e were seven three-deckers, of ninety-eight
to one hundred guns; but in the lower rates the British were at a
disadvantage, having but one eighty-gun ship and three sixty-fours,
whereas the allies had six of the former and only one of the latter.
All the other vessels of the line-of-battle were seventy-fours, the
normal medium type, upon which the experience of most navies of that
day had fixed, as best fitted for the general purposes of fleet
warfare. Where more tonnage and heavier batteries were put into single
ships, it was simply for the purpose of reinforcing the critical
points of an order of battle; an aim that could not be as effectively
attained by the combination of two ships, under two captains.

As Nelson said in his celebrated order, so large a body as
thirty-three heavy vessels is not easily handled, even at sea; and
leaving port with them is an operation yet more difficult.
Consequently, the movement which began soon after daylight on the 19th
was not completed that day. Owing to the falling of the wind, only
twelve ships got fairly clear of the bay, outside of which they lay
becalmed. The following morning the attempt was resumed, and by two or
three o'clock in the afternoon of the 20th the whole combined fleet
was united, and standing with a fresh southwest wind to the northward
and westward, to gain room to windward for entering the Straits.

As has been said, the movement that Blackwood recognized at 7 A.M. of
the 19th was communicated to the admiral at half-past nine. According
to his announced plan, to cut the enemy off from the Mediterranean, he
at once made signal for a General Chase to the southeast,--towards
Cape Spartel,--and the fleet moved off in that direction with a light
southerly wind. At noon Nelson sat down in his cabin to begin his last
letter to Lady Hamilton. The words then written he signed, as though
conscious that no opportunity to continue might offer; nor is it
difficult to trace that some such thought was then uppermost in his
mind, and sought expression in the tenderness of farewell. The
following day, however, he added a few lines, in which the dominant
note was fear that the enemy might again elude him, by returning into
port; an apprehension that expelled the previous haunting sense of
finality. There he laid down the pen, never again to address her
directly. The letter, thus abruptly closed by death, was found open
and unsigned upon his desk after the battle.

Victo