Battle of Trafalgar

“ It is exactly at the two points of furious speed and of destructive energy that the contrast betwixt Trafalgar and the fight in [117] the North Sea is greatest. At Trafalgar, as everyone knows, the Franco-Spanish fleet was drawn up, or had drifted, into a straggling crescent four miles from tip to tip—thirty-three great line-of-battle ships, armed with more than 3000 guns, a curving forest of masts and flags. The British in two columns—Nelson in the Victory leading one column, Collingwood in the Royal Sovereign the other—bore down on the enemy, but there was no speed in the movement. ”

“ Did he think it possible to rebuild the navy, and to train the necessary crews? We may consider it probable or improbable, as we like. But at all events the feasibility of the plan, from the military point of view, is incontestable.
The battle of Trafalgar made England the uncontested 85mistress of the seas, and ensured for her that supremacy which she maintained up till 1914. When the epoch-making battle in Spanish waters, amidst the scenes of former British piratical activity, was decided, Great Britain had attained her object. She could now take everywhere what she wanted. ”

“ The battle of Trafalgar paralysed our naval force, and banished all hope of any attempt against England.
The favour which the King, of Prussia had shown to Duroc was withdrawn when his Majesty received intelligence of the march of Bernadotte's troops through the Margravate of Anspach. All accounts concurred respecting the just umbrage which that violation of territory occasioned to the King of Prussia. The agents whom I had in that quarter overwhelmed me with reports of the excesses committed by the French in passing through the Margravate. ”

“ On October 21st, 1805, was fought the battle of Trafalgar, when the British Fleet, under Admiral Lord Nelson, attacked and defeated the combined forces of French and Spanish men-of-war.
It looked almost hopeless for a small fleet to attack so large a one; but Nelson made that grand signal which called on every man that day to do his duty, and every man, like a true Scout, did his duty, even though in many a case it cost him his life. ”

“ Fairbank to Colonel Baron, which Roy undertook to read aloud to Denham, though somewhat verbose, was not without passages of interest.
During the last four years, since the Barons had left their own country for an enforced residence abroad, much had happened in European history. Most notable among famous events had been the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, which crippled for half a century to come the Naval power of France.
For three years at least previous to that date, England had been kept on tenter-hooks of expectation, incessantly dreading a French invasion. ”

“ The total tonnage of the British fleet at Trafalgar was equal to about two modern dreadnoughts, as one of the ships of the line in Nelson's time was of about 2,000 tons. In numbers of guns and of crew there were more at Trafalgar, as at that time the ships were sailing vessels.
The British had between 17,000 and 20,000 men engaged, against 21,000 to 24,000. At Skagerrak we had from 35,000 to 40,000, as against 45,000 to 50,000 men. In this way we can compare the battle in its general aspect with Trafalgar. ”

“ Just before the action Nelson ran up this signal to the masthead of his ship, where all might see it: "England explects Every Man to do his Duty." The answer to it was three ringing cheers from the entire fleet, and the fight began. When it ended, Napoleon's boasted navy was no more. Trafalgar Square, in the heart of London, with its tall column bearing aloft a statue of Nelson, commemorates the decisive victory, which was dearly bought with the life of the great admiral.
The battle of Traflagar snuffed out Napoleon's projected invasion of England. ”

“ Disaster in a land battle could not be compensated for, nor could the balance of power be maintained, by any naval victory. War would not be brought to an end favourable to the Triple Entente, even by a victory as complete as that of Trafalgar. It is also well to remember that peace came, not after Trafalgar, but after Waterloo, nearly ten years later.
The strange idea that the security of the British Empire can be maintained by the Navy alone, seems to be derived by a false process of reasoning, from the undeniable truth, that the supremacy of our Navy is essential to our security. ”

“ He closed with his enemy at top speed, and got not only the full artillery value of his attack, by making hitting easier and therefore more certain, but won what is hardly less valuable, the vast moral advantage of giving his enemy no breathing time at all. There are fifty parallels to this, of which Trafalgar is in fact only the supreme example. Given a superior force of guns—obtained by Nelson by the concentration of the whole of his fleet on the centre and rear of the enemy—the tactical plan is to be found in the method of bringing these guns to do their work in the shortest possible time. ”

“ But they did not miss much else, for the Peace of Amiens (March 1802) brought the war to a close, and though France again declared war against England fourteen months later, no actual fighting took place on shore. The British navy, however, continued to be actively employed, more especially in frustrating Napoleon's designs for an invasion of England, and this grand scheme was finally wrecked in October 1805, when the mighty Nelson, at the cost of his life, almost annihilated the French fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar. ”

“ And so one could go on, touching on wireless telegraphy, fire-control—that ingenious system which does man’s work of sighting the guns—aircraft and submarines, which constitute so serious a factor in present-day warfare. But the story of [2] Trafalgar, that well-fought battle against a noble foe who is now a gallant ally, and those of the North Sea, 1914 and 1915, will show the revolutions in modern naval warfare.
Nelson had determined to meet and beat Villeneuve, in command of the allied French and Spanish fleet, which left Cadiz at the end of September, 1805. ”

“ This battle, like Trafalgar and like many other British victories, showed that, with good, plucky leaders, backed up by men who can be trusted to obey their orders, we could attack overwhelming forces against us and come out victorious every time. ”

“ Collingwood opened the battle on the British side and first of all broke the enemy's line at Trafalgar, as all the world knows. All the world knows also how he did it. The Royal Sovereign's first broadside, as she broke through immediately astern of the Spanish flagship Santa Ana, struck down 400 men and dismounted fourteen guns. ”

“ No naval battle of history equals this in the enormous power of the fighting array; none exceeds it in the degree of its decisiveness. Trafalgar, a hundred years earlier, affords the only possible parallel, and Trafalgar, for a century the world's greatest naval struggle, was outdone.
The story begins eight months before these thrilling events in the Straits of Korea, when the Russian fleet, variously called the Baltic Fleet and the Second Pacific Fleet, sailed from Cronstadt, in the Baltic, on its 20,000 mile journey, around Africa and by way of the Indian Ocean to the Orient. ”

“ The chase and destruction of an enemy takes many hours. Nelson began his battle at Trafalgar at noon, or soon after; the Germans took good care not to engage before the afternoon was well advanced. There was enough time to destroy a detachment, but not enough to complete the destruction of a large fleet. The mist further diminished the advantage which the British possessed in their heavy guns, and enabled the Germans to count on using their numerous 6-in. weapons with success. ”

“ The heavy responsibilities connected with Trafalgar, the anxieties coming thick and fast, the duties he had to fulfil—none of these things rendered him forgetful of his treasure. For the safety of one little life his heart beat as only a parent’s heart can beat; and while meditating the array of battle, in which his own life was to cloud the splendour of the [Pg 277] victory, he found leisure to send home detailed instructions how a substantial netting should be raised in the grounds of Merton to preserve little Horatia from falling into a pond ambitiously called the Nile. ”

“ Our galleys were signaled to pursue, but were all in a sinking condition, unable to follow, and, the other vessels being crippled past making sail, the galleys escaped.
The havoc wrought in this conflict proves it to have been one of the hottest naval battles ever fought. A British sailor who was at Trafalgar declared that battle as "but a flea-bite to this." The British lost in killed and wounded one fifth of their men, the commander of the fleet, and several of his officers; the Americans, one eighth of their men. ”

“ And although the fighting by sea and land went on for ten years after Trafalgar had given to us the supreme control of the world’s seas, there were no more naval battles. Battles at sea are very rare because, when fought out, they are so crushingly decisive. This characteristic feature of the great naval battle has been greatly emphasised by modern conditions. Upon land armies have outgrown the very earth itself; fighting frontiers have become lines of trenches ”

“ What the German losses have been can only be guessed; they must reach half a million men. And still the tricolour flies over Verdun.
If we take the fighting on the sea, again, there is the same tremendous increase of scale. Trafalgar is—or was, till May 31 of the present year—the greatest sea-fight under the British flag, and it is curious to set it in contrast with the fight in the North Sea. The resemblances and differences of the two great battles are alike most striking. That little, one-eyed, one-armed, weather-beaten, sun-tanned figure, Nelson, is the dominating figure in Trafalgar ”

“ Too often has victory been bought with a great national loss, and just as the conquest of Quebec brought with it the pathetic end of Wolfe, the success in Egypt the loss of Sir Ralph Abercromby, Corunna the tragedy of Sir John Moore, so this glorious victory carried with it that greatest of all calamities, the death of Nelson. But Trafalgar was the last supreme event in the naval struggle between Napoleon and England; henceforth he must confine his conquests and his hopes to the army and the Continent. ”

“ But in spite of all these disasters, Spain had paid dearer for the war than her haughty ally. France had lost the flower of her navy indeed, but at that very time Napoleon had won a glorious victory on land. His army had marched with wonderful rapidity from the shores of the English Channel across Europe, and was carrying out his colossal schemes in the campaign against Austria. It was on the 20th of October, the day before Trafalgar, that Napoleon, at the camp at Ulm, looked on as the Austrian troops marched past, while their officers delivered up their swords ”

“ This will probably be said, as long as the world endures. It is not likely that he can ever be equalled, it is impossible that he should be surpassed.
The victory of this day, off Trafalgar, was one of the most compleatly glorious ever atchieved by Britons. About three o'clock, many of the enemy's ships having struck their colours, their line had every where given way, and as many as possible endeavoured to effect their escape. Eighteen men of war were taken; and three flag-officers, with a general, made prisoners of war. ”

“ The enemy will suddenly confront us as an Apparition! At every moment we must be ready! Can this be acquired by grown men? No! it is the force of habit. You must commence early. Our Nelsons and Benbows began the sea life when they first put their breeches on! The brother of the Black Prince (John of Gaunt) joined the Navy and was in a sea fight when he was 10 years of age! Far exceeding anything known in history does our future Trafalgar depend on promptitude and rapid decision, and on every eventuality having been foreseen by those in command. ”

“ A Trafalgar would have been a much more fatal blow to England than it was to France, had the English fleet then represented, as the allied fleet did, the bulk of the nation's power. Trafalgar in such a case would have been to England what Austerlitz was to Austria, and Jena to Prussia; an empire would have been laid prostrate by the destruction or disorganization of its military forces, which, it is said, were the favorite objective of Napoleon. ”

“ If Trafalgar could not be won without the mind of a Nelson, or Waterloo without the mind of a Wellington, was there no one mind to lead those innumerable armies, on whose success depended the future of the whole human race? Did no one marshal them in that impregnable convex front, from the Euxine to the North Sea? No one guide them to the two great strategic centres, of the Black Forest and Trieste? No one cause them, blind barbarians without maps or science, to follow those rules of war, without which victory in a protracted struggle is impossible ”

“ Numbers alone are no test of efficiency, and had Napoleon succeeded in concentrating 60 French and Spanish battleships in the Channel, the fleet would have been unable to meet with success a British force of 40, even discounting the great strength of the latter in three-decked vessels.L Mr. Julian Corbett, who has discussed the question exhaustively in ‘The Campaign of Trafalgar,’ is of opinion (1) that Napoleon was only saved from disaster up to Trafalgar by the crafty French admirals whom he despised so much ”

“ The huge ram crashed into her vitals as she swerved, and reeling and pitching like some drunken leviathan, she went down with a mighty plunge, and the Britain ploughed on over the eddies that marked her ocean grave.
This was the beginning of the greatest and most decisive sea-fight that had been fought since Trafalgar. The sailors of Britain knew that they were fighting not only for the honour of their King and country, but, as British sailors had not done for a hundred and four years, for the very existence of England and the Empire. ”