French ship Achille (1803)

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She should not be confused with HMS Achille, named after a captured French warship.

The Achille was a 74-gun French ship of the line, with a crew of 499, built at Rochefort in 1803 by Jacques-Noël Sané.

Under the command of Gabriel Denieport, she was the first Franco-Spanish ship to sight the English fleet the day before the Battle of Trafalgar. At the start of the battle she joined Aigle, Neptune and Fougueux in engaging the second ship in the British lee column, HMS Belleisle. Belleisle was soon completely dismasted, unable to manoeuvre and largely unable to fight, as her sails blinded her batteries, but kept flying her flag for 45 minutes until the other British ships behind her in the column came to her rescue.

Achille was then battered by broadsides from many ships. Whilst engaging her final opponent HMS Prince, the fore top of the Achille caught fire, and the next broadside against her brought her blazing main mast down, engulfing the ship in flames. At this point, knowing that her opponent's fate was sealed, Richard Grindall, the Prince 's captain, ceased firing and wore round to clear the Achille, before placing boats in the water to rescue the French seamen, but this proved hazardous as the Achille's abandoned but loaded guns were set off by the intense heat now raging below decks.

The fires eventually reached her magazine and she blew up spectacularly at 5.45pm, marking the end of the battle. An officer serving in the Defence wrote:

"It was a sight the most awful and grand that can be conceived. In a moment the hull burst into a cloud of smoke and fire. A column of vivid flame shot up to an enormous height in the atmosphere and terminated by expanding into an immense globe, representing for a few seconds, a prodigious tree in flames, specked with many dark spots, which the pieces of timber and bodies of men occasioned while they were suspended in the clouds."

Only some 100 French sailors could be rescued by the surrounding British ships.

She figures on The Battle of Trafalgar by Turner.