The wreckage and suffering on other ships were almost as great. The very first broadside of the _Royal Sovereign_, taking the _Santa Ana_, struck down 400 out of the 1000 persons aboard; and the _Sovereign_ herself soon lost every mast. The _Santissima Trinidada_, a Spanish four-decker, and the largest ship then afloat, was reduced to a wreck, and a dozen others lost a part or all of their masts. As for the _Victory_, she was always in the thick of it, receiving at one time the concentrated fire of seven hostile battle-ships, yet was not too much disabled to be manœuvered. Her captain’s aim was to engage directly with the French flagship _Bucentaure_, but she was closely attended by three other large ships, and difficult to reach. Nevertheless, the _Victory_ finally got across her stern, and from a few yards distance poured in a broadside which, sweeping the whole length of her interior, dismounted twenty guns, and killed and wounded 400 men. As she passed on, returning the fire of the other vessels near by, she was closely followed by the _Temeraire_, the second English ship, which had already become almost unmanageable; and a lifting of the smoke showed her smashing a little French frigate, the _Redoubtable_, which, by and by, was captured after almost every man had been killed, and she was in a sinking condition. The astonishing resistance of this little vessel, and the damage she did by soldiers with muskets crowded in her tops and firing down upon the decks of the English ships, form one of the most noteworthy incidents of naval history; and it is not too much to say that she inflicted upon Great Britain as great harm as all the rest of the allies put together, for it was a musket-ball from the mizzentop of the _Redoubtable_ that struck down, early in the action, the great Nelson himself. He seemed to have had a feeling, even before leaving England, that he would not survive this campaign, and knew his wound was mortal the instant it was received. He was carried below, and remained alive and conscious about three hours, eagerly listening to reports of the progress of the fight, and rejoicing at last in a knowledge of victory. His last words, murmured again and again, with his failing breath, seemed an answer to his signaled injunction, for they were: “_Thank God I have done my duty._” Other men [writes Captain Mahan] have died in the hour of victory, but to no other has victory so singular and so signal stamped the fulfilment and completion of a great life’s work. “Finis coronat opus” has of no man been more true than of Nelson. Results momentous and stupendous were to flow from the annihilation of all sea power except that of Great Britain, which was Nelson’s great achievement; but his part was done when Trafalgar was fought, and his death in the moment of completed success has obtained for that superb victory an immortality of fame which even its own grandeur could scarcely have insured.