Battle of Trafalgar
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| Battle of Trafalgar | |||||||||||||||||
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| Conflict | Napoleonic Wars | ||||||||||||||||
| Date | 21 October 1805 | ||||||||||||||||
| Place | Cape Trafalgar | ||||||||||||||||
| Result | British victory | ||||||||||||||||
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The Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) was the most significant naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars and the pivotal naval battle of the 19th century. It was fought west of Cape Trafalgar in southwest Spain.
A British Royal Navy fleet under the command of Admiral Lord Nelson destroyed a combined French and Spanish fleet and in so doing guaranteed to the United Kingdom uncontested control of the world's oceans for more than 100 years.
In 1805 under Napoleon, the French were masters of the European continent, while the British still ruled the seas. The British, during the course of the war, managed to impose a fairly effective blockade on France. This blockade had the effect of keeping the French from fully mobilizing their own naval resources and kept the French from invading Britain although Britain could always land in France.
Disgusted with this situation, Napoleon Bonaparte determined to sweep the Royal Navy from the seas, and issued orders for the French Navy to combine with forces from the Spanish Navy (Napoleon was allied with Spain), break the British blockade, then escort an invasion force of some 350,000 French soldiers to the shores of England.
Napoleon had had his troubles with the Royal Navy before. The French occupation of Egypt was ultimately undone when Nelson smashed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile off Alexandria. Were this all Nelson had done, he would still be regarded as a famous admiral, but his greatest day was yet to come.
Background
By the late 1700s the development of the modern ship of the line had progressed to the point where the larger naval cannon were just able to break through the ever-thickening sides of the ships – but only after repeated shots. This led to battles of attrition where lines of ships battered at each other until one side lost, at which point both would limp home for repairs.
Ships had one weak spot, however, on the stern. Here a single shot would often penetrate the thinner planking and stern lights, and if it did so, could run down the length of the decks. However tempting this sort of attack might be, ships were so slow to maneuver at the time that it was difficult for fleets to attack in this way without being vulnerable to a similar attack in return.
Instead both admirals would attempt to form up into long lines. The two lines would then maneuver, sometimes for days, in an effort to close to within gunfire range. Each ship was then supposed to attack its opposite number in the enemy line.
A hint of a new tactic came to be known in 1782. After defeating the British attempt to reinforce their deployment in what would soon be the United States during the Battle of the Chesapeake, the French decided to attempt the taking of Bermuda. Facing them was a smaller fleet under George Rodney. When they met in the Battle of the Saintes on April 12 things looked excellent for the French, but a missed signal made their line split up. Rodney quickly signaled a 90 degree turn in his own line, running his ships between the French line while they continued to sail in their original directions. His ships ended up firing right into the sterns of the French ships and soon reduced six of their main ships.
Nelson
In the Napoleonic era, the Royal Navy had long been mired in pointless tradition. A young class of admirals quietly undertook to overthrow much of accepted naval strategy; Horatio Nelson was part of this movement. After proving himself at the Battle of the Nile, he was inclined to reconsider much of the former tactical doctrine and to experiment with new methods.
Nelson's plan was to attempt to break the enemy line of battle in order to cut the center and rear of the fleet from its van, and to then concentrate his forces on the ships in rear part of the line. Since the ships would be sailing downwind, it would be difficult for those in the van to backtrack upwind to come to the aid of the rear. In fact this is a similar tactic to that which Nelson had already used successfully at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent (1797), but here it was applied as a deliberate plan on a larger scale.
Battle
At Cádiz, in Spain, a combined French and Spanish fleet finally set sail under the command of Admiral Pierre de Villeneuve. Lord Nelson's fleet had bottled up the Mediterranean, and so the combined French and Spanish fleets came to fight their way out. It took two days, October 19 and October 20, for the combined fleet to clear the harbor at Cádiz, and on the morning of October 21, the British approached as the Spanish and French ships were still struggling to form up south of Cádiz in light and contrary winds.
The French had 18 ships of the line: Bucentaure, Formidable, Neptuno, Indomptable, Algesiras, Pluton, Mont-Blanc, Intrepide, Swiftsure, Aigle, Scipion, Duguay-Trouin, Berwick, Argonaut, Achille, Redoutable, Fougueux, and Heros. The Spanish had 15: Santissima Trinidad, Principe de Asturias, Santa Anna, Rayo, Neptuno, Argonauta, Bahama, Montanez, San Augustin, San Ildefonso, San Juan Nepomuceno, Monarca, San Francisco de Asis, San Justo, and San Leandro.
Nelson had 27 ships of the line: Britannia, Royal Sovereign, Victory, Dreadnought, Neptune, Prince, Temeraire, Tonnant, Achilles, Ajax, Belleisle, Bellerphon, Colossus, Conqueror, Defence, Defiance, Leviathan, Mars, Minotaur, Orion, Revenge, Spartiate, Swiftsure, Thunderer, Africa, Agamemnon, and Polyphemus.
The battle progressed largely according to Nelson's plan. At 11:35, Nelson sent throughout the fleet the famous flag signal, "England expects that every man will do his duty". He then attacked the French line in two columns, leading one column in HMS Victory; while Admiral Collingwood in HMS Royal Sovereign led the other column.
As the battle opened, the French and Spanish were in a ragged line headed north as the two British columns approached from the west at almost a right angle. Because the winds were very light during the battle, all the ships were moving extremely slowly and the lead British ships were under fire from several of the enemy for almost an hour before their own guns would bear. At 12:45, Victory cut the enemy line between Villeneuve's flagship Bucentaure and Redoutable. Meanwhile, Royal Sovereign had already engaged the Spanish Santa Ana.
A general mêlée ensued, and during that fight, the Victory locked masts with the French Redoutable. A sniper's bullet struck Nelson in the spine. Nelson was carried below decks and died at about 16:30, as the battle that would make him a legend was ending in favour of the British.
The Franco-Spanish fleet lost 22 vessels and the British not one.
Consequences
France was forever altered by their loss at Trafalgar. Napoleon would never risk passage across the English Channel for fear of the Royal Navy, instead resorting to the Continental System of economic warfare. Nelson became a legend, and his statue atop Nelson's Column towers triumphantly over London's famous Trafalgar Square, which was named for the victory. Without France to challenge her – Germany was not yet unified, and Russia was not a significant naval power – Britain would rule the world's oceans for over a century.
200th Anniversary
In October 2005, the 200th anniversary of the battle will be marked by six days of celebrations in Portsmouth, and at St Paul's Cathedral and Trafalgar Square in London, as-well as across the rest of the UK in varying degrees. The anniversary comes one year after the UK and France celebrated 100 years of the Entente Cordiale.
In literature
- In the Richard Sharpe series of novels (specifically "Sharpe's Trafalgar") by Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe finds himself at the Battle of Trafalgar aboard the fictitious HMS "Pucelle", following a complicated series of events which began in India.
- In "1805", one of the Nathaniel Drinkwater series of novels by Richard Woodman. Drinkwater is a prisoner aboard the French flagship Bucentaure.
- Trafalgar, a book about the battle of the same name, opens the series of novels Episodios Nacionales by Benito Pérez Galdós.
See also
External links
- HMS Victory Royal Navy Web Site (http://www.hms-victory.com/)
- Pictures of HMS Victory (http://y2u.co.uk/&002_Images/Victory%20Nelson%2001.htm)
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