She outlasted, indeed, her old captain at Trafalgar. In 1836, six years after Sir Eliab Harvey had been gathered to his fathers, his old ship entered on her last turn of duty, harbour service at Sheerness as Guardship of Ordinary, Captain-Superintendent's ship for the Fleet Reserve in the Medway. By an interesting coincidence, the officer who last of all hoisted his pennant on board the 'Fighting' _Temeraire_ was the man who had been her first lieutenant at Trafalgar, now a grey-headed old post-captain, holding his last appointment before retiring from the Service as Captain-Superintendent of Sheerness dockyard, Captain Thomas Fortescue Kennedy. Actually the last guns that were ever fired on board the 'Fighting' _Temeraire_ were for the Royal Salute in honour of Queen Victoria's Coronation Day. Six weeks after that, on the 16th of August 1838, the _Temeraire_ was put up for auction and sold for L5530 to Mr. Beatson, the Rotherhithe shipbreaker. She was sold out of the Navy 'all standing,' with her masts and yards still in her, just as her guard-ship crew left the vessel, as Turner saw her and has faithfully painted her: a fact, also, that explains what has puzzled many critics of the famous picture, the removal to be broken up of a man-of-war rigged and masted and with yards across. So we come, at length, to the _Temeraire's_ final hour and her appointed end. Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o'er the flood And waves were white below; No more shall feel the victor's tread, Nor know the conquered knee-- The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea. All the way up the river on her last day, we are told, the _Temeraire_ was cheered as she passed along by the crews of the merchant ships and the people on board the river steamboats 'surprised as well as delighted by the novel spectacle of a 98-gun ship in the Pool,'[117] while after they had begun to break the _Temeraire_ up at Rotherhithe numbers of people came to visit 'the ship that helped to avenge Nelson at Trafalgar,' attracted by reports of the finding of Trafalgar relics on board. One of these was a round-shot, found deeply embedded in the centre of one of the _Temeraire's_ main-deck beams with a French sailor's red cap, which had evidently been used as an improvised wad in the hurry of the fighting, stuck fast to it. Another was the brass memorial tablet (already spoken of), let into the quarter-deck near the wheel, and bearing the inscription, 'England expects that every man will do his duty.'[118]