page_title: Spanish ship Neptuno (1795)
section_title: Approach to Trafalgar
hierarchical_section_title: Spanish ship Neptuno (1795) / Approach to Trafalgar
caption_attribution_description: Español: Retrato del marino español Cayetano Valdés (1767-1835), que llegó a ser el XVII capitán general de la Real Armada Española. En 1809 ascendió a teniente general y fue nombrado capitán general de Cádiz. El retrato fue realizado en Sevilla en 1847, por encargo del Museo Naval de Madrid, y el retratado aparece de medio cuerpo y de frente, vistiendo el uniforme pequeño de capitán general y de Director General de la Armada. Y luce las bandas y placas de las grandes cruces de las órdenes de San Fernando y de San Hermenegildo y la venera de caballero de la Orden de Malta. El cuadro ingresó en el Museo Naval de Madrid en 1847.
context_page_description: Neptuno was an 80-gun Montañes-class ship of the line of the Spanish Navy. She was built in 1795 and took part in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. She fought with the Franco-Spanish fleet in the battle of Trafalgar, and was wrecked in its aftermath.
  Neptuno was built at Ferrol and launched in 1795. She entered service in time to support an attempt to unite with a French force and land troops in England, but the Spanish fleet under Admiral José de Córdoba y Ramos was intercepted and engaged by a British fleet under Sir John Jervis. Neptuno did not take part in the battle, having been sent into port beforehand. Several years later she was in a Spanish port when the combined Franco-Spanish fleet under Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve arrived, having sailed to the West Indies and back, and been engaged by a British fleet in the Battle of Cape Finisterre. Neptuno joined the fleet in her attempt to reach Brest, but the plan to join with another French fleet failed and Neptuno ended up with the rest of the fleet, blockaded in Cadiz by a British fleet under Lord Nelson.
context_section_description: By 1805 Neptuno was based at Ferrol, under the command of Captain Don Cayetano Valdés y Flores. There she was joined in late July by ships of the combined Franco-Spanish fleet under Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve. The combined fleet had recently arrived in European waters from the West Indies, where they had evaded a British fleet under Lord Nelson, but had failed to carry out any attacks on the British colonies in the Caribbean. The fleet, hotly pursued across the Atlantic by Nelson, had been intercepted by another fleet under Robert Calder that had been positioned off Cape Finisterre in expectation of their arrival.  Calder captured two of Villeneuve's ships in a confused action, after which Villeneuve withdrew to Ferrol and Corunna. He sailed again on 9 August, taking the Spanish ships he had found in those ports, including Neptuno, with him, hoping to rendezvous with the French Rochefort squadron under Zacharie Allemand. The hoped-for rendezvous failed: the two French fleets supposedly mistook each other for the main British fleet and, instead of joining, attempted to escape from each other, with Villeneuve fleeing to Cádiz.
  After spending several months there, watched by the blockading British fleet under Nelson, Villeneuve decided to put to sea in mid-October. Valdés prepared Neptuno for sea, and the fleet sailed from Cadiz on 19 October. Neptuno was initially the rearmost ship of the combined fleet as it sailed southwards, but as the British approached on the morning of 21 October, Villeneuve formed the line of battle and ordered it to come about heading northwards, with Neptuno now the lead ship of the van. She was ahead of the 74-gun French Scipion, and formed part of the squadron under Rear-Admiral Pierre Dumanoir le Pelley, which had previously been intended as the rear of the fleet.
caption: Portrait of Cayetano Valdés y Flores, commander of Neptuno at Trafalgar, painted by José Roldán y Martínez, Sevilla, 1847
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