Then we have this incident, which occurred in the forenoon, as the British fleet was closing on the enemy:—
“Lord Nelson had been requested by Captain Blackwood (who was anxious for the preservation of so invaluable a life) to allow some other vessel to take the lead, and at last gave permission that the Téméraire should go ahead of him, but resolving to defeat the order which he had given, he crowded more sail on the Victory and maintained his place. The Royal Sovereign was far in advance when Lieutenant Clavell observed that the Victory was setting her studding-sails, and with that spirit of honourable emulation which prevailed between the squadrons, and particularly between these two ships, he pointed it out to Admiral Collingwood, and requested his permission to do the same. ‘The ships of our line,’ replied the Admiral, ‘are not yet sufficiently up for us to do so now, but you may be getting ready.’ The studding-sail and royal halliards were accordingly manned, and in about ten minutes the Admiral, observing Lieutenant Clavell’s eyes fixed upon him with a look of expectation, gave him a nod, on which that officer went to Captain Rotherham and told him that the Admiral desired him to make all sail. The order was then given to rig out and hoist away, and in one instant the ship was under a crowd of sail, and went rapidly ahead. The Admiral then directed the officers to see that all the men lay down on the decks and were kept quiet.”
The Royal Sovereign’s captain at Trafalgar, Collingwood’s flag-captain, was, like his Admiral, a gallant Northumbrian, Edward Rotherham, the son of a Hexham doctor. Of him that day the following story is told. As the battle was about to open, it was pointed out to Captain Rotherham that the unusually big cocked hat that he wore would probably render him a special target for the marksmen in the enemy’s tops. “Let me alone,” was all Rotherham’s reply, “Let me alone. I’ve always fought in a cocked hat and I always will!”
As pre-arranged by Nelson, the British lee column at Trafalgar, fifteen ships strong, began the action before the weather column, by leading down and breaking the enemy’s line near its centre. The manœuvre was begun a few minutes before noon, when, at Collingwood’s order, the Sovereign, with every sail set and every reef shaken out, dashed forward by herself, sailing “like a frigate,” ahead of the whole British fleet. Taking on herself the fire of the enemy’s line, centre and rear, as she advanced, she swept resistlessly under the stern of the Spanish flagship Santa Anna, a gigantic 112-gun three-decker, nearly a mile in front of Collingwood’s second astern, the Belleisle—“the most remarkable incident of the battle, a feat unparalleled in naval history,” as it has been called. “See,” exclaimed Nelson with delight to Captain Hardy, as he watched the Sovereign’s advance; “see how that noble fellow Collingwood carries his ship into action!” Just at the moment, as it happened, on the Royal Sovereign’s quarter-deck, Collingwood himself was saying to his captain, “Rotherham, what would not Nelson give to be here!”
We know from what a French officer at Trafalgar wrote, that the confident daring of the Sovereign’s single-handed advance “positively appalled Villeneuve!”[18]
King George the Third, in effigy, led his own fleet that day. The Royal Sovereign’s figure-head was an immense full-length carving of the King, represented in the battle-day panoply of a Roman Emperor, his sword at his side and a sceptre in hand, his red war cloak (paludamentum) on his shoulders, with two attendant winged figures, Fortune and Fame, blowing trumpets on either side.
As the Sovereign closed on the enemy, a French ship, the Fougueux, ranged up close under the stern of the Santa Anna, as though to bar the passage through the line to Collingwood. Captain Rotherham noted this, and pointed it out to the Admiral. Collingwood’s reply was: “Steer straight for the Frenchman and take his bowsprit!” So they closed, and then, driving through the line just under the towering Spanish’s ship’s stern, the Sovereign opened the fight with her full broadside treble-shotted. The terrific discharge, at one blow, it has been related, disabled fourteen guns, and put a large part of the crew hors de combat. “El rompio todos” were the words of an officer of the Santa Anna. After that the Sovereign ranged alongside the big Spaniard to leeward to fight the battle out gun-muzzle to gun-muzzle.
TRAFALGAR—12 NOON: AS SKETCHED ON THE SPOT BY A FRENCH OFFICER
