![]() But their opponents were skilled and committed, the American ships innovatively designed and strong because of their costly, difficult live oak construction. Faced with this young pretender, defeat was unthinkable. Her fledgling navy was small and untested and Royal Navy officers were confident of success, arrogant. Not, this time, a traditional European Great Power, but a challenger from the new world: the United States of America. And yet, just seven years after Nelson’s final, fatal victory, British ships were at war with a new enemy. The global power of the Royal Navy was unlike anything the world had ever seen before. Her bases were far-flung, strategically located, and unassailable she sailed out of Chatham, Sheerness, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Kinsale, Gibraltar, Port Mahon, Malta, Halifax, Bermuda, Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, Capetown, Bombay, Calcutta, Trincomalee, Jakarta, Pelu Pelang and New South Wales. After Trafalgar, Britain’s fleets held sway over the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Caribbean, the North Sea, the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Her naval dominance over the century that followed was absolute. ![]() The Battle of Trafalgar, as it came to be known, crowned the Royal Navy as undisputed sovereign of the world’s oceans. ![]() On October 21st, 1805, an English fleet commanded by Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson hunted down and annihilated the combined fleets of France and Spain in an immense sea battle off Cape Trafalgar, near the Spanish coast. ![]()
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