Napoleon had now completed further plans. These he fondly hoped would lead to the downfall of British rule in the United Kingdom and the eventual dismemberment of the Empire. His strategy, if somewhat involved, was deeply laid. Instead of concentrating his fleet in European waters, that very essential part of the programme was to be undertaken in the Atlantic. By means of feints and false intelligence it was anticipated that Nelson would again suppose that the East was the destination of the French armament. Again much depended on whether Napoleon’s commanders at Rochefort and Toulon would prove sufficiently clever to elude the blockading squadrons and to carry out the subsequent junction. The former was to make for Martinique, the latter for Cayenne. Having spread ruin and disaster in the British West Indies, they were to unite, release the squadron at Ferrol, and return to Rochefort to threaten Cornwallis, who would thus be precluded from lending assistance elsewhere. Ganteaume at Brest was to play the chief part. He was to make a descent on Ireland while his colleagues were crossing the Atlantic and then cover the invading army from Boulogne.

On the 11th January 1805 Missiessy, in command at Rochefort, made good his escape, and eventually reached the West Indies. A week after his colleague had left port Villeneuve was also at sea. The great war game had begun. “Our frigates saw part of them all day, and were chased by some of the ships,” Nelson informs Sir John Acton. The Admiral received the report of the enemy’s sailing at Madalena at 3 P.M. on the 19th. Three hours later “the whole fleet was at sea,” steering for the south end of Sardinia, “where I could have little fear but that I should meet them; for, from all I have heard from the captains of the frigates, the enemy must be bound round the south end of Sardinia, but whether to Cagliari, Sicily, the Morea, or Egypt, I am most completely in ignorance.” He warns Acton to be on his guard for Sicily and to send information to Naples. On the 21st a French frigate was discerned off the south end of Sardinia, but became lost in the fog, and a little later Nelson heard that one of the French sail-of-the-line had put in at Ajaccio in a distressed condition. On the 27th he was off Palermo. “One of two things must have happened,” he conjectures, “that either the French fleet must have put back crippled, or that they are gone to the eastward, probably to Egypt, therefore I find no difficulty in pursuing the line of conduct I have adopted. If the enemy have put back crippled, I could never overtake them, and therefore I can do no harm in going to the eastward; and if the enemy are gone to the eastward, I am right.” He sent vessels to call at Elba, San Fiorenzo, Malta, Tunis, Pantellaria, Toro and other places to obtain information. He believed that eleven sail-of-the-line and nine smaller vessels were at sea. “I shall only hope to fall in with them.”

On the 11th February Nelson was still in “total ignorance” regarding the whereabouts of the French fleet, but was more than ever confirmed in his opinion that Egypt was its destination. He had set off for the Morea, and then proceeded to Egypt, but the enemy had eluded him. It was not until he arrived off Malta on the 19th that he received authentic information that the Toulon fleet had put back to port “in a very crippled state.” He himself was able to report that the health of his men was excellent, and “although we have experienced a great deal of bad weather, have received no damage, and not a yard or mast sprung or crippled, or scarcely a sail split.” “I have consulted no man,” he had written to Lord Melville on the anniversary of the battle of Cape St Vincent, “therefore the whole blame in forming my judgment must rest with me. I would allow no man to take from me an atom of my glory had I fallen in with the French fleet, nor do I desire any man to partake of any of the responsibility—all is mine, right or wrong.”

Misfortune had dogged Villeneuve almost from the moment he had left Toulon. After encountering a gale in the Gulf of Lyons his ships were in such a pitiful state that there was no alternative but to return. He complained bitterly, and not without reason, to the Minister of Marine about the wretched condition of the fleet at his disposal. The vessels, according to his report, were built of superannuated or bad materials, and lost masts or sails “at every puff of wind.” In addition they were short-handed, the sailors were inexperienced, and the decks were encumbered with troops. Napoleon, who never appreciated the many difficulties of navigation, let alone of naval warfare, entertained the notion that the Navy could be run with practically as much precision as the Army; conditions of weather he almost contemptuously dismissed as of little account. He abruptly tells Villeneuve the plain unvarnished truth, namely that the great evil of the service “is that the men who command it are unused to all the risks of command.” Almost in despair he asks, “What is to be done with admirals who allow their spirits to sink, and determine to hasten home at the first damage they may receive?” Villeneuve was not a courageous commander. He hated taking risks. It may be that he realised his own personal limitations to some extent; it is certain that he fully appreciated those of his men and of his ships. The only training-place for sailors is the sea, and such excursions as had been made were as nothing compared to the daily encounters with storm, wind and tide which fell to the lot of the blockading squadron below the horizon.

Such obvious facts appealed to that sense of grim humour which is so essentially characteristic of Nelson. He thoroughly enjoyed his adversary’s discomfiture, and poked fun at Napoleon, his men and his methods, on every possible occasion. “Bonaparte,” he writes to Collingwood on the 13th March, “has often made his brags that our fleet would be worn out by keeping the sea; that his was kept in order and increasing by staying in port; but he now finds, I fancy, if Emperors hear truth, that his fleet suffers more in one night than ours in a year.”

Napoleon, now the Imperial Incarnation of the Revolution, for he had crowned himself Emperor of the French on the 2nd December 1804, was not to be thwarted because his subordinates had failed to bring his giant schemes to a successful issue on two distinct occasions. He was obsessed by a desire to “leap the ditch.” To humble that Island Power which was ever in his way, to strike at the very heart of that England whose wealth was lavished in fostering coalition after coalition, were now his fondest hopes. He thought, talked, and wrote of little else.

While his third plan was more involved than the others, it had the advantage of calling a greater number of ships into service. Villeneuve was to start from Toulon with eleven ships, release the Spanish squadron of six sail-of-the-line under the command of Admiral Gravina, and one French ship, at Cadiz, and then make for Martinique, where he would find Missiessy’s squadron of five sail. In a similar manner the twenty-one ships of Ganteaume’s fleet at Brest were to rally Gourdon’s fifteen vessels at Ferrol and also proceed to the West Indies. Thus no fewer than fifty-nine sail and many smaller vessels would be congregated for the final effort. While Nelson was searching for them, this immense armament, with Ganteaume in supreme command, would recross the Atlantic, appear off Boulogne, and convoy the flotilla to England. It is unnecessary to give the alternative plans furnished to the admirals. To do so would only tend to involve the broad outline of the manoeuvre as detailed above and serve no essential purpose.

Spurred on by Napoleon’s displeasure, Villeneuve put to sea on the night of the 30th March 1805, and was sighted “with all sail set” by two British frigates on the following morning. It was not until the 4th April that Nelson, then off Toro, received this useful if vague intelligence, for the frigate which had followed in the tracks of the Toulon fleet had lost sight of the enemy. Her captain “thinks they either bore away to the eastward or steered S.S.W., as they were going when first seen,” Nelson informs the Admiralty. He “covered the Channel from Barbary to Toro with frigates and the fleet” in the hope of discovering them or obtaining reliable information as to their whereabouts. On the 18th April he says, “I am going out of the Mediterranean after the French fleet. It may be thought that I have protected too well Sardinia, Naples, Sicily, the Morea, and Egypt, from the French; but I feel I have done right, and am therefore easy about any fate which may await me for having missed the French fleet. I have left five frigates, besides the sloops, &c., stationed at Malta for the present service of the Mediterranean, and with the Neapolitan squadron will, of course, be fully able to prevent any force the French have left to convoy troops to Sicily.”

Nelson only succeeded in making sixty-five leagues in nine days “owing to very bad weather.” It was not until the 18th April, when Villeneuve had been at sea nearly three weeks, that he had news of the enemy having passed through the Straits on the 8th. “I am proceeding with the fleet under my command as expeditiously as possible to the westward in pursuit of them.” Sir John Orde had so far forgotten or neglected his duty that when Villeneuve made his appearance at Cadiz the commander of the blockading squadron made off without either sending word to Nelson or leaving a frigate to keep in touch with the enemy. Consequently Nelson was still uncertain as to their destination. “The circumstance of their having taken the Spanish ships which were [ready] for sea from Cadiz, satisfies my mind that they are not bound to the West Indies (nor probably the Brazils); but intend forming a junction with the squadron at Ferrol, and pushing direct for Ireland or Brest, as I believe the French have troops on board.” When off Tetuan on the 4th May he rightly observes, “I cannot very properly run to the West Indies without something beyond mere surmise; and if I defer my departure, Jamaica may be lost. Indeed, as they have a month’s start of me, I see no prospect of getting out time enough to prevent much mischief from being done.” Gibraltar Bay was reached on the 6th May, and at 6 P.M., Nelson was making his way through the Gut owing to there being “every appearance of a Levanter coming on.” Off Cape St Vincent he hoped to be met by a frigate from Orde with intelligence of the enemy’s route and also by a frigate from Lisbon. “If nothing is heard of them from Lisbon or from the frigates I may find off Cape St Vincent, I shall probably think the rumours which are spread are true, that their destination is the West Indies, and in that case think it my duty to follow them, or to the Antipodes, should I believe that to be their destination. I shall detach a sloop of war to England from off the Cape, when my mind is made up from either information or the want of it.”

Nelson’s idea as to the destination of the allied fleet was corroborated by Commodore Donald Campbell, a Scotsman who had entered the Portuguese navy. After clearing transports and taking on board sufficient provisions for five months, he set out from Lagos Bay with ten sail-of-the-line and a number of smaller craft on his long chase. “My lot is cast,” he hurriedly informs Ball, “and I am going to the West Indies, where, although I am late, yet chance may have given them a bad passage and me a good one. I must hope the best.”

Many minds, many opinions. What had become of the Allied fleet? Even more important, what had it accomplished? Such questions must have been ever present in the mind of Nelson and his officers. Everything about the enemy was so vague as almost to suggest a phantom fleet. “I still think Jamaica is their object,” is Nelson’s comment on the 27th of May when making for Barbadoes, “but many think Surinam or Trinidad; and Bayntun, that they will land their troops at the city of San Domingo. In short, everyone has an opinion, but it will soon be beyond doubt. Our passage, although not very quick, has been far from a bad one. They started from Cadiz thirty-one days before we did from St Vincent, and I think we shall gain fourteen days upon them in the passage; therefore they will only arrive seventeen days before us at Martinique, for I suppose them bound there. I shall not anchor at Barbadoes.... I have prayed Lord Seaforth to lay an embargo, that the French may not know of my approach, and thus again elude our vigilance. My mind is not altered that Egypt was their destination last January.” Eight days later, when the fleet was in Carlisle Bay, Barbadoes, and Nelson’s force had been augmented by the addition of two battleships under Cochrane, we are informed that “There is not a doubt in any of the admirals’ or generals’ minds, but that Tobago and Trinidad are the enemy’s objects; and although I am anxious in the extreme to get at their eighteen sail-of-the-line, yet, as Sir William Myers has offered to embark himself with 2000 troops, I cannot refuse such a handsome offer; and, with the blessing of God on a just cause, I see no cause to doubt of the annihilation of both the enemy’s fleet and army.”

It happened that the general had received a letter on the previous night from Brigadier-General Brereton, stationed at St Lucia, informing him that the enemy’s fleet, “steering to the southward,” had been reported as passing that island during the late hours of the 28th May. According to Brereton’s supposition its destination “must be either Barbadoes or Trinidad.”

Knowing full well that if the intelligence proved false it would lose him the French fleet, but having no alternative, Nelson set off for Tobago, where he learnt from the captain of an American vessel that his ship had been boarded by a French sail-of-the-line the day before. Then he received a signal from a passing ship that the enemy was at Trinidad, where he anchored on the 7th June. Another report came to land that on the 4th the enemy had been at Fort Royal and was likely to sail during the night for the attack of Grenada. He was at the latter island on the 9th, and heard that the enemy had not only passed Dominica three days before, “standing to the northward,” but had been lucky enough to capture a convoy of ships laden with sugar. Nelson peeped in at Montserrat on the 11th; on the 13th the troops were being disembarked at St John’s, Antigua, at which place the fleet had arrived the previous evening. “At noon I sailed in my pursuit of the enemy; and I do not yet despair of getting up with them before they arrive at Cadiz or Toulon, to which ports I think they are bound, or at least in time to prevent them from having a moment’s superiority. I have no reason to blame Dame Fortune. If either General Brereton could not have wrote, or his look-out man had been blind, nothing could have prevented my fighting them on 6 June; but such information, and from such a quarter, close to the enemy, could not be doubted.” He had already sent a fast-sailing brig with despatches to the Admiralty informing them of the probable return of the combined fleet to Europe, although so late as the 18th July he was not sure that the enemy had not tricked him and gone to Jamaica. With commendable alacrity Admiral Stirling was told to form a junction with Sir Robert Calder off Ferrol, and to await the enemy, for the commander of the brig has sighted the quarry and was of opinion from the course they were making that the neighbourhood of Cape Finisterre was their desired haven. It has remained for two modern historians to point out that Nelson had discerned the likelihood of Ferrol as an anchorage for Villeneuve’s fleet, and had forwarded a warning to the Admiral stationed off that port.65

On the date just mentioned Nelson joined Collingwood off Cadiz, but no accurate news awaited him. Indeed, the former pinned his faith to an attack on Ireland as the grand finale of Napoleon’s naval manoeuvres. At Gibraltar the Admiral went on shore for the first time since the 16th June, 1803—over two years. From thence he proceeded to Cornwallis’s station off Ushant, and received orders from the Admiral to sail with the Victory and the Superb for Spithead. He struck his flag on the 19th August 1805 and set off for Merton.

To what extent had Napoleon’s plans succeeded? Villeneuve had reached Martinique on the 14th May, only to find that Missiessy had not awaited his coming according to instructions. Ganteaume was also unable to carry out his part of the plan, consequently Villeneuve was alone in the West Indies and might become Nelson’s prey at any moment. The prospect did not please him. When he heard that the great British commander had not only arrived at Barbadoes but had been reinforced by Cochrane he set the bows of his ships in the direction of home, contrary to the Emperor’s orders to wait for a stated period for Ganteaume’s arrival. So far from raiding the British West Indies, Villeneuve only succeeded in capturing the Diamond Rock at Martinique and Missiessy in taking Dominica, although the latter had reinforced the French colonies.

After a perilous voyage Villeneuve was approaching Ferrol in thick weather on the 22nd July when he came face to face with the squadron of fifteen battleships and four smaller vessels which had been sent by the Admiralty to await his coming. The action which followed was anything but decisive. The fleet Nelson had longed to annihilate was allowed to escape by Calder, whose only prizes were the Spanish San Rafael (84) and El Firme (74). After leaving three of his less seaworthy ships at Vigo, the French commander eventually reached CoruÑa.

Another Act of the great Atlantic Drama was over.