Why the Combined Fleet sailed from Cádiz against Spanish advice
When French Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve pressed the war council in Cádiz to put to sea in October 1805, Spanish Admiral Federico Gravina argued that the fleet should remain inside the bay and let winter storms punish the blockading British squadron as severely as a pitched naval battle.[9] Cosme Damián Churruca, commanding the San Juan Nepomuceno, and General Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros, aboard the giant Santísima Trinidad, backed him strongly.[3] Both men pointed to unfavourable winds and a storm building along the coast.[3]
The Spanish ships anchored in the bay already carried structural handicaps before a single hawser was cast off. Between 1802 and 1804, a yellow fever epidemic had killed nearly 60,000 people across Spain, hitting coastal towns hardest and draining the pool of skilled mariners available in Cádiz.[10] Many hulls were elderly veterans of the eighteenth-century Atlantic trade: the Spanish ships averaged nearly 25 years of service, led by the oldest warship in the battle, the 57-year-old Rayo.[11]
Personal pride overrode maritime meteorology. Once Villeneuve received a dispatch from Paris stating that Admiral Rosily was travelling to Cádiz to relieve him of command, he ordered the Combined Fleet out of the roadstead at 06:00 on 19 October 1805, hoping to slip into the Mediterranean without giving battle.[2][12][13] Getting 33 ships of the line clear of the harbour took two full days, which gave Horatio Nelson, stationed 40 miles offshore after leaving Portsmouth on HMS Victory on 14 September, all the warning he needed.[1][13][14]
- 14 Sep 1805
Nelson leaves Portsmouth
Horatio Nelson sails aboard HMS Victory and stations the British fleet 40 miles off Cádiz.[14]
- 19 Oct 1805
- 21 Oct 1805
- 23 Oct 1805
- 27 Oct 1805
Rescue of the Rayo
Fisherman Félix Odero takes two bou boats and twenty sailors to rescue survivors from the wrecked Rayo.[6]
21 October 1805: five hours off Cape Trafalgar
Nelson caught the Franco-Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, forming his 27 ships into two columns that sailed straight into the allied line of 33 vessels in a head-on assault.[1][13][15] Firing lasted until 5:30 pm.[4] Britain won a decisive victory, though Nelson was shot aboard HMS Victory at 1:15 pm and died at 4:30 pm, an hour before the guns fell silent.[4][17]
Among the Spanish crews, half of all fatalities occurred on just three heavily attacked ships: the four-decker Santísima Trinidad lost nearly 300 dead, the San Juan Nepomuceno nearly 200, and the Santa Ana almost 100.[18] Three Spanish ship commanders died in action: Cosme Damián Churruca (alongside his second-in-command Francisco de Moyua) on the San Juan Nepomuceno, Dionisio Alcalá Galiano on the Bahama, and Francisco Alcedo y Bustamante on the Montañés.[19]
By 5:30 pm, 17 allied ships had been captured, another was a burning wreck, four escaped seaward only to be taken a few weeks later, and 11 battered warships struggled back to Cádiz.[4] Stand at the Baluarte de la Candelaria at the mouth of the bay and you look straight across the channel where those splintered hulls limped home.
The 23 October counter-sortie and the wreck of the Rayo
Most English-language accounts stop on the evening of 21 October, yet on the morning of 23 October 1805 a northwest wind prompted Captain Julien Cosmao-Kerjulien, the senior officer in port, to leave his anchorage in the bay or outer harbour entrance of Cádiz with several allied warships to recapture prizes from the British.[5] The 57-year-old Spanish ship Rayo sailed in the sortie.[6][11]
Cosmao-Kerjulien's squadron retook two Spanish ships of the line: the Santa Ana, whose crew rebelled against their captors when they saw the allied squadron approaching, and the Spanish Neptuno.[16] Only the Santa Ana made it safely back into port.[16]
The storm the Spanish commanders had warned of now broke with full force.[3][16] Both the Neptuno and the old Rayo ended up wrecking along the coast, though the Neptuno's crew was saved.[6][16] On 27 October 1805, six days after the battle, local fisherman Félix Odero took two bou boats and twenty sailors to the stretch of coast where the Rayo had wrecked to rescue the survivors.[6]
How Cádiz's hospitals cared for wounded sailors from all three navies
Casualties across the three fleets were staggering, and Cádiz bore the immediate medical burden as survivors and shipwrecked crews came ashore.[7][18][20] The losses broke down across the three navies as follows:
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- French fleet: 2,218 dead and 1,155 wounded, including nearly 500 killed when the Achille blew up and almost another 500 on the Redoutable.[20]
- Spanish fleet: 1,022 dead and 1,383 wounded, half of the dead coming from the Santísima Trinidad, San Juan Nepomuceno and Santa Ana.[18]
- British fleet: 449 dead and 1,241 wounded in the battle, plus prisoners and wounded treated ashore after Gibraltar's medical capacity collapsed.[7][20]
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With Gibraltar overwhelmed, the Marquis of Solano, Governor of Andalusia, took a remarkable step. He offered the hospitals of Cádiz to the British for both their troops and their prisoners.[7] The British were deeply impressed when Spanish soldiers in Cádiz gave up their own beds to British prisoners.[7] Five years later, Britain and Spain fought side by side during the 1810–1812 French siege of Cádiz.
Where to trace the Trafalgar story in Cádiz and San Fernando today
Although the battle was fought off the southern headland of Cape Trafalgar, the decisions before 19 October and the human aftermath unfolded around the Bay of Cádiz.[1][2][7] You can follow the physical trail of the October 1805 campaign across Cádiz and nearby San Fernando at four stops:
- Panteón de Marinos Ilustres (San Fernando): Across the bay from Cádiz, the main facade of this naval pantheon is guarded by two old cannons resting on their carriages from the batteries of the Santísima Trinidad, the eighteenth-century flagship of the Spanish Royal Navy that lost nearly 300 men in the battle.[8][18]
- Museo de las Cortes de Cádiz (Calle Santa Inés): Visit the Museo de las Cortes de Cádiz in the old town to see the 1777–1779 mahogany scale model of the walled city and harbour as it stood when the Combined Fleet anchored in the bay.
- Seafront bastions and watchtowers: Walk from Castillo de Santa Catalina beside La Viña along the bay walls to look over the roadstead where the 33 warships weighed anchor at 06:00 on 19 October 1805 and where 11 surviving hulls returned on 21 October.[1][2][4]
- Cape Trafalgar (Los Caños de Meca, Barbate): Drive south down the Atlantic coast of Cádiz province to the headland where Nelson's two columns intercepted Villeneuve's line on 21 October 1805.[13][15]
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