Victory. Redoutable. Téméraire. Fougueux.
BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR. October 21, 1805—2.15 P.M.
No captain, perhaps, ever fought his ship better against overwhelming odds than Captain Lucas fought the Redoutable at Trafalgar. Napoleon had him specially exchanged as soon as possible, and sent for him to St. Cloud where, in the presence of the assembled État Major, he decorated him with his own hand with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour.[106] 'Had my other captains,' said the Emperor, 'behaved as you did, the event of the battle would have been very different.' There is an ironclad Redoutable in the French navy to-day which bears the name in remembrance of the gallant two-decker lost with honour at Trafalgar.
The Téméraire, however, had still one of her first foes left. The French Neptune was still dangerously near. She was lying where she had been from the first, pounding away steadily into the Téméraire from a short distance off, 'willing to wound but still afraid to strike.' It says little for the courage of the French captain that he had not ventured to force home an attack at close quarters, and less still for the gunnery of his men that it had not before this reduced the Téméraire to a sinking state. Not far off, also, there was, as the Téméraire's log notes, 'a Spanish two-decked ship ... on the larboard bow or nearly ahead, who had raked us during great part of the action.' On seeing the Victory move off, the French Neptune apparently took heart of grace. She now made as if she really meant at last to close with the Téméraire. It was not very brave of the Neptune, seeing how the Téméraire was situated, with five-sixths of her guns blocked in by the two prizes alongside. But all the same the Téméraire did her best to give the Neptune a warm reception. By clearing away the wreckage from aloft that overlay most of the Téméraire's upper-deck guns, Captain Harvey was able to get some of these into action and keep the Neptune off. Then a few minutes later assistance arrived. The approach of the Leviathan, a British seventy-four, once more daunted the Neptune, and she sheered off and withdrew altogether from the scene.
After that came a well-earned breathing space for the Téméraire and her gallant crew, a brief half-hour's pause that Captain Harvey and his men made use of in putting prize-crews in charge of the Redoutable and Fougueux, and doing what they could towards repairing their own damages and clearing away their wrecked top-hamper. The Sirius frigate during this spell, in response to a signal from Captain Harvey, took the Téméraire and her prizes in tow.
A note in the Téméraire's log shows how intermixed some of the British ships had now got. 'The Royal Sovereign,' it says, 'was a short distance to leeward, and the Colossus, dismasted, with one of the enemy's two-deckers on board of her, who had struck, and appeared to be Spanish.'
In the half-hour that the Téméraire stood by, the battle passed through its crisis, although fighting went on fiercely at many points for another two hours yet. Before half-past two, six or seven of the enemy had given in and could be seen 'lying with British ensigns displayed at the stern over tricolours or Spanish flags.' By three o'clock nearly a third of the enemy's fleet had either struck their colours or were on the point of striking them, and another third were hauling out of line and preparing to quit the battle and run for Cadiz. The Spanish flagship Santa Ana, with every mast down and her starboard side shattered to matchwood, had surrendered to the Royal Sovereign. The French flagship Bucentaure had hauled down her ensign and Admiral Villeneuve was a prisoner on board the British Mars.
The surrender of the Bucentaure—although perhaps it only comes incidentally into the Téméraire's story—was one of the most dramatic events of Trafalgar. When the French flagship, beaten to a standstill, with her three masts shot down, one after the other within five minutes, was on the point of surrendering, Admiral Villeneuve ordered a boat to be lowered to take him on board another French ship. 'Le Bucentaure,' said Villeneuve as he gave the order, 'à rempli sa tâche, la mienne n'est pas encore achevée.'[107] But every one of the Bucentaure's boats was found to have been smashed to pieces. Then Villeneuve's flag-captain, Majendie, hurried aft and clambering into the wreckage of the ship's stern gallery with his speaking-trumpet hailed the Santisima Trinidad to send a boat at once. There was no reply. The Trinidad was lying quite close to the Bucentaure at that moment, so close that only a very few yards separated Majendie from her as he hailed, but the tremendous thunder of the guns all round completely overpowered his voice. Nor did any one on board the Spanish ship see him. There was no means of attracting help from elsewhere. The Bucentaure had indeed done her work—and Villeneuve's too. There was left now but one thing to do. The colours of the Bucentaure were hauled down to the nearest British ship,—a seventy-four named, by something of a coincidence, the Conqueror,—'and a white handkerchief was waved from her in token of submission.' Captain Israel Pellew was in command of the Conqueror. He was at the moment unable to spare Lieutenant Couch, his First Lieutenant, to whom in ordinary course the duty of boarding the prize would have fallen, and being unaware, from the absence throughout the battle of Villeneuve's flag from the Bucentaure's mast-head, that the enemy's Commander-in-Chief had surrendered to him, he told Captain Atcherley of the Conqueror's marines to go in the First Lieutenant's place and take possession of the Bucentaure. Atcherley went off in a small boat with two seamen and a corporal and two marines. He was pulled alongside and clambered on board the prize, little dreaming whom he was going to meet and the reception in store for him. This is what then took place.
