A very curious story is related of Collingwood on the morning of Trafalgar Day which most of those who have written about him have repeated. Collingwood, we are told, as the British fleet was approaching the enemy, went round the decks of the _Royal Sovereign_ and bade the men at the guns “show those fellows what the tars of the Tyne can do!” More than that, there is an old print in existence (a copy of which is in the possession of Earl Nelson) artistically depicting the story, and labelled with the legend, “Tars of the Tyne.” The ship’s books unfortunately give quite another version. There were fewer North countrymen on board the _Royal Sovereign_ at Trafalgar, perhaps, than in any other ship of the British fleet. Altogether, according to the muster book, there were in the ship hardly thirty all told, including Collingwood himself and Captain Rotherham and the youngsters, “the northern boys,” as Collingwood called them. Of the seamen—A.B.’s, ordinary, and landmen—the _Sovereign’s_ books name only four as coming from Newcastle, two as coming from Shields, and one as coming from “Northumberland” at large. Sunderland sent four men, and the rest were from Durham, three men, with from Berwick-on-Tweed two, Whitehaven six, Westmorland one. That exhausts the North-country contingent in the _Royal Sovereign_. More than a third of the entire ship’s company on board were Irishmen—240 men and boys. Scotland, including Shetland and the Hebrides, contributed forty men, and Wales twenty-one. The London contingent with Collingwood at Trafalgar was the next largest after the Irishmen—seventy-five men and boys altogether. Lancashire was represented by forty-six men, Devon by thirty-four, Hampshire with thirty, Cornwall with twenty-four, Gloucester (Bristol) and Somerset each by eighteen, Yorkshire and Kent by ten men each; Lincolnshire, Cheshire, and Dorset each by eight; Norfolk and Suffolk by seven men each; and so on down to Cambridge, Bedford, Leicester, Hertfordshire, and Worcester with one man each.