Even a moment like that, though, did not in the least perturb Collingwood. “Her studding-sails and halliards were now shot away, and as well as a top-gallant studding-sail were hanging over the gangway hammocks. Admiral Collingwood called out to Lieutenant Clavell to come and help him to take it in, observing that they should want it again some other day. These two officers accordingly rolled it carefully up and placed it in a boat.”
No sooner was the _Sovereign_ alongside the _Santa Anna_ than four other enemies—two French ships, the _Fougueux_ and the _Indomptable_, and two Spanish, the _San Leandro_ and the _San Justo_—closed round and joined in to help the _Santa Anna_.
So hot a cross fire did these four ships keep up on the single British ship during her, at first, unsupported fight, that, in the words of those on board the _Sovereign_, “We could see their shots meeting and smashing together in mid-air round us.” The _Fougueux_, we are also told, “at one time got so much on the quarter of the _Sovereign_ that she almost touched.” It was indeed a battle of the giants—a heroic defiance of heroic odds.
So magnificent, indeed, did the situation of the _Royal Sovereign_ appear, fighting single-handed in the thick of the enemy, that it drew remarks from some of our captains, for the time being lookers-on, on board the nearest ships that were then coming up astern. “The English ships,” to quote Admiral Collingwood’s biographer again, “were pressing forward with their utmost speed in support of their leader, but doubtful at times of his fate, and rejoicing when, on the slackening of the _Santa Anna’s_ fire, they discerned his flag still flying above the smoke. One of his most gallant followers and friend, the captain of the _Tonnant_, has often expressed the astonishment with which he regarded the _Royal Sovereign_ as she opened her fire, which, as he declared, ‘so arrested his attention, that he felt for a few moments as if he himself had nothing to do but to look on and admire!’”
How Collingwood bore himself in the battle we hear from two sources. Both accounts speak of Collingwood’s unmoved demeanour and cool courage under fire.
“The Admiral,” says one, “directed Captain Vallack, of the Marines, an officer of the greatest gallantry, to take his men from off the poop, that they might not be unnecessarily exposed; but he remained there himself much longer. At length, descending to the quarter-deck, he visited the men, enjoining them not to fire a shot in waste; looking himself along the guns to see that they were properly pointed, and commending the sailors, particularly a black man, who was afterwards killed, but who, while he stood beside him, fired ten times directly into the portholes of the _Santa Anna_.”