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saltin, kanue, Jean-Luc Picard, move plox.

Tito, I know that you know where threads belong. Please post them where they belong and not give me a migraine.

Quintus Fabius, thanks for getting my attention

Ah I see. In other threads here people haven't been tagging me in my own board which is slightly annoying

Well sorry about the migrane my dear Jean-Luc Picard now chaps what about the first question is it true and how did they do it

You aint the only one who wants to let out the sherlock holmes

Well I'll do my best to answer this.

It is true that the British won this battle even though they had less ships than the Franco-Spansih fleet (the British had 33 ships and the Franco-Spanish fleet had 41) in fact the Franco-Spanish fleet had as many Ships of Line as Britain had total ships (ships of the line and others). The battle of Trafalgar is considered to be one of the most decisive naval battle EVER because it completely crushed any hope of France. Britain only lost ONE the Franco-Spanish fleet lost 22. This victory led to Britain's clear naval supremacy which lasted until World War 2. For Britain, Trafalgar was probably the most important battle in the whole Napoleonic Wars because although it was fought away from Britain, if Nelson lost it Britain may have been invaded.

Now naval combat in the age of sail was VERY different to modern naval combat. Ships were not free to move how they pleased as they depended on the wind. This meant that whoever held the 'Weather Gauge' would control a naval engagement. The Weather Gauge is a naval term used to describe the advantageous position of the wind for one side of the battle. I won't delve into this too much but it basically means whoever held the weather gauge could control where the naval battle would take place which was very useful in those days. Communication was also very different in those days as there were no radios or phones or Twitter so ships had to communicate with signals which were basically a code of flags that ships used. I'm not going to go to much deeper into the differences as there are too many to list.

Prior to Trafalgar naval combat was pretty much just the two opposing fleets would form up into a column each and sail parallel to each other and just fire everything (remember ships in these days had most of their guns on the sides not the front and back). Sometimes ships would manoeuvre so they could use their side guns to fire into the back (stern) of an enemy ship because this was a weak point and was often devastating. What makes Nelson's victory stand out even more was the unorthodox tactics he used.



Instead of using the conventional tactics stated above Nelson attacked in this unorthodox formation. I don't have time to write up a detailed explanation on the tactics used but Nelson did have the weather gauge which I mentioned earlier and the British sailors were much better trained and more experienced than the French and Spanish. In fact a number of the French sailors were actually army soldiers transferred to the navy to deal with manpower shortages which was a very bad idea.

Here are some links: www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ebdk5/how_did_nelsons_tactics_work_at_trafalgar/
www.thedearsurprise.com/a-detailed-look-at-nelsons-innovative-strategy-at-trafalgar/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trafalgar

They lies all the time lol

Well nobody has a question?