Battle of Trafalgar

Connections

• Caspian won the Battle of Trafalgar disguised as Admiral Nelson

Context

The Battle of Trafalgar was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy and the combined forces of the French and Spanish Navies during the early part of the Napoleonic Wars. It took place on October 21, 1805 at Cape Trafalgar, Spain (just northwest of the Strait of Gibraltar). The battle ended in a British victory thanks to a rather unorthodox strategy employed by Admiral Lord Nelson (who was aboard the fittingly named HMS Victory).

You see, at the time, the conventional practice in naval battles was to have the opposing fleets run in parallel lines, going in opposite directions. This was called "the line of battle," and allowed each ship to try to destroy enemy ships by firing the broadside canons. This formation also made it easier for allied ships to signal instructions to each other.

But Nelson wanted a decisive victory, so instead of positioning his ships into the line of battle, he had his fleet form two columns, perpendicular to the enemy's line of battle, in the hopes that the vertical lines made by his ships would divide the enemy line into thirds, breaking apart the fleet and taking advantage of isolated ships. There's a good illustration and explanation of this plan here. The plan was so crazy, it worked!

But now that we know it was really Caspian and not Nelson himself (at least, in the Brawlhalla version of Earth), maybe the reason for the unorthodox plan was that, on that day, the British Royal Navy was led by a new, unorthodox leader!