HMS Victory

The Royal Navy's defining moment came at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Thirty-three British ships under Admiral Horatio Nelson faced 41 ships of the combined French and Spanish navies off the southwest coast of Spain. Nelson shunned conventional naval tactics, which dictated lining your fleet up oppose the enemy and then pound them into submission. Instead, he divided his ships into two lines and drove them through the opposition at right angles in a manoeuvre known as crossing the T. It...