Looking at the modern history of the world, it is not difficult to find that no country at that time attached more importance to the sea than Britain, and no country used the ocean to surpass Britain. Although Spain, the Netherlands and other countries have become rich and wealthy through the sea, and even once ranked at the forefront of the world's great powers, their purpose is not to compete for world hegemony, they want to reach the East full of gold and spices, and meet the needs of the nobles by obtaining a large number of gold, spices and other luxury goods. The Netherlands is known as the coachman of the sea, Spain once established the first country through the sea known as the "Empire of the Sun Never Sets", but they did not make good use of the sea, so that they handed over the hegemony to others, and they have not eased up, especially Spain, once a first-class country has now completely fallen into the third class.
And the island country of Britain, through its powerful naval fleet and heroic Marines, can be described as invincible on the sea, people block killing, Buddha blocks the killing of Buddha, wearing that gorgeous uniform almost conquered the world. With countless resources from the colonies, armed armies and a thriving economy, Britain quickly became the world's hegemon in recent history, with a quarter of the world's population under his rule.
The British economist Jevons described it this way in 1865: The plains of North America and Russia are our corn fields, Canada and the Baltic Sea are our forest areas, Australia is our pasture, Peru is our silver mine, South Africa and Australia are our gold mines, India and China are our tea plantations, the East Indies are our sugar cane, coffee, and spice plantations, and the southern United States is our cotton plantations."
Nelson
All of this, except for the martyrs who fought for it, is inseparable from a man: Nelson.
Horatio Nelson was the most famous admiral and military figure of the British Sailing Age. He was born on 29 September 1758 in the village of Burnham Sopo, Norfolk, England, the year in which the British government approved the construction of the battleship Victory. Nelson was the third of eight children, and his mother died when he was 9 years old, and the extended family was carried by his father.
At the age of 12, he joined the Royal Navy as a naval cadet and worked as an intern on the ship where his uncle, Sacklin, was captain. He sailed with the ship and gained a lot of experience in ship driving and living at sea. Shakerin used his influence to get Nelson to the Carcass and take part in an Arctic expedition with him, giving the 14-year-old Nelson experience navigating the Ice Sea.
With Schacklin's promotion to NC Of the Royal Navy, his influence accelerated Nelson's promotion in the Navy, nelson was studious and quickly acquired many maritime skills, becoming an experienced and capable young officer.
In 1778, Schacklin died, and the following year Nelson was appointed captain of the battleship USS Huntingbrook. Admiral Hood helped Nelson in his military career by appointing Nelson as captain of the Alemarle and taking the young Prince William (later King William IV) to the West Indies.
In 1789, the French Revolution brought the focus to the European continent. Nelson had always been sympathetic to the plight of farmers in his hometown. As the threat of war escalated, Nelson was given command of the Agamemnon and later to chatham.
In January 1793, Louis XVI was executed, which made war inevitable.
In 1794, Nelson was busy with the blockade and siege of Toulon. During the siege of Calvi in Corsica, a shell hit him in front of him, and flying shrapnel and rubble blinded him in the right eye. Soon, Vice Admiral Hotham succeeded Hood as commander of the Mediterranean Fleet. The Agamemnon took part in the battle against the French, and Nelson captured the caira. But he did not comply with Hotham's orders and requested further action, but Hotham was content with the status quo and did not take his advice. Before the Mediterranean Fleet was assigned to Admiral Jervis, Nelson carried out Hotham's orders to blockade the southern coast of France.
Jervis was flexible in command, allowing his men to take some actions on their own, depending on the situation, to make his men more proactive. Jervis was a disciplined man who never procrastinated and showed no mercy to incompetent subordinates. He took note of Nelson's enthusiasm and used his influence to get Nelson to advance to brigadier general so that Nelson could command an independent small squadron.
On 14 February 1797, the British Mediterranean Fleet (15 capital ships) met the Spanish Fleet (27 capital ships) at Cape Saint Vincent in the Atlantic Ocean for a fierce battle (The Battle of Cape Saint Vincent). In this battle, Nelson acted decisively, disobeying Jervis's orders, breaking out of his formation and rushing to the Spanish fleet, blocking its way, and bravely approaching the enemy ship with his ships, twice leading his troops to rush to the enemy ships to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. Nelson's actions played a decisive role in the final victory of the British fleet. After the war, Nelson was promoted to rear admiral and received the title of Lord.
In July 1797, during the British Navy's attack on the Spanish Canary Islands, Nelson again led his ships into a battle with the enemy ships, and he and his men fought the enemy with swords. On the first day of the battle, nelson's lieutenants used their bodies to block two swords for him, which made him safe. But he was hit in the right elbow by a stray bullet during the fighting the next day, resulting in amputation of his right arm. The Battle of the Canary Islands not only proved Nelson's bravery and tenacity once again, but also demonstrated the incomparable loyalty of his men to him, who were willing to give their lives for Nelson.
In early 1798, after his recovery, Nelson served as commander of the Mediterranean Squadron.
In fact, as long as Nelson did not encounter in the naval battle, it seems that the mind can not be regarded as very shrewd, in 1798, Napoleon's crusade to Egypt, Nelson led the ship to intercept, he suffered a lot. First of all, he arrived in Toulon too late, and Napoleon's transport ships were already running out of sight. This can also be regarded as a matter of mischief, but his next judgment is outrageous, the French have been promoting that Toulon's troops are the left-wing corps that landed in Britain, Nelson believed it, and the whole army turned the rudder to the west and pounced on Gibraltar, the throat of the Mediterranean Sea leading to the Atlantic.
At this time, Napoleon was breaking the waves and heading south. It wasn't until Nelson learned from a few American merchants that Napoleon had taken Malta that he quickly turned around and hurried back, by which time Napoleon's slow fleet had won a month. Still hesitant, Nelson sent a ship to Egypt to reconnoiter, but the results of the reconnaissance were ineffective, and he even had a whimsical judgment that Napoleon's target was Turkey, and that Napoleon had already taken Cairo at the time of his armed march.
Fortunately, although Napoleon's army was victorious, Nelson still found face. The French fleet at Aboukir Bay was completely destroyed by him on 1 August, and the troops were trapped in Egypt.
In the Battle of Aboukir, the French army was very afraid of him, so he hid in the harbor and lined up in a long snake array to anchor the battle, only to find that there was a gap of less than 100 meters between the French first ship and the coast, and he immediately sent half of his troops to drill into this gap and attack the French army from the opposite side.
By the time he returned home in 1799, only 2 small ships remained of the 400 warships, suffering heavy casualties, and his plans to invade India were blocked.
After this battle Nelson was made a Baron of the Nile.
At the end of 1800, Tsarist Russia, Sweden and Denmark formed an armed neutral alliance against Britain. To dismantle them, in March 1801, Admiral Parker led a fleet of 53 warships into the Oresund. On 2 April of the same year, Nelson led a squadron to attack the Danish fleet. Early in the battle, due to the organized resistance of the Danish fleet, the British army was severely damaged, and Parker ordered him to fight, but Nelson ignored it and continued to attack, and under the heavy blows of the British warships, the Danish fleet suffered heavy losses and was forced to surrender. Nelson took advantage of the victory to pursue, driving the Swedish and Russian fleets away. Completely destroyed the Triple Alliance. Nelson was awarded the Viscount for his merits and succeeded Parker as commander of the Baltic Fleet.
In May 1805, Nelson became commander of the Mediterranean Fleet against the Combined Franco-Spanish Fleet. But he was confused again. At that time, Napoleon was going to land in England, but also sent a squadron to carry out a pretense, Nelson immediately followed the atlantic ocean straight to the Americas, if it were not for The Wernav in the Mediterranean Sea was encountering a storm can not get out of the port, and when Nelson found out that he was only afraid that the Bank of England had changed its owner, it would not be able to talk about the Battle of Trafalgar, which made him famous.
On 19 October 1805, the combined Franco-Spanish fleet sailed out of the Spanish port of Cadiz in an attempt to travel to the Mediterranean Sea via the Strait of Gibraltar in conjunction with Napoleon's military campaign in Italy. By this time, Nelson was already waiting in the waters of Trafalgar west of Cadiz. On October 21, the Battle of Trafalgar, the largest naval battle of the 19th century, began.
Naval Battle of Trafalgar
The combined Franco-Spanish fleet had 33 warships and the British fleet had 27 warships. The Mediterranean Fleet under his command abandoned the traditional tactics of line-line warfare and adopted a mobile tactic interspersed with detachments (known as the "Nelson Method"). The battle ended at about 4 p.m., and the British fleet won.
Throughout the battle, the British lost 449 dead and 1214 wounded. The French suffered 3,373 casualties and 1,155 wounded. The Spanish army killed 1,022 and wounded 1,383. In total, the combined fleet was captured between three or four thousand men. Wounded, killed, and captured, 14,000 people were wounded. Of the 33 battleships of the combined French and Spanish fleet, 12 were captured, 7 were completely incapacitated, 1 was on fire, 9 were fleeing to Cadiz and 4 to Gibraltar. As night drew to a close, the storm raged, and for four days in a row, most of the wounded ships sank automatically, including all the British trophies, with the exception of 4. Throughout the battle and in the midst of the storm, the British did not lose a single ship.
After the Battle of Trafalgar, the first words of the victorious British officer to the Admiralty were: "Sir, we have won the battle against Trafalgar, but we have lost Lord Nelson." ”
Nelson's death
During his 35-year naval career, Nelson had long been adrift on the oceans, fighting more than a hundred battles, large and small. He fought bravely and tenaciously, dared to break old dogmas militarily, broke through traditional strategic and tactical principles, and was good at exerting originality and initiative in battle, which is what he called "Nelson style". That is to say, the navy is regarded as an independent branch of the army, and only by annihilating the enemy ship, sinking it or capturing it can it really complete the task.
The British Navy reached its peak for the first time in the Nelson era. At that time, the British Navy had more than 900 large and small ships, a total tonnage of 860,990 tons, 27,800 cannons, a total of 151572 people, was the largest navy in the world at that time, far more than the second French navy and the third Spanish navy combined. Inheriting the "Nelson spirit", the British stood on the top of the world for the first time.