Two hundred and twelve years ago, off the southwest coast of the Iberian Peninsula, England inflicted a decisive defeat on the combined forces of France and Spain, vanishing Napoleon’s dreams of dominating the British islands and exalting a spectacular rise that had been lasting for over a century. The battle of Trafalgar is indissolubly tied to the name of Horatio Nelson, the legendary British vice admiral who routed Villeneuve’s and Gravina’s fleet in what is considered to be one of the major military endeavour in History, shortly before being shot dead by a French marksman. The British triumph was the result of a connection in many ways unrepeatable. On the one hand, the tactical genius and charisma of a hero like Nelson. On the other, the unmatched superiority of the British crews, the result of the experience accumulated in the years spent uninterruptedly at sea since the outbreak of the hostilities with Revolutionary France in 1792–3. Trafalgar opened a long historical phase that lasted for over a century when no other great power was able to accumulate a naval power to compete with the British’s, which in the meantime had become the irresistible guardian of London’s global empire.
