Collingwood at Trafalgar.
Of Cjllinjjwood Thackeray says : "I think, siBCB Heaven made gentleman, it never made a, better one than Cuthbert Collingwood," and there w&s, no doubt;, a knightly and chivalrons side to Colliugwood worthy of King Arthur's round table. Bus there was also a side of heavy-footed ccinmon sense, of Dutch-lik« frugality, in Collingwood — a. sort of woodenheaded unimagicativeneas which looks humoroua when seb against the background of such * planet-shaking fight as Trafalgar. Thus on the morning of the fight he advised one of his lieutenants, who wore a pair of boots, to follow his example and put ou stockings and shoes, as, in the event of being shob in the leg, ifc would, he explained, "be co much more manageable for the surgeon." And as he walked the break of hia poop ia tights, silk stockings, and buckled shoes, leading in his single ship an attack on a flee!;, he calmly munched an apple. To be able to munch an apple when beginning Trafalgar is an illustration of what may be called the quality of: wooden-headed unimaginativeness in Collingwood. And yefcColHngwood had a sensa of the scale o? the drama in which he was taking part. ." Now, gentlemen," he said to his officers, "lefc us do something to-day which the world may talk of Hereafter."
Collingwood, in reality, was a great man and a great seaman, and in the battle which followed he "fought like an angel," to quota the amusingly inappropriate metaphor o£ Black wood. The two majestic British columns moved slowly on, the great ships, with ports hauled up and guns run out, following each other like a procession of giants. " I suppose," says Codringbon, who commanded the Orion, " bo man ever before saw such a sight."
And the element of humour was added to tha scene by ths spectacle of the tiny Pickle, a duodecimo schooner, gravely hanging on- to the quarter of an 80-guu ship — as an actor in the fight describes it — " with tha boarding nettings up, and her tompioas out of her four guns — about as large aud as formidable as two pairs of Wellington boots."—" Daeds that Won the Empire."
Collingwood at Trafalgar.
Otago Witness, Issue 2298, 17 March 1898, Page 52
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