So we come, at length, to the Téméraire's final hour and her appointed end.
Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood
And waves were white below;
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Nor know the conquered knee—
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea.
All the way up the river on her last day, we are told, the Téméraire was cheered as she passed along by the crews of the merchant ships and the people on board the river steamboats 'surprised as well as delighted by the novel spectacle of a 98-gun ship in the Pool,'[117] while after they had begun to break the Téméraire up at Rotherhithe numbers of people came to visit 'the ship that helped to avenge Nelson at Trafalgar,' attracted by reports of the finding of Trafalgar relics on board. One of these was a round-shot, found deeply embedded in the centre of one of the Téméraire's main-deck beams with a French sailor's red cap, which had evidently been used as an improvised wad in the hurry of the fighting, stuck fast to it. Another was the brass memorial tablet (already spoken of), let into the quarter-deck near the wheel, and bearing the inscription, 'England expects that every man will do his duty.'[118]
Two gigantic figures, quarter-gallery decorations, taken from the Téméraire during her breaking up, are still in existence, preserved by the successors to the firm at whose hands the old ship met her fate.[119] Any one, also, who cares to make a pilgrimage among the byways of riverside London on the south side, may come across a church within a stone's-throw of where the final scene in the Téméraire's career was enacted—St. Paul's, Globe Street, Rotherhithe—in which the altar, altar rails, and sanctuary chairs are all made of heart-of-oak carved from the frame timbers of the 'Fighting' Téméraire.
RELICS OF THE 'FIGHTING' TÉMÉRAIRE
Two quarter-gallery figures now in the possession of Messrs. H. Castle & Sons, Millbank.
So the story reaches its close. It can hardly end better than with the eloquent passage in which Mr. Ruskin has delivered what is, in intent, the funeral oration at the passing of the 'Fighting' Téméraire.[120]
'This particular ship, crowned in the Trafalgar hour of trial with chief victory, prevailing over the fatal vessel that had given Nelson death—surely, if anything without a soul deserved honour or affection, we owed them here. Those sails that strained so full bent into the battle, that broad bow that struck the surf aside, enlarging silently in steadfast haste, full front to the shot, resistless and without reply, those triple ports whose choirs of flame rang forth in their courses into the fierce revenging monotone, which, when it died away, left no answering voice to rise any more upon the sea against the strength of England—those sides that were wet with the long runlets of English life-blood, like press planks at vintage, gleaming goodly crimson down to the cast and clash of the washing foam—those pale masts that stayed themselves up against the war-ruin, shaking out their ensigns through the thunder, till sail and ensign drooped—steeped in the death-stilled pause of Andalusian air, burning with its witness-clouds of human souls at rest—surely for these some sacred care might have been left in our thoughts, some quiet space amidst the lapse of English waters? Nay, not so, we have stern keepers to trust her glory to—the fire and the worm. Never more shall sunset lay golden robe on her, nor starlight tremble on the waves that part at her gliding. Perhaps, where the low gate opens to some cottage garden, the tired traveller may ask idly why the moss grows so green on its rugged wood, and even the sailor's child may not answer, nor know, that the night dew lies deep in the war-rents of the wood of the old Téméraire.'