Seventeen ships from five nations staged a mock sea battle off southern England on Tuesday to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, during which Admiral Horatio Nelson routed Napoleon Bonaparte’s French and Spanish forces and ensured that Britain ruled the waves for more than a hundred years.
The ceremony — watched by Queen Elizabeth II and thousands of spectators — involved 10 tons of gunpowder, state-of-the-art pyrotechnics and a replica 18th-century frigate portraying the HMS Victory, the flagship that Nelson commanded and died aboard when a musket ball struck his spine during the famous battle.
Obviously, France and Britain have long forged an alliance since then, and both countries had ships taking part in Tuesday’s ceremony, as will Spain. But the British-French rivalry remains strong, as their latest public feud over the European Union budget indicates, and the anniversary organisers worked hard to avoid touching it off.
They decided not to carry out a precise re-enactment of the Battle of Trafalgar with a victor and a loser, instead opting for a sea battle pitting an unidentified red navy against an unnamed blue one.
That irritated Anna Tribe (75) the great-great-great-granddaughter of Nelson and his famous lover, Emma Hamilton.
Tribe dismissed the idea as ”pretty stupid.”
”I am sure the French and Spanish are adult enough to appreciate we did win that battle,” she said. ”I am anti-political correctness. Very much against it. It makes fools of us.” French Vice-Admiral. Jacques Mazars, who is in charge of five vessels that are taking part, said: ”We are proud to be here and to be part of this great all-week sea festival in Portsmouth. That’s why the French navy sent five ships.”
He said the point of such a ceremony isn’t to put British forces on one side, and French and Spanish ones on the other ‒ or to rekindle a rivalry ‒ but to have the strong allies today celebrate a big moment in history when both camps showed bravery.
The mock battle kicks off a long season of festivities in Britain marking the bicentennial of the Battle of Trafalgar, which took place on October 21, 1805.
Tuesday’s festivities also include 35 nations that have contributed 58 vessels to the International Fleet Review, with 57 heads of foreign navies attending.
Nelson, one of Britain’s greatest heroes, won a series of stunning naval successes against France and Spain that culminated in Trafalgar, during which he shattered the combined enemy fleet by taking it head-on. The victory arguably ended any hope of an invasion of Britain by Napoleon, enabling the British empire to grow.
A passionate man in love and war, Nelson became a people’s hero, who often was shunned by the aristocracy at the height of his fame.
His state funeral in 1805 was the largest ever held in Britain, with a 2,5km-long procession behind his coffin in London. Today, his statue atop a column in London’s Trafalgar Square remains one of the city’s famous landmarks.
In the 1800s, ships such as the HMS Victory were that era’s weapons of mass destruction. Sailing a ship through difficult weather and tricky currents was difficult. Knowing how to organise and manoeuver fleets during a battle was even harder.
Nelson was the son of a parson whose mother died when he was nine.
An uncle got him into the Royal Navy at the age of 12. By the time he was 16, he had travelled the world learning the basics of seamanship, and he became a captain by the age of 21.
The admiral was famous for leadership skills that promoted bravery, obedience and camaraderie among his men. During wars with the French, he fought in more than 120 engagements, losing an arm and an eye, and suffering many other injuries, thanks to his daredevil nature.
After the Battle of Trafalgar, and during a long storm that followed, English sailors performed extraordinary feats of seamanship and valour as their commander lay dead by saving the lives of many injured and exhausted opponents.
Although Trafalgar was Nelson’s greatest victory, others also showed his tactical skills and daring. They included the Battle of the Nile in 1798, during which he risked manoeuvering his fleet between a line of French ships anchored at Egypt’s Aboukir Bay, and ‒ after fierce fighting ‒ destroyed 12 of them with no loss to his own fleet.
During the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, Nelson ignored a signal from his commanders to withdraw by putting a telescope to his blind eye. He went on to rout the Danes.
The military man also was a renowned self-publicist who ensured that every detail of his conquests was relayed back home to England.
Today, there are more than 100 Nelson biographies. -Sapa-AP