chances in favour of the British ; and, with 12 ships formed as British ships usually are formed, it is a question whether, when the darkness of a February night added its horrors to the destructive broadsides of a gallant and well-disciplined, though numerically inferior enemy, the Spanish admiral would not have abandoned the whole of his crippled ships to the conquerors.

Before we take our final leave of this action, impartiality demands from us some inquiry into the more immediate causes which led to the defeat, such as it was, of an enemy, whose character for courage has ever been so justly extolled. One fact is certain, that the crews of the Spanish ships were the most worthless that can be conceived : they were composed of pressed landmen and soldiers of the new levies, with about 60, or at most 80, seamen to each ship. Is it necessary to go farther ? Can it be surprising that "the poor panic-struck wretches," in the words of an intelligent writer,* "when called upon to go aloft to repair the injured rigging, fell immediately on their knees, and in that posture cried out, that they preferred being sacrificed on the spot, to performing a duty in the execution of which they considered death as inevitable?"

As a proof, too, of what little use their numerical superiority of guns was to the Spaniards, four or five of the San-Josef's quarterdeck guns on the starboard side, which was that chiefly engaged, were found with their tompions in. Innumerable other instances might be adduced, to show that their numbers were a detriment to them rather than an advantage.

Had eight of the 25 ships, present in the morning of the action, been left at Carthagena, and the 500 seamen they probably contained been substituted for twice the number of raw hands taken from the remaining 17 ships, the Spaniards would, at least, have made a better stand ; and the victory have been achieved, for achieved it still would have been, at a far greater expense of lives. British lives are here meant : of Spanish lives, indeed, many were sacrificed, as the returns of the four captured ships fully testify. Nor must it be forgotten, how resolutely those ships were defended. Whatever may have been the quality of the crews, the courage of the officers was of the true Castilian stamp. It is with these that the act of surrender chiefly rests. The disaffected part of the crew may aim badly, fire slowly, and even skulk from their quarters ; but the seamen cannot, without open mutiny, come aft and strike the colours. Upon the whole, the victory off Cape St. Vincent, although, from its consequences as a political event, pre-eminently great, from its merits as a naval combat, cannot be considered, especially when the quantum of effective resistance is taken into the account, in an equal degree glorious.

* Lieutenant-colonel Drinkwater. See his " Narrative of the proceedings of the British fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir John Jervis, K.B.," p. 25.

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