The stubborn stand that the _Santa Anna_ made was a disappointment, it would appear, to the _Sovereign’s_ men. Their terrible raking broadside at the outset had plainly “sickened” the Spaniards—as our men expressively put it—and many on board believed that the enemy must surrender forthwith. Captain Rotheram, indeed, “came up to the Admiral, and, shaking him by the hand, said: ‘I congratulate you, sir; she is slackening her fire, and must soon strike!’” The gallant fellows who were fighting at the _Royal Sovereign’s_ guns actually thought, it is on record, that their ship would have the proud distinction of capturing an enemy’s flagship in the midst of her own fleet before another British ship had got into action. In the end, though, they had this consolation: when at length the _Santa Anna_ did surrender; “No ship besides ourselves fired a shot at her,” wrote one of the _Sovereign’s_ officers, “and you can have no conception how completely she was ruined.” “Her side,” wrote Collingwood himself, “was almost entirely beat in.” “The _Santa Anna_,” to quote Mr. Newnham Collingwood, “struck at half-past two o’clock, about the time when the news of Lord Nelson’s wound was communicated to Admiral Collingwood, but the _Royal Sovereign_ had been so much injured in her masts and yards by the ships that lay on her bow and quarter that she was unable to alter her position. Admiral Collingwood accordingly called the _Euryalus_ to take her in tow, and make the necessary signals. He dispatched Captain Blackwood to convey the Spanish Admiral on board the _Euryalus_, but he was stated to be at the point of death, and Captain Blackwood returned with the Spanish captain. That officer had already been to the _Royal Sovereign_ to deliver his sword, and on entering had asked one of the English sailors the name of the ship. When he was told that it was the _Royal Sovereign_, he replied, in broken English, while patting one of the guns with his hand, ‘I think she should be called the _Royal Devil_!’” The _Royal Sovereign_, on the _Santa Anna_ surrendering, pushed off from her giant prize—so big a ship, indeed, that, in Collingwood’s own words, she “towered over the _Sovereign_ like a castle.” She moved away to seek another enemy. But the fall of her main and mizen-masts, cut through and through by shot, prevented her from taking a further part in the battle until after being taken in tow by the _Euryalus_ frigate, Captain Blackwood’s ship. The _Sovereign_ was able after that, during the rest of the action, to employ her broadsides here and there. Her last piece of work was at the very close of the battle, when she formed one of the group of ships that Captain Hardy summoned round the _Victory_ to support the dying chief’s flagship against a threatened attack on the _Victory_ from the fresh ships of the French van squadron as they passed down the line.