Battle of Trafalgar

The Battle of Trafalgar was a naval battle fought on 21 October 1805 off Cape Trafalgar, on the Atlantic coast of south-western Spain. A British fleet under Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated a larger combined French and Spanish fleet under the French Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve. Nelson was killed in the battle, but his victory confirmed British supremacy at sea for the rest of the Napoleonic Wars and ended any real prospect of a French invasion of Britain.

When war between Britain and France resumed after the Peace of Amiens, Napoleon gathered an army at Boulogne to invade England. To get it across the Channel he needed to break the Royal Navy's control of the sea, and Spain, now allied to France, added its fleet to his. In 1805 Villeneuve escaped Nelson's blockade of Toulon, joined Spanish ships at Cádiz and sailed to the Caribbean, hoping to draw the British away. Nelson chased him across the Atlantic and back. After an inconclusive clash with a British squadron off Cape Finisterre, Villeneuve headed south to Cádiz instead of north towards the Channel. In late August Napoleon's army broke camp at Boulogne and marched east into Germany, where it would win at Austerlitz in December. The immediate threat of invasion was over.

Nelson, after a short stay in England, sailed in mid-September to take command of the fleet watching Cádiz. The usual tactic of the time was for two fleets to sail in parallel lines and exchange broadsides, which often produced indecisive results. Nelson planned instead to attack in two columns at right angles to the enemy line, cutting it into pieces and forcing a close-range mêlée in which his better-trained crews would have the advantage. Villeneuve sailed from Cádiz on 18 October with 33 ships of the line against Nelson's 27.

On the morning of 21 October the British fleet bore down on the Franco-Spanish line from the west. Shortly before the action began, Nelson sent his famous signal, "England expects that every man will do his duty". The winds were light, so the leading British ships came under heavy fire for a long time before they could reply. Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood's Royal Sovereign broke the line first, at the head of the southern column, and Nelson's flagship Victory then cut through near Villeneuve's flagship Bucentaure, firing a devastating broadside into her stern. Victory became locked against the French ship Redoutable, and a marksman in Redoutable's rigging shot Nelson through the shoulder and spine. He was carried below and died some hours later, shortly before the fighting ended. The isolated allied centre and rear were overwhelmed, while their leading ships sailed away. Villeneuve surrendered, and the Spanish commander Federico Gravina died of his wounds months later.

The British lost no ships, with about 458 men killed and 1,208 wounded. The French and Spanish lost around 4,400 killed and 2,500 wounded, and some 7,000 to 8,000 men were taken prisoner. Seventeen allied ships of the line were captured and one destroyed, though a storm in the following days wrecked or sank many of the prizes, and some were retaken.

Napoleon had already given up his invasion plans, and they were never revived. France rebuilt a large fleet over the following years, but it never seriously challenged the Royal Navy again in a great battle, and Britain's command of the sea went largely untested for about a century. Nelson's body was taken home, and he was given a state funeral, becoming Britain's best-known naval hero. Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column in London commemorate the battle.

Our 1800 map shows the British Empire and the Spanish Empire a few years before the battle, and the 1815 map shows Europe after the fall of the First French Empire.