The War of Wars (34 page)

Abruptly, it changed course west after Nelson had watched a barrage of signal lights being exchanged in the gloom. The
Minerve
skilfully, still pretending to be part of the fleet, drifted away, its lights hidden, to report on the Spanish fleet’s direction to Jervis, who was stationed off Cape St Vincent (São Vicente), on the barren south-western extremity of Portugal.

Nelson reported directly to the acerbic Jervis, and then assumed command of his own ship, the
Captain
. That night the signal guns of the Spanish fleet were sounding eerily off to the south-west. In the morning a thick mist blocked the view of both fleets. It was a tense moment, one that would be crucial to the war. If Britain lost, the way would be open for the enemy to command the Channel and prepare for the invasion of Britain.

The lookouts strained in the eerie murk covering the Atlantic roll. The mist suddenly lifted to reveal one of the most awesome and picturesque fleets ever assembled, a floating township of thousands of
men inhabiting edifices taller than any buildings yet constructed on land. There were no fewer than twenty-seven battleships; these included the biggest ever made, the four-decker
Santissima Trinidad
, with no fewer than 212-guns, six three-deckers with 112 guns each, two 80-gun vessels and seventeen 74-gun ships. In terms of firepower it was perhaps the greatest armada ever hitherto assembled.

With a low swell that morning, the sight of these baroque castles gently bobbing in the western Atlantic left the British sailors that saw them speechless with awe. Nelson described the ships as ‘the finest in the world [but] the Spaniards, thank God, cannot build men’. There was a deathly calm about the whole scene, while Jervis’s fleet observed strict silence. It was as though the British had spotted an enormous and beautiful city of palaces at sea.

On paper, the strength of the Spanish fleet was overwhelming: it had a total of 2,292 guns compared with the 1,332 guns of the fifteen-strong British fleet. Yet, compared to the extremely tight formation of the latter – Nelson remarked, in a rare tribute, ‘of all the fleets I ever saw I never beheld one in point of officers and men equal to Sir John Jervis’s’ – the Spanish lines were straggly and ill-ordered, perhaps because they had never expected the British to be so near, a consequence of Nelson’s night-time feat of detection.

Jervis immediately spotted a weakness in the Spanish defence: the six ships at the rear were several hundred yards away from the main fleet. If he could cut through the gap, the six would be at his mercy. In an instant he signalled from his flagship, the
Victory
. The two perfectly ordered British lines – each ship at an equal distance from the other – quickly formed a single line with a precision of sailing and navigation remarkable in such huge vessels.

With Thomas Troubridge in the
Culloden
leading, they made at full canvas for the gap; the
Victory
was in seventh place, and Nelson’s
Captain
in thirteenth, nearly at the rear, a position held by Collingwood on the
Excellent
. The six isolated Spanish ships sought desperately to tack against the wind, to rejoin the main fleet. At about the time
Culloden
reached the gap, the Spanish vice-admiral’s ship, the 113-gun
Principe de Asturias
, had veered round into a position where it faced the seventh ship in the British line – Jervis’s own
Victory –
which like a
spear was severing the Spanish fleet in two. A tremendous broadside from the British ship raked the Spanish one, which withdrew hastily to leeward.

Just ahead three ships from the main Spanish fleet had succeeded in slipping past the point of the British spearhead: but these nine Spanish ships, now isolated from the main fleet, were to leeward of the British and were reluctant to do battle with a far superior force: they were effectively out of the fight, and now sailed off in headlong flight. The odds between the main fleets were now much more even: eighteen Spanish ships to fifteen British ones.

As the Spanish fleet turned with the wind to try and escape past the tail of the British line, Troubridge, leading it, tacked skilfully from his south-westerly course to a northerly one, being followed by the rest of the line, describing a v-shape. Nelson in one of the two rearmost ships, spotted the Spanish manoeuvre, which would permit the whole fleet to escape, slipping past the back of the British line before Troubridge could lead it back up. The
Captain
threw the rulebook to the winds, steering in a reverse course around the ships immediately behind and crossing the front of Collingwood’s
Excellent
to try and intercept the fleeing Spanish fleet. He was set on engaging the biggest ships leading the entire Spanish fleet in an attempt to delay them while the British fleet could come up to attack. The
Excellent
followed his example by breaking the line.

The flag captain of Jervis’s
Victory
, seeing this blatant flouting of orders, was outraged and insisted that a signal be sent to recall them: but Jervis, usually the most punctilious and disciplinarian of men, had realized what they were doing and refused. The little
Captain
now found the main body of the entire Spanish fleet bearing down upon itself, headed by the four-decker
Santissima Trinidad
, more of a moving skyscraper of the seas than a ship, flanked by two 112-gun ships, the
San Josef
and the
Salvador del Mundo
, each larger than Jervis’s own flagship, with three 80-gun ships immediately following them: the
Captain
seemed destined to become matchwood before these behemoths.

Undaunted, Nelson made straight for the
Santissima Trinidad
, all guns blazing. For nearly an hour the plucky little ship endured the simultaneous fire of six much bigger Spanish ships, but many of the
Spanish shots went wide and hit other Spanish ships. Soon the
Captain
was reduced to a floating hulk, but Collingwood furiously engaged one of its tormentors and compelled it to surrender before moving upon the next, the
San Nicholas
. The Spanish fleet began to veer away, perhaps out of astonishment at the boldness of the attack by just two small ships. At that moment Troubridge’s
Culloden
, leading the British line on its new north-west course, reached the scene of the fighting and the battle swept past Nelson’s disabled
Captain
.

Even in this condition Nelson renewed the attack on the nearest ship, the 84-gun
San Nicholas
, which had also been dismasted. The British sailors swarmed up the remaining masts and spars of the
Captain
in order to drop aboard the
San Nicholas
’s deck, which towered above the smaller British ship; others grabbed the Spanish ship’s cable. Nelson himself broke through a window on the lower deck. The leader of the British boarders on the upper deck furiously cut down the Spaniards facing him and then enterprisingly hauled down the Spanish colours, as officers began to surrender to him.

Down below, the Spanish guns were still firing at a nearby British ship, the
Prince George
, while another Spanish giant, the
San Josef
on the other side of the
San Nicholas
, was crammed with marines firing with their muskets at the British boarders. Nelson ordered his men to stand by the hatchways with their muskets, to prevent the still fighting Spaniards below from pouring on to the deck, then summoned a boarding party to attack the
San Josef
, which was passing just six feet away and was in turn being raked by the muskets of the British marines.

Nelson climbed up the ropes on this side and was astonished to encounter a Spanish officer announcing surrender – the admiral had been hit and was dying. The British captain made the officers hand over their swords. As Collingwood later wrote: ‘On the deck of the Spanish first-rate
San Josef
he received the swords of the officers of the two ships, while a Johnny, one of the sailors, bundled them up with the same composure he would have made a faggot, and twenty-two of their line still within gunshot!’

Nelson had captured a 112-gun enemy three-decker across the deck of an 80-gun Spanish three-decker from his own much smaller two-decker: the feat became known as ‘Nelson’s patent bridge for boarding
first-rates’. Meanwhile the missing lee flotilla of eight Spanish ships had veered round to attempt to rejoin the main Spanish fleet. Jervis formed a line to prevent the junction and protect the four Spanish ships he had taken as prizes, as well as the disabled
Captain
. At this stage the Spanish fleet had had enough. Headed by the limping
Santissima Trinidad
, it made for Cadiz.

Nelson now had to face a foe every bit as dangerous as the Spanish: the wrath of the disciplinarian Jervis for so blatantly flouting the fleet’s orders. As he climbed wearily and apprehensively aboard the
Victory
, part of his hat blown away by shot, he was astonished to find the usually unemotional Jervis rush forward to embrace him. The disapproving flag-captain reminded the admiral that Nelson had disobeyed orders. ‘He certainly did,’ exclaimed Jervis, ‘and if you ever commit such a break of orders I will forgive you also.’

Jervis thus established his immortality, as a man who recognized boldness and genius when he saw it, even though the rules were flouted. Later it was said that Nelson alone had saved the day, or the Spanish fleet might have escaped, and that Jervis had been largely out of the battle. This was untrue. The latter had headed straight for the fight and had initiated the first engagement with a Spanish ship; and he also had shown speed in veering his ships around when the Spaniards nearly outmanoeuvred him to return to the battle. Above all, he had displayed the boldness to engage a far superior fleet, while traditionally admirals would decline battle unless the odds were much more even. Nelson was later to turn this in to an art form, but Jervis had shown the way. Finally, for all his severity, Jervis’s obsession with order had ensured a perfect formation and clockwork manoeuvring by his fleet – unlike the indiscipline that had so nearly cost Howe victory on the Glorious First of June.

In terms of prizes the victory was not overwhelming – just four Spanish ships taken, with twenty-three others escaping, leaving the fleet largely intact, although with several badly damaged, including the mighty
Santissima Trinidad
. But Jervis and Nelson had confounded the plan to unite the French, Spanish and Dutch fleets. They had also established a ferocious reputation for the British fleet which the Spanish now sought to avoid engaging at all costs, and which prevented the
French from venturing out to seek battle against the close blockade of enemy ports that Jervis now rigorously enforced. Above all, as with the Glorious First of June, the Battle of Cape St Vincent was a tremendous boost to British morale at a time when the nation’s plight seemed truly desperate – akin to the Battle of Britain in the Second World War a century and a half later.

Nelson’s actions in taking on the cream of the Spanish fleet veering down upon him in a single ship, fighting the flagship, then capturing two large ships, had now created a legend – and Jervis was far too generous a man to be jealous: instead he promoted his subordinate mightily. As Nelson himself wrote, ‘The more I think of my late action the more I am astonished. It absolutely appears a dream.’ But he was disgusted not to have captured the
Santissima Trinidad
itself. ‘Had not my ship been so cut up, I would have had her!’ Yet alongside the soaring fame of young Nelson deserves to be placed the figure of Jervis, now to be elevated to Earl St Vincent. Like Howe before him, he had shown boldness, a readiness to grasp opportunities, impeccable seamanship and disregard for conventional tactics in striking contrast to his deeply conventional reputation.

Scarcely had Pitt, his ministers and the country ceased celebrating the great triumph at Cape St Vincent when a blow came which shook Britain to its very foundations. It marked the closest moment that France came to defeating Britain in the entire period of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. It was all the more bizarre in that the French played no part whatsoever in inflicting this blow – indeed, had no idea it was taking place at all. For a month Britain virtually lost its ability to fight in the only theatre in which it had been successful so far – at sea. Britain was suddenly left unguarded, at the mercy of its enemies. Worse still, it seemed on the brink of precisely the kind of insurrection that the revolutionaries of France had so long dreamt of. What occurred was a genuine outburst of authentic working-class dissent, and it came from within the very service that had become the shield of Britain against foreign invasion – the navy, the thin wooden line of magnificent ships that were all that stood between the country and French domination.

On 15 April 1797, the pride of the British fleet rode at anchor at Spithead; this was the Channel Fleet, and it was preparing to weigh anchor to pursue the French fleet, which had left Brest. As dawn broke, a signal was given by the flagship, the
Queen Charlotte
. Then, instead of the billowing of sails from the ship as it set out to sea, an extraordinary sight was observed– the foreshrouds of the flagship were thick with sailors, and they burst out into three cheers. In an instant, the same happened in the foreshrouds of all the other ships, each cheering group answering the other. Below, the officers of the fleet could only look on bewildered,
some incandescent with fury, others bemused and frustrated: every one of the men above them was technically liable to flogging or even death for that most heinous of naval crimes, not just disobeying orders but mutiny. The entire Channel Fleet had gone on strike.

There was nothing any of the officers could do. The marines were supposed to enforce order, but could not do so against every ship’s company, even if the men with guns could get the upper hand. It was a naked insurrection, and for a moment Pitt’s government feared that revolution was indeed what was on the sailors’ minds: nothing like this had ever happened in the history of the navy, or indeed in British history. Two days later the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Spencer, rushed down to Portsmouth and the following day three admirals – Gardner, Colpoys and Pole – were rowed aboard the
Queen Charlotte
to negotiate. The admirals were old men bewildered by this entirely new situation, having to talk as equals to common sailors instead of giving them peremptory orders.