The fourth tableau rings down on the piece. The last scene closes some weeks later in the quiet waters of the Hamoaze off Devonport Dockyard, whither the Hoche was taken round, with the arrival of an Admiralty messenger at the Port Admiral’s office. He brings in his dispatch wallet an official memorandum that “My Lords have been pleased to direct Sir J. B. Warren’s prize to be registered in the List of the Navy by the name of the Donegal.”
In this way it was that the name Donegal came originally into the Royal Navy for a man-of-war, and the battle of October, ’98, off the coast of Donegal is our present cruiser’s principal bond of connection with the county.
The luckless Wolfe Tone passed from the quarter-deck of the Hoche to the condemned cell and a suicide’s grave. It came about in this way. The Hoche was towed into Lough Swilly and the prisoners were landed and marched to Letterkenny. The Earl of Cavan invited the French officers to breakfast. Tone was amongst the guests. He was in a French military uniform. An old college companion at T.C.D., Sir George Hill, recognized him. “How do you do, Mr. Tone?” said Hill pointedly. “I am very happy to see you.” Tone greeted Hill cordially, and said, “How are you, Sir George? How are Lady Hill and your family?” The police, who had had information that Tone would be among the prisoners, lay in waiting in an adjoining room. Hill went to them, pointed to Tone, and said, “There is your man.” Tone was called from the table. He knew what it meant—that his hour had come, but he went cheerfully to his doom. Entering the next apartment, he was surrounded by police and soldiers, arrested, loaded with irons, and hurried off to Dublin Castle. There he was tried by court-martial and sentenced to be hanged within forty-eight hours. His request for a firing party was curtly refused. Curran got a writ of habeas corpus from Lord Chief Justice Kilwarden. But he was too late. Tone anticipated the execution of the law, and died by his own hand—with a penknife.
The Donegal man-of-war served Great Britain for forty-seven years, keeping up to the last her reputation of being one of the swiftest two-deckers afloat.
Trafalgar should have been one of her battle honours. One of the very smartest captains that ever trod a British quarter-deck, “a dear Nelsonian” of exceptional ability and merit, the gallant and chivalrous Sir Pulteney Malcolm, commanded the Donegal at that time. The Donegal had been sent by Nelson to Gibraltar to shift the low tier of water-casks just four days before the battle. While there, at two o’clock on the morning of Trafalgar day, Monday, the 21st of October, the Weazle sloop-of-war came bustling into Gibraltar Bay, and firing alarm guns. She brought the fateful news that the enemy had left Cadiz and were at sea. Captain Blackwood, of the Euryalus, in command of Nelson’s inshore frigate squadron, had packed the Weazle off to Gibraltar to call up the six ships of the line, recently detached from Nelson’s fleet, that had gone in there to fill up water-casks and refit.
The Donegal was lying with her sails unbent from the yards, her bowsprit out, and her fore-topmast and foreyard struck. All her powder had been landed, and the ship was fast alongside the Mole. The crew had not turned in, as Captain Malcolm was keen to rejoin Nelson off Cadiz at the earliest moment. When the Weazle’s guns were first heard, they were hard at work shifting the lower tier of casks in the hold.
Instantly the order was given to prepare for sea. With extraordinary celerity the casks were got back into their tiers, and the powder was hurried into the magazines. The foremast was set up and the bowsprit replaced, the running rigging rove, and the sails were bent to the yards. Every man of the seven hundred on board the Donegal was working his hardest in one way or another. It proved, though, a twenty-two hours’ job; it would have been a four days’ business in ordinary times. Before one o’clock on the morning of the 22nd they were hauling out from the Mole into the bay. Then sea-stores and provisions were taken on board. Before noon the Donegal was ready for battle; a performance on which all concerned might justly pride themselves.
Not one of the other five ships was nearly so well advanced, although they also had been striving their hardest. Gibraltar is distant from the scene of the battle off Cape Trafalgar, as the crow flies, just fifty miles; but no sound of the firing reached there as it would appear, although at places further off, both in Spain and on the African coast, they heard the cannonading plainly. All on board the ships at Gibraltar still hoped to be in time for the expected battle, as it was to them.
A new spar had been ordered from the dockyard for the foreyard. It had not arrived by noon on the 23rd. It was forthcoming only at the last moment, just indeed as the Donegal was in the act of weighing anchor. Sail was made at once, and they went out of Gibraltar Bay with the foreyard towing in the water alongside the ship, not yet hoisted on board.
They had to beat out in the teeth of the wild storm, blowing a hard gale from the south-west, that, up the coast beyond Tarifa, was wrecking our Trafalgar prizes. Clawing out against the head wind, the Donegal won her way foot by foot, and by nightfall had gained the mouth of the Straits. Then they had to let go anchor, so as not to be swept back in spite of themselves. Next morning they weighed anchor, and once more went forward, forcing their way ahead against wind and storm and swamping seas.