fleet with his squadron, lest the enemy, as Collingwood apprehended,
should bear down upon Brest with their whole collected force. On the
15th he joined Admiral Cornwallis off Ushant. No news had yet been
obtained of the enemy; and on the same evening he received orders to
proceed, with the VICTORY and SUPERB, to Portsmouth.
CHAPTER IX
1805
Sir Robert Calder falls in with the combined Fleets--They form a
Junction with the Ferrol Squadron, and get into Cadiz--Nelson is
reappointed to the Command--Battle of Trafalgar--Victory, and Death of
Nelson.
At Portsmouth, Nelson at length found news of the combined fleet. Sir
Robert Calder, who had been sent out to intercept their return,
had fallen in with them on the 22nd of July, sixty leagues off Cape
Finisterre. Their force consisted of twenty sail of the line, three
fifty-gun ships, five frigates, and two brigs: his, of fifteen
line-of-battle ships, two frigates, a cutter, and a lugger. After an
action of four hours he had captured an eighty-four and a seventy-four,
and then thought it necessary to bring-to the squadron, for the purpose
of securing their prizes. The hostile fleets remained in sight of each
other till the 26th, when the enemy bore away. The capture of two ships
from so superior a force would have been considered as no inconsiderable
victory, a few years earlier; but Nelson had introduced a new era in our
naval history; and the nation felt respecting this action as he had felt
on a somewhat similar occasion. They regretted that Nelson, with his
eleven ships, had not been in Sir Robert Calder's place; and their
disappointment was generally and loudly expressed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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