On Sunday 21 October the Legg Residence was brightly bedecked with the White Ensign, the Union and Anguillian flags. The furniture was rearranged, all was spick and span and I had a lot of cooking to do!

Flags Flying for Trafalgar Night

The date is significant. It is a date that is enshrined in the annals of British history but, what is so special about it? To answer this we need to look back in time.
In 1805 England was frightened. Across the English Channel in France, Napoleon Bonaparte was threatening to invade and the English had only the Royal Navy to prevent the influx of the French tongue and the national dish changing from roast beef to frog’s legs.

England need not have worried. The Royal Navy was ably commanded by a slight, battered, unlikely looking hero in the shape of the brilliant, one armed, half blind Horatio Nelson. Mobbed by the public wherever he went, he was the Bill Clinton of his time.

Born in 1758, in Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk in the east of England, Nelson was the sixth of eleven children. He joined the Royal Navy at the age of twelve and was a Captain by the time he was twenty. He served in the Baltic, the West Indies and Canada. He married at the age of twenty nine and impatiently endured five years ashore in peace time England on half pay, waiting for his next command.

Joe Legg reading his speech at the 2007 Trafalgar night Dinner

With the coming of the French Revolutionary Wars, Nelson was given command of HMS Agamemnon. During the battle of Calvi he lost the sight of his right eye and later, in 1797, at the battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, his elbow was shattered so badly that his right arm had to be amputated. Known for his defiance of orders he disagreed with, he famously ignored the signal to cease firing at the Battle of Copenhagen by putting his telescope to his blind eye and claiming not to see the signal!

Ashore in Naples he met Emma, Lady Hamilton, the wife of the British Ambassador, and so began one of the most famous, and notorious, love affairs in history. They had a daughter, Horatia, in 1801, but each remained married to their respective spouses.

The Battle of Trafalgar, the battle which ended all of Bonaparte’s British pretensions, took place on 21 October 1805 at Cape Trafalgar off the Spanish coast. A combined fleet of twenty nine French and Spanish ships met the Royal Navy fleet commanded by Nelson, after a summer spent in a cat and mouse chase across the Atlantic. The night before the battle, while the British fleet waited for the combined enemy to leave Cadiz, where they had been becalmed by light winds, Nelson outlined the battle plan, which he called ‘The Nelson Touch,’ to his captains aboard his flagship, HMS Victory. This consisted of dividing the main fleet into two columns, one led by Vice Admiral Nelson aboard the Victory and the other commanded by Rear Admiral Collingwood on HMS Royal Sovereign. The columns were to attack the Combined Fleet commanded by Admiral Villenueve, cutting the Combined Fleet’s battle line in two, thereby weakening the force.

The next day, Nelson sent the now famous rallying signal to his men throughout the fleet: England expects that every man will do his duty. At noon the battle commenced. The Victory was soon in close action, the battle raging

Nelson courageously made himself conspicuous to his men, keeping up confidence and morale. This was to be his undoing. Despite his staff’s requests to lower his profile, he continued on deck, wearing his honours on his coat, making him a conspicuous target. At 1.15 pm a French sharpshooter’s bullet shattered his spine. He was carried below, out of sight of the crew. He lived long enough to be told that the battle was won. His last words were, ‘Thank God I have done my duty.’

After the battle Nelson’s body was transported back to England, preserved in spirits. He was given a State Funeral and laid to rest in St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Two hundred and two years later Nelson is still remembered on 21 October. His legacy, in the form of motivation, inspiration and thinking outside the box to outwit an enemy, is as relevant now as in his day. All over the world Trafalgar Day has been celebrated with a meal, traditionally roast beef, a Loyal Toast to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and a toast ‘to the Immortal Memory’ of Horatio, Viscount Nelson, Duke of Bronte and Vice Admiral of the White. A Google search on ‘Trafalgar Night Dinners’ shows more than 355,000 hits. It reveals commemorative events in every part of the globe at both Naval and civilian establishments, including aboard HMS Victory herself, now on display to the public in London.

Here on Anguilla, a Trafalgar Night Dinner was held at the Legg Residence both on the 200th anniversary in 2005, an anniversary which saw the White Ensign flying from the mast at Government House, and in this year, 2007. After dinner guests enjoyed an audio visual presentation, accompanied by stirring music by the Royal Marines Band, depicting the events leading up to the battle and the decisive moments on that fateful day.

For more information about Horatio Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar, these websites are particularly useful:
http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/visit_see_nelsonfaq.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/nelson_horatio.shtml
http://www.nelsonsnavy.co.uk/battle-of-trafalgar.html

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