How the news of Trafalgar was carried to London
Frank Dadd, R.I., from a sketch by C. W. Cole
Collingwood gave the number of prisoners as 20,000, and the monetary loss of the enemy nearly £4,000,000, “most of it gone to the bottom.” The British loss was 1690 killed and wounded; that of the allies 5860, although no exact figures are obtainable. The captives were taken to England, and the officers allowed on parole, but the seamen and soldiers of the extinguished Allied Fleet were sent to the prisons of Porchester, Forton, Weedon, Norman Cross, Mill Bay, and Stapleton, locked up in local gaols, or interned in hulks. By a cruel fate the Bahama and the Swiftsure were added to the number of the latter. Few exchanges were made, and so the poor fellows either died in exile or remained until the downfall of Napoleon secured them liberty.
Thus ended the battle of Trafalgar—Napoleon’s maritime Waterloo. The idea of a great military commander conducting operations at sea was proved to be impracticable, while the superior qualities of British seamanship were once more evident. The method of warfare practised by the combined fleet, that of aiming at the rigging and picking off combatants by sharp-shooting, was less successful than our own principle of aiming at the vital parts of the hull. Whereas the British succeeded in firing a gun nearly once a minute, it took three minutes for the Allied Fleet to do so. The total armament on the English vessels numbered 2148 guns, while the French had 1356, and the Spanish 1270, bringing the combined force to 2626.
Great Britain gained enormously in prestige as a result of Nelson’s overwhelming victory. Amongst other important consequences Trafalgar led Napoleon to enforce his disastrous Continental System, by means of which he hoped to exclude from the Continent the goods of his persistent enemy. This, in its turn, brought on the war with Russia, a big step towards the final catastrophe of Waterloo.
More than two weeks passed before the people of England received certain intelligence of the great rout of the enemy in Trafalgar Bay. On the 6th November 1805, guns at the Tower and elsewhere announced the victory, and the glad tidings flashed through the length and breadth of the land—
The heart of England throbbed from sea to sea.
But, alas! the idol of the nation lay dead in the keeping of his comrades and sorrowing England could never again greet in life the son who had loved her so well.
Nelson had touched the imagination of high and low, and only the sad circumstance of an early death in the moment of glorious victory was wanted to ensure him the proudest place in all the long annals of British naval history.