All the while during the final scene Nelson's flag remained flying at the Victory's mast-head—although the Admiral had for nearly an hour now been lying dead. Those on board were, perhaps, loth to lower it before they must. In accordance with one of the old fighting instructions of the navy, the commander-in-chief's ship in action kept her Admiral's flag flying in all circumstances until the battle was over, whatever might have happened to the Admiral meantime. Whether he was disabled or whether he was killed, the flag must still fly to the end of the action in its accustomed place. As a fact, at Trafalgar, Flag-Captain Hardy of the Victory had had the entire handling of the British fleet from the moment that Nelson was struck down until the last shot had been fired. His descendants treasure to this day the silver pencil-case that Hardy 'used to write down signals during the battle of Trafalgar, with the marks of his teeth on it made in moments of excitement!' It was shown at the Naval Exhibition at Chelsea in 1891, one newspaper speaking of it as 'something like a relic!' Nelson's flag flew till sunset, and, in consequence, except the Victory and the Royal Sovereign, to which Captain Hardy, of course, had sent the news specially, and Captain Blackwood's Euryalus, barely half a dozen ships of the fleet were aware of Nelson's death that night; or even that he had been wounded. In the Téméraire herself the news was not known, owing to the dispersal of the fleet caused by the stormy weather of the three following days, until the 24th, when Captain Harvey first learnt what had happened by a casual signal from the Defiance.
This is what was said on the spot of the way the Téméraire had done her work. 'I congratulate you most sincerely,' wrote Collingwood to Captain Harvey, on the 28th of October, 'on the noble and distinguished part the Téméraire took in the battle; nothing could be finer; I have not words in which I can sufficiently express my admiration of it.'[113] This from a man so temperate in his language as Collingwood was at all times was indeed high praise.
Her day's work at Trafalgar cost the Téméraire in casualties exactly 123 killed and wounded; or as Captain Harvey put it: 'Killed, 47; badly wounded, 31; slightly wounded, 45—in all, 123.' Captain Busigny and Lieutenant Kingston of the Marines, one midshipman (John Pitts) and Mr Oades, the carpenter, were the officers killed; one lieutenant of the Royal Navy, the surviving lieutenant of Marines, a master's-mate and a midshipman, with the Téméraire's boatswain, were the officers wounded. Forty-three more of the Téméraire's men were drowned on board the Fougueux and the Redoutable, in the storm after the battle.
As everybody knows, all Nelson's Trafalgar prizes except four perished in the storm after the battle, or were set on fire or scuttled. Whose fault it was, or how it came about that Nelson's dying order to anchor immediately the battle was over, which would probably have preserved all the prizes, was set aside, we need not discuss. Both the Téméraire's prizes were among the ships that were lost—the Fougueux being wrecked a few miles south of Cadiz and the Redoutable foundering in deep water. The Redoutable foundered during the night of the 22nd, carrying down with her 13 of the Téméraire's men. She was in tow of the Swiftsure, which had relieved the Téméraire of her, when, about five on the previous afternoon, she made signals of distress. The straining of the dismasted hull as it pitched and rolled in the heavy seas had reopened the shot-holes below the water-line and the ship was filling. The Swiftsure hove-to and lowered her boats, which in two trips brought off safely many of the prisoners and the wounded, and part of the Téméraire's prize crew. Then, however, the attempt had to be given up. 'The weather was so bad and the sea so high,' that, in the words of the Swiftsure's log, 'it was impossible for the boats to pass.' They were still, though, keeping the Redoutable in tow, hoping she might live out the night, when, at half-past ten, all of a sudden, the prize foundered by the stern. The sinking was so sudden at the last that the Swiftsure's men had no time to cast loose the tow-rope and had to chop it in two with axes. During the night a few of the Redoutable's men were picked up floating on rafts that they had made, but upwards of 190 hapless fellows went down in the ship.
The Téméraire herself had a bad time of it in the storm. All Tuesday, the 22nd, the Sirius kept her in tow, but it was so rough that little could be done on board towards refitting the ship or attempting to rig jury-masts or repair damages. On the 23rd the Sirius was called off by signal to recover prizes adrift which the sortie that the refugee ships in Cadiz attempted that day was threatening. The Africa was told off to take the Téméraire in tow, but the storm came on worse than ever during the afternoon, and the Africa, whose badly damaged masts were threatening to roll over the side every minute, could do nothing but stand by. 'The state of the Téméraire is so bad,' wrote Captain Harvey, that night, 'that we have been in constant apprehension of our lives, every sail and yard having been destroyed, and nothing but the lower masts left standing, the rudder-head almost shot off and is since gone, and lower masts all shot through and through in many places.'
The Téméraire, however, managed to come through all safely, and she again held her own by herself throughout the 24th and all the next day. Unaided, she brought up in the end in safety off San Lucar, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir some 25 miles north of Cadiz, at seven on the morning of the 25th. Here the men stopped shot-holes above water, cleared away wreckage and completed the knotting and splicing of the damaged rigging and cleaning up of the ship, and got up jury-masts and lower yards:—five days' hard work. On the 30th of October, the Defiance took the Téméraire in tow for Gibraltar, where the ship let go anchor on the afternoon of the 2nd of November, twelve days after Trafalgar.
At Gibraltar the Téméraire was patched up and refitted sufficiently to enable her to proceed to England under sail. The Victory had arrived four days before, and was lying at anchor with Nelson's flag and her ensign at half-mast, as were the other ships of the fleet, upwards of a dozen, that had as yet come in. Four days afterwards the Euryalus, from which Admiral Collingwood had removed into the Queen, sailed for England, carrying on board Collingwood's completed Trafalgar despatch,[114] the captured French and Spanish ensigns (to be hung up in St. Paul's and left there to perish through neglect), and Admiral Villeneuve himself, going to meet his doom. Within six months the hapless French Admiral was dead—by his own hand. The story, so long believed in England, that Admiral Villeneuve's death was another foul murder to be charged against Napoleon has every probability against it. Paroled on his arrival at Spithead, and exchanged on the usual terms, Villeneuve had landed at Morlaix in Brittany, and was on his way to report himself in Paris, when one evening a sealed letter from the Minister of Marine was handed to him. Next morning he was found in his bedroom at the inn where he had put up, stabbed to the heart. A letter taking leave of his wife was found in the room. He was buried that night without any honours.
VILLENEUVE'S SIGNATURE