At Trafalgar the Dreadnought fought as one of the ships in Collingwood’s line, and did the best with what opportunity came her way.
“This quiet old Dreadnought” wrote Dickens of his visit to the ship in her last years, “whose fighting days are all over—sans guns, sans shot, sans shells, sans everything—did fight at Trafalgar under Captain Conn—did figure as one of the hindmost ships in the column which Collingwood led—went into action about two in the afternoon, and captured the San Juan in fifteen minutes.”
While fighting the San Juan—the San Juan Nepomuceno, a Spanish seventy-four—the Dreadnought had to keep off two other Spaniards and a Frenchman at the same time; Admiral Gravina’s flagship, the Principe de Asturias, of 112 guns, and the San Justo and Indomptable, two seventy-fours. The San Juan in the end proved an easy prize, for she had been already severely mauled by some of Collingwood’s leading ships. On being run alongside of she gave in quickly. Without staying to take possession, the Dreadnought pushed on to close with the big Principe de Asturias, and gave her several broadsides, one shot from which mortally wounded Admiral Gravina. The Spanish three-decker, however, managed to disengage, and made off, to lead the escaping ships in their flight for Cadiz. Thus the Dreadnought was baulked of her big prize.
It was the Trafalgar Dreadnought that gave the name to that great international institution, the Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital, at Greenwich. This, of course, was long after Trafalgar, for the “wooden whopper of the Thames,” as Dickens called the old three-decker in her old age, did not make her appearance off Greenwich until a quarter of a century later. The fine old veteran of “Eighteen Hundred and War Time,” lasted until 1857, and to the end they preserved on board as the special relic of interest, “a piece of glass from a cabin skylight scrawled over, with somebody’s diamond ring, with the names of those officers who were in her at Trafalgar.” Another old three-decker replaced the Trafalgar ship until 1870, when the institution was removed on shore. At Chatham to-day, in the dockyard museum, visitors may see the Dreadnought’s bell which was on board the old ship during the battle, and was removed from her when the Dreadnought was broken up. Yet another memento of the Trafalgar Dreadnought exists in the Eton eight-oar Dreadnought, one of the “Lower Boats,” and so-called originally, together with the boat that bears the name Victory, in honour of Nelson and Trafalgar.
Our sixth Dreadnought is a still existing ironclad turret-ship, mounting four 38-ton muzzle loaders, launched in 1875. She is a ship of 10,820 tons, and cost to complete for sea £619,739. She served for ten years—from 1884 to 1894—in the Mediterranean, and after that as a coast-guard ship in Bantry Bay. Paid off finally in 1905, the Dreadnought now lies at her last moorings in the Kyles of Bute, awaiting the final day of all for her naval career, and the auctioneer’s hammer.
To conclude with a flying glance at our mighty battleship, the Dreadnought of to-day, the seventh bearer of the name until now, and as all the world knows by far the most powerful man-of-war that has ever sailed the seas. She is the biggest and the heaviest and the fastest and the hardest-hitting vessel that any navy as yet has seen afloat. And more than that. The Dreadnought has been so built as to be practically unsinkable by mine or torpedo; while at the same time her tremendous battery of ten 12-in. guns—huge cannon, each forty-five feet long—makes her absolutely irresistible in battle against all comers; a match for any two—probably any three—of the biggest battleships in foreign navies afloat at the present hour.
These are some of the “points”—some of the leading features—of this grim mastodonte de mer of ours, His Majesty’s battleship, the Dreadnought. With her coal, ammunition, and sea stores on board, the Dreadnought weighs—or displaces in equivalent bulk of sea water, according to the present-day method of reckoning the size of men-of-war—17,800 tons.
Put the Dreadnought bodily inside St. Paul’s and she would fill the whole nave and chancel of the Cathedral from reredos to the Western doors. Her length would take up the whole of one side of Trafalgar Square. Her width would exactly fill Northumberland Avenue, leaving only some half-dozen inches between the house fronts on either side and the outside of the hull. Two Victorys and a frigate of Nelson’s day, fully manned and rigged, could be packed away within the Dreadnought’s hull.
