The total number of casualties on the British side was 449 killed and 1,242 wounded, out of a total strength of some 18,000 men. The French and Spanish losses were reckoned to be 4,408 dead and 2,545 wounded, the unduly high number of fatalities being partly explained by the fact that hundreds of men both fit and wounded were drowned when their ships sank or were wrecked in the storm after the battle. As John Keegan has pointed out in his masterly analysis of the battle, the casualty toll on both sides (about 8,500 killed and wounded, or 17 per cent of those present) was very much lower than the horrendous number of casualties suffered in Napoleon's land battles. There were 55,000 dead and wounded at Waterloo, out of 192,000 soldiers who took part (29 per cent of the total), and 78,000 casualties (35 per cent of those present) at Borodino. Nevertheless, as Keegan also points out, the Battle of Trafalgar was a massacre in terms of sea battles. Nelson's tactics, designed to produce a decisive and overwhelming victory, succeeded in doing just that, and in the process more men were killed and wounded than in any sea fight in the previous 250 years.
FOURTEEN
Voices from the Lower Deck
1805-7
The storm which followed the battle lasted for nearly five days and was one of the worst that even the most experienced seamen could remember. More than fifty ships, many of them dismasted and severely damaged, were exposed to the full force of a westerly gale less than 7 miles from a dangerous lee shore - the rocks and shoals of Cape Trafalgar. Collingwood later wrote, 'I can only say that in my life I never saw such efforts as were made to save these ships, and would rather fight another battle than pass through such a week as followed it.' The entries in the Bellerophon's log-book describe several days of fresh or strong gales with squalls, lightning and rain, with a heavy swell from the westward, but give little idea of the peril that faced so many of the ships. Captain Blackwood, of the frigate Euryalus, summed up the dangers in a letter to his wife Harriet. 'It has blown a hurricane,' he told her. 'All yesterday and last night the majority of the English fleet have been in the most perilous state; our ships much crippled, with damaged prizes in tow; our crews tired out, and many thousand prisoners to guard; all to be done with a gale of wind blowing us right on the shore . . .'
Those ships which were dismasted and unable to hoist any sail were at the mercy of the wind and waves unless they could secure a tow from an operational ship, but securing a tow in the heavy seas was a difficult and dangerous operation. The Belleisle had been reduced to a hulk by the sustained fire of no fewer than nine enemy ships and had lost all three masts, her bowsprit, her figurehead and her anchors. The frigate Naiad managed to get a cable across to her but the cable parted and when they attempted to get another line across to her the Belleisle collided with the frigate and carried away most of her starboard quarter gallery. According to the Naiad's log they had to abandon any further attempt to take a line across with boats because the sea was running so high. The Naiad's main topsail then split across and had to be hacked free to save the topsail yard. The sail went overboard and soon afterwards the foretopmast staysail was blown to pieces. By the time they had sorted things out the Belleisle was far away, drifting perilously close to the shore to the eastward of Cape Trafalgar and in sight of breakers. At the last moment her crew managed to set a boat's sail on a jury foremast and beat clear of the immediate danger. When the wind moderated, the Naiad finally managed to get a boat alongside and take her in
All the British ships survived the storm but many of the French and Spanish ships did not. The British prize crews were horrified by the sights which faced them when they boarded the enemy ships which had surrendered. Midshipman Badcock, who went aboard the Santisima Trinidad, found her beams covered with blood, brains and pieces of flesh, and her decks littered with the dead and dying, some without legs and some missing arms. On the Bucentaur the dead were lying on the decks in heaps where they had fallen. Captain Atcherley, a marine who had been sent to secure her magazine, reckoned that more than 400 had been killed, 'of whom an extraordinary proportion had lost their heads.' A raking shot had entered the lower deck, and had glanced along the beams causing carnage among the men working the guns. A French officer declared that this one shot alone had killed or wounded nearly forty men.
Henry Walker, one of the Bellerophon's midshipmen, was a member of the prize crew which Lieutenant Cumby had sent across to the Spanish ship Monarca during a brief lull in the action and he later described the dangerous situation which he and his shipmates had to face: 'Our second lieutenant, myself, and eight men, formed the party that took possession of the Monarca: we remained until the morning without further assistance, or we should most probably have saved her, though she had suffered much more than ourselves.' At no point during the battle itself, Walker said, had he felt any fear of dying:
but in the prize, when I was in danger of, and had time to reflect upon the approach of death, either from the rising of the Spaniards upon so small a number as we were composed of, or what latterly appeared inevitable, from the violence of the storm, I was most certainly afraid, and at one time, when the ship made three feet of water in ten minutes, when our people were almost lying drunk upon deck, when the Spaniards, completely worn out with fatigue, would no longer work at the only chain pump left serviceable, when I saw the fear of death so strongly depicted on the countenances of all around me, I wrapped myself up in a Union Jack, and lay down upon deck for a short time, quietly awaiting the approach of death; but the love of life soon after roused me, and after great exertions on the part of the British and Spanish officers, who had joined together for the mutual preservation of our lives, we got the ship before the wind, determined to run her on shore.
After four dreadful days in the storm they were rescued by the Leviathan which sent boats across and took off the prize crew and all the Spanish crew except for 150 men who were afraid of getting into the boats. Soon afterwards the Monarca was driven ashore and wrecked. Altogether ten enemy ships were wrecked in the storm and three were scuttled or burnt. The Redoutable and the magnificent 140-gun Santisima Trinidad foundered at sea with great loss of life. Of the fifteen ships taken during the battle, only four weathered the storm and were towed into Gibraltar.