As the best thing, if not indeed the only thing he could do in the circumstances, he decided to turn back and make for Cadiz. If he could not avoid a battle, he trusted to be able to get sufficiently near Cadiz to have the port open to him after the battle, for his damaged ships or as a place of general refuge should things go wrong.
With such thoughts in his mind, Villeneuve, just about the time that Nelson was sitting down to breakfast, issued orders for the Combined Fleet to go about, every ship independently, and form in line of battle on the port tack, with half a cable interval between ships. They were still in the middle of the manœuvre at nine o'clock. It was not till after ten o'clock that anything approaching the line of battle as ordered had been formed, and then hardly half-a-dozen ships were in station. All the enemy's efforts, at the end of two hours, resulted in the formation of a crescent or bow-shaped array of ships, sagging in the centre away to leeward like a slack cord, with the ships distributed irregularly along its length, here in single file and with wide gaps between, there in two's and three's. As things turned out this malformation proved ideal for the occasion; but it was entirely by chance.
It has been said, indeed, that Admiral Villeneuve had already begun to anticipate defeat. As he took in the grouping and disposition of the British fleet, the double column of attack and how the leaders were pointing, there broke from his lips, we are told, an exclamation of blank dismay. Before a shot was fired Villeneuve had already admitted himself beaten. There was no precedent known to him for a battle formation such as Nelson was adopting.[94] There was nothing like it in Paul Hoste, nothing like it in the pages of De Morogues or Ramatuelle. No text-book could help him, and to improvise a new order of battle for himself on the spur of the moment was beyond Admiral Villeneuve's capacity. Practically he could only await events and meet an absolutely new form of attack, specially devised for the occasion by the greatest master of the art of naval war that ever lived, with an order of battle that was not new in the days of the Grand Monarque, with tactics such as Tourville had employed at La Hogue. It was like the Prussian General Rüchel at Jena opposing Napoleon with the tactics of Frederick at Kolin; attempting to foil Ney and Murat by giving the order 'Right shoulders up.'
There were on the Franco-Spanish side thirty-three ships (eighteen French and fifteen Spanish); in the British fleet twenty-seven. Nelson's plan of battle at the outset, as we shall presently see, reversed the odds and turned them into odds in his own favour, of twenty-seven against twenty-three. That is, the odds reckoned numerically, by counting ships. The average British ship of the line in 1805 could fire three broadsides while a French ship was firing two, which vastly increased the odds in Nelson's favour. The British fleet came on in two columns; one (Nelson's own) comprising twelve ships; the other (Collingwood's column) of fifteen. Nelson's plan of battle was for Collingwood to break the enemy's line at about a third of its length from the rear, and hold fast in close action the ships cut off. He himself, after that, would break through the remaining two-thirds of the Franco-Spanish line midway, and fall on the enemy's centre, joining hands with Collingwood. With the wind as it then was, a little to the north of west, the ten ships of the enemy's van squadron would be cut off by these tactics and thrust to leeward, out of the battle. They would have to work up round laboriously against the wind before they could get to the aid of their consorts, a business that must take a considerable time. Meanwhile the whole force of the British fleet would have been brought to bear on two-thirds of the enemy with, as Nelson confidently trusted, decisive results.
Throughout the British fleet the men were in the highest spirits, eager and ready for the fray, and at the same time cool and confident. 'As we neared the French fleet,' an officer in the Ajax relates,[95] 'I was sent below with orders, and was much struck with the preparations made by the bluejackets, the majority of whom were stripped to the waist; a handkerchief was tightly bound round their heads and over the ears, to deaden the noise of the cannon, many men being deaf for days after an action. The men were variously occupied; some were sharpening their cutlasses, others polishing the guns, as though an inspection were about to take place instead of a mortal combat, whilst three or four, as if in mere bravado, were dancing a horn-pipe; but all seemed deeply anxious to come to close quarters with the enemy. Occasionally they would look out of the ports, and speculate as to the various ships of the enemy, many of which had been on former occasions engaged by our vessels.' Elsewhere, we are told, the men kept pointing out various ships in the Franco-Spanish line, as seen through the open ports, and calling to one another, 'What a fine sight them ships will make at Spithead!' Particularly keen was every man that his ship should if possible get alongside the huge Spanish four-decker which all could see, near the centre of the enemy's fleet, the Santisima Trinidad. On board the Bellerophon, one of Collingwood's leading ships, the men at quarters on the main deck chalked 'Billy Ruff'n, Victory or Death' on their guns.[96]
How keen was the rivalry among the ships at the head of Nelson's line, as the morning advanced, is shown by two incidents in which the Neptune—a 98-gun three-decker like the Téméraire, the ship next in the line to her—and the Téméraire herself, both figured.
The Téméraire had the post of honour in Nelson's line, that of 'second,' or chief supporter to the Victory, but the Neptune had gradually drawn up level with her. Not content with that, the Neptune began to edge past the Téméraire, until, forging ahead, she had come up alongside the flagship herself. Indeed, it appeared as though she was ambitious of passing ahead of the Victory, and leading Nelson into the battle. The Admiral himself stopped her. Nelson at the moment that the Neptune began to draw up level with the Victory, happened to be in the stern gallery leading out of his cabin, observing how the rear ships of the fleet were coming on. He saw what was taking place, and at once hailed the Neptune. 'Neptune there,' he called out in a sharp, rasping tone, 'take in your stu'ns'ls and drop astarn. I shall break the line myself!'[97] The Neptune had to comply forthwith, and on her falling back the Téméraire pushed up and resumed her allotted berth as the ship next to the Victory.
Then came the incident that specially concerned the Téméraire. A little time after the Neptune had resumed her station the Téméraire was herself hailed from the Victory and ordered to pass the flagship and lead the line. Captain Blackwood of the Euryalus, who with the other frigate captains was on board the flagship, in his anxiety for Nelson's personal safety that day, on having his first suggestion that Nelson should direct the battle from on board the Euryalus set aside by the admiral, next suggested that the Téméraire should be allowed to lead the Victory into battle, to help in drawing off some of the enemy's fire. The enemy's fire, urged Blackwood, would be certain to fall with exceptional severity on the leader of the line, particularly when the leading ship was so easily recognisable a vessel as the British flagship. Nelson assented—or seemed to assent. 'Oh yes,' the admiral answered, with a significant smile and giving a look towards Captain Hardy, 'let her go ahead—if she can!' Blackwood went aft and himself hailed the Téméraire to move up, and she was also signalled to do so.
The hail was heard. Blackwood had a voice about which a number of good stories used to be told in the Navy. 'It could,' one of his officers once said, 'carry half a mile.'
At once the Téméraire made every effort to press forward. She was, as the sailors said, 'flying light' that day; having been away from port for some time she was carrying less dead-weight than usual, most of her sea-stores and heavy casks of beef and water having been used up. Fast sailer as the Victory was—she was admittedly the fastest three-decker in all the Royal Navy—the Téméraire before long began to close on the flagship and overlap her, by degrees working up closer to the Victory, and finally racing her side by side, almost abreast. It was a grand moment for Captain Harvey and his gallant Téméraires. But the goal was not yet won.