Vintagebooklvr’s Reviews > Nelson and Napoleon: The Long Haul to Trafalgar > Status Update

Nelson's portrait became the only instantly recognizable military hero in British history. He had challenged the gods.

What happened to Nelson's plan? British had followed Nelson's plan as best they could and had burst through, but into an odd, defensive double-strength crescent and then themselves been surrounded and given a terrible pasting by an enemy that was supposed to be inexpert and cowardly.

Lee says we have no proof of the French admiral's tactics but knew he anticipated Nelson's. There is no footnote to substantiate this from another source. Earlier he proposed this because Villeneuve was afraid of Nelson, he knew his mind well, so must have figured out Nelson's tactics. That is not proof he knew Nelson's tactics. That is a big assumption, not fact.

Nelson's plan he dreamed up on paper when he last visited England didn't work as well as he hoped. In part because the French fleet was not in the straight line that was usual for battle & because of the wind wasn't able to achieve speed he hoped to use to crash through line.

Lee speculates that the French admiral had figured out Nelson's new tactics for battle based on the fact he was so in awe of Nelson, might know Nelson's way of thinking, and figured out the line-of-battle concept was outdated (even though that is the way it had been done for decades). There is no basis for this conjecture.

The columns would pierce the enemy lines, split them into at least 3 groups and because the front of the column could be through before the enemy knew what was happening, the French would be fired upon from both sides. Firing into the hull of the enemy reduced chances of hitting your own with friendly fire.

Nelson's idea was to turn his fleet 90 degrees. It would break into 3 columns. 2 would be the main ships of the line. Each column would have 16 ships. The third column would be an advance squadron. This would be half the size, faster and smaller. They would have flexible tactics. If a big ship needed reinforcing they could help.

Nelson saw the weakness in line of battle campaigns as being that things could come to a standstill or captains could fail to see the signals that changed the direction of the conflict during the confusion of battle.