At about 12:10, nearly half an hour before the _Victory_ penetrated the Allied line, the _Royal Sovereign_ brought up on the leeward side of the _Santa Ana_, flagship of the Spanish Admiral Alava, after raking both her and the _Fougueux_ astern. The _Santa Ana_ was thirteenth in the actual line, but, as Collingwood knew, there were 16, counting those to leeward, among the ships he had thus cut off for his division to subdue. As a combined effect of the light breeze and the manner of attack, it was an hour or more before the action was made general by the advent of British ships in the rear. All these suffered as they closed, but far less than those near the head of the line. Of the total British casualties fully a third fell upon the four leading ships--_Victory, Téméraire, Royal Sovereign_ and _Belleisle_.
Not until about three o'clock were the shattered but victorious British in the center threatened by the return of the ten ships in the Allied van. Culpably slow, however hindered by lack of wind, several of these joined stragglers from Gravina's division to leeward; the _Intrépide_, under her brave skipper Infernet, set an example all might well have followed by steering straight for the _Bucentaure_, and surrendered only to overwhelming odds; five others under Rear Admiral Dumanoir skirted to windward and escaped with the loss of one of their number, cut off by two British late-comers, _Spartiate_ and _Minotaur_.
"Partial firing continued until 4:30, when a victory having been reported to the Right Honorable Lord Viscount Nelson, he died of his wound." So reads the _Victory's_ log. The flagship had been in deadly grapple with the _Redoutable_, whose complement, like that of many another French and Spanish ship in the action, showed that the decadence of their navies was not due to lack of fighting spirit in the rank and file. Nelson was mortally wounded by a musket shot from the mizzen-top soon after the ships closed. In his hour of supreme achievement death came not ungraciously, giving final assurance of the glory which no man ever faced death more eagerly to win.
Of the Allied fleet, four fled with Dumanoir, but were later engaged and captured by a British squadron near Corunna. Eleven badly battered survivors escaped into Cadiz. Of the 18 captured, 11 were wrecked or destroyed in the gales that swept the coast for several days after the battle; three were recaptured or turned back to their crews by the prize-masters, and only four eventually reached Gibraltar.