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The Trafalgar Festival is underway! Four months packed with events up and down the country began spectacularly on 28 June with the International Fleet Review and culminate in October with the Trafalgar Weekend for which more than a thousand events have now been registered.
For Nelson, 200 years ago, there was not the same sense of anticipation, excitement or certainty. For two years he had been trying to bring the French fleet and subsequently the Combined Fleet of France and Spain to action in order to secure a crushing victory. In July 1805 he was down hearted. ‘Cape Spartel in sight, but no French Fleet nor any information about them: how sorrowful this makes me.’ he wrote after his 3,459-mile dash across the Atlantic and back. His efforts had once again been frustrated. The Great Chase after Villeneuve ‘as far as Trinidad’ and back had ended without a battle. Nevertheless, in a dispatch sent by the fast brig Curieux under the command of Captain George Bettesworth, who arrived at the Admiralty on 8 July, he had given the astute Lord Barham, First Lord of the Admiralty, time to issue a decisive order. Barham instructed Admiral Sir Robert Calder to raise his blockade of Ferrol and to cruise between Ushant and Cape Finisterre, in order to strengthen the defence of the south western approaches to the English Channel.
