TeaBarTheShed

On this day in 1805, two weeks after Trafalgar, a British squadron ran down the last French warships that had escaped that great battle and captured every one of them. It was the final act of the Trafalgar campaign, the mopping up that made the victory complete. This is the Battle of Cape Ortegal. When Nelson shattered the combined French and Spanish fleet at Trafalgar on October 21, the destruction was enormous but not quite total. In the chaos of that battle, a French admiral named Dumanoir had managed to break away with four ships of the line, undamaged and unengaged, and flee the scene. These four warships, a powerful little squadron, escaped into the open Atlantic and tried to slip away to the safety of a friendly port. As long as they were loose, a dangerous fragment of the enemy fleet remained at large. But the Royal Navy was watching the sea lanes. As Dumanoir's ships worked their way through the Bay of Biscay, they were spotted by a British frigate, which shadowed them and raced to bring up a British squadron under Sir Richard Strachan. Strachan gathered his ships of the line and his frigates and gave chase, hunting the French squadron across the waters off the northwestern corner of Spain, near Cape Ortegal. On November 4 he caught them. The British ships overhauled the French and forced them to battle, and the two squadrons hammered each other with broadsides. The French fought hard, but they were outmatched and run down, and one by one their ships were battered into submission. Dumanoir's flagship struck her colors, and the others followed. All four French ships of the line were captured. It was a clean and complete British victory, and it closed the book on the Trafalgar campaign in the most emphatic way possible. The four warships that had slipped through Nelson's fingers were now in British hands, taken into the Royal Navy to serve against their former masters. Between Trafalgar and Cape Ortegal, the entire enemy fleet that had set out to challenge British control of the sea had been destroyed or captured, with scarcely a ship left to show for it. Nelson had won the great battle and died in his moment of triumph. Strachan, two weeks later, swept up the survivors and made the destruction total. The Battle of Cape Ortegal is the quieter sequel to Trafalgar, the day the last fugitives of that famous fight were run down and taken, sealing Britain's command of the oceans, on this day in 1805.