Today Is Trafalger Day.

Back in 2005 a work buddy of mine who used to do safe breaking (legitimately) for a living got a panic phone call. The admiralty offices needed a safe opening urgently.

All there was in the safe was a bottle of brandy. A French and a Spanish admiral were on their way over to share the brandy on the 200th anniversary, which had been taken from the French at Trafalgar, and it needed to be opened a bit early so that it could be replaced if it had gone bad....

Geoff was offered a shot of it.

“Nah, it’s a bit too early in the day for me!”

My reaction on him telling us was just “Aarrrrgh!”

 

It's a long story between France and Scotland, even Joan of Arc was helped by Scottish guards. The only purpose of the alliance was to fight England.
By the way, Culloden battle fields visit was a strange and powerful moment for me. I felt like the battle was the week before our visit. Time stopped there. can't described really, but that was strange.

 

It is a slightly weird spot. Waterloo is made less so by all the traffic but Gettysburg is a bit ‘atmospheric ‘ too.

 

There is a TV series called Outlander which we cover (when everything isn’t on hold due to current global issues).

It is a bit surreal (with the time travel stuff and all that) but it is mostly set at the very turbulent times of the Jacobite rebellion and deals with a lot of the politics of the time, in between all the chick flick romantic rubbish.

all the actors I’ve met from the show have been lovely lovely people - I even managed to get Duncan to do a highland fling on stage, and Ian and Sam arm wrestling....

 

My wife watched the whole serie. I'll impress her relating your post

 

My wife watched the whole serie. I'll impress her relating your post

 

Look on the Starfury website. http://seanharry.com/home/the-highlanders/ Which may interest her. I am not financially involved other than that I am engaged to run the stage and tech at the various events. Regretfully I cannot put videos on Youtube for you because of contractual obligations between the organisers of the event, the agents of the actors (which avoids conflict between convention events and the production companies, and also allows the actors to speak freely while on stage!). The events cover autograph signings, Photo ops with the actors, talks on stage, and parties in the evenings.

 

Moreover it's in Birmingham ::. Sure in other time with easiest travel we would have done the travel for that (our daughter lives in Birmingham)
Edit.. showed that to my wife.. as the new date is known she plans to go there .. don't know if I should really thank you @GaleForceEight

 

Sorry about that! If she comes along, do tell her she is welcome to come by the tech desk in the main hall to say hello!

 

If you ever heard the phrase "tapping the Admiral" (as in have a strong drink...) there is a legend that the seamen guarding the cask with the Admiral in tapped it, and drank the spirit through macaroni straws.

 

I love this forum, you learn loads of stuff

 

And the brew called Nelson’s Blood.......

 

Something for the real spotters.....

https://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/h...attle_of_Trafalgar.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Follow the pdf link if nec.

By all the understood laws of naval tactics Nelson was outnumbered and would have lost in a conventional side by side broadside duel. However he seems to have had an intuitive understanding of force ratios and how tactics could redress the balance.

By splitting the British fleet into two columns and attacking at right angles his lead ships (including his own) initially took a heavy pounding barely able to return fire. However as they passed the ships to their left and right they fired the length of the French and Spanish decks and reduced them to smoking wrecks in short order. By the time it was one on one the numerical advantage was completely reversed.

Fortunately Lanchester (an engineer) was a darned sight better at replicating reality in his models than SAGE and their Covid projections.....

 

Nope, that were me, DD.............

 

This worked so well because, even though the target is smaller (stern, bow), any shot that hits can travel the entire length of the ship. They cleared the decks of all bulkheads (cabins were mostly canvas frames anyway) so there was nothing but men and guns getting in the way. That means that by cutting the enemy line a 64 gun ship of the line could fire a rolling broadside, 32 guns per side, at the stern of one ship, and the bow of another. The enemy would only have 2 or 4 cannon to return fire with... Bow and stern chasers, probably 6 pounders, if that. The French used to like firing chain shot, and disable rigging, the British liked to fire round shot to sink the ship. It must have been sheer hell on those lower gun decks, I believe they painted the inner hulls red to conceal the blood during battle? Hell... Especially when you remember many of the crews were not volunteers.

We tend to forget too that everything was dependent on the wind. The trick was to steal the wind gage, thus gaining a form of superiority. Apparently the amount of cannon fire at sea battles was enough to kill the wind! Very up close and personal... Not like 100 years later where fleets could sit over the horizon and lob shells at each other!

 

Incidentally... Most men injuries were caused by flying splinters as much as direct hits by shot. Not that little splinter you dig out of your finger with a pin and tweezers... Imagine having a 3 ft length of teak, or oak, sticking in you... Ugh. Crushing by cannon trucks rolling over you... And then, gangrene.

Horrible to contemplate.

But, of course, we aren't supposed to even remember the battle, let alone contemplate the after effects. Bloody snowflake age we live in. In my view it's only by remembering the horrors of wars that we might stop and think that not doing that sort of thing again might just be a good idea.

 

Part of the ‘deal’ regarding the prize money awarded to crews for capturing French and Spanish ships encouraged captains to invest their own money into buying extra rations (to reduce the amount of sickness in the crews), and to buy extra powder and shot for training the gun crews.

Another difference was in combat philosophy - that British crews concentrated on battering the gun decks so that the fighting efficiency of French and Spanish ships was compromised as quickly as possible whereas the French and Spanish would first target the masts and rigging in order to disable the British ships ability to manoeuvre.

With the British crews able to fire faster, providing there was enough headway for the ship to turn her guns to bear, the 74 gun ships of the line were little more than massive floating gun platforms. One tactic they used while closing up was to shoot down at the sea just in front of the target so that shots bounced up from the water through the gun decks - it wasn't the cannonballs hitting people that did most damage so much as the splinters of wood shredding anyone in their path.

Incidentally, the artillery used the same idea in North Africa when the 6 pounders couldn’t penetrate the German armour. So they aimed just in front of the tank and bounced the round from the hard desert surface and up through the unarmoured floor plates.

 

Well every day's a school day.

 

Thanks Cal, that had me very interested, and started promisingly before tailing off halfway through the analysis. Unless I’m missing something (and I didn’t bother putting a towel over my head and working the mathematical model through) it doesn’t seem to account for the impact of attacking perpendicular to the French line, ie the differential impact of each broadside.

As some of the posts on here say that was extremely relevant.

 

The process was called ‘raking’.

The idea was that most of the guns pointed sideways (‘athwartships’) so if you sailed across the bow or stern if the enemy vessel, all your guns could get a shot in as you passed by with the shot passing all the way along their ship maximising any carnage it could cause. At the same time very few of their guns could be brought to bear on you, and the ones that could were relatively small calibre and could do less damage than any one of the larger calibre guns on the sides.

If you then tacked (turned the ship across the wind) the guns that had shot them to pieces were reloading but you then presented your other side which was still loaded, and give them a second dose of hell! Nelson, by cutting between their ships meant that each of his ships could unload on both sides because they were passing ships on both their port (left) and starboard (right) sides then once they had passed they could be reloading while turning for another go! This relied on starting on the windward side, which gave a huge tactical advantage since you could build up much more speed given the physics of square sailed ships that could not sail so close to the wind as modern Bermuda rigs can.

The sheer firepower of one of our ships of the line was the nuclear weapon or MOAB of its day. Enough to cow anyone into submission.