Battle of Trafalgar

The Battle of Trafalgar was a fleet action which took place on 21 October 1805 between the Royal Navy and a combined fleet of the French and Spanish navies during the War of the Third Coalition. As part of Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom, the French and Spanish navies planned to take control of the English Channel and provide the French invasion army with safe passage to Britain. The allied fleet, under the command of French Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, sailed from the port of Cádiz in southern Spain on 18 October 1805. It encountered a British fleet under Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson in the Atlantic Ocean along the southwest coast of Spain off Cape Trafalgar. Nelson's fleet was outnumbered, having only 27 ships of the line to the 33 of Villeneuve's fleet which included the largest warship in either fleet, the Spanish ship of the line Santísima Trinidad. To address this imbalance, Nelson sailed his fleet directly at the allied battle line's flank in two columns, hoping to break the line into pieces. Villeneuve had worried that Nelson might attempt this tactic, but for various reasons, failed to prepare for it. The crews of the French and Spanish ships were also inexperienced and poorly trained. The British plan worked almost perfectly; Nelson's columns split the Franco-Spanish fleet in three, isolating the rear from Villeneuve's flagship, Bucentaure. The allied vanguard sailed ahead while attempting to turn back, leaving the British temporarily superior in number against the remainder of the allied fleet. In the battle that followed, 18 allied ships were captured or destroyed, while the British lost none. The offensive exposed the leading British ships to intense crossfire as they approached the Franco-Spanish lines. Nelson's own HMS Victory led the front column and was almost knocked out of action. Nelson was shot by a French musketeer during the battle, and died shortly before it ended. Villeneuve was captured along with his flagship Bucentaure. He later attended Nelson's state funeral while a captive on parole in Britain. After the battle, the senior surviving Spanish commander, Admiral Federico Gravina, led part of the surviving Franco-Spanish fleet away from the storm; he died six months later of wounds sustained during the battle. Nelson's victory against the odds and death during battle secured his place as a British national hero. His signal to the fleet shortly before the battle, "England expects that every man will do his duty", is regularly quoted and paraphrased. The victory confirmed Britain's naval supremacy and was achieved in part through Nelson's departure from prevailing naval tactical orthodoxy. Although the battle led to the definitive end of French plans to invade Britain, it had a limited impact on the War of the Third Coalition, which ended a few months later in defeat for Britain and her allies. The Napoleonic Wars would continue for another ten years.