Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Trafalgar

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The first 20 days of October 1805 were indeed fruitful one for Napoleon, newly crowned Emperor of France, whose land army was busily smashing the Third Coalition — Britain, Sweden, Austria, Russia and some German states — after it had so laboriously coalesced in order to smash him. Comprising long-service veterans and brilliantly led by the emperor and his Marshals, Napoleon’s Grande Armée was surely at its grand peak. So successful had he been in 1805, in fact, that Britain’s Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, hardly an alarmist, wrote, ‘Never was the probability of universal monarchy more nearly being realized than in the person of the Corsican.’

Napoleon was not without a coalition of his own. Following Spain’s lead, Bavaria, Würtemberg and other German states had signed alliances with France. Now, in October, the emperor moved against his most dangerous continental enemies, Austria and Russia. He surrounded the main Austrian army and accepted its capitulation at Ulm on October 20. In the weeks following that success, a large Russian army would withdraw rather than fight and Napoleon would seize Vienna. Next, when a joint Austro-Russian host met him at Austerlitz on December 2, Napoleon would win his most crushing Victory of the epoch.

Before all that, however, even as the quartermasters of the seemingly invincible Grande Armée were tallying the booty gained at Ulm, distant events had been set in motion, both by visions of grand strategy and by more personal concern for threatened ambition. Off the coast of Spain, a fleet under Admiral Nelson was flying cat and mouse with a power-laden Franco-Spanish armada.

At that time, it may be recalled, the wars of the French Revolution had evolved into the global Napoleonic Wars, an evolution marked by the destruction of a European generation, while a stunned Britain reposed behind the oaken walls of her great fleet, her first and her final refuge. For all of Napoleon’s great success on land, the Royal Navy in 1805 was a wonder of the world in itself. Its rigid backbone was the ship of the line, the capital ship of the epoch that came in three ‘rates,’ or classes, depending on the number of cannons carried. Britain could then boast 10 first-rates (100-120 guns), 18 second-rates (90-98) and 147 third-rates (64-84). Their actual firepower was often greater, for most of the warships carried two to 12 monstrous, short-range carronades, never counted in the gun totals. Ironically, perhaps a quarter of the Royal Navy’s first three rates had been taken from the enemy in battle and pressed into its service by the lumber-starved English. Britain could also turn to another 250 ships carrying 20 to 60 guns apiece, as fourth, fifth and sixth-rates, or frigates. Not only was Britain’s navy larger than any other nation’s in 1805, but roughly three-quarters of its warships were operational at any given moment, a radio double that of any other’s.

The French and Spanish navies were similar in most respects to the British, but imposed a discipline so ferocious that volunteer recruits were always scarce. Most vessels sailed short-handed and even then had to rely on involuntary impressments for about half of their crews, compared to perhaps 20 percent of British crews impressed.

The British, through constant drill, had by far the fastest, most accurate gunnery, but the French, and specially the Spanish, tended to build larger, broader, deeper-draft ships of the line. They not only carried more guns, but provided more stable gun platforms and could absorb a fearful amount of enemy fire without structural damage. In fact, except for a fire causing an explosion in their powder magazines, such ships were virtually unsinkable in battle. The hulking Santissima Trinidad, on a run from Manila to Acapulco in 1762, was taken by Commodore George Anson’s squadron in a running fight after 1,080 cannon balls had struck it. The British prize crew, astonished to find the ship still seaworthy after such punishment, managed to sail it half way around the world to England — it arrived with several hundred cannon balls still embedded in its sides. Santissima Trinidad’s succeeding namesake in 1805 was the world’s largest warship and the only one with four gun decks, mounting 140 cannons and several carronades.

By 1805, the French and their Spanish allies found their combined naval assets still unable to best the Royal Navy, and therefore determined that only their superior land forces would defeat the British. Since the British neither could nor would invade the Continent, Napoleon first prepared to invade England. For him to do so, the allied Franco-Spanish navies would have to protect his proposed Channel crossing with a major fleet drawn from half a dozen ports, from Toulouse to Madrid and beyond. Yet most of those ports were under at least sporadic British blockade. Further, elaborate plans to draw off the British fleet at first looked successful, but then went awry. Finally, Napoleon felt constrained to deal with those powers of the Third Coalition gathering in Central Europe. The British invasion was called off in August 1805 and the emperor marched off to his Victory at Ulm.

Napoleon still had an allied fleet at his disposal, nominally commanded by French Vice Adm. Pierre Charles Jean Baptiste Silvestre de Villeneuve, with Spanish Vice Adm. Frederico Carlos Gravina as his second-in-command. Villeneuve bore the sobriquet ‘Lucky’ for having survived so many encounters with the Royal Navy, which was not to say that his luck applied to their outcomes. For example, he had been one of the few survivors of the French debacle at Nelson’s hands at Aboukir Bay, also known as the Battle of the Nile, in 1798.

As of mid-September 1805, the allied fleet was assembling at Cadiz to sally into the Mediterranean Sea and raid British convoys supplying Malta. In the midst of his preparations, though, Villeneuve heard disquieting news. Through friends rather than official sources, he understood that Napoleon planned to replace him with an old service rival, Admiral Franois Etienne Rosily. Rather than submit to such humiliation, the stung Villeneuve frantically speeded up the work of readying his fleet for sea — he would slip 0out of port before Rosily arrived to relieve him of command. Villeneuve’s goal was not Napoleon’s, but a personal quest that might win him glory in France. He would seek out Nelson’s fleet, which he knew to be nearby, and destroy it, while ignoring Malta and its convoys.

On October 19 and 20, then, 18 French and 15 Spanish ships of the line slipped anchor and left Cadiz, accompanied by four frigates. In the Spanish squadron were four of the world’s most powerful warships: the mighty Santissima Trinidad (140 guns), Principe de Asturias (112), Santa Ana (112) and Rayo (100). The rest of the Allied ships were third-rates carrying 74 to 80 guns, the smallest, San Leandro, armed with 64.

Confined in various ports for many months by British blockading squadron, the allied vessels were hardly in peak condition — Villeneuve’s haste to leave port had led to jury-rigged repairs, cursory maintenance and insufficient provisioning. Further, not one of the allied ships was fully manned — the last-minute impressments of hundreds of Spanish peasants detracted seriously from morale while adding nothing to efficiency. Nor, it turned out, was there to be much opportunity to train the reluctant newcomers, for the allied fleet had been spotted as it left Cadiz and the British fleet that Villeneuve hoped to meet weeks in the future was already alerted and making for him.

Admiral Nelson, Britain’s hero of half a dozen naval victories, was both ready and able to meet Villeneuve. The crews of his 27 ships of the line and five frigates had been at sea for months and were in fighting trim, especially the gunners, who, unique among the navies of the epoch, had spent a great deal of their time live-firing their guns at sea.

Tags: 19th Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, Napoleonic Wars, Naval Battles

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