Mahan on naval warfare : $b Selections from the writing of Rear Admiral Alfred T. MahanMahan, A. T. (Alfred Thayer)
History
Mahan on naval warfare : $b Selections from the writing of Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan
Mahan, A. T. (Alfred Thayer)
Naval art and science; Naval strategy; Sea-power
For several days the wind continued violent from north-west and
south-west. On the 23d five of the ships that had escaped with Gravina
put out, to cut off some of the prizes that were near the coast. They
succeeded in taking two; but as these were battered to pieces, while
three of the five rescuers were carried on the beach and wrecked with
great loss of life, little advantage resulted from this well-meant and
gallant sortie. Two other prizes were given up to their own crews by the
British prize-masters, because the latter were not able with their
scanty force to save them. These got into Cadiz. Of the remaining
British prizes, all but four either went ashore or were destroyed by the
orders of Collingwood, who despaired of saving them. No British ship was
lost.
Of thirty-three combined French and Spanish ships which sailed out of
Cadiz on the 20th of October, eleven, five French and six Spanish,
mostly now disabled hulks, lay there at anchor on the last day of the
month. The four that escaped to sea under Dumanoir fell in with a
British squadron of the same size near Cape Ortegal, on the 4th of
November, and were all taken. This raised the allied loss to
twenty-two,—two more than the twenty for which Nelson, in his dying
hour, declared that he had bargained.
No attempt to move from Cadiz was again made by the shattered relics of
the fight. On the 25th of October Rosily arrived and took up his now
blasted command. Nearly three years later, when the Spanish monarchy, so
long the submissive tool of the Directory and of Napoleon, had been
overthrown by the latter, and the Spanish people had risen against the
usurper, the five French ships were still in the port. Surprised between
the British blockade and the now hostile batteries of the coast, Rosily,
after an engagement of two days with the latter, surrendered his
squadron, with the four thousand seamen then on board. This event
occurred on the 14th of June, 1808. It was the last echo of Trafalgar.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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