to the mouth of the
Thames! If the plan succeeded, Portugal would fall, a descent was to
be made on Ireland; the British flag, it was reckoned, would be swept
from the seas.

Sir John Jervis was lying in the track of the Spaniards to defeat this
ingenious plan. Five ships of the line had been withdrawn from the
squadron blockading Brest to strengthen him; still he had only fifteen
ships against the twenty-seven huge Spaniards in front of him; whilst,
if the French Toulon fleet behind him broke out, he ran the risk of
being crushed, so to speak, betwixt the upper and the nether millstone.
Never, perhaps, was the naval supremacy of England challenged so boldly
and with such a prospect of success as at this moment. The northern
powers had coalesced under Russia, and only a few weeks later the
English guns were thundering over the roofs of Copenhagen, while the
united flags of France and Spain were preparing to sweep through the
narrow seas. The "splendid isolation" of to-day is no novelty. In
1796, as it threatened to be in 1896, Great Britain stood singly
against a world in arms, and it is scarcely too much to say that her
fate hung on the fortunes of the fleet that, in the grey dawn of St.
Valentine's Day, a hundred years ago, was searching the skyline for the
topmasts of Don Cordova's huge three-deckers.

Fifteen to twenty-seven is enormous odds, but, on the testimony of
Nelson himself, a better fleet never carried the fortunes of a great
country than that under Sir John Jervis. The mere names of the ships
or of their commanders awaken more sonorous echoes than the famous
catalogue of the ships in the "Iliad." Trowbridge, in the _Culloden_,
led the van; the line was formed of such ships as the _Victory_, the
flagship, the _Barfleur_, the _Blenheim_, the _Captain_, with Nelson as
commodore, the _Excellent_, under Collingwood, the _Colossus_, under
Murray, the _Orion_, under Sir James Saumarez, &c. Finer sailors and
more daring leaders never bore down upon an enemy's fleet. The picture
offered by the two fleets in the cold haze of that fateful morning, as
a matter of fact, reflected the difference in their fighting and
sea-going qualities. The Spanish fleet, a line of monsters, straggled,
formless and shapeless, over miles of sea space, distracted with
signals, fluttering with many-coloured flags. The English fleet, grim
and silent, bore down upon the enemy in two compact and firm-drawn
columns, ship follow