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The Collingwood's cheer was good, and had I worn a silk hat as high as the moon I could not have had a better time or been made more at home. An Englishman, even on his great battle-ship, unbends when the stranger passes his gangway, and when he says "at home" he means it. That one should like Gibraltar would go without saying. How could one help loving so hospitable a place?
Collingwood acted like a sound hardheaded man of affairs in salving all he could and destroying those he could not without risk of greater disaster. Collingwood's account of his difficulties after the battle was won is contained in the following letter to his father-in-law: 2nd November, 1805.
He had taken upon himself, however, with a discretion he could now assume freely, to change the Admiralty's orders, issued during his absence, withdrawing most of the small cruisers from about Malta, to reinforce Collingwood's division.
He didn't get him away. He killed him!" The effect of this straightforward pronouncement of opinion on the two men who heard it was strikingly different. Collingwood's face at once became cold and inscrutable; his lips fixed themselves sternly; his eyes looked hard into a problematic future.
"What would Nelson give to be here!" exclaimed Collingwood, in delight. "See how that noble fellow, Collingwood, carries his ship into action!" responded Nelson from the deck of the Victory. It was not long before the two fleets were in hot action, the British ships following Collingwood's lead in coming to close quarters with the enemy.
Middies grew into post-captains, and admirals into dotards during that prolonged struggle. And what have we in literature to show for it all? Marryat's novels, many of which are founded upon personal experience, Nelson's and Collingwood's letters, Lord Cochrane's biography that is about all. I wish we had more of Collingwood, for he wielded a fine pen.
Their ships, which had been steering south, now all headed north; the van became the rear; Gravina, who had been leading the column, was in the rear ship; and it was upon this rear, but still the southern flank of the hostile array, that the weight of Collingwood's attack was to fall. Soon after daylight Nelson, who, according to his custom, was already up and dressed, had gone on deck.
Already suspicion was in Collingwood's mind vague and indefinable, but there. He was half inclined to go straight back to Eldrick & Pascoe's and tell Eldrick what Jabey Naylor had just told him. But he reflected that while Naylor went out to post the letter, the old bookseller might have put the paper elsewhere; locked it up in his safe, perhaps.
But it is incredible that, with such crews as Lord Collingwood's composed, in part, of the most desperate characters, the rakings of the jails it is incredible that such a set of men could have been governed by the mere memory of the lash.
Answer, ye jails and alms-houses throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain, which, in Collingwood's time, were swept clean of the last lingering villain and pauper to man his majesty's fleets.
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