Linois found the British fire too destructive, and signalled his ships to cut or slip their cables, calculating that a faint air from the sea, which was beginning to blow, would drift them closer under the shelter of the batteries. Saumarez, too, noticed that his topsails were beginning to swell, and he instantly slipped his cable and endeavoured to close with the Indomptable, signalling his ships to do the same. The British cables rattled hoarsely through their hawse-holes along the whole line, and the ships were adrift; but the breeze almost instantly died away, and on the strong coast current the British ships floated helplessly, while the fire from the great shore batteries, and from the steady French decks, now anchored afresh, smote them heavily in turn. The Pompée lay for an hour under a concentrated fire without being able to bring a gun to bear in return, and then summoned by signal the boats of the squadron to tow her off.
Saumarez, meanwhile, had ordered the Hannibal, under Captain Ferris, to round the head of the French line and "rake the admiral's ship." Ferris, by fine seamanship, partly sailed and partly drifted into the post assigned to him, and then grounded hopelessly, under a plunging fire from the shore batteries, within hail of the Frenchman, itself also aground. A fire so dreadful soon reduced the unfortunate Hannibal to a state of wreck. Boats from the Caesar and the Venerable came to her help, but Ferris sent them back again. They could not help him, and should not share his fate. Saumarez, as a last resource, prepared for a boat attack on the batteries, but in the whole squadron there were not enough uninjured boats to carry the marines. The British flagship itself was by this time well-nigh a wreck, and was drifting on the reefs. A flaw of wind from the shore gave the ships steerage-way, and Saumarez drew off, leaving the Hannibal to its fate.
Ferris fought till his masts were gone, his guns dismounted, his bulwarks riddled, his decks pierced, and one-third of his crew killed or wounded. Then he ordered the survivors to the lower decks, and still kept his flag flying for half-an-hour after the shot-torn sails of the shattered British ships had disappeared round Cabrita. Then he struck. Here was a French triumph, indeed! A British squadron beaten off, a British seventy-four captured! It is said that when the news reached Paris the city went half-mad with exultation. Napoleon read the despatch to his ministers with eyes that danced, and almost wept, with mere gladness!
The British squadron—officers and men in such a mood as may be imagined—put into Gibraltar to refit; the Caesar, with her mainmast shot through in five places, her boats destroyed, her hull pierced; while of the sorely battered Pompée it is recorded that she had "not a mast, yard-spar, shroud, rope, or sail" which was not damaged by hostile shot. Linois, meanwhile, got his grounded ships and his solitary prize afloat, and summoned the Cadiz squadron to join him. On the 9th these ships—six sail of the line, two of them giants of 112 guns each, with three frigates—went triumphantly, with widespread canvas and many-coloured bunting, past Gibraltar, where the shattered British squadron was lying, and cast anchor beside Admiral Linois in Algeciras Bay.
The British were labouring, meanwhile, with fierce energy, to refit their damaged ships under shelter of the guns of Gibraltar. The Pompée was practically destroyed, and her crew were distributed amongst the other ships. Saumarez himself regarded the condition of his flagship as hopeless, but his captain, Brenton, begged permission to at least attempt to refit her. He summoned his crew aft, and told the men the admiral proposed to leave the ship behind, and asked them "what they thought about it." The men gave a wrathful roar, punctuated, it is to be feared, with many sea-going expletives, and shouted, "All hands to work day and night till she's ready!" The whole crew, down to the very powder-boys, actually worked while daylight lasted, kept it up, watch and watch, through the night, and did this from the evening of the 6th to the noon of the 12th! Probably no ship that ever floated was refitted in shorter time. In that brief period, to quote the "Naval Register," she "shifted her mainmast; fished and secured her foremast, shot through in several places; knotted and spliced the rigging, which had been cut to pieces, and bent new sails; plugged the shot-holes between wind and water; completed with stores of all kinds, anchors and cables, powder and shot, and provisions for four months."
On Sunday, July 12, 1801, the French and Spanish ships in Algeciras Bay weighed anchor, formed their line of battle as they came out, off Cabrita Point, and, stately and slow, with the two 112-gun Spaniards as a rearguard, bore up for Cadiz. An hour later the British ships warped out of the mole in pursuit. It was an amazing sight: a squadron of five sail of the line, which had been completely disabled in an action only five days before, was starting, fresh and refitted, in pursuit of a fleet double its own number, and more than double its strength! All Gibraltar crowded to watch the ships as, one by one, they cleared the pier-head. The garrison band blew itself hoarse playing "Britons, strike home," while the Caesar's band answered in strains as shrill with "Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis for glory we steer." Both tunes, it may be added, were simply submerged beneath the cheers which rang up from mole-head and batteries and dock-walls. Just as the Caesar drifted, huge and stately, past the pier-head, a boat came eagerly pulling up to her. It was crowded with jack-tars, with bandaged heads and swathed arms. A cluster of the Pompée's wounded, who escaped from the hospital, bribed a boatman to pull them out to the flagship, and clamoured to be taken on board!
Saumarez had strengthened his squadron by the addition of the Superb, with the Thames frigate, and at twenty minutes to nine P.M., vainly searching the black horizon for the lights of the enemy, he hailed the Superb, and ordered its captain, Keats, to clap on all sail and attack the enemy directly he overtook them. Saumarez, in a word, launched a single seventy-four against a fleet! Keats was a daring sailor; his ship was, perhaps, the fastest British seventy-four afloat, and his men were instantly aloft spreading every inch of canvas. Then, like a huge ghost, the Superb glided ahead and vanished in the darkness. The wind freshened; the blackness deepened; the lights of the British squadron died out astern. But a wide sprinkle of lights ahead became visible; it was the Spanish fleet! Eagerly the daring Superb pressed on, with slanting decks and men at quarters, but with lights hidden. At midnight the rear ships of the Spanish squadron were under the larboard bow of the Superb—two stupendous three-deckers, with lights gleaming through a hundred port-holes—while a French two-decker to larboard of both the Spanish giants completed the line.
Keats, unseen and unsuspected, edged down with his solitary seventy-four, her heaviest guns only 18-pounders, on the quarter of the nearest three-decker. He was about to fling himself, in the gloom of the night, on three great ships, with an average of 100 guns each! Was ever a more daring feat attempted? Silently through the darkness the Superb crept, her canvas glimmering ghostly white, till she was within some 300 yards of the nearest Spaniard. Then out of the darkness to windward there broke on the astonished and drowsy Spaniards a tempest of flame, a whirlwind of shot. Thrice the Superb poured her broadside into the huge and staggering bulk of her antagonist. With the second broadside the Spaniard's topmast came tumbling down; with the third, so close was the flame of the Superb's guns, the Spanish sails—dry as touch-wood with lying for so many months in the sunshine of Cadiz—took fire.
Meanwhile a dramatic incident occurred. The two great Spaniards commenced to thunder their heavy broadsides into each other! Many of the Superb's shots had struck the second and more distant three-decker. Cochrane, indeed, says that the Superb passed actually betwixt the two gigantic Spaniards, fired a broadside, larboard and starboard, into both, and then glided on and vanished in the darkness. It is certain that the San Hermenegildo, finding her decks torn by a hurricane of shot, commenced to fire furiously through the smoke and the night at the nearest lights. They were the lights of her own consort! She, in turn, fired at the flash of the guns tormenting her. So, under the black midnight skies, the two great Spanish ships thundered at each other, flame answering flame. They drifted ever closer. The fire of the Real Carlos kindled the sails of the sister ship; the flames leaped and danced to the very mast-heads; and, still engaged in a fiery wrestle, they blew up in succession, and out of their united crews of 2000 men only a little over 200 were picked up!
The Superb, meanwhile, had glided ahead, leaving the three-deckers to destroy each other, and opened fire at pistol-shot distance on the French two-decker, and in thirty minutes compelled her to strike. In less than two hours of a night action, that is, this single English seventy-four had destroyed two Spanish three-deckers of 112 guns each, and captured a fine French battle-ship of 74 guns!