I hope the Admiralty will give me credit for maintaining my station in the neighbourhood of so powerfull a fleet, for I never quitted them for a day, though I had but four ships; but now that I am reinforced by the squadron under Sir R. Calder, I have a fine fleet of 26 ships of line and some small frigates; and hope every good—and with God's blessing with me will do a good day's work for my country, whenever they give me an opportunity. That done, I shall be glad to retire to my home & enjoy the comforts of my family, for my strength fails, and the mind being on the full stretch, sinks and needs relief.
I have a gentleman from Newcastle for my Captain, but he is a man of
no talent as a sea-officer and of little assistance to me.
How glad I shall be to get to my garden again at Morpeth and quitting
the foe, see for the rest of my life only friends about me.
Ever through the thunder of cannon or the stress of a watch which ceased neither day nor night, through the threatenings of death or the allurements of fame, one thought was paramount in Collingwood's mind. A yearning for a peaceful garden he had left behind—to him a veritable garden of Paradise—for the innocent prattle of his children, the sweet companionship of his wife. A dream of reunion tormented and sustained him. "Whenever I think how I am to be happy again my thoughts carry me back to Morpeth," he wrote. Incapable of a dramatic appeal to sympathy, his letters to Stanhope, in their strong self-repression, breathe a longing the more profound. For that Paradise of his dreams Collingwood would have joyfully bartered fame, emolument, all that the world could offer, had not duty claimed from him a prolonged sacrifice of all which he held dear. Whether, if he could have looked on through the few remaining years of his life and have foreseen the end of that longing and those dreams, his weary spirit could still have borne the burden laid upon it, none may say. But buoyed up by that ever-present hope he faced the strain of his eternal watching with an unflinching courage, which may have been occasionally strengthened by a recollection which visited him, and the remarkable circumstances of which cannot be ignored.
For the week before the war had broken out, Collingwood, in the peace of that distant Northumberland home, had been elated by a vision which contained for him a strange element of great promise. In his sleep he had seen with extraordinary vividness the English Fleet in battle array; the details of their position were clear to him, and, later, he beheld an engagement in progress the incidents of which were extraordinarily realistic. Finally, the glory of a great victory came upon him, to fill his waking moments with delight and haunt his recollection. So minute, so circumstantial had been the particulars of the dream, that, profoundly impressed at the time, he had related them in full detail to his wife. In much imaginative, Collingwood was not without the vein of superstition which seems inseparable from his profession, and he had the simple faith of a child. He believed in the ultimate fulfilment of that vision and the thought pursued him.
Meanwhile, his letter to Stanhope of September 23rd, reached its destination at a moment of increased national suspense. Napoleon's elaborately planned ruse to entice Nelson to the West Indies had succeeded only too well. And while Nelson sought his decoy Villeneuve off Barbadoes, the French Admiral, as pre-arranged, was hastening back to effect, in the absence of his dupe, the release of the French Fleet blockaded by Cornwallis. But luck and wit saved England. Nelson chanced upon a ship which had seen the returning enemy; he succeeded in warning the Admiralty in time; Villeneuve, intercepted by Calder, suffered an ignominious defeat, and Napoleon consummated his own disaster by the tactlessness of his wrath against his unfortunate admiral who had thus succumbed to a force inferior in numbers. Villeneuve, stung by the bitter taunt of cowardice, rashly left Cadiz to fight Nelson—a manoeuvre which, at best, could little advance the cause of the Emperor, which, as the event proved, courted a catastrophe out of all proportion to any possible gain, and which was undertaken by the luckless Frenchman for no other end save that of disproving the imputation of cowardice under which he smarted.
Whether in the placing of the ships at the Battle of Trafalgar that vision of Collingwood played any part, history will never know—whether it must be regarded by the curious as in itself prophetic, or merely as a chance occurrence, the suggestion of which was by chance adopted. Yet it is obvious that the relation between this remarkable dream and its fulfilment can scarcely be viewed merely as an interesting coincidence. The inference is too strong that in any consultation between Collingwood and Nelson with regard to the order of battle the recollection of the scheme of attack which had so impressed the former must—even if unconsciously—have coloured the advice given by him to Nelson. Moreover such reflections give rise to a further curious speculation. To Nelson posterity is wont to ascribe the entire merit of the order of battle on that memorable day; he, it is held, was the active genius who conceived the plan of action, Collingwood was the acquiescer, a passive though able coadjutor. Yet Collingwood himself, the most modest of men and the least likely to make an erroneous statement with regard to such a question of fact, expressly asserts the contrary. "In this affair," he says, "Nelson did nothing without my counsel, we made our line of battle together and concerted the attack." [4] On this point he also insists, in writing to Stanhope, to whom, as to his wife, he incidentally recalled the circumstances of his having foreseen the battle in a dream at Morpeth the week before the war broke out.
Throughout this period, in England, news was awaited with increasing anxiety. On October 31st, Mrs Stanhope wrote to her son John:—
The Papers are now quite alarming. I fear it is up with the Austrians for the Russians cannot now join them. This horrid Bonaparte is a scourge to the whole world. It is wonderful with what enthusiasm he seems to inspire his men. They go where he likes and accomplish all his plans.
Your father has written again to Admiral Collingwood to inform him that if he does not return home, which, as he has changed his flag from the Dreadnought, is not very probable, that he will send William to him in the spring. Admiral Roddam, tho' he prefers a frigate, approves of his going with Admiral C. as he is both a good man & an excellent sailor, & will scrupulously perform that which he promises to undertake.