Much to the delight, no doubt, of its Australian owner.
Was it there that Nelson said, “No man can do wrong who lays his ship against that of the enemy.”?
Having seen the link; was the 18 century battle flag white with the union jack in the upper right field as it is today?
I think so. And also, of course, the more famous “England expects that every man will do his duty”
Yes - it was part of his memorandum to his captains, quoted in part in this book:
I think you mean the ensigns used by the Royal Navy?
If so, no. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Royal Navy was divided into three squadrons, distinguished by colour: the White, Red and Blue. Each squadron had its own ensign: blue, red or white, with the Union flag in the upper left canton. Admirals were referred to by their colour, to show their rank.
In 1864, the Royal Navy was re-organized, and abandoned the colours and the squadrons. The red ensign was assigned to civil ships, and the blue to naval reserve and naval auxiliary vessels and some other vessels. The current white ensign, with the Union flag as a canton and St George’s cross, was adopted by the navy as a whole. See the wiki article on British ensigns.
Thanks!
That was more an acknowledgement that British gunnery abilities were in fact pretty poor, and that closing the range quickly would negate this. A few captains, like Broke of the Shannon, did give weight to the subject and approached it on a scientific basis.
More than that, I think, it was an exhortation to eschew the inconclusive tactic of standing off at long range, trading cannon fire, that had produced so many drawn sea battles in the preceding centuries. As ships gradually accumulated damage, one side could decide it had had enough and disengage to limit its losses. Running away to prevent a decisive victory had become a constant pattern in war at sea, and Nelson sought to break that pattern every way he could.
Nelson wanted his captains to be aggressive, go in close, and deliver damage so quickly that opposing vessels would be too damaged to flee by the time their captains could realize it and disengage. This was how he hoped to exploit his larger strategy of “breaking the line from windward.” The quoted passage contains the telltale phrase “before the Van of the Enemy could succour their Rear,” a reference to his hope that he could isolate a section of the enemy line and devastate it before the front of the line could complete a ponderous turn and come back to help (and also so quickly that flight by the ships in the isolated section was impossible – he was willing to live with the front part of the enemy fleet fleeing and even escaping if he could crush, not just brush, a sizable portion of the overall fleet).
His most pressing worries before the battle were that his ships might be dismasted or crippled during the run in to break the line, and that his captains might not grasp the urgency of doubling and tripling up on the ships isolated and inflicting crippling damage quickly. To that end, he spent a lot of time talking with his captains, exhorting them, and trying to covey his aggressive intentions. The famous quote “no Captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an Enemy” is the culminating pre-game reminder of the necessity of this aggressive approach to the success of the entire plan.
Another point, yesterday (October 21) was the anniversary of Trafalgar.
Admiral Collingwood, Nelson’s second-in-command, was a no-nonsense guy, and it is said that his response to Nelson’s famous “England expects” signal was to mutter “I do wish Nelson would stop signaling. We know well enough what to do,” while the crew cheered.
Cool.
Say what? British naval gunnery was in fact generally superior to the French and Spanish, on account of them actually being able to practice instead of constantly being blockaded into port. Three RN volleys to the enemy’s two was the expectation, iirc. The point of pairing off to duke it out was that the RN ship would be expected to pretty much gut its counterpart with point blank volleys, the gunnery advantage multiplying itself as enemy cannons would be knocked out of service.
The other aspect of this is that RN doctrine was to shoot low, aiming to damage the hull, kill gunnery crew, and sink the ship, while French doctrine was to shoot high, to disable the ship by shooting off masts, yardarms, etc, leaving an intact hull which could be captured. By closing quickly the RN could take the French off their gameplan.
I suspect that is what Hornblower and Aubrey would like us to believe. 
Although given the explanation of Nelson’s plan, it is pretty good “don’t screw around” advice.
Against mediocre opponents without much sea-time they got by. Faced with the US Navy a few years later their deficiencies were exposed for those who had the wit to see, and bright spots like the Shannon-Chesapeake engagement were few. It was fortunate that the Americans had so few ships of the line - they would have been overwhelmed by numbers had the war gone on.
The instructions also gave captains cover from a possible court-martial for taking the risk of laying alongside. If the battle had gone badly and there was an inclination to scapegoat aggressive captains, they would have the defence of following Admiral Nelson’s orders.
“Don’t give up the ship!”
Yes, but the American frigates overmatched the British frigates both in number of guns and weight of shot while still being faster and more nimble due to design innovations by Joshua Humphreys. You could argue that british frigates were undone more by obsolete technology than lack of gunnery skill.
Even so, the American frigate were not ships-of-the-line. There were single decker, 44 gun super frigates. British 74’s would have made mincemeat of them.
The flag still smells of gunpowder?? :eek:
That’s awesome.
(and I didn’t realize there were variant spellings of “artifact”.)
Surely the ensign on display on HMS Victory is the battle ensign of Trafalgar so that makes more than one surviving flag.
Collingwood doesn’t quite get the credit he deserves for the part he played at Trafalgar. After all, he was in charge of the fleet following Nelson’s demise.
(Several weeks ago I stayed in his old house, now a hotel, at Es Castell, Menorca.)