Nelson at Trafalgar: Breaking the Line and the Ride Home in Brandy

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In early 1805 Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson ran a loose blockade of Toulon, hanging back over the horizon to tempt the French fleet into open water. Vice Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve slipped out in a storm, joined the Spanish, and sailed for the Caribbean, and Nelson chased him across the Atlantic and back. After two years at sea he had just 25 days in England before sailing for Cádiz, where he kept his fleet about 50 miles offshore behind a screen of frigates. Over dinners on HMS Victory he explained his plan to abandon the traditional line of battle and drive two columns at right angles into the enemy line, betting that idle French and Spanish gunners could not shoot well in a heavy swell.

On October 21, 1805, his 27 ships crept toward 33 in light winds. Victory took fire for 40 minutes, lost her wheel, then fired a treble-shotted raking broadside through the stern of Villeneuve's Bucentaure before locking with the Redoutable. A French musketeer in the rigging shot Nelson through the shoulder, lung, and spine, and he died below decks as roughly 20 enemy ships were taken or destroyed with no British losses. A storm followed, and Nelson's body returned to England in a cask of brandy for a state funeral.

• Nelson walked a garden with Captain Richard Goodwin Keats in England to lay out the plan before sailing.
• His ships were painted in a yellow and black pattern, the Nelson Chequer, so captains could tell friend from foe in the smoke.
• Signal officer John Pasco changed confides to expects because it had a single code, creating England expects that every man will do his duty.
• Surgeon William Beatty and chaplain Alexander Scott attended Nelson as he heard cheers for each enemy surrender.
• Trafalgar ended Napoleon's invasion plans, though Austerlitz weeks later kept the land war going for another decade.