Trafalgar, battle of

Trafalgar, battle of, 1805. Fought on 21 October 1805, 20 miles south of Cadiz and 12 miles south-west of the shoaling Cape Trafalgar, this most famous of engagements in the era of sail lasted from midday to about 5 p.m. In the course of it, 18 of the 33-strong combined fleet of France and Spain surrendered to the British under the command of Lord Nelson, supported by Cuthbert Collingwood heading the fleet's southerly (lee) division, and Lord Northesk, in the rear of Nelson's northerly (weather) division, which he himself headed in Victory. The two divisions, comprising 27 ships in all and separated north–south by a mile, advanced at right angles against the Franco-Spanish line from the west. By midday this line was on a northerly bearing for Cadiz, having a few hours before been on a southerly one, as if for the Straits. In consequence Villeneuve's and Alava's dispositions of their ships were fatally confused, though their often inexperienced crews fought with great bravery. The British engaged ‘pell mell’ at the closest quarters without losing a ship, Nelson's exhortation to ‘every man to do his duty’ being echoed by rates of fire which no other fleet of the day could approach. Nelson's victories removed all possibility of Napoleon launching an invasion of Britain.

Trafalgar was the quintessence of the implicit abandonment, in progress during the previous half-century, of opposing fleets engaging in formal parallel lines, but it was Nelson's personal genius which conferred on the battle a resonance which transcended innovation. Following his death at the battle's close, when some 500 British and at least 2,000 Spaniards and French had died (followed by many more drowned in the ensuing week-long gale), there was no active pursuit of Nelson's ideas, a retrograde conservatism being deemed the better part of audacity.

David Denis Aldridge