The first thing that he did was to send home for more ships, not because he wasn’t ready to fight the French with what he had, but simply in pursuance of his constant policy with regard to them. In his dispatch to the Admiralty he said:
“Should they come out, I shall immediately bring them to battle, but though I should not doubt of spoiling any voyage they may attempt, yet I hope for the arrival of the ships from England that as an enemy’s fleet they may be annihilated.”
In a private letter which he wrote at the same time he said:
“It is annihilation that the country wants and not merely a splendid victory of twenty-three to thirty-six—honourable to the parties concerned, but absolutely useless in the extended scale to bring Buonaparte to his marrow-bones. Numbers can only annihilate. Therefore I hope the Admiralty will send the fixed force as soon as possible.”
He hoped for forty sail of the line, but when the ever memorable morning of the 21st had dawned he was only able to muster twenty-seven against thirty-three. At half-past eleven the famous signal: “England expects that every man will do his duty!” flew from the main-royal of the Victory.
I have no intention of attempting to re-write the thousand-times told tale of Trafalgar or of the disaster which plunged the nation into mourning in the midst of the exultation of triumph, for to do so would be alike superfluous and impertinent. Let it be enough to point out that the firing of the first gun marked the moment that Nelson had lived and fought for.
He was Commander-in-chief, as he had so often prayed to be, of the British Fleet, and there in front of him was the last fleet of any strength that his hated enemy France could muster. The battle, like the triumph, was his and his alone. Every man who that day did his duty fought by Nelson’s directions and, as it were, under Nelson’s eye, and never was victory more complete or defeat more crushing.
When it was over eighteen out of the thirty-three French and Spanish ships had been captured, and finally only eleven got back to Cadiz so shattered that they never again took the sea as men-of-war.
The crowning triumph of Nelson’s life left Britain without a rival so far as the mastery of the sea was concerned and threw the way open for conquest and colonisation in all parts of the world. Well might the great Admiral say when he lay dying in Captain Hardy’s arms: “Thank God, I’ve done my duty!”
No man ever died with nobler or more truly spoken words on his lips than these, for he had not only given his country the empire of the sea, but he had saved her from invasion by one who was perhaps the greatest military genius the world has known.