October 21 is Trafalgar Day, according to an old sea salt friend and reader. It is a celebration of the victory won by the (British) Royal Navy over the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The battle was the most decisive British naval victory of the war. Twenty-seven British ships of the line led by Admiral Lord Nelson aboard HMS Victory defeated thirty-three French and Spanish ships of the line under French Admiral Pierre Villeneuve off the south-west coast of Spain, just west of Cape Trafalgar. The Franco-Spanish fleet lost twenty-two ships, without a single British vessel being lost. The celebration, however, is not so much about a victory over Spain or France, which had been taken over by Napoleon (see a related item here) but rather of the fact that the battle served to halt Napoleon from taking over Europe and a good part of America.
