October 21, 1805 – Battle of Trafalgar during the Napoleonic War of the Third Coalition

The Battle of Trafalgar was a naval engagement fought on this day in history during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1806).

The Napoleonic Wars had gone on for some time. France had built the strongest army in Europe, and controlled much of the land. Britain had a strong Royal Navy and used this to blockade France, preventing French ships from leaving their ports. The French leader Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to invade and conquer Britain, but desired naval support. This meant he had to sink the British navy first.

The Vice Admiral of the British Fleet and Commander in Chief in the Mediterranean was Lord Horatio Nelson. The British knew that France might try to attack them, and had placed ships outside the important French ports, like Toulon.

Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson

The French navy managed to avoid Nelson’s fleet, and left Toulon during a storm, meeting up with a group of Spanish ships. Spain at the time was an ally of France. This small fleet first sailed to the West Indies, then returned across the Atlantic Ocean to the Spanish port of Cádiz. The British chased them both ways across the ocean.

On September 16, Napoleon gave orders for the French and Spanish ships at Cádiz to put to sea at the first favorable opportunity and head to Naples to reinforce his troops there. The French and Spanish differed on the wisdom of this plan, and they remained in Cádiz for over a month. This gave Nelson’s fleet plenty of time to catch up.

On this day in history, the British were about 21 miles to the northwest of Cape Trafalgar, with the Franco-Spanish fleet between the British and the Cape. At around 6 a.m., Nelson gave the order to prepare for battle.

Via BBC News

French Admiral Villeneuve, in command of thirty-three French and Spanish ships of the line, ordered his ships to turn around and return to Cádiz. The inexperienced crews had difficulty with the changing conditions, and it took nearly an hour and a half for Villeneuve’s order to be completed.

By 11 a.m. Nelson’s entire fleet was visible to Villeneuve, drawn up in two parallel columns. The two fleets would be within range of each other within an hour.

Nelson was outnumbered and outgunned, the enemy totalling nearly 30,000 men and 2,568 guns to his 17,000 men and 2,148 guns. The Franco-Spanish fleet also had six more ships of the line, and so could more readily combine their fire.

Nevertheless, the twenty-seven British ships of the line led by Admiral Lord Nelson aboard HMS Victory defeated Villeneuve decisively. The Franco-Spanish fleet lost twenty-two ships and the British lost none.

The victory confirmed Britain’s naval supremacy, with the battle’s fame now second only to Waterloo among the many clashes of the Napoleonic Wars.

It was also notable for Nelson’s departure from the prevailing tactical orthodoxy of the day about how to fight naval battles. Instead of engaging the opposing fleets in a single parallel line, Nelson arranged his ships into two columns that sailed perpendicularly into the enemy line.

During the battle, Nelson was shot by a French sniper and he died shortly before the battle ended. Controversy surrounds Nelson’s last words spoken to Captain Thomas Hardy, his flag captain. They have been reported variously as both “Kismet, Hardy” or “Kiss Me, Hardy.”

The website of the Naval Historical Society of Australia reports that after the battle, Nelson’s body was encased in a large casket called a leaguer. It was then filled with brandy for its preservative qualities. At Gibraltar, where HMS Victory put in, the brandy that had not been absorbed by the corpse was replaced by new spirits for the journey home to Britain, which took four and half weeks due to bad weather: “On 11 December Lord Nelson’s body was taken from the cask and found to be in a state of perfect preservation, ‘without being in the smallest degree offensive.'” He was given a hero’s funeral.

Villeneuve was captured, along with his ship Bucentaure. He later attended Nelson’s funeral while a captive on parole in Britain. Admiral Federico Gravina, the senior Spanish flag officer, escaped with the remnant of the fleet. He died five months later from wounds sustained during the battle.

In 1843, the famous Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column were built in London to honor the victorious Vice Admiral.

A wonderful book about the battle is Nelson’s Trafalgar: The Battle that Changed the World by Roy Adkins (Viking, 2005). This very informative and entertaining book is not only about this one particular battle, but about sea warfare in general.