The Battle of Trafalgar by Geoffrey Bennett

Author:Geoffrey Bennett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2014-09-29T23:00:00+00:00

8 - ‘England expects …’

By 5.30 am on Monday 21 October the rain squalls that had disturbed the night had given way to a light breeze from the west-north-west, though a heavy swell still rolled in from the Atlantic. As the day dawned fine and clear, and the sun came up, ‘bluish mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay’, less than 20 miles away from the British fleet. Soon the Cape’s white cliffs would be visible above the eastern horizon.

Shortly after daylight the Victory’s surgeon Dr. William Beatty, saw Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson come out of his great cabin to join Captain Hardy on the poop:

He was dressed as usual in his admiral’s frock-coat, bearing on the left breast four stars of different orders, which he always wore with his common apparel[54]. He did not wear his sword … It had been taken from the place where it hung up in his cabin, and was laid ready on his table, but it is supposed he forgot to call for it. This was the only action in which he ever appeared without a sword. He displayed excellent spirits, and expressed his pleasure at the prospect of giving a fatal blow to the naval power of France and Spain; and spoke with confidence of obtaining a signal victory notwithstanding the inferiority of the British fleet, declaring to Captain Hardy that, ‘He would not be contented with capturing less than twenty sail-of-the-line’.

He afterwards pleasantly observed that, ‘the 21st October was the happiest day of the year among his family’, but did not assign the reason for this. His Lordship had previously entertained a strong presentiment that this would prove the auspicious day, and had several times said to Captain Hardy and. Dr. Scott: ‘The 21st October will be our day’.

(‘The happiest day … among his family’ had occurred in the Caribbean during the Seven Years War: with only three sail-of-the-line Nelson’s maternal uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, under whom he had first gone to sea, had attacked Commodore de Kersaint’s seven, and put them all to flight.)

As Nelson’s ships headed south-east before the wind, at 5.50[55] a group of coloured flags ran up to the main masthead of the 74-gun Achille: Captain Richard King had ‘discovered a strange fleet’. A brightening sky had revealed to the east, in the words of Able-Seaman Brown of the Victory, ‘the French and Spanish fleets … like a great wood on our lee bow [from NNE to SSW] which cheered the hearts of every British tar … like lions anxious to be at it’. Or, according to Lieutenant Barclay of the Britannia, ‘the eastern horizon was beautifully adorned with French and Spanish ensigns’, nine to ten miles to leeward, giving the British the advantage of the weather gage for what it was worth in such a light wind.

Others recorded similar sentiments. Thus a seaman of HMS Revenge: ‘On the memorable 21 October 1805, as the day began to dawn, a man at the topmast-head called out, “A

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