Battle of Trafalgar

October 21, 1805

Off Cape Trafalgar, Horatio Nelson broke the combined Franco-Spanish fleet in an afternoon and died in the cockpit of HMS Victory with news of his victory whispered in his ear. Britain's century at sea was secured; Napoleon's invasion of England, already cancelled, became forever impossible. Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square, unveiled forty years later, gave London its most famous monument and the Royal Navy its eternal saint.