| French flagship, “Bucentaure,” 80 guns. | “Redoutable,” 74 guns, from which Nelson was shot. | Collingwood in the “Royal Sovereign” opening the attack. | The “Victory” (Nelson’s flag should be at the fore, not as here.) |
From a photograph of the original sepia drawing now in the possession of a descendant of Captain Lucas of the “Redoutable.”
“In passing the Santa Anna” relates Mr. Newnham Collingwood, “the Royal Sovereign gave her a broadside and a half into her stern, tearing it down, and killing and wounding 400 of her men. Then, with her helm hard a-starboard, she ranged up alongside so closely that the lower yards of the two vessels were locked together. The Spanish Admiral, having seen that it was the intention of the Royal Sovereign to engage to leeward, had collected all his strength on the starboard, and such was the weight of the Santa Anna’s metal, that her broadside made the Sovereign heel two strakes out of the water.”
Even a moment like that, though, did not in the least perturb Collingwood. “Her studding-sails and halliards were now shot away, and as well as a top-gallant studding-sail were hanging over the gangway hammocks. Admiral Collingwood called out to Lieutenant Clavell to come and help him to take it in, observing that they should want it again some other day. These two officers accordingly rolled it carefully up and placed it in a boat.”
No sooner was the Sovereign alongside the Santa Anna than four other enemies—two French ships, the Fougueux and the Indomptable, and two Spanish, the San Leandro and the San Justo—closed round and joined in to help the Santa Anna.
So hot a cross fire did these four ships keep up on the single British ship during her, at first, unsupported fight, that, in the words of those on board the Sovereign, “We could see their shots meeting and smashing together in mid-air round us.” The Fougueux, we are also told, “at one time got so much on the quarter of the Sovereign that she almost touched.” It was indeed a battle of the giants—a heroic defiance of heroic odds.
So magnificent, indeed, did the situation of the Royal Sovereign appear, fighting single-handed in the thick of the enemy, that it drew remarks from some of our captains, for the time being lookers-on, on board the nearest ships that were then coming up astern. “The English ships,” to quote Admiral Collingwood’s biographer again, “were pressing forward with their utmost speed in support of their leader, but doubtful at times of his fate, and rejoicing when, on the slackening of the Santa Anna’s fire, they discerned his flag still flying above the smoke. One of his most gallant followers and friend, the captain of the Tonnant, has often expressed the astonishment with which he regarded the Royal Sovereign as she opened her fire, which, as he declared, ‘so arrested his attention, that he felt for a few moments as if he himself had nothing to do but to look on and admire!’”
How Collingwood bore himself in the battle we hear from two sources. Both accounts speak of Collingwood’s unmoved demeanour and cool courage under fire.
“The Admiral,” says one, “directed Captain Vallack, of the Marines, an officer of the greatest gallantry, to take his men from off the poop, that they might not be unnecessarily exposed; but he remained there himself much longer. At length, descending to the quarter-deck, he visited the men, enjoining them not to fire a shot in waste; looking himself along the guns to see that they were properly pointed, and commending the sailors, particularly a black man, who was afterwards killed, but who, while he stood beside him, fired ten times directly into the portholes of the Santa Anna.”
“The Admiral spoke to me,” related Smith, Collingwood’s servant, “about the middle of the action and again for five minutes immediately after its close; and on neither occasion could I observe the slightest change from his ordinary manner. This, at the moment, made an impression on me which will never be effaced, for I wondered how a person whose mind was occupied by such a variety of most important concerns could, with the utmost ease and equanimity, inquire kindly after my welfare, and talk of common matters as if nothing of any consequence were taking place.”