‘Tell Lieutenant Cumby never to strike.’ These dying words from his captain at Trafalgar placed an immense and sudden responsibility on the young Lieutenant Cumby’s shoulders. He rose to the occasion, survived the battle and served in the Royal Navy until he died.

William Pryce Cumby had followed his father’s footsteps into the Royal Navy and was promoted lieutenant in 1793 at the very start of the twenty-two-year-long French Revoluntionary and Napoleonic Wars. He was first lieutenant aboard the Bellerophon (74), which sailed in Vice Admiral Collingwood’s Lee Division at Trafalgar. After breaking the line of the Combined Fleet astern of the Monarca (74), she engaged the French L’Aigle. Their masts became entangled and a fast and furious fight ensued.

The crew of L’Aigle, supplemented by 150 soldiers, was well trained in the use of musketry and grenades. At such close range, the Bellerophon’s upper decks became a killing zone, so much so that Cumby suggested that his captain, John Cooke, should remove his epaulettes for fear that they marked him out. Cooke declined. A short while later, he instructed Cumby to order the gun captains to keep the starboard guns firing at all costs. On his return Cumby, choking from the thick, acrid smoke that stifled the gun decks, met two sailors carrying the master, Mr Overton, whom Cumby had last seen standing next to Captain Cooke on the quarterdeck. Overton had been mortally wounded and his leg was horribly shattered. Cumby next encountered the quartermaster, who had come to inform him that Cooke was very badly wounded, hit twice in the chest by musket balls while reloading his pistols. When at last Cumby reached the quarterdeck, Cooke was dead. His last words were conveyed to him: ‘Let me lie quietly one minute. Tell Lieutenant Cumby never to strike!’

All of a sudden, his senses reeling from the din and amidst the fiercest of fights, Cumby found himself in command of the veteran Bellerophon. It was a quarter past one o’clock. Only in retrospect would he learn that her situation wsa at that very moment graver than any other British ship during the whole of the battle. He ordered all the remaining men down from the poop deck, and, calling boarders, had them muster in readiness to repel any attempts the enemy might make to board, ‘their position rendering it quite impracticable for us to board them in the face of such musketry.’ The French grenades were dangerously effective. At one point, Cumby picked up one from the gangway while the fuse was burning and threw it overboard.

Whatever advantages the French had on the upper decks, Cumby realised they were more than compensated for by the superiority of the Bellerophon’s fire on the lower and main decks. This was vigorously maintained and L’Aigle’s great guns eventually ceased firing. The crisis passed, the Bellerophon came through with twenty-seven killed and 127 wouned, but Cumby hda fulfilled his captain’s last command.

After Trafalgar, Cumby was promoted captain. His next recorded action was on 14 November 1808, in command of the Polyphemus (64), when his men cut out the French schooner Colibri (3) from San Domingo Harbour, in the West Indies. Then, in July of the following year, he was given charge of a squadron consisting of the Polyphemus, Aurora (46) and eight small craft ordered to blockade San Domingo. The Polyphemus landed eight of her lower-deck guns for service in the shore batteries. The blockade was so successful that the French governor opened negotiations for capitulation.

A quiet period followed. Cumby was made a Companion of the Bath in 1831 and his last posting was to superintendent of Pembroke Dockyard, where he died on 27 September 1837.

PW