The Great Valentine’s Day Victory

The tenuous and ever-shifting coalitions of nations that came together against Napoleonic France from 1792 to 1815 could be fickle arrangements, indeed. One’s ally one moment might decide—out of territorial self-interest, or intimidation by Napoleon Bonaparte’s momentum, or some combination thereof—to cut a separate deal with France. And suddenly, your erstwhile partner was now on your enemy’s side.

Such was the case with Great Britain and Spain, aligned against Napoleon during the War of the First Coalition—until Spain bailed out, made peace with France, and soon was breathing down its former coalition-mate Britain’s neck. (It was not as if Britain and Spain had ever been the best of friends anyway.)

The prospect of France and Spain in united array against the British Isles was a fearful one. France already had attempted an amphibious landing at rebellion-simmering Ireland to foment a mass uprising there; the invasion was a total botch, but now, with the Spanish Royal Armada available to back his play, Napoleon was bound to take another such shot. If the Spanish fleet in the Mediterranean were to sail out to the Atlantic then head northward to hook up with the French fleet at Brest, well, that was the stuff that nightmares were made of from London to Londonderry.

The Spanish squadrons anchored in the Mediterranean included in their ranks the largest warships in the world at the time, multi-decked monsters bristling with 100-plus guns, dwarfing even a mighty British 74-gunner. Clearing the Strait of Gibraltar, the Spanish ships’ course to join forces with Napoleon’s navy would take them past a landmark time-honored by seafaring men: those distinctive weathered cliffs jutting from the Portuguese coast at the European continent’s most southwesterly point—a sight that since yore had prompted sailors to lower their topsails in salute, there near the old stomping grounds of Prince Henry the Navigator: Cape St. Vincent.

And waiting there to intercept them, the Spanish crews emerging from the Mediterranean would find a 50-year veteran of the British naval service, he and his ships recently of the Mediterranean as well—there, that is, until forced to evacuate by the fresh belligerence they now faced from more than just Napoleon. This seasoned watcher was a large and imposing admiral with a keen intelligence evident in his stare, a markedly self-disciplined officer who got up at 0200 each morning and got cracking, and for whom the Royal Navy was his raison d’etre: Admiral Sir John Jervis.

As dawn came through the lingering mist on 14 February 1797, he stood on the quarterdeck of his flagship HMS Victory and was pleased to see that his crack-trained fleet had held its position in good order through the gale-swept night. Throughout the early morning, one by one, his ships reported the sight of approaching sail. Ordered to prepare for battle, they cleared for action. And as the sighting reports kept coming in, Admiral Jervis’ captain of the fleet, Robert Calder, offered him continuous updates:

“There are eight sail of the line, Sir John.”

“Very well, sir.”

“There are 20 sail of the line, Sir John.”

“Very well, sir.”

“There are 25 sail of the line, Sir John.”

“Very well, sir.”

“There are 27 sail of the line, Sir John—near twice our own number.”

“Enough, sir, no more of that!” Jervis rebuked. “The die is cast, and if there are 50 sail I will go through them!”

While a few of those enemy silhouettes would turn out merely to be convoy vessels, Jervis’ 15 ships still were outnumbered and perilously outgunned. But Admiral Don José de Córdoba’s fearsome-looking Spanish fleet was poorly manned and inadequately trained, and it had been struggling to regroup; blown off course by a fierce easterly wind, it had been driven out into the Atlantic. And as Jervis ordered his fleet to form into a line of battle, Córdoba’s fleet found itself dangerously separated into two groups.

Jervis seized the moment, directing his battle line to spear south-southwest, broadsides blasting, between the two Spanish formations, cutting off the smaller one to the southeast from the main one to the northwest. Having successfully severed the Spanish force, Jervis now ordered his ships to turn and pursue the main Spanish fleet to the northwest.

And it became not unlike a laborious, attenuated U-turn as each British ship, one by one, tacked in succession when it was her turn at the bottom of the “U”—the tricky maneuver complicated by the smaller Spanish formation that had been cut off from the main body and had now begun engaging the British line at that bend of the “U.”

Far up toward the rear of that stalling line, an officer in HMS Captain impatiently waited as the process dragged. He was a young commodore who had been earning a reputation for audacious deeds that previous year in the Mediterranean. And now, as Horatio Nelson looked across the gap between the fleets, he instinctively sensed the urgent timeliness of the moment. And so he broke out of the slow-moving line of ships still awaiting their turns to tack—and shortcutted his way across the gap to intercept the main Spanish fleet.

It was such an outrageous, counterintuitive David-vs.-Goliath move that it threw the Spanish ships into panicked confusion. As the 74-gun Captain singlehandedly battled six Spanish warships—including the behemoth 130-gun Santísima Trinidad—other British captains rushed their ships into the fray, backing Nelson’s bold play and further wreaking destruction on the Spanish fleet.

The Captain, her wheel gone, her foretopmast down, had little fight left in her, so Nelson made one last good use of her: He hooked her to the battle-ravaged San Nicolás, whose decks were a tangle of strewn corpses and toppled masts—and who herself was hopelessly entangled with the equally beaten-up San José. As the Captain’s bow rammed into the San Nicolás’ quarterdeck, Nelson shouted, “Death or glory!” and personally led the boarding party that fought its way onto the Spanish vessel and forced her surrender.

From there, Nelson and his deck-stormers continued their streak, boarding the San José next and swiftly taking her as well. Nelson’s remarkable double-boarding feat would quickly become the stuff of legend—part of a legend that was destined to grow.

In the aftermath of the British triumph, one of Admiral Jervis’ officers made a derogatory comment about how Nelson’s decisive line-breaking action had been a breach of orders.

“It certainly was so,” Jervis replied, “and if you ever commit such a breach of orders I will forgive you also.”

The Battle of Cape St. Vincent put an end to the Spanish threat; France would attempt to launch another Irish invasion later that year, but this time with Dutch naval support. And that, too, would fail in the face of British naval resolve. (See “Showdown Off Camperdown,” June 2024, pp. 10–11.)

In the fanfare that followed the great Valentine’s Day victory, Jervis was granted a baronetcy and gained the title 1st Earl of St. Vincent. Nelson was knighted and promoted to rear admiral. Jervis would succeed in keeping the Spanish fleet bottled up in the Mediterranean for the ensuing years. And Nelson would continue to be a star ascendant. His fame grew with each victory to follow, until his ultimate victory, and ultimate fate, just eight years later, down along that selfsame stretch of coast between Gibraltar and Cape St. Vincent—at a place called Trafalgar.