THE battle which enshrined the Royal Navy as the world’s pre-eminent maritime power was the final act in a game of cat-and-mouse between Britain and France.

With Napoleon gearing up to invade the British Isles, the French Emperor needed command of the English Channel – something the British were not particularly keen to afford him; the Royal Navy bottled up enemy forces in its bases in Brest and Toulon.

In Bonaparte’s grand plan, the dispersed French squadrons would evade their jailor, sail to the West Indies, form one fleet then sail back across the Atlantic and dominate the Channel long enough for his Grande Armée to land and conquer the British Isles.

It began promisingly. In April 1805, Admiral Villeneuve slipped away from Toulon, joined up with a Spanish squadron from Cadiz, then headed west for the Indies. Nelson – now in the flagship HMS Victory – and his fleet eventually learned of the breakout and gave chase, one month behind his adversary.

The Franco-Spanish force was never joined by the rest of the French Fleet in the West Indies, and Villeneuve wearily returned across the Atlantic when he learned Nelson’s Mediterranean Fleet was on his heels.

The enemy force was intercepted off Cape Finisterre in July 1805, where Villeneuve lost two ships before scurrying for the safety of Cadiz, while Napoleon abandoned any thought of invading Britain and turned his attention to conquering Austria, a decision which would lead to victory at Austerlitz.

Having sought shelter in Cadiz, Villeneuve now found himself trapped as the British Fleet; he knew Nelson was waiting for him, but he also knew a replacement was being sent to take over his post.

Refusing to suffer the ignominy of being sacked, but convinced his force of 33 ships, though powerful on paper, was poorly manned, equipped and trained – especially the Spaniards – Villeneuve reluctantly decided upon death or glory. He would challenge Nelson off Cadiz.

The French admiral exhorted his men: “The Fleet will see with satisfaction the opportunity that is offered to it to display the resolution and daring which will ensure its success, revenge the insults offered to its flag and lay low the tyrannical domination of the English upon the seas.”

Off Cadiz, Nelson called his ‘band of brothers’, the captains of his 27 ships, to Victory for a two-day council of war. His fleet would form two columns and split the enemy line; the head would be cut off and useless, while the centre and rear would be annihilated.

“When I came to explain to them the Nelson Touch, it was like an electric shock,” Nelson described his plan in a letter to Emma Hamilton. “Some shed tears, all approved. It was new – it was singular – it was simple. From admirals downwards, it was repeated: ‘It must succeed, if ever they will allow us to get at them! You are, my Lord, surrounded by friends, whom you inspire with confidence.’”

On October 19, Villeneuve finally put to sea. It was another two days before Nelson and his Fleet could draw close and engage. By dawn on the twenty-first, off Cape Trafalgar, the two forces were just nine miles apart and closing.

Shortly before mid-day, Victory hoisted the signal ‘England expects that every man will do his duty’ and the battle was joined as the two British columns, with Victory in the van, careered into the French and Spanish lines.

The clash lasted less than five hours. It has been described as a ‘pell-mell battle’ – a furious, confused affair. For once battle was joined it was not Fleet against Fleet, but ship against ship. An anonymous sailor recalled the scenes on a gun deck at the height of the battle:

“At every moment, the smoke accumulated more and more thickly, stagnating on board between decks at times so densely as to blur over the nearest objects and often blot out the men. All that a man knew was that he heard the crash of shot smashing through the rending timbers, and then followed at once the hoarse bellowings of the captains of the guns.”

Surgeons struggled to deal with the torrent of wounded carried down to them. The decks were stained with blood as crude amputations and operations were performed. “A shot took off the arm of Thomas Main,” the captain of HMS Leviathan wrote. “The surgeon soon after amputated the shattered part of the arm, near the shoulder, during which, with great composure, smiling, and with a steady clear voice, he sang the whole of Rule Britannia.”

Captain Lucas, of the French battleship Redoubtable – which gave as good an account of herself as any enemy vessel that day – described the horrors of the action as his ship was engaged by the ‘Fighting’ Temeraire.

“All the guns were shattered or dismounted. An 18-pounder and a 36-pounder carronade on the forecastle having burst, killed and wounded many of our people. The two sides of the ship were utterly cut to pieces. All our decks were covered with dead, buried beneath the debris and splinters from different parts of the ship. Out of the ship’s company of 643 men, we had 522 disabled, 300 being killed and 222 wounded. He who has not seen the Redoubtable in this state can never have any conception of her destruction. I do not know of anything on board which was not cut up by shot.”

Lucas and his ship were captured. But his men dealt one mortal blow that afternoon. Around 1.15pm, as he paced the quarter-deck, Nelson was struck by a bullet from one of Redoubtable’s marksmen. “They have done for me at last, Hardy,” he told his longtime friend and Victory’s captain, Thomas Hardy. Crew carried the stricken admiral below.

The bullet fractured Nelson’s spine, punctured his left lung and severed an artery. The wound was fatal. For two more hours, the admiral clung on to life; only when he was assured by Hardy that the Navy had won a great victory, did he prepare himself for the inevitable. He famously asked Hardy to kiss him, then allowed the captain to resume his duties. He died, shortly after 3.30pm, on Victory’s orlop deck. His final words: “Thank God I have done my duty.”

And so he had. The battle raged for another hour or so, although Villeneuve himself had surrendered in his flagship Bucentaure – like Redoubtable engaged by HMS Victory – as early as 1.45pm. When calm descended on the seas, 18 enemy ships had been captured and 20,000 prisoners taken.

Yet the British sailors did not celebrate a great victory; they mourned the loss of a great hero. Grown men openly wept.

The misery was not quite over. The following day a fierce storm sank all but four of the captured enemy vessels.

Decisive as Trafalgar was, it did not halt Napoleon’s expansionist dreams; it was another decade before defeat at Waterloo finally brought the curtain down on Bonaparte’s drive for European domination. Trafalgar did not even wipe out the French Navy; there was still a fleet bottled up in Brest. But as a signal triumph it demonstrated the superiority of the British Fleet, its men and ships, over the combined might of two then ‘superpowers’. No nation effectively challenged the Royal Navy on the High Seas until the 20th century.