Free Men of Honour by Adam Nicolson Page A

superiority, 33 to 27, he now calculated that in the weight of firepower, not to speak in seamanly skills, the British were superior. His leading ships had already cleared Cape Trafalgar, andwould now have been able to turn downwind for the Strait, but his fleet as a whole, stretched over some eight miles of sea, would not in the light airs reach that point before the British caught them. Without the van of the fleet to support them, they would be pinned against the shoals off Cape Trafalgar and either killed in battle or drowned in the huge Atlantic surf they could see breaking on the rocks and sands to leeward. A battle was inevitable. A storm was in the offing. It would be better to have the port of Cadiz to run to than those murderous shoals. Should he head on for the Strait, as his orders from the Emperor himself required? Or should he turn and keep Cadiz under his lee bow, in case disaster struck? He was already crushingly aware that Napoleon no longer trusted him as a commander in battle. Admiral Rosily was en route from Paris, only delayed in Madrid because a broken carriage spring had interrupted his journey, with orders to relieve Villeneuve of his command and replace him. Villeneuve had already written to his friend Denis Decrès, the Minister of Marine in Paris, that he knew himself and his fleet to be the ‘laughing-stock of Europe’. He was in ‘the abyss of unhappiness’.
    It is a mark of his seamanship, and of his moral courage in standing up to the Emperor, that soon after eight o’clock Villeneuve gave the order for the entire fleet to reverse direction, by taking their sterns through the wind (wearing ship) and then to head on a port tack northwards for Cadiz. But this was no run for cover. The British fleet in headlong chase had every sail set but the Combined Fleet was under topsails, staysails and topgallants only, trying slowly and clumsily to form up in good order, but nevertheless waiting for the attack to reach them. The main topsails were hauled tight to the wind, so that their luffs were shivering and not driving the ships as hard as they might. British officers watching through telescopes were aware of this and appreciated it. As he watched them, Nelson ‘frequently remarkedthat they put a good face upon it; but always quickly added, “I’ll give them such a dressing as they never had before,” regretting at the same time the vicinity of the land.’ There was honour in the way they were standing up for battle. No English officer ever suggested that their enemy was not courageous.
    But the manoeuvre involved the first Franco-Spanish failure of the day. Villeneuve’s plan had been to hold a squadron of twelve powerful ships, under the command of Admiral Gravina, in reserve. His intention was for this squadron to remain to windward of the main fleet as battle was joined and, when it became clear on which part the bulk of Nelson’s divisions were descending, for Gravina to commit his force to that part of the battle. At the crucial point, the Schwerpunkt , the hard place, as Clausewitz would call it, the defending force would then be able at least to equalise the numbers of ships engaged. This never happened. Early in the morning, as the fleet reversed direction and turned northwards, Gravina’s squadron had become mixed in with the rear of the Combined Fleet. Their identity as a separate squadron was muddled away and Gravina’s ships would enter the battle, one by one, as they came up to the series of mêlées which developed in the centre of the fleet.
    At the very beginning, Villeneuve lost his ability to reshape the battle. His fleet waited in a state of victimhood. By about ten o’clock, they ended up in a shallow crescent, about eight miles long, partly bunched together, partly overlapping, and with vulnerable gaps opening in places through which an enemy could drive. Every eyeglass on every British ship watched those gaps. That