Deeds that Won the Empire | Page 2

motto true, 'Defy not, but defend.'
Men whisper that our arm is weak, Men say our blood is cold, And that
our hearts no longer speak That clarion note of old; But let the spear
and sword draw near The sleeping lion's den, Our island shore shall
start once more To life, with armèd men." --HERMAN CHARLES
MERIVALE.
On the night of February 13, 1797, an English fleet of fifteen ships of
the line, in close order and in readiness for instant battle, was under
easy sail off Cape St. Vincent. It was a moonless night, black with haze,
and the great ships moved in silence like gigantic spectres over the sea.
Every now and again there came floating from the south-east the dull
sound of a far-off gun. It was the grand fleet of Spain, consisting of
twenty-seven ships of line, under Admiral Don Josef de Cordova; one
great ship calling to another through the night, little dreaming that the
sound of their guns was so keenly noted by the eager but silent fleet of

their enemies to leeward. The morning of the 14th--a day famous in the
naval history of the empire--broke dim and hazy; grey sea, grey fog,
grey dawn, making all things strangely obscure. At half-past six,
however, the keen-sighted British outlooks caught a glimpse of the
huge straggling line of Spaniards, stretching apparently through miles
of sea haze. "They are thumpers!" as the signal lieutenant of the
Barfleur reported with emphasis to his captain; "they loom like Beachy
Head in a fog!" The Spanish fleet was, indeed, the mightiest ever sent
from Spanish ports since "that great fleet invincible" of 1588 carried
into the English waters--but not out of them!--
"The richest spoils of Mexico, the stoutest hearts of Spain."
The Admiral's flag was borne by the Santissima Trinidad, a floating
mountain, the largest ship at that time on the sea, and carrying on her
four decks 130 guns. Next came six three-deckers carrying 112 guns
each, two ships of the line of 80 guns each, and seventeen carrying 74
guns, with no less than twelve 34-gun frigates to act as a flying cordon
of skirmishers. Spain had joined France against England on September
12, 1796, and Don Cordova, at the head of this immense fleet, had
sailed from Cadiz to execute a daring and splendid strategy. He was to
pick up the Toulon fleet, brush away the English squadron blockading
Brest, add the great French fleet lying imprisoned there to his forces,
and enter the British Channel with above a hundred sail of the line
under his flag, and sweep in triumph to the mouth of the Thames! If the
plan succeeded, Portugal would fall, a descent was to be made on
Ireland; the British flag, it was reckoned, would be swept from the seas.
Sir John Jervis was lying in the track of the Spaniards to defeat this
ingenious plan. Five ships of the line had been withdrawn from the
squadron blockading Brest to strengthen him; still he had only fifteen
ships against the twenty-seven huge Spaniards in front of him; whilst, if
the French Toulon fleet behind him broke out, he ran the risk of being
crushed, so to speak, betwixt the upper and the nether millstone. Never,
perhaps, was the naval supremacy of England challenged so boldly and
with such a prospect of success as at this moment. The northern powers
had coalesced under Russia, and only a few weeks later the English

guns were thundering over the roofs of Copenhagen, while the united
flags of France and Spain were preparing to sweep through the narrow
seas. The "splendid isolation" of to-day is no novelty. In 1796, as it
threatened to be in 1896, Great Britain stood singly against a world in
arms, and it is scarcely too much to say that her fate hung on the
fortunes of the fleet that, in the grey dawn of St. Valentine's Day, a
hundred years ago, was searching the skyline for the topmasts of Don
Cordova's huge three-deckers.
Fifteen to twenty-seven is enormous odds, but, on the testimony of
Nelson himself, a better fleet never carried the fortunes of a great
country than that under Sir John Jervis. The mere names of the ships or
of their commanders awaken more sonorous echoes than the famous
catalogue of the ships in the "Iliad." Trowbridge, in the Culloden, led
the van; the line was formed of such ships as the Victory, the flagship,
the Barfleur, the Blenheim, the Captain, with Nelson as commodore,
the Excellent, under Collingwood, the Colossus, under Murray, the
Orion, under Sir James Saumarez, &c. Finer sailors and more daring
leaders never bore down upon an enemy's fleet. The picture offered by
the two fleets in the cold haze of that fateful morning, as