Â. By noon the larger squadron, led by Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood in the Royal Sovereign, had engaged the rear (south) 16 ships of the French-Spanish line. As its gunner worked like automatons Victory, dismasted and largely out of control, ran its bowsprit into the rigging of the oncoming 74-gun French warship Redoubtable. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. One of the greatest naval victories in British history, the Battle of Trafalgar saw Nelson capture/destroy 18 ships. Battle of Trafalgar, (October 21, 1805), naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, which established British naval supremacy for more than 100 years; it was fought west of Cape Trafalgar, Spain, between Cádiz and the Strait of Gibraltar. British seapower, by contrast, preserved the country from invasion and guaranteed peace and prosperity at home, up to the time of Trafalgar and beyond. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so. British ships, in storm that blew up after battle Their effect on the Spanish was hellish. Corrections? During the course of the war, the British imposed a naval blockadeon France, which affected trade and kept the French from fully mobilising their own naval resources. She suffered 57 dead and 102 wounded, the highest number of dead of any British ship during the battle, but of those 159 casualties, only two were on the lower deck. Nelson caught him off Cape Trafalgar on October 21. In Britain, meanwhile, historians for the past half-century have agreed that Trafalgar only confirmed what everybody had always known. To feed his armies, to endow the new military aristocracy which guarded his throne, he needed continual conquests. However, Napoleon continued to be successful in his campaigns on the continent, and the continued costs of a distant war left wearied even former enthusiasts. Read more. His revenues never covered the expense of government. The Victory at Trafalgar demonstrates this well. THE EFFECT OF WEAPONS ON WAR. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. They were able t… While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. The Trafalgar class is named after the Battle of Trafalgar from 1805 between the forces of the British Royal Navy against the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars. Their interpretation has been that British sea power, though certainly necessary for survival in the face of aggression from France, was not sufficient for victory over Napoleon, and that ultimately it was Wellington and the British army, fighting alongside a great coalition of military powers in 1814 and 1815, that secured Britain's triumph. Moreover Napoleon's empire was never politically or economically stable. The majority of Nelson’s squadron broke through and shattered Villeneuve’s lines in the pell-mell battle. In 1804 his successor, Lord Melville, calculated that he had 81 ships of the line in commission, of which 18 were fit only for home waters, and none of the remainder had an estimated service life remaining of more than five years. Condemned by his character and situation to constant aggression, Napoleon could only have escaped his fate by finding some means of expansion outside Europe, where Britain was more vulnerable and the continental great powers were less concerned. Even if the details are sketchy, this … The system did indeed damage the British economy, but it damaged European economies even more, and in the end it fatally undermined Napoleon's power. Without Trafalgar none of this would have been necessary. A British Royal Navy fleet blockaded a French and Spanish fleet belonging to Napoleon Bonaparte and defeated them in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Cape Trafalgar, Spain. What was more, his strategy of economic warfare obliged Napoleon to attack every neutral European power that did not choose to participate in his system - but Portugal resisted, Spain rebelled, Sweden evaded his demands and Russia changed its mind. The Battle of Trafalgar was a naval battle that took place during the Third Coalition War on October 21, 1805. About 1,500 British seamen were killed or wounded, but no British ships were lost. Updates? He spent the rest of his reign in a futile ... attempt to reconstruct his lost battle-fleet. In 1805, the First French Empire, under Napoleon Bonaparte, was the dominant military land power on the European continent, while the Royal Navy controlled the seas. The Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) was a naval engagement fought by the British Royal Navy against the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies during the War of the Third Coalition (August–December 1805) of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). In the UK at least, the battle’s fame is second only to Waterloo among the many clashes of the Napoleonic Wars. Baffled in his efforts to strike at our heart, he then, as we have seen by his instructions of the middle of September 1805 (as also in those of 27-29th September 1804), proposed to make war on British commerce by sea. Battle of Trafalgar by William Clarkson Stanfield The Battle of Trafalgar was one of history’s most important naval engagements. In contrast, French historians preferred to dismiss the battle as an unfortunate but essentially marginal affair, not to be mentioned in the same breath as Napoleon's smashing victories at Ulm and Austerlitz in the same year as Trafalgar - victories that drove Austria and Russia from the war, and yet again confirmed France's unchallenged domination of Europe. A fleet of 33 ships (18 French and 15 Spanish) under Admiral Pierre de Villeneuve fought a British fleet of 27 ships under Admiral Horatio Nelson. Nevertheless the victory was dearly bought at the price of the death of him who by universal assent is accounted the greatest sea-captain that the world has known. He spent the rest of his reign in a futile and immensely costly attempt to reconstruct his lost battle-fleet. This did not concern him, as he had no opinion of the usefulness of merchants, especially as many of them were not even French. Trafalgar: In 1803, Europe was plunged into a regional war known as the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon and his allies on one side … The Battle of Trafalgar is one of the most famous battles in British naval history. Having thrown away his fleet, Napoleon had no direct means of attacking a maritime and commercial power such as that of Britain, and he was forced to resort to economic warfare. His soldiers and officials, even at the highest levels, were eminently corruptible, so that behind the official façade the political glue of the regime was dissolving.