Battle of Trafalgar 1805
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 21 October 1805 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1805 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | 19th century (1800–1913) | derived from year |
| Nearest landmass | At sea (nearest continent: Europe) | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Trafalgar Campaign | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | First French Empire, Kingdom of Spain, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 36.2500, -6.2000 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Battle of Trafalgar was a fleet action which took place on 21 October 1805 between the Royal Navy and a combined fleet of the French and Spanish navies during the War of the Third Coalition. As part of Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom, the French and Spanish navies planned to take control of the English Channel and provide the French invasion army with safe passage to Britain. The allied fleet, under the command of French Vice-admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, sailed from the port of Cádiz in southern Spain on 18 October 1805. It encountered a British fleet under Vice-Admiral of the White Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson in the Atlantic Ocean along the southwest coast of Spain off Cape Trafalgar.
Nelson's fleet was outnumbered, having only 27 ships of the line to the 33 of Villeneuve's fleet, which included the largest warship in either fleet, the Spanish ship of the line Santísima Trinidad. To address this imbalance, Nelson sailed his fleet directly at the allied battle line's flank in two columns, hoping to break the line into pieces. Villeneuve had worried that Nelson might attempt this tactic, but for various reasons, failed to prepare for it. The crews of the French and Spanish ships were also inexperienced and poorly trained.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Trafalgar (revision 1380737399), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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Other battles of the Trafalgar Campaign
Browse more: battles at sea · Europe · 19th century battles