The battle, however, even though both the French Commander-in-Chief and the Spanish Second in Command[110] and also the big Santisima Trinidad with the Spanish Third in Command,[111] had surrendered, was not yet over. There were still a number of ships of the enemy that were yet apparently unbeaten, besides one group that had hardly fired a shot as yet.
At three o'clock, or a few minutes after that, the Téméraire's men had again to stand to their guns. Fresh foes were seen approaching.
These were five of the ships of Villeneuve's van squadron under Rear-Admiral Dumanoir. Admiral Villeneuve's last signal had been to order Dumanoir's squadron, which had been cut off by Nelson's tactics and had so far not been engaged at all, to head round and come to the rescue of the centre and rear. There were originally ten ships under Dumanoir's command, but five of them, after they came round, broke away, and edged off to leeward towards where Admiral Gravina (the Spanish Commander-in-Chief, now left by Villeneuve's surrender the senior officer on the enemy's side) was rallying some of the rear ships to try and escape into Cadiz. What befell these does not concern us.
Dumanoir's remnant of five (four French ships and one Spaniard) stood along a little to windward of the ships engaged as far as where the Téméraire lay, making it appear as though they were coming down to attack. 'At 3,' says the Téméraire's log, 'observed five of the enemy in good order, starboard side. Sent the men from the quarter-deck guns to assist on the other decks. The Sirius made sail from us, when four of the enemy's ships opened their fire on our starboard side; having but few guns clear of the prizes, cut them loose.' 'While they were about three-quarters of a mile to windward,' says Captain Harvey describing what happened in his letter home, 'they opened their guns upon the Téméraire and her prizes, and for some time I could return no guns; but when those we could fight with were brought to bear upon the enemy, the gentlemen thought proper to haul to a more respectable distance, and thus towards evening with me ended this most glorious action.'[112] Dumanoir's fire did little harm to the Téméraire herself. It mortally wounded one of her midshipmen who was on board the Redoutable, and cut away the Fougueux' main and mizen masts,—the Fougueux had been cleared away from alongside the Téméraire a few moments previously, and allowed to swing athwart the Téméraire's stern, end-on to Dumanoir's ships as they passed by,—but that was practically all they did.
'Half-past 4,' says the Téméraire's log, 'ceased firing.' The Téméraire had now played her part. It only remained to house and secure the guns.
The battle was over—although near by there were still some three or four of the enemy who had not yet gone through the formality of lowering their ensigns. They were feebly firing, though they could neither fight nor fly. All could see that the inevitable end could hardly be long deferred. The knife was already at the throats of the last of the destined victims of the day. The Téméraire's last gun, as a fact, went at the same instant that Nelson, in the cockpit of the Victory, breathed his last.
Three-quarters of an hour later all resistance on the part of the enemy had ceased, and there was a silence on the sea. Trafalgar had been fought and won. Seventeen of the enemy had surrendered—eight French ships and nine Spaniards. One French ship, in addition, was on fire and her crew were being rescued by the boats of the nearest British ships. The remainder of the enemy had run out of the battle and were in full flight, some in one direction, some in another.
The scene all round at that moment, as it appeared from the Téméraire, was one that the last survivor of Trafalgar could hardly have forgotten to his dying day—
Nobly, nobly, Cape Saint Vincent to the north-west died away,
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay,
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face, Trafalgar lay.
Cape Trafalgar was sighted from off the deck, we are told, just as the battle was ending, and was made at about eight miles off. On either hand lay ships with shattered bulwarks and hulls gashed all over and riddled from the water-line upwards with gaping and splintered shot-holes, the yellow strakes between the ports seared and scorched by the back-blast from the guns and crusted over with half-burned powder. Some also had several of their ports knocked into one, or their port-lids unhung or wrenched away; others had their figure-heads clean gone, and their bowsprits smashed off short; others, in addition, had their stern and quarter galleries beaten in; and there were ugly smears and stains down the sides of all where the scuppers opened overboard. No fewer than nine ships were lying entirely dismantled—'ras comme des pontons,' as a Frenchman put it. In these everything on deck above the bulwarks was gone, shorn roughly off—rigging, spars, masts—everything. A short stump, only a few feet high, remained in one or two of the ships to show where a tall mast had that morning stood—that was all. All else had disappeared—smashed down, shot by the board and lying over the sides amid the tangled confusion of broken spars, torn rigging, and ragged sails. Eight of the dismasted ships were trophies of the battle, French or Spanish prizes—the Bucentaure and the Santisima Trinidad among them. The ninth was a British ship, the cruelly battered Belleisle, which had undergone a terrific mauling. The burning ship was the French Achille, which lay not far off—a mass of flames from end to end. She had been set on fire by accident in the last hour of the battle, and was now blazing fiercely from stem to stern, sending off heavy volumes of dense black smoke into the clear evening air, as the hapless vessel lay burning to the water's edge, or until the flames should reach the magazine. Over yonder a group of British ships, several with topmasts and yards gone, were closing on a big three-decker that had only her foremast left standing, Collingwood's Royal Sovereign. Nearer, the battered ships of Nelson's column formed another group, collecting round the Victory. Far to the north-west, towards Cadiz, could be seen the sails of eleven ships that were escaping with Gravina. Among these fugitives was the Téméraire's first antagonist, the French Neptune, which, by carefully avoiding every attempt to bring her to close action, had got through the battle with a loss of only 13 men killed and 37 wounded. Black dots against the western sky, now ablaze in all the wild glory of a stormy October sunset, Dumanoir's flying ships could be seen—four in number—standing away into the Atlantic. The fifth ship of the group, the Spanish Neptuno, had been cut off and taken as the battle closed by the British Minotaur and Spartiate.