It is difficult to imagine a naval battle more thoroughly examined than Trafalgar. The engagement of 21 October 1805 has generated an enormous body of literature, from detailed studies of the battle to biographies of the man whose death has become almost inseparable from the victory itself. The broad outline remains familiar: the combined Franco-Spanish fleet is brought to a fleet action off Cape Trafalgar, where Nelson divides his force into two columns and breaks the enemy line; the British then capture or destroy a substantial proportion of the opposing fleet and, in the process, lose their commander. It is, therefore, a reasonable question to ask what another book about Trafalgar can add.
Paul O’Keeffe has chosen not to compete directly with the established histories. Instead, he concentrates on the human experience of the battle and, particularly, what happened afterwards. His Trafalgar begins with the approach of the British fleet, and follows events throughout the battle, the violent storm that followed, the fate of the surviving ships and crews, the voyage of the Pickle to carry the news of the battle, Horatio Nelson’s funeral, and, of course, the subsequent creation of Trafalgar’s public memory. The publisher describes it as a history concerned with the ‘human cost of war’, and this is undoubtedly the book’s defining characteristic.
There is considerable merit in this approach. Indeed, one of the most welcome aspects of the book is the extent to which O’Keeffe incorporates social history into a subject that has so often been dominated by admirals, captains, and tactical manoeuvres. Trafalgar was not simply an encounter between two fleets. It involved thousands of individuals whose experiences of the battle varied enormously according to rank, position, and circumstance. The ordinary seaman, the marine, the midshipman, the gunner, and the officer all experienced the same battle, but in very different ways, and O’Keeffe is at his best when he allows these individual experiences to come to the fore.
Life and death