There is no naval battle regarding which we possess so many detailed narratives of those who took part in it on both sides, and it would be easy to compile a long list of stirring incidents and heroic deeds. Though the battle lasted till about five o'clock, it had been practically decided in the first hour. In that space of time many of the enemy's ships had been disabled, two had been actually taken; and, on the other hand, England had suffered a loss that dimmed the brightness of the victory. In the first stage of the fight Nelson's flagship was engaged with the "Redoutable" alone, the two ships locked together. Presently the "Téméraire" closed on the other side of the Frenchman, and the "Victory" found herself in action with a couple of the enemy that came drifting through the smoke on the other side of her, one of them being the giant "Santisima Trinidad." Before the "Téméraire" engaged her, the "Redoutable" had been fearfully damaged by the steady fire of the "Victory," and had also lost heavily in repeated attempts to board the English flagship. Only a midshipman and four men succeeded in scrambling on board, and they were at once killed or made prisoners. Captain Lucas, of the "Redoutable," in the report on the loss of his ship, told how out of a crew of 643 officers and men, sailors and soldiers, three hundred were killed, and more than two hundred badly wounded, including most of the officers; the ship was dismasted, stern-post damaged, and steering gear destroyed, and the stern on fire; she was leaking badly, and most of the pumps had been shot through; most of the lower-deck guns were dismounted, some by collision with the enemy's sides, some by his fire, and two guns had burst. Both sides of the ship were riddled, in several places two or more ports had been knocked into one, and the after-deck beams had come down, making a huge gap in the upper-deck. The "Redoutable," already in a desperate condition, became a sinking wreck when the "Téméraire" added her fire to that of the flagship. But the "Victory" had not inflicted this loss herself unscathed. One of her masts had gone over the side, and there had been heavy loss on her upper decks and in her batteries. The wheel was shot away. Several men had been killed and wounded on the quarter-deck, where Nelson was walking up and down talking to Captain Hardy. One shot strewed the deck with the bodies of eight marines. Another smashed through a boat, and passed between Nelson and Hardy, bruising the latter's foot, and taking away a shoe-buckle. All the while there came a crackle of musketry from a party of sharpshooters in the mizen-top of the "Redoutable," only some sixty feet away, and Nelson's decorations must have made him a tempting target, even if the marksmen did not know who he was.