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Overview-Appendix
How Nelson Saved the World By Russell Lewis, Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2005
On Oct. 21 1805, off Cape Trafalgar on the Spanish coast, Admiral Lord Nelson won the greatest battle in
the annals of sail, routing Napoleon's Navy without losing a single ship himself. The Queen launches this
year's bicentennial celebrations in Portsmouth today. It's understandable that the British should honor a
triumph that put paid to Napoleon's plans for invading their island, and began a century in which Britannia
ruled the waves.
Why should anyone but the Brits commemorate the birth of British imperialism? In addition to the French,
Americans look back on that era with misgivings. Trafalgar marked the start of the worst period of AngloAmerican relations on record that culminated in an unnecessary war in 1812.
The British blockade of Napoleon's European empire -- in response to the French emperor's closure of
Continental ports to British trade -- generated friction between London and Washington. Americans were
irked by the Royal Navy's policy of stopping and searching their ships and arresting for desertion any
American sailor who had previously served on board British naval vessels. (Indeed when I recently visited
Nelson's flagship HMS Victory in Portsmouth, I looked at the list of sailors who served at Trafalgar to see if
there was a namesake of mine. There was a Lewis but he was American.) President Thomas Jefferson forbid
British ships entry to American waters; Britain, in turn, prohibited all direct trade between America and
Europe. Washington declared war just as the British rescinded their Orders in Council prohibiting U.S. trade
with Europe. Too late! It took a month for news of this conciliatory gesture to cross the Atlantic.
This war proceeded with some notable if small-scale American naval successes, the British burning of the
White House and U.S. victories at Baltimore, before peace was restored.
Yet, despite the grievous aftermath, Nelson's victory at Trafalgar was a boon to America as well as to Europe
and the rest of the world. America's renowned 19th century naval strategist, Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan,
wrote of the British blockade of France that "those far distant storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand
Army never looked, stood between it and the domination of the world."
Jefferson viewed Napoleon with alarm. When the French colony of Louisiana was ceded to Napoleon by
Spain in a secret treaty in 1801, the U.S. president worried that the French had wider designs on the
American continent. As Jefferson remarked at the time: "The day that France takes possession of New
Orleans, we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation." Fortunately Napoleon's troops were turned
back from Santo Domingo (today's Haiti), discouraging him from any more adventures. He sold Louisiana -then about a third of modern America -- for $16 million, or 4 cents an acre.
But Admiral Mahan was still right that had Napoleon beaten Britain and established a European empire, his
whole career suggests that he couldn't have stopped there. Napoleon once said: "You can do anything with
bayonets except sit on them." America surely would've been next.
As it happens, after Trafalgar, Britannia did rule the waves for a hundred years, not out of benevolence -except for stamping out the slave trade -- but to protect her commerce. In doing so Britain enabled a huge
growth of world trade and prosperity. Moreover, with the Royal Navy standing guard, the danger of
Continental European nations interfering in American affairs
-- during the Civil War for instance -- was zero. So America was spared the expense of maintaining a large
navy for most of the 19th century and instead got on with opening up its west.
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Historians differ as to whether Napoleon could ever have managed to invade England. But English people
then took it seriously and flukes happen in history. A great French army was collected at Boulogne with a
flotilla of flat-bottomed boats to transport it across the Channel. Boney believed that only if his forces could
control the crossing for six hours in reasonable weather then the French could swiftly vanquish his chief
enemy in Europe.
To that end Napoleon instructed Admiral Villeneuve in command of the fleet at Toulon to break out of the
English blockade. The plan was to lure the Royal Navy's squadrons over to the West Indies, then return and
combine with the French Atlantic fleet emerging from Brest to escort his soldiers to land in England.
The plan failed. The English Channel remained guarded throughout, while Nelson's fleet chased Villeneuve
across the Atlantic and back. Instead of heading for Brest, the French admiral, his nerve failing him, turned
south and took refuge in Cadiz. He did emerge in desperation, having learnt that he was about to be sacked.
He was attacked and crushed off Cape Trafalgar. Villeneuve's flagship was boarded and he was taken
prisoner.
Trafalgar was a naval blitzkrieg. Of the combined fleet of 33 French and Spanish ships, 17 were either
captured or put out of action. People are now apt to think that these wooden ship battles were pretty small
beer. A visit to Nelson's 3500-ton flagship, HMS Victory, with its 100 cannons, now permanently anchored
in Portsmouth, should disabuse them. The gun power of his fleet at Trafalgar was six times that of
Napoleon's army at Waterloo.
Before Nelson, these guns were never used to their full potential. Fleets sailed in line alongside each other
and exchanged fire, but casualties were light, and the losers mostly got away with the loss of a few ships.
Nelson believed in annihilation. The completeness of the Trafalgar rout was made possible by his brilliant,
unorthodox and risky tactics of breaking the enemy line in two places, and concentrating fire on a few ships
at a time before dealing with the rest. This called for central control of the action, made possible through a
recently invented, rapid method of flag signaling. This communication system was revolutionary in the same
way that radio was in making central control of tank armies effective in World War II. All this together with
superior British gunnery and seamanship, not to mention the Nelson touch, did the trick.
From then on the French navy, apart from a few, small and usually unsuccessful sorties, remained bottled up
for the rest of the war, which continued for another nine years. British Prime Minister William Pitt summed
up the consequences, saying "England has saved herself by her exertions and, as I trust, Europe by her
example."
That hope of saving Europe at first seemed wishful. Napoleon proceeded to notch up his greatest victories,
rolling up the Austrian, the Russian and the Prussian armies. He replied to the British blockade by banning
imports of British goods. Napoleon's blockade was eventually undermined by smuggling and the hunger of
the whole Continent, not only for cheap British textiles but also tobacco, tea, coffee, cocoa, cotton and spices
only available from countries overseas. It was Russia's refusal to keep British goods out that led Napoleon
into his supreme folly of marching on Moscow, where he lost half a million men.
British naval power also made it possible for Wellington to take his troops to Spain to support the guerrillas
and tie down a further quarter of a million French troops. The disasters befalling the Grand Army breathed
new life into the anti-Napoleonic alliance, which was nourished by British gold, and finally brought his
defeat and abdication. Control of the sea lanes allowed Britain safely to ship and maintain an army on the
Continent.
In a very real sense the battle of Trafalgar made possible the victory at Waterloo 10 years later. So the
Europe of independent nations had good cause to be grateful for the one sea power which refused to bow to
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the French dictator and whose defiance led to his eventual overthrow. Otherwise they might still be vassals in
his empire -- not exactly the kind of union that even the keenest Europhiles would wish for today. The battle
of Trafalgar preserved freedom in the old world and the new.
Mr. Lewis is a former general director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, London.
www.pacificshipmodels.com
It was the year of 1805, the year when it seemed that at long last Napoleon would invade England,
which, for twelve years, had stood in the path of the Grand Armée´s complete domination of Europe. It was
the year when, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, Napoleon had suddenly convinced himself that
his united fleet could annihilate any squadron which the English could put to
sea to meet it.
In August of 1805, he wrote to his admirals: „Come into the Channel. Bring
our united fleet and England is ours. If you are only here for 24 hours, all
will be over, and six centuries of shame and insult will be avenged."
It was an order, however, which his captains found impossible to obey.
Although Napoleon had 2,000 ships and 90,000 men assembled along the
coast of France, the British blockade of the French and Spanish harbours had
virtually immobilised this gigantic force.
In desperation, Napoleon ordered his fleet at Cadiz to sail out and meet the
enemy ships which sat quietly waiting on the green Atlantic swells at Cape
Trafalgar, some 80 kilometres east of Cadiz.
„His Majesty counts for nothing the loss of his ships," Napoleon´s message
ended, „provided they are lost with glory."
In response to this order, a Franco-Spanish fleet of 33, with 2,640 guns,
commanded by Admiral Villeneuve, set out from Cadiz to engage the enemy.
Massive though this force was compared to the force that awaited them, its
destruction was an almost foregone conclusion from the very beginning.
There were several reasons for the inevitable destruction of the FrancoSpanish fleet, not the least being that it was commanded by a man who was
haunted by the memory of his humiliating defeat at the hands of a much
smaller English force only three months earlier. A man, moreover, that even
Napoleon had decided at the last moment was ill-fitted for the task that had
been entrusted to him.
As Villeneuve was sailing out of Cadiz, a horseman was hastening down the Spanish Peninsula, carrying a
message, informing Villeneuve that he was to hand over his command to Admiral Rosily.
It would be wrong to assume that if the messenger had arrived in time to stop Villeneuve sailing, and the
highly capable Admiral Rosily had been in command, the outcome of the Battle of Trafalgar might have
been a different one. There were too many other factors weighed in the balance against the Franco-Spanish
fleet for this to have happened.
Like Villeneuve, the captains of the French and Spanish fleets were imbued with a sense of impending defeat
before they had even encoutered the enemy. And with good cause!
Demoralised by a long period of inactivity, and with 1,700 sick men aboard their ships, the French sailed out
of Cadiz knowing that only a miracle could give them a victory.
Press-ganged crews
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The Spanish ships, manned mostly by soldiers or by beggars press-ganged from the slums of Cadiz, with
gunners who had never fired a gun from a rolling ship, and commanded by Spanish captains who resented
being placed under a French admiral, were in an even worse plight.
Most unnerving of all for the captains of the fleet was the knowledge that they were about to put themselves
against the most skilful sea captain of all time - Horatio Viscount Nelson. Only slightly less awe-inspiring
was the British Jack Tar himself, that clay-piped, pig-tailed sailor, who, more often than not, had been
recruited by the press gangs from the scourings of the English sea towns. Already an aggressive fighting man
by instinct, he had literally been whipped into becoming a magnificent sailor by the iron discipline of
autocratic captains for whom the lash was the answer to almost every infringement of the ship´s rules. A
seasoned French sailor would have had difficulty in holding his own against such a formidable foe, let alone
those pathetic crews sailing out to meet the English fleet.
On the 20th of October, 1805, the Franco-Spanish fleet was sighted, and soon afterwards the area where the
British ships waited became bright with patches of gaudy bunting as each ship broke out strings of flags
which assed on the message: „The French and Spanish are out at last, they outnumber us in ships and guns
and men: we are on the eve of the greatest sea fight in history."
On board the flagship, HMS Victory, the message had been delivered to the English commander, a slight,
one-armed man, blind in one eye and shabbily dressed in a threadbare frock coat stained with sea salt, its
gold lace tarnished to black flattened rags.
Battle plans
This slatternly-looking admiral was, of course, Lord Nelson, who received the news with the utmost
calmness. And why not? His battle plans had already been made and communicated to all his captains. Those
plans, he was convinced would give him a swift victory. Until the Battle of Trafalgar, the problem of how a
fleet could gain an annihilating victory over the enemy was one that had never really been solved, and for
want of a better tactic, it had been the custom for the fleets to sail into action in two parallel lines, with each
ship taking on a single opponent, firing its guns broadside as it passed.
Inevitably, the enemy would take an opposite tack, and the battle would then become a vastly prolonged
affair, with the ships continually sailing on opposite tacks, or engaging on the same tack, until one of the
fleets eventually retired. Nelson had decided to break completely with this tradition. His plan was to divide
his fleet into two groups. One group would attack sections of the enemy line and destroy them before other
ships could come to their aid. The other group would attack the enemy at right angles, break through their
lines and then cut off the retreat of the enemy fleet. This aggressive piece of strategy, which was later
referred to as the „Nelson Touch", was to change the whole course of naval warfare.
The battle did not begin until the following day, by which time the enemy fleet was well in sight, off Cape
Trafalgar. Nelson was on deck, now in a freshly laundered uniform and with new ribbons for all the medals
on his breast.
Battle signal
Shortly after, Nelson called for the signal officer. „Make the signal to bear down on the enemy in two lines,"
he ordered. He then went down to make his will, which was witnesssed by Captain Hardy and Captain
Blackwood who had come aboard from the Euryalus. Afterwards, Nelson went up to the poop and ordered
that signal officer to hoist his celebrated signal: ENGLAND EXPECTS THAT EVERY MAN WILL DO
HIS DUTY.
It has been said that this famous signal was to have been worded: „Nelson confides that every man will do
his duty," and that his name was replaced by that of England at the suggestion of the signal officer, who
pointed out that if the words „confides that" were used, they would have to be spelt out with a long string of
flags. The word „expects" was substituted.
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First blood
The first shot was fired at the English ship Royal Sovereign at noon. This salute of iron was received in
silence by the Royal Sovereign, who waited until she had drawn astern of the Spanish three-decket, Santa
Anna, then raked her decks with a murderous fire that killed or wounded 400 of her crew.
In the meantime, Nelson´s ship was moving on, silent and intent, searching for the French admiral´s ship.
Eventually, right in front of her, lay the huge Spanish four-decker, Santissima Trinidad. Guessing correctly
that the French admiral´s ship must be nearby, Nelson bore down on her. As he did so, the Bucentaure,
Villeneuve´s ship, and seven or eight other enemy ships, opened fire on the Victory. Still she advanced
without firing. By the time she had come close enough to rake the Santissima Trinidad with her larboard
guns, 50 of her men were dead and 30 wounded.
It was at this point that the Victory came into collision with the French Redoubtable. Locked together, and
wrapped in sheets of flame, the two ships drifted slowly through the smoke of battle. Gradually, although the
fighting had continued unabated, the smoke cleared a little from the decks of the Victory, enough for the
marksmen to see the epaulets of the English officers. A marksman kneeling in the mizzen-top aimed his
musket at Nelson.
On the quarterdeck of the Victory, Captain Hardy had turned to leave Nelson´s side to give an order when
Nelson fell, mortally wounded. Immediately, Hardy, a sergeant of the marines and two privates, rushed
forward to lift him up. Nelson was then carried down to the cockpit, where he ordered that his face should be
covered with a handkerchief so that he might not be recognized.
In the meantime, the Redoubtable´s top marksmen had shot down 40 officers and men, destroying so many
that the French, seeing the upper deck clear of all but dead or wounded, tried to board her. It was an
enterprise which was to cost them dear. A botswain´s whistle piped, „Boarders; repel Boarders", and the
order immediately summoned swarms of smoke-begrimed blue-jackets to the deck, where they killed every
man who had managed to board the Victory.
Below decks, Nelson´s life was now ebbing away fast. But he was still alive when Hardy returned from the
fighting above to inform him that fourteen enemy vessels had given in. „That´s well," Nelson said, „but I had
bargained for twenty." He lingered on for a little while longer. After murmuring some inarticulate words, he
said distinctly, „I have done my duty. I thank God for it!"
The first stage of the battle, with the Victory leading a frontal attack, while the rest of Nelson´s fleet attacks
at right angles to break through the lines of the enemy ships, and thus cut off their retreat. This tactic was in
complete variance with all the accepted rules of naval warfare.
The last stage of the battle, with the French and English ships engaged in a general melée. By then 25 French
ships were already out of action and trying to make for Cadiz.
The raking maneuver employed with great success by the British ships. When attacking the enemy line, a
British vessel would steer for a gap between enemy vessels. After brilliant seamanship had gained the British
ship an advantageous position, a broadside was fired at one enemy vessel before sailing in front of it to
unleash yet another broadside into the stern of the next ship in the line. Yet another broadside was then
delivered to that crippled vessel from the other side.
Ruined dream
Above ,beneath the setting sun, his fleet was lying in two groups with the shattered hulks of the enemy ships
all around them. The British losses had been heavy; 449 killed and 1,241 wounded. But of the 27 ships of the
British fleet, not one had been sunk or captured. Trafalgar was the decisive battle of the Napoleonic Wars.
It had always been essential to Napoleon´s master plan to control the world that he should have command of
the seas. With his Allied fleet now ruined as a fighting force thet dream had been destroyed forever.
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Trafalgar, moreover, established England´s supremacy at sea for nearly a century and a half, during which
time her navy remained the bedrock on which her control of the far-flung British Empire rested through the
age of steam and into the 20th century.
It was not until several days after the battle that The Times newspaper was
able to inform its readers of the outcome of the battle. Their joy that England had won a great sea battle was
tempered by the knowledge that the country had lost its most beloved naval commander.
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