Deeds that Won the Empire | Page 3

a matter of
fact, reflected the difference in their fighting and sea-going qualities.
The Spanish fleet, a line of monsters, straggled, formless and shapeless,
over miles of sea space, distracted with signals, fluttering with
many-coloured flags. The English fleet, grim and silent, bore down
upon the enemy in two compact and firm-drawn columns, ship
following ship so closely and so exactly that bowsprit and stern almost
touched, while an air-line drawn from the foremast of the leading ship
to the mizzenmast of the last ship in each column would have touched
almost every mast betwixt. Stately, measured, threatening, in perfect
fighting order, the compact line of the British bore down on the
Spaniards.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE OFF CAPE ST. VINCENT. Cutting the
Spanish Line. From Allen's "Battles of the British Navy."]
Nothing is more striking in the battle of St. Vincent than the swift and
resolute fashion in which Sir John Jervis leaped, so to speak, at his

enemy's throat, with the silent but deadly leap of a bulldog. As the fog
lifted, about nine o'clock, with the suddenness and dramatic effect of
the lifting of a curtain in a great theatre, it revealed to the British
admiral a great opportunity. The weather division of the Spanish fleet,
twenty-one gigantic ships, resembled nothing so much as a confused
and swaying forest of masts; the leeward division--six ships in a cluster,
almost as confused--was parted by an interval of nearly three miles
from the main body of the fleet, and into that fatal gap, as with the
swift and deadly thrust of a rapier, Jervis drove his fleet in one
unswerving line, the two columns melting into one, ship following hard
on ship. The Spaniards strove furiously to close their line, the
twenty-one huge ships bearing down from the windward, the smaller
squadron clawing desperately up from the leeward. But the British
fleet--a long line of gliding pyramids of sails, leaning over to the
pressure of the wind, with "the meteor flag" flying from the peak of
each vessel, and the curving lines of guns awaiting grim and silent
beneath--was too swift. As it swept through the gap, the Spanish
vice-admiral, in the Principe de Asturias, a great three-decker of 112
guns, tried the daring feat of breaking through the British line to join
the severed squadron. He struck the English fleet almost exactly at the
flagship, the Victory. The Victory was thrown into stays to meet her,
the Spaniard swung round in response, and, exactly as her quarter was
exposed to the broadside of the Victory, the thunder of a tremendous
broadside rolled from that ship. The unfortunate Spaniard was smitten
as with a tempest of iron, and the next moment, with sails torn,
topmasts hanging to leeward, ropes hanging loose in every direction,
and her decks splashed red with the blood of her slaughtered crew, she
broke off to windward. The iron line of the British was unpierceable!
The leading three-decker of the Spanish lee division in like manner
bore up, as though to break through the British line to join her admiral;
but the grim succession of three-deckers, following swift on each other
like the links of a moving iron chain, was too disquieting a prospect to
be faced. It was not in Spanish seamanship, or, for the matter of that, in
Spanish flesh and blood, to beat up in the teeth of such threatening lines
of iron lips. The Spanish ships swung sullenly back to leeward, and the
fleet of Don Cordova was cloven in twain, as though by the stroke of
some gigantic sword-blade.

As soon as Sir John Jervis saw the steady line of his fleet drawn fair
across the gap in the Spanish line, he flung his leading ships up to
windward on the mass of the Spanish fleet, by this time beating up to
windward. The Culloden led, thrust itself betwixt the hindmost Spanish
three-deckers, and broke into flame and thunder on either side. Six
minutes after her came the Blenheim; then, in quick succession, the
Prince George, the Orion, the Colossus. It was a crash of swaying
masts and bellying sails, while below rose the shouting of the crews,
and, like the thrusts of fiery swords, the flames shot out from the sides
of the great three-deckers against each other, and over all rolled the
thunder and the smoke of a Titanic sea-fight. Nothing more murderous
than close fighting betwixt the huge wooden ships of those days can
well be imagined. The Victory, the largest British ship present in the
action, was only 186 feet long and 52 feet broad; yet in that little area
1000 men fought, 100 great guns thundered. A Spanish ship like the
San Josef was 194 feet in length and 54 feet in breadth; but in that area
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