Part 17

“The _Santa Anna_,” to quote Mr. Newnham Collingwood, “struck at half-past two o’clock, about the time when the news of Lord Nelson’s wound was communicated to Admiral Collingwood, but the _Royal Sovereign_ had been so much injured in her masts and yards by the ships that lay on her bow and quarter that she was unable to alter her position. Admiral Collingwood accordingly called the _Euryalus_ to take her in tow, and make the necessary signals. He dispatched Captain Blackwood to convey the Spanish Admiral on board the _Euryalus_, but he was stated to be at the point of death, and Captain Blackwood returned with the Spanish captain. That officer had already been to the _Royal Sovereign_ to deliver his sword, and on entering had asked one of the English sailors the name of the ship. When he was told that it was the _Royal Sovereign_, he replied, in broken English, while patting one of the guns with his hand, ‘I think she should be called the _Royal Devil_!’”

The _Royal Sovereign_, on the _Santa Anna_ surrendering, pushed off from her giant prize—so big a ship, indeed, that, in Collingwood’s own words, she “towered over the _Sovereign_ like a castle.” She moved away to seek another enemy. But the fall of her main and mizen-masts, cut through and through by shot, prevented her from taking a further part in the battle until after being taken in tow by the _Euryalus_ frigate, Captain Blackwood’s ship. The _Sovereign_ was able after that, during the rest of the action, to employ her broadsides here and there. Her last piece of work was at the very close of the battle, when she formed one of the group of ships that Captain Hardy summoned round the _Victory_ to support the dying chief’s flagship against a threatened attack on the _Victory_ from the fresh ships of the French van squadron as they passed down the line.

The _Royal Sovereign’s_ list of casualties, as officially reported on the morning after Trafalgar, amounted to forty-seven men killed and ninety-four wounded.

* * * * *

How Collingwood first heard of Nelson’s fate he himself has told us:

“When my dear friend received his wound,” wrote the Admiral, “he immediately sent an officer to tell me of it, and give his love to me. Though the officer was directed to say the wound was not dangerous, I read in his countenance what I had to fear, and before the action was over Captain Hardy came to inform me of his death. I cannot tell you how deeply I was affected; my friendship for him was unlike any thing that I have left in the Navy—a brotherhood of more than thirty years.”

Writing to the Duke of Clarence, an old service friend of Collingwood’s and of Nelson’s as well, he said this:

“He (Nelson) sent an officer to inform me that he was wounded. I asked the officer if his wound was dangerous. He hesitated, then said he hoped it was not; but I saw the fate of my friend in his eye, for his look told what his tongue could not utter. About an hour after, when the action was over, Captain Hardy brought me the melancholy account of his death.”

Another detail of Trafalgar that may be news to some of us is the fact that Collingwood was wounded in the battle. He said nothing about himself to any one in any of his letters at the time, nor did he include himself in the return of wounded sent to the Admiralty. It was only in response to an anxious inquiry from his wife, who, some months afterwards, heard a rumour about it and wrote to inquire, that Collingwood, five months after the battle, first made mention of the matter. His letter to Lady Collingwood is dated March 29, 1806, and in it the Admiral says:

“Did I not tell you how my leg was hurt? It was by a splinter—a pretty severe blow. I had a good many thumps, one way or the other: one on the back, which I think was the wind of a great shot, for I never saw anything that did it. You know nearly all were killed or wounded on the quarter-deck or poop but myself, my Captain, and Secretary, Mr. Cosway, who was of more use to me than any officer after Clavell.

“The first inquiry of the Spaniards was about my wound, and exceedingly surprised they were when I made light of it, for when the captain of the _Santa Anna_ was brought on board, it was bleeding and swelled, and tied up with a handkerchief.”

What was really troubling the frugal north-country mind of Admiral Collingwood at that moment, as far as he was individually concerned, far more than his wound, was his out-of-pocket expenses owing to the damage that the enemy’s shot had done in his steward’s store-room. Writing to Lady Collingwood, he tells her this:—

“I have had a great destruction of my furniture and stock. I have hardly a chair that has not a shot in it, and many have lost both legs and arms, without hope of pension. My wine was broke in moving, and my pigs were slain in battle, and these are heavy losses where they cannot be replaced.”

One gets an idea of the kind of man Collingwood was also from the characteristically sympathetic way in which he wrote in a private letter about one of his officers (Mr. William Chalmers, the master of the _Royal Sovereign_) who was killed near the Admiral, on the quarter-deck, at his post by the wheel.

“I have written to Lloyd’s about Mr. Chalmers’ family. He left a mother and several sisters, whose chief dependence was on what this worthy man and valuable officer saved for them from his pay. He stood close to me when he received his death. A great shot almost divided his body; he laid his head upon my shoulder, and told me he was slain. I supported him till two men carried him off. He could say nothing to me, but to bless me; but as they carried him down, he wished he could but live to read the account of the action in a newspaper. He lay in the cockpit, among the wounded, until the _Santa Anna_ struck, and joining in the cheer which they gave her, expired with it on his lips.”

* * * * *

The only personal description of Collingwood’s appearance in existence is from the pen of a young officer (Midshipman Crawford, of the _Royal George_) who had an audience of him, to present a letter of introduction, in October, 1806, just a year after Trafalgar:

“Being provided with a letter of recommendation to Lord Collingwood, the Commander-in-Chief, I took an early opportunity to wait upon his Lordship.... Lord Collingwood was between fifty and sixty, thin and spare in person, which was then slightly bent, and in height about five feet ten inches. His head was small, with a pale, smooth, round face, the features of which would pass without notice, were it not for the eyes, which were blue, clear, penetrating; and the mouth, the lips of which were thin and compressed, indicating firmness and decision of character. He wore his hair powdered, and tied in a _queue_, in the style of officers of his age at that time; and his clothes were squared and fashioned after the strictest rules of the good old sea school. To his very ample coat, which had a stiff, stand-up collar, were appended broad and very long skirts—the deep flaps of his single-breasted white waistcoat, descending far below his middle, covered a portion of his thighs; and blue knee-breeches, with white stockings, and buckles to his shoes, completed his attire....

“On entering his presence, he took a rapid searching survey of me from head to foot; then ... in a quiet tone, amounting almost to gentleness, he put a few questions to me in nautics, which I believe I answered to his satisfaction.”

Of Collingwood in lighter vein we also get a glimpse. How, a short time after Trafalgar, he got one of his officers to write up his biography for a pertinacious newspaper editor is a story that the Admiral himself tells in a letter to his wife.

“The editors of the _Naval Chronicle_ have written to me for the history of my life and progress, for which they are pleased to say the world is very impatient. Now this rather embarrasses me, for I never could bear the trumpeter of his own praise. So, to get rid of it as well as I can, I have employed ⸺ to write a history for me. For my birth and parentage he has selected two or three chapters of Bamfylde Moore Carew; for my service in the West Indies and on the Spanish Main he has had good assistance in the _History of the Buccaneers_; and for my shipwreck he has copied a great deal out of _Robinson Crusoe_; all which, with a few anecdotes from the _Lives of the Admirals_, a little distorted, will make, I am inclined to think, a very respectable piece of biography.”

Collingwood’s dog, Bounce, was on board the _Royal Sovereign_ at Trafalgar, tied up out of the way below, in comparative safety, on the orlop deck. According to Collingwood himself, Bounce did not like cannon firing. Wrote Collingwood about him, before the battle: “Bounce is my only pet now, and he is indeed a good fellow; he sleeps by the side of my cot, whenever I lie in one, until near the time of tacking, and then marches off, to be out of the hearing of the guns, for he is not reconciled to them yet.” After the battle, on his master being raised to the peerage, Bounce—as Collingwood whimsically describes in one of his home-letters—seemed to grasp the new situation and took to giving himself airs. “I am out of all patience with Bounce. The consequential airs he gives himself since he became a right honourable dog are insufferable. He considers it beneath his dignity to play with commoners’ dogs, and truly thinks that he does them grace when he condescends to lift up his leg against them. This, I think, is carrying the insolence of rank to the extreme, but he is a dog that does it!”[19]

* * * * *

As all the world knows, Collingwood never set foot in England after Trafalgar, doomed, poor homesick fellow, never more to see—

The pleasant strand of Northumberland And the lordly towers thereby.

He wore out his life on duty, waiting and watching at sea for nearly five long and weary years, for an enemy who did not dare to face him. The Admiralty could not spare him to come home.

“He stepped into his boat from Plymouth Dock,” says the writer of a biographical sketch of Collingwood published shortly after the Admiral’s death, “on the last day of April, 1805, and returned, five years after, a peer and a corpse.” Immediately before he embarked, Collingwood had been conversing with a brother officer, who records an affecting incident. “The last time I ever saw Lord Collingwood,” wrote Sir T. Byam Martin, “he was on the point of stepping into his boat, never again to touch the British shore. We walked together for half an hour, and as long as I live I shall remember the words with which, in his accustomed mildness of expression, he alluded to the sacrifices our professional duties exact of us. He told me the number of years he had been married, and the number of days he had been with his family since the war commenced (then of many years duration). ‘My family are _actually strangers to me_.’ He was greatly overcome by the feelings thus excited, and, taking me by the hand, he said, ‘What a life of privation is ours—what an abandonment of everything to our professional duty, _and how little do the people of England know the sacrifices we make for them_!’ With this he turned from me to hide the tear which ran down his manly cheek, and saying ‘Farewell!’ walked to his boat.”

Slowly killed, if ever man was, by downright hard work, Collingwood died on the 7th of March, 1810, on board his flagship in the Mediterranean. On the day before he died his old spirit flickered up once more, and he murmured to his captain, who bent down over the brave old face, “I may live to fight the French once more.” The end drew on apace after that, and the soul of one of the grandest veterans of England at her best, passed calmly away to the presence of the God in Whom throughout every hour of his blameless life his trust had been as that of a little child for its earthly father. “He met death,” said the surgeon who attended Collingwood, “as became him, with composure and a fortitude which have seldom been equalled and never surpassed.”

We know something of how his sailors loved “Old Cuddy,” as the whole fleet called Collingwood, from what happened at Collingwood’s funeral on that May day of 1810, when Nelson’s brother-in-arms was laid to his rest beside his old messmate, friend, and companion in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Lord Chancellor Eldon, beside whom, as a little boy of nine, the Admiral had sat in class at school, was a mourner at the funeral. “It was very affecting,” he describes, “his sailors crowded so around, all anxious to see the last of their commander. One sailor seized me by the arm, and entreated that I would take him in with me that he might be there to the end. I told him to stick fast to me, and I did take him in; but when it came to throwing some earth on the coffin (you know the part of the service ‘dust to dust’), he burst past me and threw himself into the vault!”

No truer description of the man as a fact was ever penned than the words that Thackeray years afterwards used of Collingwood: “Another true knight of those days was Cuthbert Collingwood, and I think since heaven made gentlemen, there is not record of a better one than that.”

* * * * *

Collingwood’s officers at Trafalgar, those who served with him on board the _Royal Sovereign_, were these. According to the muster book the ship was two lieutenants short on the 21st of October.

Captain—Edward Rotherham.

Lieutenants—John Clavell, Joseph Simmons, James Bashford (wounded), Edward Barker, Brice Gilliland (killed), Francis Blower Gibbes.

Master—William Chalmers (killed).

Surgeon—Richard Lloyd.

Purser—Brinsley S. Oliver.

Chaplain—Rev. John Rudall.

Secretary—W. R. Cosway.

Gunner—Nicholas Brown.

Boatswain—Isaac Wilkinson (wounded).

Carpenter—George Clines.

Marine officers:—

Captain—Joseph Vallack.

Lieutenants—Robert Green (killed), Armiger W. Hubbard, James Le Vescomte (wounded).

Assistant Surgeons—Primrose Lyon, Henry Towsey.

Master’s Mates and Midshipmen—Thomas Altoft, Charles A. Antram, Richard Davison Pritchard, William Sharp, William Watson (wounded), John Aikenhead (killed), John Doling Morey, Sam Weddle, Thomas P. Robinson, Charles Coucher, Joseph Del Carrotto, John Chaldecott, Henry Davis, William Budd Boreham, Gilbert Kennicott (wounded), Thomas Currell, Granville Thompson (wounded), George Castle, John Parr, Thomas Dickinson (wounded), John Campbell (wounded), Thomas Braund (mortally wounded), John Farrant (wounded), John Redwood, John Dobson, William Stock, James Rudall.

First Class Volunteers—Meredith Milnekoff, Robert Julian, Archibald Nagle, Robert Duke Hamilton, John Hill, Claudius Charles, William Lloyd, Charles Lambert, Charles Chiswick.

* * * * *

From the officers we proceed in natural sequence to the men, and with regard to these, at the outset, there hangs a tale.

A very curious story is related of Collingwood on the morning of Trafalgar Day which most of those who have written about him have repeated. Collingwood, we are told, as the British fleet was approaching the enemy, went round the decks of the _Royal Sovereign_ and bade the men at the guns “show those fellows what the tars of the Tyne can do!” More than that, there is an old print in existence (a copy of which is in the possession of Earl Nelson) artistically depicting the story, and labelled with the legend, “Tars of the Tyne.” The ship’s books unfortunately give quite another version. There were fewer North countrymen on board the _Royal Sovereign_ at Trafalgar, perhaps, than in any other ship of the British fleet. Altogether, according to the muster book, there were in the ship hardly thirty all told, including Collingwood himself and Captain Rotherham and the youngsters, “the northern boys,” as Collingwood called them. Of the seamen—A.B.’s, ordinary, and landmen—the _Sovereign’s_ books name only four as coming from Newcastle, two as coming from Shields, and one as coming from “Northumberland” at large. Sunderland sent four men, and the rest were from Durham, three men, with from Berwick-on-Tweed two, Whitehaven six, Westmorland one. That exhausts the North-country contingent in the _Royal Sovereign_.

More than a third of the entire ship’s company on board were Irishmen—240 men and boys. Scotland, including Shetland and the Hebrides, contributed forty men, and Wales twenty-one. The London contingent with Collingwood at Trafalgar was the next largest after the Irishmen—seventy-five men and boys altogether. Lancashire was represented by forty-six men, Devon by thirty-four, Hampshire with thirty, Cornwall with twenty-four, Gloucester (Bristol) and Somerset each by eighteen, Yorkshire and Kent by ten men each; Lincolnshire, Cheshire, and Dorset each by eight; Norfolk and Suffolk by seven men each; and so on down to Cambridge, Bedford, Leicester, Hertfordshire, and Worcester with one man each.

Yet another interesting point is brought out by the muster book of the _Royal Sovereign_. We have been told how Collingwood, in the middle of the fighting, commended a “black man” for his straight shooting. Apparently the man was a West Indian. There were no fewer than seventy foreigners and aliens on board Collingwood’s flagship at Trafalgar, according to the ship’s books, the list being thus made up: Twenty-four Americans (hailing for the most part from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Jersey); seven Dutchmen—Dirks and Franz’s and Hendriks and Rutters—from Friesland, Delft, Maestricht, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam; one Belgian, from Brussels; three Portuguese from the Azores and Lisbon; four Prussians and one Pole from Dantzic; two Danes, two Frenchmen, one Norwegian, one Venetian, one Neapolitan, one Maltese, seven Lascars—two of them entered as “Jonan” and “Lowannah”—from the East Indies; two Malays from Batavia, entered as “Soloman” and “Ballee”; one from Bengal, one from Madras, a third Malay entered as “George”; fifteen West Indians, from St. Kitts, Barbados, Jamaica, and from Berbice, in British Guiana.

* * * * *

Two interesting letters from the _Royal Sovereign_ may serve to conclude our narrative. One was from a Hampshire lad, one of those fighting below at the guns. It runs thus:—

“Honoured Father,—This comes to tell you I am alive and hearty except three fingers; but that’s not much, it might have been my head. I told brother Tom I should like to see a greadly [_sic_] battle, and I have seen one, and we have peppered the Combined rarely; and for the matter of that, they fought us pretty tightish for French and Spanish. Three of our mess are killed, and four more of us winged. But to tell you the truth of it, when the game began, I wished myself at Warnborough with my plough again; but when they had given us one duster, and I found myself snug and tight, I ... set to in good earnest, and thought no more about being killed than if I were at Murrell Green Fair, and I was presently as busy and as black as a collier. How my fingers got knocked overboard I don’t know, but off they are, and I never missed them till I wanted them. You see, by my writing, it was my left hand, so I can write to you and fight for my King yet. We have taken a rare parcel of ships, but the wind is so rough we cannot bring them home, else I should roll in money, so we are busy smashing ’em, and blowing ’em up wholesale.

“Our dear Admiral Nelson is killed! so we have paid pretty sharply for licking ’em. I never sat eyes on him, for which I am both sorry and glad; for, to be sure, I should like to have seen him—but then, all the men in our ship who have seen him are such soft toads, they have done nothing but blast their eyes, and cry, ever since he was killed. God bless you! chaps that fought like the devil, sit down and cry like a wench. I am still in the _Royal Sovereign_, but the Admiral has left her, for she is like a horse without a bridle, so he is in a frigate that he may be here and there and everywhere, for he’s as _cute_ as here and there one, and as bold as a lion, for all he can cry!—I saw his tears with my own eyes, when the boat hailed and said my lord was dead. So no more at present from your dutiful son,—SAM.”

A pathetic interest attaches to the other letter. It was written on the morning of the battle by a midshipman of the _Royal Sovereign_, Mr. John Aikenhead, who was killed in the action. It was apparently meant for his parents and family in general:—

“We have just piped to breakfast; thirty-five sail, besides smaller vessels, are now on our beam, about three miles off. Should I, my dear parents, fall in defence of my King, let that thought console you. I feel not the least dread on my spirits. Oh my parents, sisters, brothers, dear grandfather, grandmother, and aunt, believe me ever yours!

“Accept, perhaps for the last time, your brother’s love; be assured I feel for my friends, should I die in this glorious action—glorious, no doubt, it will be. Every British heart pants for glory. Our old Admiral (Admiral Collingwood) is quite young with the thoughts of it. If I survive, nothing will give me greater pleasure than embracing my dearest relations. Do not, in case I fall, grieve—it will be to no purpose. Many brave fellows will no doubt fall with me on both sides.”

The letter added that the writer had made his will and put it in his desk. It gave also a statement of the property deposited in his chest, with £10 savings, added since the will was made. “Do not be surprised,” says the lad in his letter, “to find £10 more—it is mine.”

“OLD IRONSIDES” AND THE THIRD IN COMMAND

“Britannia Victrix”

The 100-gun three-decker _Britannia_, was the flagship of the third in command at Trafalgar, Rear-Admiral the Earl of Northesk. In honour of the part that the _Britannia_ took in the battle Lord Northesk was created a Knight of the Bath, and was granted by George the Third the right to place the name “Trafalgar” on his coat-of-arms, with special heraldic augmentations. Ever since 1805 the supporters of the heraldic shield of the earls of Northesk have each borne a staff with a Rear-Admiral of the White’s flag on it bearing the inscription, “Britannia Victrix.”

“Old Ironsides” was the _Britannia’s_ every-day name in Nelson’s fleet, due to the fact, it is said, that the _Britannia_ was the oldest man-of-war in the fighting line of the Navy. The veteran three-decker on the 21st of October, 1805, had been afloat just forty-three years and two days. She was our second _Britannia_, and the first three-decker launched in George the Third’s reign, the launch taking place at Portsmouth Dockyard on the 19th of October, 1762, in the presence of twenty thousand spectators, “who all had the pleasure of seeing as fine a launch as ever was seen.”

Trafalgar was the _Britannia’s_ fifth battle. She had had her first meeting with the enemy as flagship of the Second in Command in the “Grand Fleet” under Lord Howe, which achieved the relief of Gibraltar in 1782—a feat that nowadays perhaps we think little of, but which was thought enough of at the time for such a personage as Frederick the Great to write an autograph letter of congratulation on it to the British Admiral. After that she had taken part at Lord Hood’s occupation of Toulon, in Admiral Hotham’s two actions off Genoa and off Hyères, as commander-in-chief’s flagship, and on the 14th of February, 1797, “Glorious Valentine’s Day,” as flagship of the second in command in the battle off Cape St. Vincent.[20]