Deeds that Won the Empire | Page 5

domestic
but hard-fighting Collingwood wrote to his wife, "than the length of our
garden." Then, with a fine feat of seamanship, the Excellent passed
between the Captain and the San Nicolas, scourging that unfortunate
ship with flame at a distance of ten yards, and then passed on to bestow
its favours on the Santissima Trinidad--"such a ship," Collingwood
afterwards confided to his wife, "as I never saw before!" Collingwood
tormented that monster with his fire so vehemently that she actually
struck, though possession of her was not taken before the other Spanish
ships, coming up, rescued her, and she survived to carry the Spanish
flag in the great fight of Trafalgar.
Meanwhile the crippled Captain, though actually disabled, had
performed one of the most dramatic and brilliant feats in the history of
naval warfare. Nelson put his helm to starboard, and ran, or rather
drifted, on the quarter-gallery of the San Nicolas, and at once boarded
that leviathan. Nelson himself crept through the quarter-gallery window
in the stern of the Spaniard, and found himself in the officers' cabins.
The officers tried to show fight, but there was no denying the boarders
who followed Nelson, and with shout and oath, with flash of pistol and
ring of steel, the party swept through on to the main deck. But the San
Nicolas had been boarded also at other points. "The first man who
jumped into the enemy's mizzen-chains," says Nelson, "was the first
lieutenant of the ship, afterwards Captain Berry." The English sailors
dropped from their spritsail yard on to the Spaniard's deck, and by the
time Nelson reached the poop of the San Nicolas he found his

lieutenant in the act of hauling down the Spanish flag. Nelson
proceeded to collect the swords of the Spanish officers, when a fire was
opened upon them from the stern gallery of the admiral's ship, the San
Josef, of 112 guns, whose sides were grinding against those of the San
Nicolas. What could Nelson do? To keep his prize he must assault a
still bigger ship. Of course he never hesitated! He flung his boarders up
the side of the huge San Josef, but he himself had to be assisted to
climb the main chains of that vessel, his lieutenant this time dutifully
assisting his commodore up instead of indecorously going ahead of him.
"At this moment," as Nelson records the incident, "a Spanish officer
looked over the quarterdeck rail and said they surrendered. It was not
long before I was on the quarter-deck, where the Spanish captain, with
a bow, presented me his sword, and said the admiral was dying of his
wounds. I asked him, on his honour, if the ship was surrendered. He
declared she was; on which I gave him my hand, and desired him to
call on his officers and ship's company and tell them of it, which he did;
and on the quarterdeck of a Spanish first-rate--extravagant as the story
may seem--did I receive the swords of vanquished Spaniards, which, as
I received, I gave to William Fearney, one of my bargemen, who put
them with the greatest sang-froid under his arm," a circle of "old
Agamemnons," with smoke-blackened faces, looking on in grim
approval.
This is the story of how a British fleet of fifteen vessels defeated a
Spanish fleet of twenty-seven, and captured four of their finest ships. It
is the story, too, of how a single English ship, the smallest 74 in the
fleet--but made unconquerable by the presence of Nelson--stayed the
advance of a whole squadron of Spanish three-deckers, and took two
ships, each bigger than itself, by boarding. Was there ever a finer deed
wrought under "the meteor flag"! Nelson disobeyed orders by leaving
the English line and flinging himself on the van of the Spaniards, but he
saved the battle. Calder, Jervis's captain, complained to the admiral that
Nelson had "disobeyed orders." "He certainly did," answered Jervis;
"and if ever you commit such a breach of your orders I will forgive you
also."

THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM
"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! To all the sensual world
proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a
name." --SIR WALTER SCOTT.
The year 1759 is a golden one in British history. A great French army
that threatened Hanover was overthrown at Minden, chiefly by the
heroic stupidity of six British regiments, who, mistaking their orders,
charged the entire French cavalry in line, and destroyed them. "I have
seen," said the astonished French general, "what I never thought to be
possible--a single line of infantry break through three lines of cavalry
ranked in order of battle, and tumble them into ruin!" Contades omitted
to add that this astonishing infantry, charging cavalry in open formation,
was scourged during their entire advance