CHAPTER VI
Nelson’s First Great Fight: The Battle of Cape St Vincent
(1797)
“To have had any share in it is honour enough for one man’s life, but to have been foremost on such a day could fall to your share alone”
Sir Gilbert Elliot.
Sir John Jervis had concentrated his fleet in Gibraltar Bay. Nelson was making his way from thence to Elba in the Minerve, accompanied by the Blanche, both 32-gun frigates. All went well until late in the evening of the 19th December 1796, when they fell in with two Spanish frigates named the Santa Sabina (40) and the Ceres (40) off Cartagena. The Commodore at once instructed Captain Cockburn to bring the Minerve to close action with the former. The struggle which ensued lasted for nearly three hours. The lengthy resistance of the enemy is proof that there were still gallant officers in the naval service of what was once the mightiest Sea Power in the world, now long since fallen from her high estate. Captain Don Jacobo Stuart fought his ship with praiseworthy calm and daring. Not until 164 of the 286 men who comprised the crew of the Santa Sabina had been killed or wounded did the Don strike his colours. The vessel had then lost both main and fore-masts, and the deck must have resembled a shambles. The Blanche had also behaved well, although the action was trifling compared with the determined encounter between the other vessels. The approach of three additional ships prevented the captain of the Blanche from following up his advantage and capturing the Ceres, which had hauled down her colours and sustained considerable damage to her sails and rigging.
Nelson’s prize was put in charge of Lieutenants Culverhouse and Hardy and taken in tow by the Minerve. They had not proceeded far before a third Spanish frigate came up and engaged the Minerve, necessitating the casting-off of the Santa Sabina, thereby leaving the two young, but able, junior officers to their own resources. The encounter lasted a little over half-an-hour, when the frigate having had enough of Nelson’s pommelling hauled off. The vessels from which Captain D’Arcy Preston of the Blanche had escaped were now approaching, their commanders having been attracted by the sound of distant firing. Dawn revealed them to Nelson as two sail-of-the-line and a frigate. By hoisting English colours above the Spanish flag on the prize the enemy’s Admiral was attracted to her, a ruse which enabled the Minerve and the Blanche to escape, for it would have been foolish for Nelson to run the risk of sacrificing them because of the prize crew. Indeed, the situation was so perilous that Nelson afterwards wrote to Sir Gilbert Elliot, “We very narrowly escaped visiting a Spanish prison.” Neither before nor since have British Tars behaved in finer fashion. They sailed the Santa Sabina until she was practically a hulk, when she was recaptured.
“The merits of every officer and man in the Minerve and her Prize,” Nelson reports to Jervis, “were eminently conspicuous through the whole of this arduous day.” He likewise said the kindest things of his antagonist: “My late prisoner, a descendant from the Duke of Berwick, son of James II., was my brave opponent; for which I have returned him his sword, and sent him in a Flag of truce to Spain ... he was reputed the best Officer in Spain, and his men were worthy of such a Commander; he was the only surviving Officer.” He reserved more picturesque details for his brother.
“When I hailed the Don,” he relates, “and told him, ‘This is an English Frigate,’ and demanded his surrender or I would fire into him, his answer was noble, and such as became the illustrious family from which he is descended—‘This is a Spanish Frigate, and you may begin as soon as you please.’ I have no idea of a closer or sharper battle: the force to a gun the same, and nearly the same number of men; we having two hundred and fifty. I asked him several times to surrender during the Action, but his answer was—‘No, Sir; not whilst I have the means of fighting left.’ When only himself of all the Officers were left alive, he hailed, and said he could fight no more, and begged I would stop firing.” Culverhouse and Hardy, after having been conveyed to Carthagena, were subsequently exchanged for the unlucky but brave Don, and returned to the Minerve.
