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Cayetano Valdés y Flores

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Cayetano Valdés y Flores (1767-1834) was a Spanish naval officer who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, fighting for both sides at different times due to the changing fortunes of Spain in the conflict.

Born in Seville, Valdés was just fourteen when he departed for the Naval Academy in Cadiz in 1781. During his time there he saw action in the American Revolutionary War, participating the the Siege of Gibraltar from the landwards side. He also took part in a Spanish operation against Algiers in an effort to crush the rampant piracy and white slavery sponsored by the Dey. He finally achieved his position as a confirmed officer during a scientific expedition to the Straits of Juan de Fuca in the North-East Pacific Ocean.

Following his gradution from the academy, promotion was rapid, and by 1797 he was in command of the ship of the line Pelayo at the battle of Cape St Vincent when the British fleet of Sir John Jervis defeated the Spanish thanks to a daring manouvere by Horatio Nelson. Valdés however gained a reputation from this battle as a strong fighter, and was again promoted, this time into the larger Neptuno, in which he conveyed the commander of Spanish forces in Hispanola on a joint Franco-Spanish operation against the rebellious slaves in Haiti during the Haitian Revolution.

In 1805, Valdés and the Neptuno were based in Cadiz as commodore of a squadron of ships, and so they were called on to fight when the French fleet attempted to make the open sea during the Trafalgar campaign. On the 21 October the combined fleet was chased down and attacked in the battle of Trafalgar. Valdés again fought hard, his ship was leading the combined fleet and turned back into the melee behind him. Unfortunately the French ships accompanying the Neptuno under Admiral Dumanior did not turn back and so the isolated Neptuno was surrounded and eventually forced to surrender.

Although his ship was wrecked in the storm which followed the battle, Valdés and many of his shipmates survived, and thus he was in England when the Peninsular War broke out in Spain in 1808. Immediately released and returning home, Valdés enlisted in the land army and participated in a battle at Espinosa de los Monteros on the staff of General Blake but mainly contented himself with administration and involvement in the Cadiz Cortes. For this service during the was he was appointed the Captain General in charge of Cadiz, but on the return of Ferdinand VII of Spain, he was stripped of his titles and was lucky to escape death during the repression which followed the resitiution of an absolute monarchy.

In the uprising of 1820 he was again heavily involved on the republican side, and fought in the First Spanish Civil War although without much success, proving more adept as theshort lived government’s minister for war. Under a sentence of death, he fled to Gibraltar where he was protected by the British for ten years until in 1833 he was permitted to return and even had his titles of captain general of Cadiz and admiral returned to him. He died in Cadiz in 1834.

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