The Battle of Trafalgar by Auguste Mayer

Henry Dundas, Lord Melville was a formidable and adroit politician – and over a long career did much for the Navy and his country. Pitt made him First Lord of the Admiralty in 1804 but Dundas found himself out of office before Trafalgar as he was impeached in the spring of 1805 over accusations of malversation of funds when he had been Treasurer of the Navy. He resigned, the impeachment failed and he was acquitted on all charges involving his honour: “light delinquency” was Fox’s phrase to describe his mingling of public and private accounts. Dundas saw out the remainder of his days quietly in Scotland.

William Pitt was one of the great statesmen of late Hanoverian Britain. Although he presented as proud and absorbed as a public figure, his friends knew a more spontaneous person – witty, a lover of the poems of Robbie Burns and a valued dinner companion. Pitt admired Nelson immensely and could not sleep the night he heard the news from Trafalgar. Virtually the same age as his sea hero, Pitt himself died just months after Nelson. Towards the end of his life his health had deteriorated and he drank heavily, especially port. Dundas, who was close to him, claimed that Pitt divided his time “between cellar and garret.”

Here, in the Board Room of the Admiralty office in Whitehall, the Lords of the Admiralty met to plan their global strategy in the fight against Napoleon Bonaparte. Around the walls were a wind indicator (linked to a weather vane on the roof), a globe and pull-down maps of various parts of the world. The cords hanging down summoned clerks and messengers.

Charles Middleton, 1st Lord Barham, was a naval administrator par excellence. He was austere, religious – and at times outspoken – but he always served his country well. He prepared the Navy for its crucial role in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Aged nearly 80, he was asked to become First Lord of the Navy after Melville’s resignation. It was Barham who received the news, sent by Nelson in the fast brig Curieux, that Villeneuve was heading back to France after a futile chase half way around the world. And it was he who issued the order that, a few months later, culminated in the Battle of Trafalgar.

For much of the 22 years of the wars with France (1793-1815) Britain faced the enemy alone. Hostilities initially erupted with the various revolutionary regimes in France and subsequently involved Napoleon Bonaparte’s French empire. “The Corsican Tyrant” as he was dubbed, was proclaimed First Consul for Life in 1802 and crowned himself Emperor Napoleon 1 in 1804. France’s spectacular defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar put paid once and for all to Napoleon’s plans to invade Britain.

Although the tactic of breaking the line was not new, Nelson was the first to deploy it as a deliberate strategy to become a daring weapon of annihilation in naval warfare. To do so, he planned to abandon the standard line of battle and sail directly at the enemy in two columns, one towards the center and the other the rear. These would break the enemy line in half and allow the rear-most ships to be surrounded and destroyed in a “pell mell” battle while the enemy van was unable to assist. The disadvantage to these tactics was that his ships would be mercilessly under fire during the approach to the enemy line.

The famous message “England expects that every man will do his duty” was made at 11:50 am. The signal required 13 separate hoists, 32 flags in total (the message was preceded by the Telegraph Flag), and probably took about four minutes to complete. Nelson originally wanted to use the word “confides” but agreed to change it to “expects” in order to use fewer flags, at the suggestion of Lieutenant John Pasco, his signal officer.

This painting, done 50 years after Nelson’s death, I find very moving. It shows him at his desk in his day cabin aboard Victory on the morning of October 21 contemplating just what might lie before him and his fleet, perhaps composing his famous prayer before the battle: May the Great God, whom I worship, grant to my Country, and to the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious Victory ... and may humanity after Victory be the predominant feature in the British Fleet... Amen. Amen. Amen. There have, of course, been many portraits of Nelson painted, and as he himself once complained, every one showed a different side of this very complex man.

Second in command at Trafalgar, Cuthbert Collingwood in Royal Sovereign, leading the lee column, first broke the enemy line. A fine fighting sailor, his greatest service was, however, performed after the victory at Trafalgar, when for five long years with weather-beaten and battle-damaged ships, he maintained strict blockade upon the remains of the French fleet. He had made friends with Nelson at a young age when they were both midshipmen and they remained close throughout their careers. On 6 March 1810 Collingwood’s flagship at last set sail for home but tragically he was never to set foot on English soil again; he died the next day, worn out by devotion to duty. He was buried beside Nelson at St Paul’s.

A highly intelligent man, Revd. Alexander John Scott was not just chaplain aboard Victory but Nelson’s private secretary and a close friend. He remained at Nelson’s side as he lay dying, fanning him and gently rubbing his chest. He was much effected by the noise and bedlam of battle and the terrible agony of the wounded. Also aboard the Victory was John Scott, Nelson’s personal secretary (he died, disembowelled by a cannon ball before Nelson’s eyes). Nelson referred to Alexander Scott as ‘Doctor Scott’ although he was not actually a Doctor at this point, the award of the Doctorate of Divinity from the University of Cambridge came after Trafalgar. Scott would write to a friend: ‘Men are not always themselves and put on their behaviour with their clothes, but if you live with a man on board ship for years, if you are continually with him in his cabin, your mind will soon find out how to appreciate him. I could forever tell of the qualities of this beloved man, Horatio Nelson. I have not shed a tear before the 21st October, and since whenever I am alone, I am quite like a child.”

The Spanish warship San Juan Nepomuceno was dismasted during the battle. Her commander, Don Cosme Damian Churruca, was the youngest flag-officer in the Spanish navy. He had won a European reputation by explorations in the Pacific and on the South American coasts. Keen in his profession, recklessly courageous, deeply religious, he was a hero of the Spanish navy. He had a low opinion of his allies, however, telling his first lieutenant: “The French admiral does not know his business.” During the battle Churruca was mortally injured by a cannonball which shattered one of his legs, but he fought heroically on. Eventually he yielded, with over 400 dead and injured on board. After Trafalgar, the ship was taken into British service as HMS San Juan and served as a supply hulk for many years at Gibraltar. In honour of Churruca’s courage, the cabin he had occupied while alive bore his name on a brass plate, and all who entered it were required to remove their hats as a mark of respect for a gallant enemy.

The Spanish contributed four First Rates to the Franco-Spanish Fleet. Three of these ships, one at 136 guns and two at 112 guns were much larger than any in Nelson’s command. During the battle the Spanish commander Don Federico Carlos Gravina y Nápoli, in his flagship Principe de Asturias, found himself attacked by three British ships at once. He fled back to Cadiz.

Pierre-Charles-Jean-Baptiste-Silvestre de Villeneuve was in command of the combined French and Spanish forces, 33 ships-of-the-line – 41 ships in total – in his flagship Bucentaure. During the battle Victory raked her stern and she lost 197 killed and 85 wounded. Villeneuve was taken prisoner but later paroled and returned to France. He died in 1806; a dubious verdict of suicide was recorded.

She is the most famous ship in naval history and I still get a shiver down my spine when I visit Portsmouth and walk her decks where she is both a national treasure conserved for the nation and also home to the Commander-in-Chief. During the writing of Victory I was enormously privileged to be given virtually unlimited access to the ship.

This painting by Turner is one of the most famous artistic renditions of the Battle of Trafalgar. Like the August Mayer, above, it is not accurate in all the particulars. This was Turner’s only royal commission, ordered by George IV in 1822 to make a same-size pair with Phillipe-Jacques de Loutherbourg’s ‘Battle of the Glorious First of June, 1794’, already in the Royal Collection. The finished composition includes reference to a number of incidents that took place at different times in the battle and is in essence a high-Romantic commemoration of Nelson’s victory and death.

Broadside ballads like this reinforced British patriotic pride and were hot sellers of their day. Inexpensive prints illustrating various aspects of Nelson’s life became very popular in Georgian England. The cheapest of these was the broadside ballad; in fact every sensational public event was rendered into rhyme and sold on broadsheets. About the size of handbills, with a crude woodcut often heading the sheet taken from the printer’s stock images, and usually specifying the tune of some popular air to which the ballad was to be sung, the broadsheets were a lively commodity, providing employment for a troop of hack poets. This one would have sold on the streets for a penny or two, and may have been printed on the actual day of Nelson’s funeral.

This is the musket ball that killed Nelson; two hours into the action, at about 1.15 pm, Captain Hardy, realizing that Nelson was no longer by his side, turned to see him on his knees, supporting himself on his left arm before this gave way and he collapsed.

The musket ball that killed Nelson was removed by surgeon Beatty at the post mortem. It caused an agonising death for Nelson of slowly drowning in his own blood. When I think of all the injuries and sicknesses that beset Nelson during his lifetime it seems a particularly cruel twist of Fate to have been inflicted with lingering death at his moment of his great triumph.

The actual uniform that Nelson was wearing is preserved for posterity in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. The hole left by the fatal musket ball can be seen on the left shoulder close to the epaulette damaged by the same shot.

Nelson’s body was returned to the land of his birth where he was given a magnificent state funeral. As the funeral procession moved slowly along its route the only sound from the crowd was a low murmur, which arose from thousands of people respectfully removing their hats. The funeral service in St Pauls lasted over four hours. Beneath the dome hung a chandelier of 130 lamps, and below the floor of the aisle a special lift had been built to lower the coffin into the crypt. The procession had been ordered, the crowds reverent, the service solemn. Then, at the last moment, when the 48 seamen from Victory were to fold the battle ensign and lay it upon the coffin they turned on the flag and tore it into pieces, one for each man. An impulsive, emotional initiative worthy of Nelson himself.

“England’s Pride and Glory”, oil on canvas by Thomas Davidson. A young naval cadet and his mother view Lemuel Abbott’s portrait of Nelson at the Naval Gallery in the Painted Hall of Greenwich Hospital. Also in the picture are two other works about the life of Nelson, George Arnald’s ‘Victory of the Nile, 1 August 1798’, and Richard Westall’s ‘Nelson in Conflict with a Spanish Launch, July 1797’.

Emma Hamilton was the great love of Nelson’s life. In a codicil to his will written on the day of the battle Nelson wrote “I leave Emma Lady Hamilton, therefore, a legacy to my King and Country, that they will give her ample provision to maintain her rank in life.” This did not happen and Emma died in France in poverty in 1815.

In 2005, the country celebrated the bi-centennial of the Battle of Trafalgar with a reconstruction of the journey taken by Lieutenant John Lapenotiere to convey the news of the victory to London. The journey of 271 miles took 21 changes of horses and carriages and Lapenotiere arrived in the Admiralty courtyard at 1 a.m. on 6 November, some 37 hours after he had left Falmouth. Lapenotiere handed over dispatches to William Marsden, secretary to the Navy Board, who was on his way to his private apartments havng just finished work in the board room. with the words, “Sir, we have gained a great victory. But we have lost Lord Nelson.”

The simple fact that in 2009 this tattered flag from the Battle of Trafalgar fetched one third of a million pounds is testament to the importance to this day Nelson has in our national pride