Trafalgar Day
Today LASSCO commemorates Trafalgar Day.
211 years ago today the His Majesty’s Royal Navy encountered the combined Franco-Spanish fleet off a headland near Cadiz in a place known as Cape Trafalgar.
In the heavy fighting that followed the Royal Navy, though outgunned and outnumbered, achieved a stunning and decisive victory that captured the waves for Britain for the next century and more.
Twenty-seven British ships of the line led by Admiral Lord Nelson aboard HMS Victory defeated thirty-three French and Spanish ships of the line under the French Admiral Villeneuve. The Franco-Spanish fleet lost twenty-two ships, without a single British vessel being lost.
It was also the first decisive reverse against the tyrant Bonaparte and began the inevitable recoil of that mischief upon his own head, which he had sought to spread by violence throughout Europe.
