In the feeble wind and allowing for the scattered state of the ships, together with the slow sailing of some of them, the task of forming the two into one regular line, or each one itself into a regular line, would have taken hours. In the meantime the enemy would have been slipping off. It was ever Nelson’s way to trust to the spirit not the letter, the substance and not the mechanical order. “Lord Nelson determined to substitute for exact order an impetuous attack in two distinct bodies.” So said Collingwood, writing to a brother seaman, Admiral Pasley, and he may really be supposed to have known what his lifelong friend, who thought him fit to be entrusted with the entire management of the lee line, meant. “It (Nelson’s plan) was executed well and succeeded admirably; probably its novelty was favourable to us, for the enemy looked for a time when we should form something like a line.” There were men in the fleet who thought the plan was not executed, because the mere order of going of the memorandum was not observed. There was no drawing up in three lines before the enemy’s centre, no attack in line abreast, or all together at the same moment, on an inferior number of the rear ships. Captain Moorsom of the Revenge thought the plan had been wholly thrown over. So did Israel Pellew of the Conqueror. But Collingwood, and Codrington of the Orion, who said they all scrambled into action as best they could, inspired by the example of their leaders and the spirit of the memorandum, thought overwise. Whatever dubitations there may have been in the minds of men here and there, the whole fleet knew well enough that they were not asked to display “the froth of discipline and the tricks of parade.” When signal 72, “Form the order of sailing in two columns,” went up at seven o’clock, and was followed in a few moments by 76, “To bear up and sail large on the course steered by the admiral or that pointed out by him,” and the compass direction E.N.E. was given, they knew they were to steer for the enemy and fall on his centre and rear in such order as time and distance, wind and speed, and the formation of the allies should allow. To the look-out ships of the French the English seemed to come up from the W.S.W. in a long string of groups of ships stretching from north to south. The allies were lying in a concave line also stretching from north to south. They turned to bring their heads on Cadiz. Their advance squadron, commanded by the Spanish admiral, Gravina, which had been to windward of the van before the fleet turned, and was now the rear, was trying to fall in behind the centre, and formed the projecting southern point of the crescent. They were not in exact order, for some were to leeward of others, so that the whole seemed to form two lines. Beginning from the north they lay thus:—

Neptuno 80SpanishCapt. Don Cayetano Valdés.
Scipion 74French 〃 C. Berenger.
Intrépide 80 〃 〃 L. A. C. Infernet.
Formidable 80 〃{
{		Rear-Admiral Dumanoir-le-Pelley.
Capt. J. M. Letellier.
Duguay-Trouin 74 〃 〃 C. Touffet.
Mont Blanc 74 〃 〃 G. J. N. La Villegris.
San Francesco de Ases 74Spanish 〃 Don Luis de Flores.
Rayo*100 〃 〃 Don E. Macdonel.
Hèros 74French 〃 J. B. J. R. Ponlain.
San Agustin* 74Spanish 〃 Don F. X. Cagigal.
Santissima Trinidad130 〃{
{		Rear-Admiral Don B. H. Cisneros.
Commodore F. de Uriarte.
Bucentaure 80French{
{		Vice-Admiral Villeneuve.
Capt. J. J. Magendie.
Redoutable 74 〃 〃 J. J. E. Lucas.
San Justo 74Spanish 〃 Miguel Gaston.
Neptune 74French 〃 E. T. Maistral.
San Leandro 64Spanish 〃 Don J. Quevedo.
Santa Ana112 〃{
{		Vice-Admiral J. M. de Alava.
Capt. J. Gardogui.
Indomptable* 80French 〃 J. J. Hubert.
Fougueux 74 〃 〃 L. A. Beaudouin.
Pluton 80 〃 〃 J. M. C. Kerjulien.
Monarca* 74Spanish 〃 Don T. Argumosa.
Algesiras 74French{
{		Rear-Admiral Magon.
Capt. G. A. Bronard.
Bahama 80Spanish 〃 Don D. Galiano.
Aigle 74French 〃 P. P. Gourrège.
Montañes 74Spanish 〃 Don J. Salcedo.
Swiftsure 74French 〃 C. E. L. H. Villemadrin.
Argonaute 74 〃 〃 J. Epron.
San Ildefonso 74Spanish 〃 J. Bargas.
Argonanta* 80 〃 〃 A. Parejas.
Achille 74French 〃 G. Denieport.
Principe de Asturias112Spanish{
{		Admiral F. Gravina.
Rear-Admiral A. Escaño.
Berwick 74FrenchCapt. J. G. F. Camas.
San Juan Nepomuceno 74Spanish 〃 Don C. Churruca.

* The vessels marked with an asterisk were those lying inside.

As the day wore on to noon the string of groups forming the confused looking English line began to collect into two “distinct bodies.” At the northern end ships fell in behind the Victory, which was steered for the allied van. To the south they collected behind Collingwood. The enemy looked in vain for a time when each should form something like a line. As the whole approached the curve where the allies were forging slowly ahead, ready to show at least the passive and defensive courage of brave men who had not the skill to display active valour, Collingwood ordered his squadron to form the leeward line of bearing. If the order could have been executed it would have brought all the ships of his division into a line on his starboard side deflected from him at an angle and stretching from N.N.E. to S.S.W. Then his ships would infallibly have come into action in such a way that the most southerly of them would have struck on the projecting southern point of the allied crescent, before the most northern reached her point of attack near the centre. But the order cannot have been intended to produce exact obedience, Collingwood even made exact obedience impossible. The Royal Sovereign, his flagship, at the northern end of his line, a clean swift-sailing ship, curved all sail and swept on ahead. Nobody stopped for the heavy sailers. The signal was meant to tell the captains to advance along lines parallel to the course of the flagship as well and as fast as they could, and between her and the rear of the enemy. They did advance in a string, the quick sailers close to the Royal Sovereign, and the tubs struggling in the rear. The Defence was two hours later in getting into action than the Royal Sovereign, a clear proof that she never was even nearly on the larboard line of bearing. Nelson, for his part, did less than Collingwood to satisfy any expectation the enemy may have entertained of seeing a line formed. Captain Blackwood of the Euryalus, the frigate which had rendered excellent service in watching the allies, has left a memorable picture of the admiral’s bearing and conduct on this last morning of his life. Blackwood was summoned early to the flagship, and came in the hope of hearing that Nelson had decided to give him the command of the Ajax or the Thunderer, then in charge of lieutenants, because their captains had gone to England to attend a court-martial on Sir R. Calder. He was mistaken. Nelson had called him to act as witness to the codicil to his will he had just written, wherein he left to the nation the legacy he perhaps ought not to have left, but which ought not to have been refused. Then the admiral wished to make his wishes clear, and to pour his heart out with all the freedom of his expansive nature among friends, now when the approach of peril and of the decisive hour were producing the exhilaration they never failed to arouse in his soul of flame. Blackwood, speaking for himself and for all the officers, urged Nelson to allow other vessels to pass ahead of the Victory to meet the first shock, and leave him free to direct the general movements of his fleet. He consented. He even allowed Captain Blackwood to row to the Leviathan with a message to Captain Harvey to take the head of the line. But when Blackwood returned he found that nothing had been done to render obedience possible. The Victory was still carrying on. She was headed at the enemy’s van and then at his centre. Her swaying course added to the confusion prevailing among the ships behind her. But it kept the enemy in doubt as to the exact point on which the attack would fall. At 11.40 Nelson signalled that he meant to pass through the enemy’s line and bar the road of retreat to Cadiz. A quarter of an hour later he sent up the famous signal which, as some authorities tell us, was to have been, “Nelson expects that every man will do his duty.” If I may be permitted to express a personal preference, I wish it had been. That England expects every man to do his duty is at best a copy-book heading, and we cannot quite forget that she stands in expectation with the articles of war in hand, and death or other punishment denounced against all who fail. The personal appeal of Nelson, who of all admirals did most by his personal influence, would have been appropriate and heroic. When the weather division was all but touching the enemy’s line, Nelson sent Blackwood and his brother-captain, Prowse of the Sirius, back to their ships. He told Blackwood to hail the captains of the ships behind the Victory, and tell them to break in on the enemy where they could, standing not upon the order of their going—and parted from him with the prophecy that they were not to meet again, for he did not believe that he would survive the battle.

It was a little before noon of the 21st October that England began to reap the reward of generations of wise effort honestly made, while France and Spain began to pay for unwisdom and neglect of long standing. The famous plan of battle was comparatively a small matter, a clever device which a clever enemy could have baffled, or at the best a more effectual way of doing what Howe had done on the 1st June—of producing a mêlée in which the better quality of the English fleet would have full play. The chief gave that superiority entire freedom. In his memorandum he had frankly told his officers that unforeseen conditions might make it impossible to carry out his plan exactly as he designed it, but that no captain could be wrong who laid his ship alongside an enemy. And the men knew their superiority—not in valour, the quality which is indispensable to a good force, but will not itself make a good fighting force. The valour and intellectual alertness of the French had never left themselves without witness in their fleets. The Spaniards, less active and intelligent than the French, could at their best fight the batteries of their ships with the same sort of courage they showed in defending Saragossa or Gerona. The superiority lay in the power to strike quick and hard, to repair damage, to use their weapons.

In the little wind there was the English came on at the rate of about a mile and a quarter an hour. The effective range of fire of the guns of the time was from a thousand to twelve hundred yards. Therefore, as our leading ships came on they were under fire for half an hour or so before reaching the line. Until they were within four to five hundred yards they would be liable to the concentrated fire of two or more of the enemy, while as they approached the enemy’s line, through which they meant to steer, the danger of a raking broadside increased with their proximity. If the fire of the allies had been what the fire of the well-drilled English ships was, two broadsides in five minutes (some could fire three), the leading ships of both divisions must have undergone ten or twelve broadsides before they were in a position to reply. If the aim of the enemy had been good they would have been torn to shreds. The Royal Sovereign, the first to cut the line, passed astern of the Santa Ana, raking her with great effect, and ahead of the Fougueux. She ranged up on the starboard side of the Spaniard, who made but a feeble reply, but she was fired into by the Fougueux, the Monarca, and the Indomptable. The time seemed long to her officers and men before relief came. But in some ten minutes, the Belleisle, which had been left three-quarters of a mile behind the Royal Sovereign broke in astern of the Fougueux and took off part of the fire. A few minutes later help came from the weather division. The Royal Sovereign was relieved of most of her assailants, and was left to fight it out with Santa Ana whose side she fairly battered in. In the course of the battle she was rendered unmanageable, and she lost 141 killed and wounded. But she was not shattered beyond repair, and her loss was four less than the loss of the Ardent, 64, out of a far smaller crew at Camperdown.[8] As much may be said of all the vessels which lost heavily, the Victory, the Téméraire, the Belleisle, Mars, Tonnant, Bellerophon, Colossus. They came in early against fresh opponents, they were engaged with several at once, they were roughly handled; but in such conditions and against equal skill they would have been destroyed. The most striking proof of the poor gunnery of our opponents is afforded by the fortunes of the Africa, 64. She was separated, and to the north, before the battle began. She joined Nelson’s division by passing in front of the enemy’s van within range, and she took part in the hottest fighting at the centre. Yet her loss was only sixty-two, less than half the loss of the Ardent at Camperdown.

The Royal Sovereign had broken the enemy’s line astern of the Santa Ana a little before twelve. There were sixteen French and Spaniards of the line between her and the last ship in the curved formation of the allies to be dealt with by Collingwood’s fifteen. The Victory, with the Neptune on the port and the Téméraire on the starboard side, broke in two ships ahead of the Santa Ana. The Victory passed astern of the Redoutable, the Neptune ahead of her and astern of the Bucentaure, the Téméraire attacked the Spanish San Justo astern and to leeward of the Redoutable. Thus a concentration was effected on the enemy’s centre as the ships of the weather division came up. The allies astern of the Santa Ana moved ahead to help friends, or because the wind carried them slowly on. The ships of the English lee division broke in among them, or, in the case of the heavy sailers who came in late, swept round the end of the line. There was here no concentration of superior numbers by us, but a development of superior power of gunnery which shattered the enemies within reach and broke the whole, so that the last comers of the English finished the action with little loss to themselves, and indeed, in the case of the Prince, with no loss at all. When the weather division fell on the group of the allies about the Bucentaure it stopped their way. The ten ships ahead of the central group stood on leaving a break between themselves and the hard-pressed centre. In vain did Villeneuve hoist signals to bring them into the action, so long as he had a mast to hoist signals on. Dumanoir signalled that he had no enemy to engage, and he behaved as if he had no wish to find one. He could bring his ship’s head round with the help of their boats, and could find wind to take a sweep out to the west, and run away with all who would follow him at the close of the battle. All did not. Some of the ten came voluntarily into action comparatively early, turning back manfully to help their friends. Two refused to follow Dumanoir at the end—Don Cayetano Valdés of the Neptuno, and Captain Infernet of the French Intrépide were found faithful and struck for honour, when they could no longer strike for victory. But the chivalry which does not recognise that the feeble bearing of Dumanoir-le-Pelley was no small aid to our success, is a chivalry which has forgotten that a regard for truth is one of the qualities of a knight and a gentleman.

Every child in the English-speaking world knows how the death which Nelson saw coming to him struck him down on the Victory’s quarter-deck, and how he died in her cockpit—thanking God that he had done his duty. He had also done his work. He had so directed the long acquired superiority of the English fleet that it could act untrammelled by pedantry and could despise vain shows. It had exercised its whole strength and had swept hostile fleets off the sea. When the battle of Trafalgar ended at five o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st October, the epoch of battles at sea was over for long years. There was plenty of work for the navy to do. There were no more battles to fight. Of the thirty-three ships of the allied line, four—the Formidable, Mont Blanc, Scipion, and Duguay-Trouin—escaped seaward and steered for France, only to be captured off Cape Ortegal by five English ships of the line under Sir Richard Strachan: the Cæsar, 80, Strachan’s own ship; the Hero, 74, Captain Alan Hyde Gardner; the Namur, 74, Captain Halsted; the Courageux, 74, Captain Lee; and the Bellona, 74, Captain Pater. Observe that in this action, where no English ship was isolated amid several opponents, we lost 24 killed and 111 wounded in all. The loss of the enemy was 730. Eleven ships escaped into Cadiz, where the French among them remained till they were taken by the Spaniards in 1808. Eighteen were taken, one of them, the French Achille, caught fire and was destroyed. Four—one French and three Spanish—remained as prizes in our hands. The others were wrecked, destroyed by us, or recaptured in the storm following the battle. Nelson had decided to anchor. Collingwood, to whom the command fell, elected not to do so. Perhaps he thought that the most seriously injured vessels could not anchor, and that the less injured must keep under way to help them. It was a question of seamanship, and of that art he was a master. Our total loss was 1690. The loss of the allies cannot be accurately fixed, but it was very much greater. Villeneuve, who fought his flagship bravely, remained a prisoner till he was released on parole, and killed himself in France.