Talk:Battle of Trafalgar

Germany?
''With no sign of Villeneuve's fleet, on 25 August, the three French army corps' invasion force near Boulogne broke camp and marched into Germany, where it was later engaged. This ended the immediate threat of invasion.[21][22]''

This is impossible, Germany did not exist before 1871! Let's not rewrite history. Mjroots (talk) 04:23, 21 October 2022 (UTC)


 * They are talking about the geographical Germany, not the political Germany. The same principle applies to Italy. 2A02:C7C:59DD:E900:6121:7825:5AE4:35CC (talk) 19:35, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Consequences
I’ve deleted some speculation in the consequences section (here): I don’t know if it’s been interpolated into some quoted material, or if it is from the source quoted. If it’s someone’s opinion, its bollocks; if it is from the source quoted then I’d question the that person’s competence to talk about the subject. To go from 'having produced a fleet of 80 ships by 1814' to 'given a few more years they would have 150' is simply incompetent in the maths department. If it takes ten years to produce up to 80 ships, it will take at least another ten to produce 70 more, by which time what state would the first 80 be in? There is also a suggestion the ships built were of poor quality (using inferior wood, etc) and a quick review of those built in this period (the Ocean, Bucentaure and Temeraire classes) shows most of those that hadn’t been lost had been broken up or hulked by 1820. Anyway, Napoleon’s problem wasn’t ships, it was men to crew them; Britain invested in a strong navy, at the expense of a small army. Napoleon had an army ten times as big as Britain’s; the corollary to that is a small pool of men for a navy. Writers about he period point out that N had stripped his fleet of gunners to provide the army with artillerymen, and was having to fill his ships with landsmen, underlining the fact. Anyway, it isn't just my opinion; here is a discussion on the subject, making similar points. Moonraker12 (talk) 22:27, 29 July 2023 (UTC)


 * If it is published opinion, then it probably fall to WP:VNOT. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:38, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Battle plans
I've uploaded these copyright-free maps to Commons. I'll leave it to the regulars here to decide whether either, or both, will be useful in the article. The first shows the iconic battle plan, and is imho rather beautiful, and an improvement on the plan currently in the Combat section. The second is necessarily somewhat fanciful, the engraver can't have known the precise disposition of all the ships, but he may have known as much as anyone else. Maproom (talk) 14:29, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

name of the battle
If the battle really occurred in the location given, and I believe it did, then I have to wonder why it is not called the Battle of Cala Del Aceite. That seems closer than Cape Trafalgar.

Tupelo the typo fixer (talk) 11:34, 1 March 2024 (UTC)