“This quiet old _Dreadnought_” wrote Dickens of his visit to the ship in her last years, “whose fighting days are all over—_sans_ guns, _sans_ shot, _sans_ shells, _sans_ everything—did fight at Trafalgar under Captain Conn—did figure as one of the hindmost ships in the column which Collingwood led—went into action about two in the afternoon, and captured the _San Juan_ in fifteen minutes.” While fighting the _San Juan_—the _San Juan Nepomuceno_, a Spanish seventy-four—the _Dreadnought_ had to keep off two other Spaniards and a Frenchman at the same time; Admiral Gravina’s flagship, the _Principe de Asturias_, of 112 guns, and the _San Justo_ and _Indomptable_, two seventy-fours. The _San Juan_ in the end proved an easy prize, for she had been already severely mauled by some of Collingwood’s leading ships. On being run alongside of she gave in quickly. Without staying to take possession, the _Dreadnought_ pushed on to close with the big _Principe de Asturias_, and gave her several broadsides, one shot from which mortally wounded Admiral Gravina. The Spanish three-decker, however, managed to disengage, and made off, to lead the escaping ships in their flight for Cadiz. Thus the _Dreadnought_ was baulked of her big prize. It was the Trafalgar _Dreadnought_ that gave the name to that great international institution, the _Dreadnought_ Seamen’s Hospital, at Greenwich. This, of course, was long after Trafalgar, for the “wooden whopper of the Thames,” as Dickens called the old three-decker in her old age, did not make her appearance off Greenwich until a quarter of a century later. The fine old veteran of “Eighteen Hundred and War Time,” lasted until 1857, and to the end they preserved on board as the special relic of interest, “a piece of glass from a cabin skylight scrawled over, with somebody’s diamond ring, with the names of those officers who were in her at Trafalgar.” Another old three-decker replaced the Trafalgar ship until 1870, when the institution was removed on shore. At Chatham to-day, in the dockyard museum, visitors may see the _Dreadnought’s_ bell which was on board the old ship during the battle, and was removed from her when the _Dreadnought_ was broken up. Yet another memento of the Trafalgar _Dreadnought_ exists in the Eton eight-oar _Dreadnought_, one of the “Lower Boats,” and so-called originally, together with the boat that bears the name _Victory_, in honour of Nelson and Trafalgar. Our sixth _Dreadnought_ is a still existing ironclad turret-ship, mounting four 38-ton muzzle loaders, launched in 1875. She is a ship of 10,820 tons, and cost to complete for sea £619,739. She served for ten years—from 1884 to 1894—in the Mediterranean, and after that as a coast-guard ship in Bantry Bay. Paid off finally in 1905, the _Dreadnought_ now lies at her last moorings in the Kyles of Bute, awaiting the final day of all for her naval career, and the auctioneer’s hammer.