Battle of Trafalgar
Nelson destroyed the combined French and Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar on 21 October 1805 and was killed doing it. The invasion of Britain had already been abandoned — Napoleon had broken camp at Boulogne in August and marched into Germany — and the fleet that came out of Cadiz was doing so under orders that its own commander thought mistaken. Villeneuve knew he was about to be relieved for cowardice and sailed rather than face it. Nelson's plan, circulated in advance and known to his captains as the Nelson touch, was to abandon the conventional line-of-battle and attack perpendicularly in two columns, cutting the enemy line in two places and forcing a general mêlée in which British gunnery and seamanship would tell. It exposed the leading ships to raking fire for the twenty minutes of the approach, which he accepted. The signal that England expected every man to do his duty was hoisted with some difficulty, one word having to be spelled out. The line was broken, the rear cut off, and twenty-two enemy ships were taken or destroyed without a single British loss. Nelson was shot on his own quarterdeck by a marksman in the mizzentop of the Redoutable and died some three hours later, having been told the outcome. A gale afterwards wrecked most of the prizes. Britain held command of the sea for the next century, and Napoleon turned to economic warfare instead. The body was brought home in a cask of brandy and buried at St Paul's in a coffin made from the mainmast of a French ship taken at the Nile. The column in Trafalgar Square went up thirty-eight years later.
- Year: 1805 CE
- Category: Military
