few words to his brother-in-law, Ruiz de Apodaca, and, after sending a message to his young wife he fixed his thoughts on God, whose name we heard frequently on his parched lips, and died with the calm resignation of a just man and the fortitude of a hero; bereft of the satisfaction of victory but with no angry sense of defeat. In him duty and dignity were equally combined, and discipline was second only to religion. As a soldier he was resolute, as a man he was resigned, and without a murmur or an accusing word he died as nobly as he had lived. We looked at his body, not yet cold, and it seemed all a delusion—he must surely wake to give us our orders; and we wept with less fortitude than he had shown in dying, for in him we had lost all the valor and enthusiasm that had borne us up.

“Well, the ship struck; and when the officers from the six vessels that had destroyed her came on board each claimed the honor of receiving the sword of our dead hero. Each exclaimed: ‘He surrendered to me!’—and for a few minutes they eagerly disputed the victory, each for the ship he represented. Then they asked the officer who had taken the command to which of the Englishmen he had struck. ‘To all,’ he replied. ‘The Nepomuceno would never have surrendered to one.’

“The English gazed with sincere emotion on the body of the hapless Churruca, for the fame of his courage and genius was known to them and one of them spoke to this effect: ‘A man of such illustrious qualities ought never to be exposed to the risks of battle; he should be kept to live and serve the interests of science and navigation.’ Then they prepared for dropping him overboard, the English marines and seamen forming a line of honor alongside of the Spaniards; they behaved throughout like noble-minded and magnanimous gentlemen.

“The number of our wounded was very considerable, and they were transferred on board other English or captured ships. It was my lot to be sent to this one which has suffered worse than most; however, they count more on getting her into Gibraltar than any other, now that they have lost the Trinidad which was the finest and most coveted of our ships.”

Thus ended Malespina’s narrative which was attentively listened to as being that of an eye-witness. From what I heard I understood that a tragedy just as fearful as that I myself had seen had been enacted on board every ship of the fleet. “Good God!” said I to myself, “what infinite misery! and all brought about by the obstinacy of a single man!” And child as I was, I remember thinking: “One man, however mad he may be, can never commit such extravagant follies as whole nations sometimes plunge into at the bidding of a hundred wise ones.”

CHAPTER XIV.

A large part of the night was spent in listening to Malespina’s narrative and the experiences of other officers. They were interesting enough to keep me awake and I was so excited that I found great difficulty afterwards in going to sleep at all. I could not get the image of Churruca out of my mind as I had seen him, handsome and strong, at Doña Flora’s house. On that occasion, even, I had been startled by the expression of intense sadness on the hero’s features, as if he had a sure presentiment of his near and painful death. His noble life had come to an untimely end when he was only forty-four years old, after twenty-nine years of honorable service as a soldier, a navigator, and a man of science—for Churruca was all of these, besides being a noble and cultivated gentlemen. I was still thinking of all these things when, at length, my brain surrendered to fatigue and I fell asleep on the morning of the 23rd, my youthful nature having got the better of my excitement and curiosity. But in my sleep, which was long if not quiet, I was still haunted by nightmare visions, as was natural in my overwrought state of mind, hearing the roar of cannon, the tumult of battle and the thunder of billows; meanwhile I fancied I was serving out ammunition, climbing the rigging, rushing about between decks to encourage the gunners and even standing on the quarter-deck in command of the vessel. I need hardly say that in this curious but visionary battle I routed all the English past, present, or to come, with as much ease as though their ships were made of paper and their cannon-balls were bread-pills. I had a thousand men-of-war under my command, each larger than the Trinidad, and they moved before me with as much precision as the toy-ships with which I and my comrades had been wont to play in the puddles of la Caleta.