1While naval battlefields may lack the obvious memorial function of their terrestrial counterparts, many, including Trafalgar, took place within sight of the shore, and are name for terrestrial features. They can be seen, as well as visited, but their necessarily opaque character has done much to sustain mythic readings of the past. And promote strikingly obtuse readings of their meaning.

2Throughout the nineteenth century the British ignored the reality of Trafalgar, preferring to concentrate on the mythic status of the battle in the national myth. The prevalence of this mythic interpretation was most obvious in the hyperbole with which the Victorians surrounded an event they claimed had played a critical role in saving civilisation and defeating Napoleon, or even the smaller untruth that it ended Napoleon’s invasion plans1. In reality Trafalgar did none of these things, but for more than a century no-one questioned that it had. It was as if a conspiracy of silence had descended over the battle, one in which every Briton was complicit.

3As that ardent navalist Wilhelm II recognised Trafalgar was a magical event. Even as the fighting died away the events of October 21^st were being transformed into the stuff of legend. Trafalgar escaped the fate of so many naval battles: reduced to squalid, contested calculations of numbers and names, arguments and blame. Instead, it would embody the very essence of British power for the next hundred years, a central element in national life and culture, a totem given countless public re-statements, from Trafalgar Square to the House of Lords.

4Furthermore Trafalgar was at once the definitive, and the last battle of its type. There would be no more full-scale sailing battle fleet actions between first class nations. Nor would there be any serious prospect of a fleet battle involving the Royal Navy for the next hundred years, what sane man would dare to take on the sublime?

5The magic of Trafalgar was purchased at the highest price, it cost Britain the life of her national hero, the iconic talisman who had sustained national resistance to Continental tyranny, and redefined the very concept of being British. By the manner and context of his death, passing into immortality at the very moment of victory Nelson provided the final ingredient that made Trafalgar magical. Together man and battle transcended mere matters of fact to become iconic, the very definition of success. Nelson and Trafalgar gave the Royal Navy a unique status, closer to religion than reason, one that would be contested, but could not be countermanded.

6This totemic status was responsible for a sustained failure to examine Trafalgar as history, a failure that reflected the unspoken desires of a nation. However, this left the Royal Navy of the early 20^th century precious little time to recover the realities behind their icon, and while it went to war in 1914 in ships that bore the proud names of those that fought at Trafalgar, the operational and tactical systems in place were the negation of Nelson’s career2.

Immediate response

7To harness and use the magic of Trafalgar the British had to be creative. To refine and enhance reality Collingwood was careful to prevent any hint of controversy reaching the public, despite the less than stellar performance of some captains. The myth that another “Band of Brothers” had fought the battle was implied, and accepted without question by a shocked and stunned nation. As he composed his matchless dispatch Collingwood was using the English language to transmit the ideals that his friend had fought and died for, unsullied by petty recriminations or jealousies, this perfect battle would be a critical national asset in the days that followed.

8The magical Trafalgar would survive the nineteenth century, because it was quickly incorporated into the national mythos of the emerging British state. In the process Nelson was greatly diminished, his sublime genius reduced to unreflective courage, and no attempt was made to comprehend the wider context, or the tactical insight of his final battle. Only the 1880s did historical scholarship even begin to address the battle as an event, and consider the methods employed. Despite those otherwise sane men continued to spout nonsense about a central event in their recent history, because Trafalgar had achieved a magical status incompatible with the prosaic calculation of ships and men. It was necessary to find better results than the capture or destruction of 19 enemy ships if Trafalgar was to be useful. Little wonder we have found new ways of examining the battle for the bicentenary3.

9In one respect the source of the confusion is obvious: by 1805 Horatio Nelson was already a national icon, a talisman of victory and god-like source of comfort. Consequently, his death did not elevate him to the pantheon, as had been the case with Wolfe, instead it elevated the occasion of his death to the realms of magic and myth. It remained there because the occasion was, of itself sublime; melding triumph and tragedy, grandeur and genius with the wider consequences of British success in the naval campaign of 1805. This hyperbolic Trafalgar then survived the nineteenth century as a simplified short hand for larger processes, and more complex events. The truth it conveyed was real, but not literal. In life Nelson had achieved divine status among his people, he was the new saviour, and his death was necessarily linked to their redemption from danger and sin. The most obvious results of his death were a century of unchallenged naval mastery, and domination of the global economy.

10While Collingwood’s matchless dispatch began the process others who knew Nelson and served the state sustained the impulse. No sooner had the news arrived in Britain than George Canning, the last statesman to talk with Nelson, turned it to account in his ten pages poem “Ulm and Trafalgar”. He followed the lead of his mentor Prime Minister William Pitt using the destruction of Napoleon’s fleet as a counter-point to the humiliating failure of the Austrian army. Canning used literary gifts and classical learning, of which he was inordinately proud, to serve the Pittite political cause. Anxious to sustain British defiance in the face of catastrophe it was hardly surprising that Canning strayed into hyperbole or, given the national mood, that his unattributed stanzas were a success4. For Canning the “dear bought glories of Trafalgar’s day” flowed with “radiant glory from thy trophied tomb”, to “grace and guard thy country’s martial fame”, as “a mighty beacon”, “to shine and save through ages yet unborn!”5

11The impact of Canning’s piece is evident from Southey’s decision to use eight lines on the title page of his biography, initially unaware of the author’s name. Wittingly or otherwise Canning had set the tone for a century of Trafalgar commentary, while Southey reinforced the trend with his sublime, yet highly mannered Nelson biography6. Canning was well aware of the impact that his words would produce. Throughout his post-war career at the Foreign Office, he relied on naval might to sustain the national deterrent, citing the “dormant thunder” of the reserve fleet as the right arm of the state7.

12Canning’s lead was echoed across the century: between 1805 and 1905 the British Library catalogue records 174 works published under the title word Trafalgar, not one of the English titles could be described a serious examination of the battle. The only book by a reputable scholar, Professor John Laughton’s The Story of Trafalgar of 1890 was, as the title suggests, a popular work designed to reinforce the legend with some snippets of new research. In particular Laughton repeated the myth about ending the invasion threat8. He closed the booklet with a ringing call to his countrymen to remember Trafalgar as an example of obedience, duty, loyalty and devotion, applied with skill, and even genius by a tightly knit fellowship9. The other 173 works included poetry, songs, sermons, and a design for the Trafalgar Square waterworks, but not one Briton dissected the event which alone rendered the name so powerful for other literary and artistic forms. The exception to this catalogue of trifles came from another country, rather closer to the battlefield.

13Frenchmen who had grown up in the glory days of Bonaparte’s Empire, found the years that followed Waterloo a sad spectacle, lacking drama, glory and heroes. Adolphe Thiers, the most industrious historian of the era, used his 22 volume account of the years between the Revolution and Waterloo to regenerate Napoleonic glory. That he had been the Prime Minister dismissed by a King anxious to avoid a war with Britain in 1840 lent Thiers’ work on the Consulate and Empire a powerful anti-British bias. The success of his books, ten editions of the history of the Revolution had appeared by 1848, and translation into many languages made it a standard reference. In the process Thiers invented a number of stories to laud his hero. He alleged, without a scrap of evidence, that Nelson had been “decoyed” to the West Indies, outsmarted by Bonaparte. This nonsense appeared in English in 1845, quickly generating an invasion scarce. When the relevant sixth volume was translated into Spanish “Thiers’ criticism” of the performance of the Spanish fleet at Trafalgar caused outrage. On the eve of the first reconstruction since Trafalgar the Spanish Navy could not afford to let such comments pass unanswered. Two books, the first full length accounts of Trafalgar in any language, and series of articles appeared within two years, supported by the Naval Ministry. All were critical of the role of the French alliance in the glorious, but catastrophic defeat. Furthermore, the Spanish Navy began to commemorate the heroes of the battle, naming ships for Gravina and his companions, names that have endured in the Spanish Navy, a testament to the finest hour of the old Navy10.

14The Spanish response to Thiers demonstrated a simple truth, a controversial present generates a contested past. The British relied on a naval arms race, many of the new ships being named for Nelson and his battles, rather than a historical counter-offensive. They were content with their mythic Trafalgar, and did not wish to disturb the symbolism of the event. Trafalgar was not a fit subject for careful investigation – it was best left as the sublime example of naval power.

Strategic realities

15Nelson inflicted a blow on the navies of France and Spain that they would never forget, and from which they could never recover. Trafalgar, as the battle was named by George III, crushed the naval power of the enemy, with total losses of more than 20 ships. It also destroyed their morale. The Spanish and French had, in the main, fought like heroes, and yet they had been annihilated. Trafalgar was the coda to Nelson’s achievement. He had already destroyed Napoleon’s maritime strategy and invasion plans by pursuing Villeneuve to the West Indies and back. Trafalgar destroyed the naval power that alone gave credence to Napoleon’s invasion threat. Britain’s command of the sea had been placed beyond doubt. British trade and empire were safe to prosper and expand, creating wealth and funding the war. It was time to translate naval power into strategic success. However, the fruits of Trafalgar would take a decade to harvest. Napoleon dominated Europe and set up the Continental System in 1806, an economic blockade, excluding British trade from Europe. Yet his power had been circumscribed, his ultimate fate mapped out. Britain would survive Austerlitz, and because she controlled the sea, she could block every attempt by Napoleon to escape the bounds of Europe, and the tyranny and extortion that alone kept his regime in power. Finally, the tension snapped, Spain revolted, then Russia.

16Having destroyed the French fleet the Royal Navy was reconfigured for a new war. With the residue of French seapower tightly blockaded in Brest, Toulon and Antwerp British task forces seized the last remnants of the French and Dutch overseas empires, boosting trade and ending the threat to shipping. Insurance rates fell. British cruisers shifted to the offensive, offshore islands and convoys were swept up, coastal towns attacked and the Spanish rising against the French sustained and reinforced. As Napoleon observed, while a prisoner on board HMS Bellerophon in 1815: “If it had not been for you English, I should have been Emperor of the East. But wherever there is water to float a ship, we are sure to find you in our way”. While Napoleon had been beaten by European armies, by Russia, Prussia and Austria, with the support of the British, Spanish and Portuguese effort in the Iberian Peninsula, this was only possible because Britain never gave up the conflict, never allowed Napoleon the opportunity to consolidate his power and rebuild the continent in his own image. Trafalgar was the beginning of his end. It was also the ideal reference for any diplomatic demarche – if this battle had brought down Napoleon, who could stand against such power?

Images

17Trafalgar could be used to make other points: Lord Byron not only modelled his image on the heroic ideal provided by Nelson, and employed the same portraitist, he also used Nelson to define the heroic in his masterpiece Don Juan.

Nelson was Britannia’s god of war,
And still should be so, but the tide is turn’d;
There’s no more to be said of Trafalgar,
’Tis with our hero quietly inurn’d11

18Another man to recognise the magic was George, Prince of Wales, later the Prince Regent and King George IV. Having met Nelson briefly during his final days in England the Prince took control of the official biography, to establish his connection with the glory of the national hero, and the greatest human being he ever met. George also collected memorabilia and artefacts for display in Carlton House to convey the impression that he, rather than any naval or military men, had been the real architect of Napoleon’s downfall. In the 1820s George commissioned J. M. W. Turner to paint the Battle, the resulting picture, a majestic monumental artistic response to the defining moment in modern history hung briefly at Carlton. In his opium fuelled delusions George completely missed both the magic of event, and the power of Turner’s picture. Unable to comprehend the meaning of genius, either at sea or in oils, and tiring of the carping comments of narrow-minded sea officers, who found the treatment too stylised, George despatched the picture down to the Naval Hospital at Greenwich in 1829. Turner would return to the theme again in 1839 with the “Fighting Temeraire” which established his own immortality.

19Understandably the state was anxious to carry the magic of Trafalgar forward into the post-war world. Although the House of Commons had discussed a national Nelson monument in 1816, it was only in 1835 that the newly cleared space at the north end of Whitehall was named Trafalgar Square. Then the Duke of Wellington and Thomas Hardy helped to collect money for the Nelson memorial that would give the square a focal point. William Railton’s design employed a column modelled on those in the Augustan Temple of Mars Ultor (Mars the Avenger, or he who has the last word). By using this architectural quotation from a temple built at the heart of Imperial Rome to celebrate the deification of Julius Caesar, linking him with the god of war, the avenging of his murder and the establishment of an Imperial regime that would last forever the Nelson monument was loaded with meaning. At Trafalgar Nelson had become the national god of war, and the nation had avenged his death by defeating Napoleon. Curiously enough while everyone associates Trafalgar Square with national celebration, very few understand the original purpose. By the 1840s it was clear that Trafalgar had established Britain’s naval mastery for all time: Nelson and an Augustan column provided the ultimate expression of global maritime power. The column and statue were in place by November 1843, twenty-four years later Landseer’s bronze lions completed the design.

20The unequivocal meaning of the monument and the universal language in which it was conveyed may explain the vehemence with which some French commentators responded to Trafalgar Square. The impact of the column was, and remains immense. Hitler saw it as the “symbol of British naval might and world domination”: he planned to take it back to Berlin if his invasion project had been more successful than Bonaparte’s. However, British naval might – represented by the fleet flagship HMS Nelson was far more than a symbol, and he did not make the attempt.

21Aside from the usual delays attending any great national project the slow process of deciding on the nature of the Trafalgar monument reflected a deeper truth. There was little need for so much effort when the command of the sea was not in doubt. The French and Russian navies posed no threat while there were a host of Nelson’s legatees on hand to sustain the reality that underpinned the magic. This living legacy reinforced the magic: there were companions of Nelson, Trafalgar heroes, ready for war. While men like Cockburn, Hardy, Codrington and William Parker led the fleet, as they did into the 1850s who could doubt that a new Trafalgar would be enacted on any fleet foolish enough to pose a challenge. Similar confidence flowed through the political leadership until 1865 when Lord Palmerston, the last Prime Minister to have met Nelson, died. Yet the magic required updating, the symbols renewing.

Ships and frescoes

22In the 1840s steam power, a revived French Navy, and the passing of many Trafalgar heroes inspired a restatement of the story. The key events were simple enough, HMS Victory was transformed into a shrine, the new HMS Trafalgar was launched, the column was completed, Nelson’s correspondence was published and the battle was chosen as a critical image for the new Houses of Parliament.

23In 1807, the Royal Navy ordered its first HMS Trafalgar, a relatively insignificant three decked second rate ship. By 1818, it was clear that the name was too important to be wasted. The undersized, obsolescent vessel was renamed Camperdown, and a far larger 120 guns First Rate Trafalgar was ordered. The new ship was built slowly, keeping time with the development of Trafalgar Square until the nation had need of such a potent talisman. After the Syrian Crisis of 1840, where a fleet commanded by one of Nelson’s Captains, and including the Trafalgar ships HMS Revenge and HMS Implacable (which had fought under French colours on October 21^st 1805 as the Duguay-Trouin) had demolished Egyptian rule in Syria, humiliating France in the process. The old rivalry resumed; with new weapons.

24On June 22^nd 1841, Prince Albert and the Queen attended the launch of the new first rate HMS Trafalgar at Woolwich. At the Queen’s request Lady Bridport, Nelson’s niece, conducted the ceremony before a vast crowd on land and water, estimated to be almost half a million. The explanation for this sudden upsurge of enthusiasm, other first rates had been launched without crowds or patriotic frenzy, was clear enough. France was being saucy, and if the crisis of 1840 had ended without a cross channel war, it was still necessary to remind Paris who ruled the ocean. To reinforce the point a new round of warship construction revived many of the key names from Nelson’s career, especially Trafalgar. It seemed that every ship in the fleet was in some way connected with the hero, his battles, ships and companions12. Albert was suitably impressed by the launch; it was, as he told his father “the most imposing sight which I can remember”13. Nor did his interest in the heroic past end there. On Trafalgar Day 1844 Albert boarded HMS Victory, and was taken to all the key sites by his guide, the Queen. Those present, who included Trafalgar veteran Captain Moubray, noted that Her Majesty had been “visibly affected” by the occasion14. The Royal couple would pass the ship on numerous occasions, as they travelled to their favourite residence Osbourne House on the Isle of Wight. If Albert appeared less affected by the old shrine ship he had not missed the point. His growing identification with the British past included a strong, and for him novel, appreciation of naval history.

25The new Parliament buildings were just beginning to rise from the ruins left by the destruction of much of the old Palace of Westminster in 1834. Here was a project close to the Prince’s heart, a vast gothic building celebrating the Germanic origins of British democracy. The artistic model he followed was a royal residence in Munich, decorated with scenes from the Niebelungenlied, notably the death of Siegfried. The mix of history and magic in the growing German identity was most powerfully expressed in the vast Arminius statue, which the Prince was pleased to support15. In 1841 a Committee of the House of Commons declared that the new building provided an ideal opportunity to promote British Fine Arts. Incoming Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, anxious to secure the support of the Prince to counter-act the whiggish sympathies of the Queen, quickly set up a Royal Fine Arts Commission to oversee the interior decoration of the building with Albert in the chair. The Commission, which had been dircted to commission fresco paintings from British artists, offered Albert another opportunity to create tradition. Artists were invited to submit designs, and the best were rewarded and selected for commission16. None chose modern subjects. Perhaps the recent past was too problematic for a taste increasingly literal. Allegorical art is most effective when the story being used is simple, and well-known. Even when the Commission selected designs almost all of the history pictures dealt with ancient or medieval subjects17. By 1847, the subjects for the frescos and statuary had been fixed, Albert ensured that his favourite artist took up the challenge. The Irish romantic Daniel Maclise was given the immense task of capturing Waterloo and Trafalgar for the Royal Gallery18. They would be vast pictures, 45 feet long and 12 feet deep, accompanied by sixteen smaller pictures of British valour. These military scenes would serve the same patriotic and uplifting function as the magnificent Armada tapestries, destroyed with the old House of Lords. There was going to be a lot of death about, the prominence of heroic sacrifice reflected contemporary attitudes, the emergence of a new chivalry19. Nelson was, once again, the central figure. He would be re-invented as an example to future generations, although one wonders what sort of “sacrifice” the House of Lords was going to be called upon to make. However, it would be many years before Maclise started work on Trafalgar.

26In 1852, the British government decided that the new Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet should not fly his flag in HMS Waterloo, to avoid upsetting French sensitivities, but his fleet could include the Trafalgar. Two years later, when Britain went to war with Russia France was an ally. While the Russians were suitably impressed by the Royal Navy, and did not come to sea, the French Navy spent the war trying to prove they were at least as good as the British – But the simple fact was that the magic of Trafalgar was only one part of the Royal Navy’s superiority, it was sustained by superior seamanship, discipline, initiative and confidence20.

The Crimean War, 1854-1856

27Although British strategic planning in the nineteenth century was dominated by the threat of France, Britain fought but one major war, against Russia. However, it was a limited war, waged thousands of miles from home, without any of the intensity or danger that had filled the years between 1793 and 180521. As in Nelson’s day the Russians refused to meet the Royal Navy at sea, only too well aware that they were outmatched by the quality of British ships, officers and above all seamen. Without a great sea battle naval heroics were confined to the odd shore bombardment, and service in the land batteries besieging Sevastopol.

28Only one Admiral appeared to satisfy the public need for a hero, Sir Edmund Lyons. Lyons began his career in Nelson’s fleet off Toulon in 1804, and secured rapid promotion through connections and courage. He took up diplomatic service in the 1830s, only rejoining the Navy in late 1853, on the eve of war. A slight grey-haired figure Lyons always fancied he resembled Nelson, and managed to convince a good number of his contemporaries that this resemblance reflected something more. The idea, once Lyons had suggested it, was widely taken up. With the “Life of Nelson” ever to hand Lyons took every chance to play the hero. His posturing certainly impressed the editor of The Times, who watched the allied armies disembark in the Crimea in September 1854. For Delane: “The real commander is Lyons” he wrote, “who is just another Nelson, full of energy and activity”. Delane also hoped he would disobey his superiors, citing the incident at Copenhagen as the example to follow22. The idea that Nelson was merely energetic, active and insubordinate reflected a limited understanding of the man, and his legacy that was all too common in the period.

29While he lapped up the newspaper adulation, which appeared with suspicious frequency, Lyons was no genius. His results were unremarkable. Although the Commander in Chief had ordered him to keep his ships safe during a diversionary attack on the Russian batteries at Sevastopol on October 17^th 1854 Lyons did the exact opposite. Leading his squadron into a close range action he ensured the ships were badly damaged, and achieved nothing. While his cool conduct under fire excited the admiration of the newspaper correspondents, who he had carefully cultivated in violation of Admiralty Standing Orders23, Lyons lacked the vision, insight or reflection to make use of the opportunities that arose. Any merit in the work of the Royal Navy in the Black Sea belonged to other men, those who planned and conducted the work, not to Lyons, who merely struck a Nelsonic pose. After a year of increasing insubordination, writing home to his political masters behind the back of his commander in chief, Lyons was rewarded with the supreme command. By shifting any blame for the supply problems that affected the Army onto his subordinates, and leading a few minor operations, Lyons was still in place when the war ended, and was the only naval officer to be ennobled for his role. The Barony was hardly merited; Nelson received the same for the Nile. Lyons did not live long to enjoy the honour, dying in 1858. This prompted The Times to observe that “he was so like Nelson, the hero whom more than all others we regard with a sort of personal attachment… Not only in appearance but also in reality there was something of Nelson in Lord Lyons.” In truth the real similarities were restricted to personal failings; Lyons was inordinately vain. He also lacked any talent for the higher direction of war beyond a fluency in French, which alone of his talents Nelson might have envied24. A better judge of the man, Foreign Secretary Earl Clarendon, saw little to praise: “I think him singularly deficient in judgement, he is moreover irritable & one of the vainest men I ever knew”25. Lyons was interred in St. Paul’s, immortalised in stone, and largely forgotten. A mere cardboard cut-out version of Nelson he could only fool the enemy at a distance.

30This did not matter at the time, for mid-Victorian Britain never faced the challenge of total war. The rivalry of the Second Bonapartist Empire, unlike the First, was dismissed with a pair of arms races. Consequently, there was little need to reflect on the meaning of Trafalgar, or to develop fresh examples of naval magic. The Crimean War was paltry affair by the standards set half a century before, and the biggest debates concerned the class from which the heroes were to be drawn, leading to the institution of a classless bravery award, the Victoria Cross. This comfortable world could not last forever; Trafalgar would be needed when the external environment darkened. The only question was what form the new image would take.

Icon

31With the war over it was time to complete those peaceful projects set aside for the duration, notably the Houses of Parliament. As patron of the artists, and arbiter of taste and subject Albert brought a great deal of death to the building, but the deaths were uplifting images of heroism and sacrifice, for the new culture of service. Maclise’s inclusive “Waterloo” was completed in December 1861. In the same month Albert died of an unromantic complaint occasioned by the medieval drains of Windsor. With one big wall already covered Maclise began to design “Trafalgar: the death of Nelson”. For this his research was meticulous, as befits the taste of the time, and included the famous bullet-holed coat that his patron had purchased, along with visits to the Victory and samples of ropes, fittings and other gear. The composition included over seventy life sized figures, placed on the upper deck of Victory with the fallen Nelson, in the arms of Hardy at the focal centre. There is no glory or triumphalism here. The price of success is represented life sized, and disturbingly powerful26. Maclise’s picture reflects a new mood, while the hero falls, mortally wounded, at the core of the image, he is surrounded by death and mutilation. The sacrifice is far more democratic than had been allowed hitherto. This Nelson is not a god, just one of many men to die that day27. Trafalgar was recreated as a national event, with the death of the hero as the main incident, but the sacrifice of all is honoured.

No more heroes

32“Trafalgar” took nearly two years to execute, completing just as the great project to embellish the Houses of Parliament with mythic images collapsed. Albert “had been the directing mind and without his determined support the enterprise would probably have ended sooner.”28 Maclise’s Trafalgar was universally praised, a masterpiece of narrative art in the high romantic style29. The Art Journal concluded: “We are a maritime power, but it is the only picture which we yet possess entirely worthy of our naval history30.” Yet such judgements reflect a triumph of literalism over meaning. In pursuit of a chivalric ideal Maclise missed the magic that made Trafalgar central to the British identity. Britain needed its gods, and failing a heroic monarchy, the divine mantle had fallen on the man who placed the capstone on naval mastery, and made the world safe for British trade. Perhaps without realising it Albert was seeking to dethrone Nelson, to make way for the newly restored monarchy to put the Royal firmly ahead of the Navy.

33By the time Maclise’s picture had been completed the sense of urgency that had marked much of Albert’s naval interest had passed. The naval challenge of the Second Empire had collapsed, although it had provided the opportunity scope for some neat touches. In 1861 a massive new ironclad battleship was named HMS Northumberland: in memory of the old 74 that had taken Napoleon into exile in 1815! She was followed by HMS Bellerophon, although such powerful symbolism proved unnecessary: Napoleon III came to England as an exile on a scheduled passenger steamer in 1871. As a long term resident of London Louis Napoleon may have taken a slightly more measured view of his host’s national hero than his countrymen. In 1859, with the arms race in full spate social commentator Hippolyte Taine walked through the streets of London. Determined to be displeased by what he saw he found the smoke begrimed buildings and thick fog depressing. When he reached Trafalgar Square he could not bring himself to give the space its name, reserving his vitriol for the heroic figure far above him: “That hideous Nelson, planted upon his column like a rat impaled on the end of a stick!”31

Losing Nelson

34After 1865 Trafalgar was pensioned off, it had no place amidst the economic booms and internal reforms that dominated the next two decades. But this was only a temporary release. The era of Gladstonian economy, defence cuts, tax cuts and attempts to limit the size and cost of the empire came to a shuddering halt in the mid 1880s. In pursuit of domestic agendas, notably extending the franchise, the “Grand Old Man”, had lost sight of the new realities of the age. The masses depended for their daily bread on free access to the sea. Those who made public policy were increasingly aware of economic competition, of tariff barriers against British trade, and the rising tide of imperial conquest. Populist journalist William Stead, editor of the influential Pall Mall Gazette, using confidential figures supplied by Captain John Fisher RN, started a campaign to highlight “The Truth about the Navy”. From mid March 1885 Stead kept up a steady barrage of weekly revelations, revelations that seriously embarrassed the Government. In search of allies Stead sent his first editorial to the Poet Laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Suitably roused Tennyson produced a simple, but emotive popular appeal, which appeared in The Times, and the Pall Mall Gazette, on April 23^rd32. In “The Fleet” Tennyson left no-one in any doubt about where he stood. Gladstonian finance had gone too far, it was time to reinforce the defences of the country, and the coaling stations that held Britain’s global empire of trade together. While it did not require a poet’s sensibility to employ Nelson as the exemplar of English greatness, or the polar opposite of Gladstone, dismissively reduced to the familiar “you”, the genius lay in the completeness of the image. “The Fleet of England is her all in all, and in her Fleet her fate.” Behind the naval concerns lay a deeper fear, of hungry masses, political change and social chaos33.

35There can be little doubt that the “The Fleet” summed up the national mood, or that Gladstone was listening. Within weeks a supplementary naval estimate, the “Northbrook Programme” had been placed before Parliament, and passed into law. Among the new ships built to meet the renewed French challenge were the Nile and Trafalgar, menacing ironclad leviathans, the very acme of naval might.

Revival

36In 1891 the naval revival reached a new level of popularity with the Royal Naval Exhibition at the Chelsea Hospital. A grand spectacle designed to demonstrate “the relation between Britannia’s naval expenditure and naval responsibilities” with Nelson as the central figure, and a full sized mock-up of the Victory the dominant image, complete with a “Death of Nelson” waxwork by Madame Tussaud’s, based on Arthur Devis’s picture. Between May 2^nd and October 24^th some 2,352,000 visitors attended, inspecting everything from Nelson artefacts, many with the flimsiest of provenance, to modern ships, guns, engines and boilers. There was a large circular panorama of Trafalgar, a modern mock naval battle on the lake and a massive catalogue, the historical part written by Professor John Knox Laughton, the historian who pioneered the academic study of Nelson. Crowds entered under a suitably Nelsonian motto, taken from the Articles of War, “The Navy, whereon under the good providence of God, the wealth, safety and strength of the Kingdom do chiefly depend.” A smaller travelling version of the show then toured the major cities, gradually selling off artefacts and curious.

37Nelson was the patron saint of the Navy League, founded in 1894 to press for a bigger and better organised navy. The purpose of the League was to inform the people about the importance of naval supremacy on which the British Empire depended for trade, food and survival. Suitably informed the people would support expenditure required for an adequate navy. The chief fund-raisers for the League were City firms, involved in trade, banking and investment, through the London Chamber of Commerce. League advertising went for the jugular, linking a great figure with their message. “Nelson’s life and death, it was foreseen, might be utilised to personify British Sea Power to the children, if not to the veterans of British democracy throughout the world.”34 The League also made full use of Trafalgar Square, celebrating Trafalgar Day in 1896 with a massive turnout that emphasised national concern for naval strength, similar events occurred in other major British cities, and across the Empire. Liberal opinion formers were outraged, and expressed an astonishing level of concern that the French might be offended by ostentatious celebrations. George Bernard Shaw even suggested it would be better to pull down Nelson’s column35. He did not trouble himself to think why the French should be offended by Trafalgar, and its public celebration. In truth the French were acutely conscious of the sustained and repeated insults that British naval power had forced them to swallow ever since 1805.

38Trafalgar ended the nineteenth century on a high note. In 1898 Britain and France almost went to war over the headwaters of the Nile, the Fashoda Crisis provided a final opportunity to assess the magic of Trafalgar. The Royal Navy responded to the crisis, as they had to most 19^th century international disagreements, by preparing to bombard the nearest hostile naval base. The obvious target was Cherbourg, and the French hurriedly moved their fleet to Brest and backed down, convinced the arrogant British would be only too pleased to finish what they had begun at Trafalgar36. The latest naval budgets, propelled by Stead and Fisher’s alarmist campaign, had purchased victory in the struggle for empire and trade without war.

39As the Kaiser observed: “The Poor French, they have not read their Mahan37!” However, while enjoying his little joke Wilhelm took no heed of the underlying power that the French had recognised. Trafalgar remained both a definitive magical symbol and a convenient short hand for the most powerful force in global politics. When Wilhelm decided to challenge Britain for command of the seas he put his country on a collision course with the magic of Trafalgar, and relied on logical political calculation to counter the sublime. Two years after Fashoda the German Admirals concluded that the British fleet had the power to steam past all their fortifications, enter the River Elbe and sink their fleet38.

40The Victorian era in which the magic of Trafalgar had held undisputed sway over the world’s oceans came to an end in 1901, and the old Queen was carried in state into Portsmouth harbour, past the ship of memories, by now a rather tired old vessel, occasionally battered by her more modern successors, and increasingly hard to maintain.

41While the largest rival fleet was still that of France, now allied to a resurgent Russia Trafalgar was an ideal national symbol. Yet a sudden shift in Britain’s international position crippled the commemoration of the centenary of Trafalgar. In 1904 Britain signed an Entente with France. This agreement settled the squabbles of the past thirty years, and allowed the two nations to co-operate in the face of growing German power. The Foreign Office was so concerned to avoid upsetting French sensitivities that official celebrations were effectively stifled, and the Admiralty ordered the fleet not to make any special display. The Navy Records Society had planned a public lecture to commemorate the event, but the Admiralty considered that a public lecture on some aspect of Nelson’s career was acceptable, but it was “important that… the address should not include anything which might wound the susceptibilities of France or of any other foreign nation.”39 Lord Charles Beresford, commanding in the Mediterranean, was similarly instructed to avoid triumphalist display. Beresford ignored the order and reviewed 3,000 men of the parade square at Malta. The event was handled with becoming dignity, and reflected more on the loss of the hero than the victory40.

42Quite who came up with the absurd idea that we should forget our past merely to avoid upsetting the sensitivities of our current friends is unknown, but such feeble, apologetic nonsense did not show the country in a particularly favourable light. Trafalgar is a matter of fact and record, the outcome is not contested. Certainly contemporary French attitudes to the past were unrestrained by any such considerations. The popular Bonaparte biography of the pre-1914, Frédéric Masson’s Napoléon et sa famille, stretched across 13 anti-democratic, militarist and violently anti-British volumes. In a telling passage in volume eight of 1906 Masson blamed Britain for the defeat of Bonaparte, and with him of the dream of a united Europe41. Throughout the nineteenth century the link between interpretations of Bonaparte and attitudes toward Britain were obvious. From Thiers in the 1830s those who yearned for the glory of the First Empire, and strong military leadership took up a line that culminated in the Dreyfus Affair. As an angel of chaos, a man who destroyed everything he touched Bonaparte proved a deeply divisive symbol in French politics, and as Louis-Philippe and Louis-Napoleon had discovered proved too powerful a weapon for mere mortals to wield. By contrast Nelson, who had given his life to uphold king, church and country was an ideal heroic exemplar.

43The apologetic tone adopted by the Government left the centenary of Trafalgar to be marked by relatively unimpressive events: there was nothing of the national need so evident in 1805, or in 1914. Much of the press had taken the Entente line although there was a widespread belief that the day should be made a national holiday. There was a Navy League wreath laying ceremony in Trafalgar Square, and an exhibition of relics at the Royal United Services Institution on Whitehall. New books appeared, although none of any significance. The nation was still content to attribute Trafalgar to “character” and get by on myths and make-believe. It was courage and self-sacrifice that the late Victorians and Edwardians found so ennobling about Nelson. His devotion to “Duty” chimed with the service ethic of the age, his Christian values were modernised to suit current tastes, disposing of declarations that Emma was his wife before God. Even the cautious Laughton gave way to hyperbole in the fervid atmosphere of the 1905 commemorations, portraying Nelson as the redeemer, saving Europe by his sacrifice. It helped that he was a popular hero, above class or clique, without a significant political role, and of course the sea was Britain’s element42.

Professional interest

44Yet Trafalgar was not without serious students, its lessons were not entirely lost. As far back as 1871 a certain Commander Fisher had demonstrated a sound grasp of the Trafalgar memorandum and how it would be applied to steamships. He learnt to appreciate naval history and great admirals when he worked with Admiral Sir Geoffrey Phipps-Hornby, the master of fleet tactics who bridged the worlds of scholarship and seamanship in the 1870s and 1880s. Fisher knew Mahan’s works, chose October 21^st 1904 as the ideal day to take up the office of First Sea Lord and cited Nelson as the example for new measures wherever possible. That his first Commander in Chief had been Sir William Parker, the last of Nelson’s Captains, made him something of a living link with Nelson43. The fleet he built while serving as First Sea Lord, 1904-1910 revived every Trafalgar related name on the Navy List, including his iconic new battleship HMS Dreadnought. Fisher expected these ships would have to fight a new Trafalgar, but picked out John Jellicoe to be his Nelson44. It must have been obvious to Fisher that Jellicoe was quite unlike Nelson, afflicted by uncertainty, doubt and caution that were alien to the mind of his supposed model45. Unfortunately Churchill took Fisher’s advice in 1914.

45The nineteenth century had produced no naval heroes worthy of a statue in Trafalgar Square. It remained to be seen if there would be any in the twentieth. During the nineteenth century Nelson recovered his place as the chief secular deity of the state, whenever the security of the British Isles, the Empire and above all the trade routes that linked them together was questioned. But it was not until the century ended that the “magic” of Trafalgar was linked to serious attempts to understand his intellectual legacy, or turn his genius to account. Only in the new century would historical scholarship and naval doctrine combined to rethink the man and his final battle, recovering their meaning from the wilderness of popular obsession with character and morality, but the work was far from complete in 191446. The first British book-length treatment of the battle, Julian Corbett’s 1910 The Campaign of Trafalgar, was based on a lecture course delivered to the Naval War Course, and the Army Staff College at Camberley. Corbett, the pre-eminent naval historian, educator and theorist produced something worthy of the battle and the hero, and did so in co-operation with Colonel Edouard Desbriere, the French official historian of Trafalgar47!

***

46Across the nineteenth century Trafalgar remained a mythic event, which was recalled or ignored in response to the current state of the French Navy. In the 1820s, between the early 1840s and the mid 1860s, and again from the late 1880s Trafalgar was a major presence in British culture. In other times it slipped into the background, not forgotten, but not necessary, or compelling. The place of history, myth and magic in national life has always reflected the contemporary context. History addresses current agendas; it should seek to explain how we arrived at this time and place, rather than simply revisit older studies concerned to explain how our ancestors saw their past. The development of modern historical methods in the nineteenth century was intimately connected with the creation of national myth. In Imperial Germany historians affected to see Prussian military success as the completion of a pre-ordained purpose, shaping their writing to support this contemporary agenda, thereby imposing a linear inevitability on the chaos of the past that separated Arminius from Bismarck48. This prompted a typically explosive response from Friedrich Nietzsche who stressed: “You can explain the past only by what is most powerful in the present”49. History is both a record and a process, and the process is the more important of the two. How we think is more important than what we know.

47How far Trafalgar lives in the realm of magic and how far in history is a question that will occupy us all for years to come – but we must always leave a space for the magic.