Nelson's bridge off the Algarve: the Battle of Cape St Vincent, 1797

At half past two in the morning of 14 February 1797, a small Portuguese frigate, the Carlotta, came alongside the British flagship Victory somewhere off the coast of the Algarve. Her captain, a man named Campbell whom James believed to be a Scot, brought news that the British had half guessed from the signal guns they had heard all night: the Spanish fleet was only about five leagues to windward.2 sources2 sources

Day broke dark and hazy. Admiral Sir John Jervis had 15 ships of the line formed in two compact columns, with Cape St Vincent about eight leagues away to the east by north. At 10.49 the sloop Bonne Citoyenne signalled that the strange ships to the south-west were ships of the line, 25 of them. Jervis had known the Spanish could hardly have fewer than 19 and might have as many as 30.2 sources2 sources

Jervis did not wait for the Spanish to form up. Their ships were straggling in two loose groups with a wide gap between them, and he steered his line straight for the gap.2 sources2 sources

Portugal's usual policy in the late eighteenth century was to stay neutral while keeping its old alliance with England and avoiding a quarrel with France or Spain. Lisbon's first concerns, in the historian Luís de Oliveira Ramos's summary, were the country's independence and its overseas empire. Neutrality also paid: Portugal re-exported Brazilian sugar and cotton to the rest of Europe, and its trade balance stayed in surplus. The French Revolution broke that comfortable position.2 sources2 sources

After Louis XVI was executed in 1793, Portugal joined Spain and Britain in the coalition against France and sent troops to fight beside the Spanish in Roussillon and Catalonia. The campaign went badly. In 1795 Spain made a separate peace with France at Basel, leaving Portugal still formally at war with the French and exposed to an attack overland.2 sources2 sources

Spain then changed sides altogether, allied itself with France and declared war on Britain in a manifesto dated 5 October 1796. With the French and Spanish fleets combined, the British fleet in the Mediterranean was outnumbered 38 ships of the line to 13, and by the end of the year it had pulled out. Its new orders were plain. Nelson, evacuating the British base on Elba, wrote that the fleet's object now was “the defence of Portugal, and keeping in the Mediterranean the Combined Fleets”.3 sources3 sources

Lisbon became the fleet's base. Jervis entered the Tagus on 21 December 1796, and at the turn of the year he lay there with 11 ships of the line, while the 74-gun Zealous was repaired in the city.3 sources3 sources

When Jervis sailed on 18 January 1797, his first task was to escort a convoy of Brazil merchantmen and Portuguese warships out to a safe latitude. The start was not lucky. The 98-gun St George ran foul of a Portuguese frigate, then stuck fast on the South Cachopo, one of the sandbanks at the mouth of the river, and had to go back for repairs.1 source1 source

Cape St Vincent, Cabo de São Vicente in Portuguese, is where the country's west coast turns east into its south coast. It is the tip of a wedge of high, wind-beaten coast in the south-west Algarve that the Romans called the Promontorium Sacrum, the sacred headland. The cape is named after Saint Vincent, a fourth-century martyr whose relics were kept on the promontory until they were carried by sea to newly conquered Lisbon in the twelfth century. Sagres, the town associated with Prince Henry the Navigator, stands on the same promontory.1 source1 source

Any ship sailing between the Strait of Gibraltar and Lisbon had to round it, and Jervis had fixed his rendezvous with the reinforcements from England in the waters off the cape. Strong south-easterly winds kept him from reaching it for days. The same winds decided the Spanish route: Córdoba was bound for Cádiz, but the easterly gale that rushed him through the Strait drove his fleet well out into the Atlantic, past his own port.3 sources3 sources

Where he meant to go after Cádiz is less certain. James says Cádiz was his destination and that talk of his sailing on to Brest, to join the French for an invasion of Britain, was only a rumour. Royal Museums Greenwich, describing one of its paintings of the battle, says he was bound for Brest by way of Cádiz.3 sources3 sources

The battle was fought out at sea, roughly 45 kilometres west-south-west of the cape. Its Portuguese chapter came afterwards, on the sheltered south coast to the east, in the Bay of Lagos.2 sources2 sources

Jervis's list of the enemy, sent home with his dispatch, named 27 Spanish ships of the line. They included six three-deckers of 112 guns and the four-decked Santísima Trinidad of 130 guns, Córdoba's flagship and the largest ship on either side. Not all 27 were together that morning. Three had been detached to escort troop transports into Algeciras, across the bay from Gibraltar, and only one had rejoined, so 25 were present when the British counted them.2 sources2 sources

The Spanish fleet was weaker than its numbers. William James, the British naval historian whose detailed account first appeared in the 1820s, said its crews were largely pressed landsmen and newly raised soldiers, with only 60 to 80 real seamen in each ship. The Spanish had also been told by an American ship that Jervis had only nine of the line. When the haze cleared and they saw 15 in two tight columns, their ships were still scattered.1 source1 source

Jervis's column passed through the gap at about half past eleven, firing as it went, and cut off a smaller Spanish group to leeward from the main body of about 16 ships. Then, at about noon, the British began to tack one after another, turning through the wind onto the opposite course, to chase the main body. The Culloden, under Thomas Troubridge, led the way round.2 sources2 sources

Tacking in succession was slow. Each ship had to sail on to the point where the leader had turned, and the rear of the British line was still heading away from the enemy. Third from the rear was the Captain, a 74 flying the broad pendant of Commodore Horatio Nelson, aged 38, a captain given temporary command of a squadron. Shortly after one o'clock he saw the leading Spanish ships bear away before the wind, as if to slip round the tail of the British line and rejoin their separated division.3 sources3 sources

Nelson did not wait for his turn. He ordered the Captain to wear, turning away from the wind, and took her out of the line between the Diadem and the Excellent, straight across the bows of the leading Spanish ships. By his own account he was in action by about a quarter past one with the Santísima Trinidad, the San José, the Salvador del Mundo, the San Nicolás and others, one 74 against several far bigger ships. Troubridge's Culloden soon came up to support him.2 sources2 sources

Whether he had permission is still argued over. Nelson's signed account says Jervis had just signalled the fleet to tack in succession and that he chose to do something else. James argued that Jervis had hoisted a signal at 12.51 telling ships to take suitable stations and engage as they came up, so that Nelson obeyed its spirit. Nicolas, who edited Nelson's letters in the 1840s, rejected this firmly.2 sources2 sources

Jervis did not seem to mind. At dusk, by Nelson's account, the admiral embraced him on the Victory's quarter-deck and said he could not sufficiently thank him. Later that evening, in an anecdote told by Jervis's biographer Jedediah Tucker, his first captain, Robert Calder, hinted that the move had been unauthorised. Jervis agreed it was a breach of orders, and said that if Calder ever committed such a breach he would forgive him too.1 source1 source

For about an hour the Captain and the Culloden took the fire of the leading Spanish ships, until the Blenheim came between them and the enemy. Cuthbert Collingwood's Excellent, called up from the rear by Jervis, then battered the Salvador del Mundo and forced the San Ysidro to strike her colours; the Salvador del Mundo surrendered soon afterwards as the Victory came up. Collingwood sailed on to ease the pressure on Nelson, an old friend, and passed within ten feet of the San Nicolás with a full broadside.2 sources2 sources

The San Nicolás swung up into the wind and fell foul of the bigger San José, which had already lost her mizzen mast. The Captain was by now a wreck. Her fore-topmast was down, her wheel shot away, and she had “not a sail, shroud, or rope left”, Nelson wrote. She could neither keep the line nor chase. So he put the helm over, ran her into the San Nicolás and called for boarders.2 sources2 sources

Edward Berry, Nelson's former first lieutenant, was first into the Spanish ship's mizzen chains. One of the soldiers of the 69th Regiment serving aboard smashed the window of the upper quarter-gallery and jumped in; Nelson followed. The cabin doors were fastened and Spanish officers fired their pistols, but the boarders broke through and the Spanish commodore fell. Nelson later recorded that Tomás Geraldino was killed on board. By the time Nelson reached the quarter-deck, Berry held the poop and the Spanish ensign was coming down.1 source1 source

Then muskets and pistols opened from the stern gallery of the San José, lying alongside. Nelson had soldiers fire back, sent more men into the San Nicolás and led a second party across her deck into the three-decker's main chains. A Spanish officer leaned over the rail and said they surrendered. On the quarter-deck the Spanish captain presented his sword and told Nelson that the admiral, Francisco Xavier Winthuysen, was dying of his wounds below.2 sources2 sources

Nelson put his losses in the boarding at about seven killed and ten wounded, with about 20 Spaniards killed in what he called a foolish resistance; none died taking the San José. The sailors soon had a name for what he had done, using one enemy ship as a gangway into another. Nelson repeated it with pleasure in his letters: “Nelson's Patent Bridge for boarding First-Rates”.2 sources2 sources

Not everyone gave him all the credit. James pointed out that the Prince George had been firing into the San José as she fouled the San Nicolás. Nelson himself told a friend that he did not pretend the two ships might not have fallen had he not boarded them, though they might just as well have got away to the rest of the Spanish fleet.2 sources2 sources

The fighting died away at about five in the evening. The Santísima Trinidad, badly damaged, may have struck her colours, but she was never taken possession of and was towed away. With night coming on and the Spanish divisions reunited, Jervis gathered his fleet around the four prizes instead of pressing on. James later wondered whether a night action might have taken more.3 sources3 sources

Jervis's return, printed in the Gazette, listed 73 British killed and 227 wounded, a total of 300. The losses fell on a handful of ships. Nelson's Captain had 24 killed and 56 wounded, the most in the fleet, while the Egmont had not a man hurt. James thought the official figure too low, because, unusually, the slightly wounded had been left off the returns, and suggested at least 400.2 sources2 sources

Spanish losses were much heavier. The four captured ships alone had 261 killed and 342 wounded among about 2,900 men. The San Nicolás, which Nelson's men had fought into and across, lost 144 killed. Spanish accounts quoted by James put the losses in the Santísima Trinidad at more than 200 killed and wounded. Jervis's returns covered only the prizes, so the losses in the rest of the Spanish fleet are not known exactly; James guessed that the Spanish total fell little short of 1,000.2 sources2 sources

On 15 February the Spanish, though still stronger and to windward, bore down once and then hauled off. On the 16th, at about three in the afternoon, the British fleet and its prizes anchored in Lagos Bay, on the Algarve's south coast. Jervis wrote his dispatch there, and the roughly 3,000 Spanish prisoners from the prizes were landed on Portuguese soil against a receipt from the proper officer.2 sources2 sources

The fleet left Lagos on 23 February and anchored in the Tagus on the 28th. The four prizes, jury-rigged and short-handed, were said to have beaten every British ship working up the river, and Lisbon greeted the victory warmly. They served for a time on the Lisbon station before sailing for England in the autumn. Córdoba's fleet limped into Cádiz on 3 March; the crippled Santísima Trinidad got there later in the month.2 sources2 sources

In London the news arrived with Jervis's first captain, Robert Calder, and was published on 3 March. In May Jervis was made Earl of St Vincent, with a pension of £3,000 a year; a peerage had already been promised before the battle. Nelson was made a Knight of the Bath. His promotion to rear-admiral came through on 20 February in a general promotion of flag officers.2 sources2 sources

Jervis's public dispatch praised only Calder and singled out none of the captains who had fought hardest. He commended Troubridge and Nelson in a private letter to Lord Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty. Sir John Barrow, an Admiralty secretary, later claimed that Calder had persuaded Jervis to leave Nelson out because praising a disobedient officer would set a bad example.1 source1 source

In Spain the defeat was punished. According to James, Córdoba was deprived of all his offices, declared unfit ever to serve again and banned from the court and the main seaport towns. His second in command, the Count of Morales de los Ríos, lost his rank, as did four captains, and other officers were suspended or reprimanded. James thought the Spanish government itself was to blame for sending such badly manned ships to sea.1 source1 source

In Britain the victory brought Jervis his earldom, baronetcies for two of his admirals and the Order of the Bath for Nelson, and the City of London gave Nelson its freedom. James's verdict was cooler: the victory was great politically, he wrote, but less so as a feat of arms given how little resistance most Spanish ships put up. It did keep the Spanish fleet bottled up in Cádiz, where Jervis blockaded it from April, using Lisbon as his base.1 source1 source

For Portugal the British fleet in the Tagus was protection, but it also tied the country to Britain while France threatened it overland. That August Portugal's envoy in Paris, António de Araújo de Azevedo, signed a peace treaty with France that would have restricted Portuguese trade with Britain and help for British fleets. Under British protests Lisbon never ratified it, and the French declared it void that autumn.2 sources2 sources

Not every Portuguese observer was impressed by British sea power. Miguel Pereira Pinto Teixeira, a judge of the Porto appeal court, urged the Minister of the Kingdom in 1798 to break with Britain and come to terms with France. He wanted British warships sent out of Portuguese ports and the British officers serving in Portugal's army and navy retired. He waved away Jervis's victory and Adam Duncan's defeat of the Dutch at Camperdown in October 1797.1 source1 source

In a later letter he added that twelve days after the battle the “Bank of London” had failed. What had happened was less dramatic. After a run on coin that it blamed on “ill-founded or exaggerated Alarms”, the Privy Council ordered the Bank of England on 26 February 1797 to stop paying out cash until Parliament had considered the matter.2 sources2 sources

Portugal could not stay out of the war for good. Ten years later, as a French army marched on Lisbon, the royal family sailed for Brazil under British escort on 29 November 1807.2 sources2 sources