Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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The news spread quickly. Across the British fleet, the lookouts were pointing and crying out, and men were pounding up the ladders and pouring from the hatchways, cheering and shouting for all they were worth. There, 11 miles to the east, was the combined fleet. A jaw-dropping spectacle spread out across the horizon in the glow of the dawn.
On the quarterdeck of the victory, a cloud seemed to pass from Horatio Nelson's face. He had barely slept, but he felt free of care. This was his moment. Every ship he had ever taken, every voyage he had ever made, had led to this hour. The victory spread her sails. Then Nelson ordered his signal lieutenant to hoist two messages. First came the order to form two divisions as planned.
And then came the signal they had all been waiting for. Prepare for battle. So begins the climactic chapter of Adventures in Time, Nelson, Hero of the Seas, which Dominic, I'm sure you'd agree, must surely rank as the definitive life of this extraordinary man, written, of course, by yourself. And it has been a very long voyage, has it not, from Burnham Thorpe, where we set out 11 episodes ago.
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Chapter 2: How did the British fleet prepare for battle at Trafalgar?
At 7.30 in the morning, Nelson signals to his frigate captains to come aboard the Victory. The frigates are smaller ships, for those people who are not massively familiar with the Royal Navy. Unlike us. Yes, we're tremendously familiar with our tremendous knowledge. Yes, exactly. Yeah, undoubtedly. In the Chatham High Street episode, did we not confuse a destroyer and a battleship?
Is that not the great sin that we committed? Few listeners noted that deliberate mistake and good on them. I like to keep them on their toes. We were just trying to make it accessible, weren't we? I think that was what we were trying to do. For the non-naval people. Exactly. So anyway, Nelson signals to his frigate captains to come aboard the Victory.
He is going to need them to signal his orders. The chief frigate commander, whom we met in the previous episode bringing the news of Villeneuve's movements to Nelson at Merton... is a guy called Henry Blackwood. And Henry Blackwood says to Nelson, why don't you come across to my frigate and command the fleet from there? Why risk your life at the head of the line?
Why not be at a safe distance, like a kind of First World War commander, and direct the fleet from there? And a lot of commanders did do this kind of thing. Not all did, but it was not totally unknown. And Nelson said, no way. And Blackwood must have known Nelson would say, no way. Nelson would be bound to put himself in harm's way from the front.
But it's a sign of just how dangerous they know Nelson's plan is to sail directly at the enemy without giving yourself the opportunity to fire first.
But that's precisely. why Nelson has to do it because it is so dangerous. He cannot possibly ask his men to throw themselves into the jaws of hell without leading them there himself. And in fact, you know, he wants to be visible. This is what he's always done. Nelson loves a bit of bling. So he's there in all his paraphernalia.
He's got all those kind of the stars of knighthood sewn onto his jacket, his epaulets gleaming. And actually some of his men on board the ship say, you Yeah, I mean, brilliant that you're here, but why don't you just wear a slightly less showy coat? But he's not going to do that. He wants to draw attention to himself.
I guess that what makes this even more risky for Nelson personally is that he, like all the other officers on board the ship, are not allowed to duck. The seamen can duck, but officers cannot, no matter how many sharpshooters, no matter how many grapeshot. I mean, just insane courage.
Yeah. So he's got his nice coat on and on they go. The gap is 11 miles and closing very slowly, but it's closing every minute.
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Chapter 3: What were the stakes for Nelson during the battle?
And in his makeshift operating theatre, which is called the surgeon's cockpit down in the bowels of the ship, the ship's doctor, William Beattie, has laid out his scalpels and his bandages and his bottles of vinegar and all of this kind of thing. And I'm sad to say we will be returning to that particular cockpit later in the episode.
He will have been warming his sores, won't he? Because that was something that Nelson insisted on, having had his arm sawn off.
Yes, he said it was too cold. And that was the thing that he remembered. So below decks, the gun crews, they would have stripped their waists. They have tied handkerchiefs around their heads and ears to muffle the sound of the guns. They will be, some of them are dancing a jig.
The band are playing things like, you know, Royal Britannia, God Save the King, Heart of Oak, all of these kind of patriotic songs to get them in the mood. Nelson, for the last time, tours the ship. He says to his men, he shakes hands with his left hand with his men. He says, do not fire until absolutely sure of your object. In other words, hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes.
And he has never seemed more calm or more confident. My noble lads, he says, this will be a glorious day for England, whoever lives to see it. And on every ship in the fleet, there are similar scenes. The captain's giving these incredibly inspiring speeches to their men saying, you know, we don't back down. We don't surrender. I know you will do well. You know, this is going to be a great day.
Enjoy it. Get out there and have fun. Exactly. It is like a bit of a football manager before a big game kind of atmosphere. So it's 11 o'clock now. Nelson takes his place on the quarterdeck of the victory, and beside him are the ship's captain, Thomas Hardy, the master of the ship, Thomas Atkinson, the first lieutenant, John Quilliam, and the frigate captain, Henry Blackwood.
And they can now see the combined fleet clearly. They can see the decorations on the French and Spanish ships, the gun ports. They can see the little figures moving about on deck. And they can see the size of some of their opponents. Yeah, they're monsters, aren't they? Gravina's flagship, the Principe de Asturias, has 112 guns. The Santissima Trinidad, which Nelson had faced at Cape St.
Vincent. Is it, I think, at Cape St. Vincent? 140 guns. So the biggest ship on Earth. Four decks. Four decks. An absolute monster. So in total, Villeneuve and Gravina have 33 ships. They have 2,600 guns and 30,000 men. Nelson, much smaller. in men, 17,000 men, smaller in guns, barely 2,000 guns, and 27 ships. That's how the British like it, isn't it? To be outnumbered. That's how we love it.
So as we discussed in the previous episode, I mean, this is an amazing fact and cannot be hammered home too strongly. The two fleets at Trafalgar had 10 times as much firepower as all the armies at Waterloo put together. I mean, imagine being at the center of that, the noise and the smoke. It's very First World War, actually.
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Chapter 4: How did Nelson's leadership influence the battle strategy?
Yeah, I mean, quite right. And they are. So Nelson is watching with admiration from the victory as Collingwood's division leads the way. His own moment has almost come. The victory is now very close to Villeneuve's flagship, the Bucentauri. There are shots beginning to whistle overhead, but he says, you know, hold your fire, hold your fire, and his gun crews are holding their nerve.
And then three enemy ships open fire on him at once, the San Agustin, the Heros, and the Santissima Trinidad. So that's about 200 guns. That's a lot of guns. Firing into Nelson's ship. And the air is already full of smoke and splinters and blood and whatnot. And yet still Nelson waits.
He has got up to Villeneuve's flagship now and he's slowly turning, turning, taking the enemy fire, waiting for the perfect moment.
to return it but that means of course he's absorbing enormous punishment and because he's on the quarterdeck you know he's in the line of fire so at one point you know the quarterdeck's quite small at one point his secretary who's a bloke called John Scott is talking to Captain Hardy when an enemy cannonball just smashes into the middle of him and basically blows him to pieces it's kind of two legs are left standing aren't they
Yeah, it's a ghastly scene. And two sailors basically take the rest of him and throw it over the side. And Nelson, he kind of glances over his shoulder and he says, oh, is that poor Scott that's gone? Poor fellow. Yeah, very Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo. Very Duke of Wellington. Then the ship's wheel explodes in a kind of cloud of splinters.
There's another shot that kills eight Marines in one go on the poop deck. And Nelson says to the Marine captain, spread out your men. Don't pack them together because they'll be more easily killed if they're packed together. And there are more and more shots kind of hammering into the quarterdeck. One of them famously ricochets off Hardy's shoe and rips off the buckle.
And, you know, it's very lucky for Hardy. Basically, he could have lost his foot. And Nelson says to Hardy, this is too warm work, Hardy, to last long. Meaning we can't take much more of this because they've now lost, what, about 50 men dead and wounded on the deck of the victory. Their sail has been reduced to ribbons. The wheel has been destroyed.
But while that has been happening, they have completed the turn and they are ready to fire.
And so Victory has 50 cannons trained on the Boussaintour and smash. The French flagship seems almost to kind of crumple in submission before this firepower. And now it is the turn of the French flagship, its deck to be covered with bodies, soaked in blood, its guns wrecked, its officers smashed to pieces. Although Villeneuve survives, doesn't he? And it is a scene of the utmost devastation.
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Chapter 5: What events transpired as the fleets engaged in battle?
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Dominic, a shot has rung out from the French ship, the Redoutable, but the clamour of the battle being what it is, nobody has heard it. And it's only when Hardy, who's been kind of pacing ahead... Turns back to look for Nelson that he realizes what has happened because he sees Nelson lying on his side. He's in excruciating agony. He's propping himself up with his left hand.
And Hardy can see that a musket ball has hit Nelson on the left shoulder, punched through his spine and is buried inside his body. And Hardy and other sailors rush to his side. And Nelson looks up at Hardy and says, I believe they have done it at last. My backbone is shot through. And Hardy orders men to pick the Admiral up, to carry him down to the surgeon's cockpit.
And of course, every step that the men carrying Nelson take, it's absolute agony for Nelson himself. And such is his pain that he asks for a handkerchief to cover his face because he doesn't want to alarm his men with how seriously injured he is. He knows that probably he's dying. And so he's taken down into the cockpit and there in the shambles. He is laid down.
Yeah. It's a terrible place, actually, the cockpit. It's very dark. It's lit by these kind of shaking lanterns. There's a smell of sweat and blood. There's blood everywhere. There's blood on the timbers. There's the bodies of wounded men everywhere. They can hear up ahead the roar of the guns, the cheering and screaming and whatnot.
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Chapter 6: What was the atmosphere among the sailors before the battle?
Pitt gets it kind of in the small hours of the morning. Pitt always said, whatever the news, no matter how badly the war is going, I always get a good night's sleep. And he said afterwards this was the one night in his political career when he couldn't sleep because he was so affected by the loss of Nelson. George III was at Windsor Castle.
He got the report just before breakfast and he supposedly sat there in silence, unable to speak with emotion. And Tom, you think this is out of guilt?
Well, I hope so, because he snubbed Nelson, didn't he? He was not as supportive of the great man as he could have been.
Yes. So, you know, as day dawns, the news spreads across London, the newspapers printed special editions, a huge crowd assembled at the Admiralty, totally silent. It's an amazing thing. You know, the Royal Navy had won the victory that had been longed for for so long. Britain was definitively safe from invasion, you know, mistress of the seas.
And yet it is the loss of Nelson that is the sort of first entry in their headlines.
Yeah, so Robert Southey, who becomes the Poet Laureate and wrote the first great biography of Nelson. I mean, he said, it was felt in England as something more than a public calamity. Men started at the intelligence and turned pale as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend. And there's another poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who is in Naples at the time.
And he said that people kept coming up to him in the streets to console him and said, as they held my hand, they burst themselves into tears. Of course, Naples, you know, there are some people who hated Nelson. There were others who regarded him as their savior.
Exactly. So we'll talk about Emma and Fanny and what happened to them in next week's bonus episode for our Restless History Club members, won't we, Tom? So that's an incentive, if any be needed, to join the Restless History Club. But let's just wrap up what happened to Nelson himself.
The victory got back to Britain on the 5th of December, and it was carrying Nelson's body, which had been preserved in a barrel, first with brandy and then transferred into one with pure alcohol.
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