On this day, just before noon two hundred years ago, the first shots were fired off Cape Trafalgar signifying the start of the most decisive and famous naval engagements of all time. Four and a half hours later Nelson was dead and twenty two enemy vessels of an original fleet of thirty three were captured without the loss of a single English vessel.

Therefore, if any of you have ever needed an excuse for a drink or twenty I bid you to charge your glasses and raise the following toast:

"The immortal memory of Nelson and those who fell with him"


I must also add that the Battle of Trafalgar also lead the way to almost 150 years of unrivalled domination of the oceans. Rule Britannia!

On the Legacy of Trafalgar...

It appears that Nelson's victory affected the Royal Navy (and the English psyche) into expecting that "crushing blow" against an enemy fleet, to the point that Jellicoe's cautious handling of the Grand Fleet in WW1 was heavily criticised vs Beatty's handling of the Battle Cruisiers (and subsequent losses against the Imperial German fleet).  Since the German High Seas Fleet didn't venture out of their harbours much --- as a FLEET -- the "decisive" engagement at Jutland wasn't so much the "anihilating" defeat of the enemy (because of sundry events, including Beatty's uncoordinatied charge against the Germans and destroyer flotilla caught by the German fleet, the British lost more vessels than the Germans, and, if memory serves me right, no British dreadnought was lost) as it was a paralysation of the High Seas Fleet to venture into such a battle.

Interestingly, the Japanese victory at Tsushima (Russo-Japanese War, 1905) of the Russian fleet, similarly caused the Japanese psyche to look for that anihilating, crippling naval victory over the enemy, which they thought they would have achieved over the US in 1941.