- 2 days ago
Documentary, BBC Empire of the Seas S01E03 How the Navy Forged the Modern World
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00One April morning in 1771, a 12-year-old boy was rowed along the River Medway in Chatham,
00:12Kent, to begin a new life as a midshipman in the Royal Navy.
00:16In the waters all around him, the great warships of the Navy lay at anchor.
00:25Having won a long and vicious global conflict with France, the Seven Years' War, Britain
00:33was at peace and much of her mighty fleet was now mothballed, tied up in port.
00:41As the boy passed the mighty HMS victory, he would have looked up and seen that her decks
00:46were covered and her gun ports were tightly shut.
00:49Little can he ever have imagined that their fates would one day collide.
00:53Thirty-four years later, he would stand on the quarter-deck of the victory, commanding
00:58the fleet in the most epic naval battle in British history, Trafalgar.
01:09The boy's name was Horatio Nelson, and within his lifetime, Britain would construct the most
01:15powerful maritime fighting force in history.
01:23Far more than just a wooden fleet, the Navy was a national enterprise.
01:30Its voracious demand for ships fuelled the Industrial Revolution, while funding it drove
01:35to the war.
01:36At sea, its highly trained crews and ambitious officers laid claim to a burgeoning empire,
01:49and pushed back the horizons of the known world.
01:54But there would be a huge price to pay for this global sea power.
01:58Britain and her navy would soon be dragged into the greatest sequence of wars the nation
02:03had ever seen.
02:05They would be a fight for Britain's security, her way of life, her very identity, a colossal
02:11struggle against her old enemy, France.
02:15And the outcome would be decided out here, at sea.
02:44A year before the young Nelson began his career at sea, a Royal Navy ship was sailing deep
02:49in the South Pacific Ocean, 12,000 miles from home.
02:57The skies had cleared after heavy storms, and to the west, high cliffs emerged through
03:02the cloud.
03:08The ship's captain decided to name this uncharted piece of land, Cape Howe, in honour of one
03:14of the Navy's finest sailors.
03:17The captain made a precise note of Cape Howe's coordinates in his private journal, and then
03:22continued north along this unknown coastline.
03:30The date was the 20th of April, 1770.
03:33The ship was called the Endeavour.
03:35Her commander was James Cook.
03:40The son of a humble Scottish labourer, Cook had worked his way up through the Navy's ranks
03:45to become one of the service's most respected navigators and cartographers.
03:50His reward was command of a high-profile mission, not to fight, but to explore.
04:01Backed by the Royal Society, the Admiralty drew up plans for a scientific expedition to the
04:06Pacific.
04:07In 1768, Cook set off from Plymouth with a crew of 70, including artists, astronomers,
04:22and botanists.
04:23They sailed across the Atlantic, through the treacherous waters around Cape Horn, and then
04:28across the Pacific to begin observations in Tahiti.
04:33Then they turned south into uncharted seas.
04:43Cook obsessively logged the Endeavour's speed, course, and position, so that future naval
04:48crews could retrace his route precisely.
04:52Missions like this were equipped with the latest navigational technologies, including
04:58a new British invention to measure latitude, which is still in use today.
05:03With a sextant.
05:05Every day at noon, the ship's officers would line up here on the rail of the quartertec with
05:09their sextants to measure the angle between the sun and the horizon.
05:14Now this helped them to fix the distance that the ship was north or south of the equator.
05:19Very sophisticated piece of kit, very hard to use though, particularly because the deck
05:23was always rolling around.
05:24It was very difficult to fix the sun precisely.
05:33The Navy also led a grand experiment with cutting edge precision clocks, known as chronometers.
05:40Cook had gone to pioneer their use to measure a ship's longitude.
05:45The Navy was mastering the sea, not through cannon fire, but by harnessing innovative science
05:51and technology.
05:57As they journeyed further into the unknown, the Endeavour's civilian crew documented more
06:01than a thousand new animal and plant varieties.
06:06And they painted vivid pictures of local peoples and customs.
06:14But for the Admiralty, Cook's expedition was not simply to satisfy the Royal Society's thirst
06:19for knowledge.
06:20While the desire to collect scientific data was real enough, Cook also had a set of secret
06:26instructions.
06:27They told him to take possession of convenient situations in the name of the King of Great
06:32Britain.
06:34Cook was going to claim undiscovered lands for the British.
06:38This shows that the mission was as political as it was scientific.
06:41Cook was going to extend British influence to the very furthest corners of the globe.
06:46In the 18th century, land was power, a source of new markets with new products to exploit.
07:01And there was fierce competition for it.
07:05The French Foreign Minister condemned Britain's imperial project.
07:09Britain, he said, was a restless and greedy nation.
07:15As Cook crossed the Pacific, the French explorer Louis de Bougainville was also circumnavigating
07:21the globe.
07:23It was a perfect excuse to claim lands for his king.
07:28Bougainville wanted to stop what he described as Britain's project of universal monarchy.
07:35We must anticipate them, he cried.
07:37The race for global supremacy was on.
07:44Rougainville and Cook were searching for a mythical southern continent.
08:02Another new world of riches believed to exist deep in the southern ocean.
08:07So when Captain Cook's lookout spotted land at Cape Howe that April evening in 1770, the
08:13stakes couldn't have been higher.
08:17Cook followed the coastline until his lookouts spotted beautiful natural harbour.
08:25When they sailed into it, the sea was full of stingrays and he called it Stingray Cove.
08:30But later, after he'd been ashore and seen the bewildering variety of plants there, he renamed
08:37it Botany Bay.
08:38Little did he know it at the time, this wasn't just some insignificant South Pacific island,
08:45this was Australia.
08:51Cook claimed this new land for his king.
08:56The navy he sailed with had grown beyond its traditional role as a fighting force.
09:02It had become a vehicle of empire building, projecting British power, driving commerce and conquest
09:10to the far side of the world.
09:21Captain Cook drew up more than 40 maps and surveys as he sailed across the South Pacific.
09:27Today they're held at the British Library in London.
09:32This is a collection of sketches and charts actually made by James Cook as he led the crew
09:38of the Endeavour on that extraordinary voyage of discovery.
09:42This one shows the track of the Endeavour through the South Pacific, this dotted line here.
09:47And then it shows them arriving at the east coast of Australia here where he went on to chart
09:522,000 miles of that coastline, naming the key points and marking out navigational hazards.
09:58And he's written probably quite proudly here, discovered in 1770.
10:05Previous to his voyage, much of this space here just would have been blank.
10:09But now he's sailing through it, filling in the gaps.
10:12What I find so fascinating about the navy in this period is how these expeditions were unlocking the secrets of the globe.
10:20This age of naval exploration may not have involved spectacular battles, but its impact was every bit as significant,
10:33both on the navy's own prestige and Britain's international standing.
10:37As soon as Cook got home, the British government published these charts to prove that his discoveries were genuine.
10:47But it was about much more than geography, it was about politics.
10:51Both the British government and Cook were laying claim to this coast of Australia,
10:55which Cook even called New South Wales.
10:57And if you look at the other names he's choosing, they're ostentatiously patriotic.
11:02Particularly this one, Cape St George. I mean, you can't get more British than that.
11:06Australia would prove one of Britain's most valuable colonies.
11:22English speaking, cricket playing, British in institution and law.
11:28Yet, for the personalities and skills of the crews involved, it could all have been very different.
11:35One year before Cook sighted Australia, Louis de Bougainville had reached the Great Barrier Reef.
11:43But the French explorer was deterred by the dangerous shallow waters.
11:47By 1771, goods from her colonies were pouring into Britain.
12:00Dockside, merchant ships unloaded precious hardwoods from North America,
12:05salted fish from Canada, exotic silks and spices from India.
12:10The empire had never been so rich or so extensive, and it was the Navy's job to keep it that way.
12:21This was the inheritance of young sailors like Horatio Nelson.
12:25One of hundreds of midshipmen, trainee officers, being toughened up to do their duty at sea.
12:32When I was one, I served myself the day I went to sea.
12:37I jumped the board of Irish and they wrapped the tips of me.
12:40But now it's been that we're cool and I can't tell the Irish to see.
12:43This is, this is, stop asking, this is.
12:49Just as Nelson would have done more than 200 years ago,
12:52these cadets aboard the training ship Royalist
12:55are being taught the dangerous and demanding arts of tall ship sailing.
12:59What these guys are learning here is that in order to make this ship work safely and efficiently,
13:05you've got to work as a team and you've got to obey orders.
13:08Everything has a set procedure.
13:14The Royal Navy was a meritocracy.
13:17The sea was an unforgiving master,
13:20and to get promoted up through the ranks,
13:22you had to prove that you could sail and fight.
13:25Nelson initially showed little sign of such promise.
13:29The captain of his first warship asked,
13:32what had poor Horace done, who is so weak,
13:35that he above all the rest should be sent to rough it out at sea?
13:42Nelson was far from alone.
13:44Recruits as young as ten were sent to sea for months at a time,
13:48surrounded by the same faces, confined within the same wooden walls.
13:52It was as much a psychological test as a physical one.
13:57The Navy's solution to this was to insist on a strict routine,
14:02the same no matter what ship you're on,
14:04no matter where you were in the world.
14:06The young men would have learned self-reliance
14:08and to obey orders in order to overcome the terror and the tedium of being at sea.
14:13It was often a life of hard labour, of lifting, mending sails and rigging,
14:23carrying cannonballs and gunpowder.
14:25Yet it was also, for many young officers, a rare chance to get an education.
14:31The rigours of climbing aloft were interspersed with traditional school lessons,
14:36with emphasis on the complex mathematics and trigonometry required for navigation.
14:45Through this regime, the Navy turned children like Nelson
14:48from unpromising raw recruits into experienced fighting men.
14:53Nelson himself remembered,
14:55Thus, by degrees, I became a good pilot and confident of myself.
15:05By the age of just 19, when he became a lieutenant,
15:09Nelson had travelled over 45,000 miles around the world.
15:15Like thousands of other young boys,
15:18Nelson was seeing the sheer scale of Britain's global ambition at first hand
15:22and visiting her growing empire.
15:26He'd been down into the Southern Oceans,
15:28rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian Ocean.
15:31He almost died of malaria in Bombay,
15:33helping safeguard British trading interests in the East.
15:37And he'd even fought pirates in the Caribbean.
15:40Nelson had joined the ranks of a highly professional force,
15:53sailors filled, as he said, with ardent ambition.
15:58They were a band of brothers,
16:00dedicated to the projection of British power on a world stage.
16:10The Navy's increasing global reach changed how Britain saw the world,
16:19and their place within it.
16:22In 1768, the Royal Academy of Arts was established in central London.
16:29It was an opportunity seized upon by a canny admiralty.
16:33They put on display paintings of naval missions,
16:36some of which are held today at the National Maritime Museum.
16:41The Admiralty collection includes works by Captain Cook's onboard artist,
16:45William Hodges.
16:48His paintings depicted Britain's growing empire.
16:53Britain was naming and mapping the world.
16:56Now, by capturing it on canvas,
16:58in many ways she was claiming it as well.
17:01The people who saw these paintings were left with a very simple and immediate message,
17:06that Britain didn't just rule the world's oceans, but the world itself.
17:18Visitors to the exhibitions could furnish their own homes with copies of these images,
17:23as print shops opened up in the streets around the Royal Academy.
17:27Marine art had never been so popular.
17:32This is a view of Portsmouth Harbour, painted in 1770 by Dominic Sayers.
17:38It's dominated by this fantastic ship of the line,
17:41a battleship anchored here in the middle,
17:43with its two rows of camons run out, hatches open,
17:47and the captain on the stern perhaps talking to the first lieutenant.
17:50And there's some figures here in the foreground,
17:52an unfeasibly smart-looking seaman here,
17:55perhaps in his Sunday rig,
17:57talking to a naval officer and two marine officers here,
18:00lounging around on some cannon.
18:05This, then, is how the Admiralty wanted the British to see their navy,
18:09ordered, well-equipped, ready for any eventuality.
18:13But these images disguised an extraordinary truth,
18:18that a navy that wasn't fighting risked falling into neglect and disrepair.
18:25After a decade of peace,
18:27British naval expenditure was at less than a quarter of its wartime levels,
18:32and much of the fleet was mothballed or simply tied up in port.
18:35One admiral complained that out of 35 ships under his command,
18:40only six were seaworthy.
18:42To make matters worse, across the channel in France,
18:45the king wasn't just painting pretty pictures of his fleet,
18:48he was building an entirely new one.
18:54Louis XVI was determined to end the Royal Navy's preeminence at sea.
19:01He ordered the construction of new docks
19:03and oversaw the completion of 80 new warships.
19:08Ready to pounce,
19:09Louis now waited for the right moment
19:11to deploy his powerful new fleet and ruin Britain.
19:23His opportunity would come from 3,000 miles to the west,
19:27across the Atlantic Ocean,
19:29from within the British Empire.
19:33On the 9th of May, 1768, British customs officials in Boston Harbour
19:50boarded an American merchant ship, the Liberty.
19:53It was carrying a cargo of imported Madeira wine.
19:56The next morning, customs officials inspected the hold of the ship.
20:01They were a little bit suspicious when they discovered
20:04that it contained only a quarter of her total capacity.
20:08They thought that during the night people had been secretly unloading the cargo
20:12to avoid paying customs duties.
20:14They asked the Royal Navy to impound the Liberty.
20:21Working alongside customs officials,
20:23naval ships were enforcing stringent tariffs on American trade.
20:29The revenues raised helped pay for the Royal Navy and for colonial defence.
20:33But the very principle was anathema to the Americans.
20:41The Liberty's owner, John Hancock, was arrested for tax evasion.
20:46He sat in the dock for five months before the case collapsed.
20:50All across the eastern seaboard,
20:55American traders faced what they saw as harassment from an aggressive British fleet.
21:01The Navy, which for centuries had been held up by the British
21:05as the defender of their liberties from foreign tyranny,
21:08was now seen by many in America as a tyrant herself.
21:12It was a perception that was forcing them to reconsider their entire relationship with Britain.
21:22The tension would culminate on 4 July 1776
21:27with the Declaration of American Independence.
21:31Most prominent among the signatures was John Hancock, the owner of the Liberty.
21:38Britain was now at war with her own subjects.
21:42.
21:53Back home, the Navy board went into overdrive
21:55to supply over 100 ships, now fighting a transatlantic war.
22:01But after two years of conflict,
22:04as the new Navy board controller, Charles Middleton,
22:07made his way to work in London's Seething Lane,
22:10The navy was in deep crisis.
22:13What had begun as a local civil war between Britain and her rebellious colonists with a ragtag army
22:18had now turned into a truly global contest,
22:22because a few months before, France, sensing her opportunity for revenge,
22:27had declared war on Britain.
22:32In 1778, King Louis XVI ordered his new fleet across the Atlantic
22:38to support the American rebels.
22:41Within months, the French navy had forced British troops
22:45to abandon America's biggest city, Philadelphia.
22:49The situation was perilous.
22:51The enemy, Middleton warned, outnumber us at every station.
22:59The solution to the problem seems obvious, to build more ships.
23:04But it could take up to five years and 2,000 trees
23:07to construct a single warship.
23:14Middleton didn't have the time or resources to build a new fleet.
23:18The only option was to improve the ships he already had.
23:23Just a few weeks after he began work at the Navy Board,
23:26a letter from a Mr Fisher arrived on Middleton's desk.
23:31Fisher's original correspondence doesn't survive,
23:34but its content is referred to in records held at the National Maritime Museum.
23:39This is a letter written by the Navy Board to their colleagues at the Admiralty
23:45on the 27th of January, 1779, and it contains a vital clue.
23:50It mentions Mr Fisher, calls him a shipbuilder from Liverpool,
23:54whose ships did a brisk trade with West Africa.
23:57Now, in these warm, tropical waters, shipworm were a real problem.
24:02These little worm would burrow into the hull of the ship and weaken the fabric of the vessel.
24:07But also, long tentacles of seaweed would form,
24:09clinging on to the sides of the ship and really slow it down.
24:12Mr Fisher's solution was copper sheathing,
24:17coating the underside of the hull beneath the waterline with copper panels,
24:21thus protecting the integrity of the ship and, crucially,
24:25making it travel a lot faster through the water.
24:35Middleton saw in this experimental technology a possible solution to his problem.
24:41He would sheathe the bottoms of his wooden fleet in copper.
24:44It was, though, an expensive process and Middleton urgently needed money
24:53if he was to, as he put it, extricate us from present danger.
25:00Middleton petitioned a king, George III, for a personal meeting at Buckingham House.
25:06He said it was a matter of the greatest consequence.
25:09What better way to convince the king than to take along a beautiful scale model?
25:16And this is the actual one that Middleton brought to that meeting with George III.
25:21It's an HMS Bellona, which was a 74-gun battleship.
25:25The detail is wonderful.
25:26You can see the wood carvings up there and the paintings along the side there.
25:31But the really important detail is the copper plating below the waterline down here.
25:35There would have been about 3,000 plates of copper on a full-sized ship of this kind.
25:41But this detail is so intricate,
25:42you can see the nails that actually hold the copper plates to the hull.
25:47It must have really impressed the king
25:49because he threw his support behind the navy's bold project
25:53to spend huge amounts of money on a totally unproven technology.
25:57It was a great industrial challenge.
26:04Sheathing just one ship could require 15 tonnes of copper.
26:08But Middleton drove the project forward.
26:11At Portsmouth docks, he placed orders to copper bottom 51 navy ships within the year.
26:17It was a uniquely British triumph.
26:25Only British industry had the ability to produce copper on such a scale.
26:32Here at Paris Mountain in North Wales,
26:355,000 men worked the rich seams of an open-cast copper mine.
26:40During its lifetime, Paris produced over 130,000 tonnes of copper,
26:47much of it to supply the navy with this vital munition of war.
26:51The copper was sourced exclusively from British mines,
26:55and the smelting process required a vast quantity of coal,
26:58which itself needed mining,
27:01often using new steam engines,
27:03which drained water out of the deepest shafts.
27:06The finished product needed to be carried on new roads and in new merchant ships.
27:11All of this created new jobs
27:13and economic communities all over the country.
27:16The Royal Navy wasn't just benefiting from domestic industrialisation,
27:21it was also accelerating it.
27:27But as the naval dockyards rushed to complete the task of coppering the fleet
27:32across the Atlantic in America, the war effort was crumbling.
27:38In 1781, the French navy had blockaded the British army in Chesapeake Bay,
27:44cutting off their supply lines by sea and forcing them to surrender.
27:49In that moment, the American colonies were lost.
27:54One naval defeat and half a continent slipped out of Britain's grasp.
27:5920,000 stranded British troops had to be evacuated.
28:07The newly promoted Captain Nelson joined a naval force sent to bring them home.
28:12And Louis XVI looked to build upon his sudden maritime advantage.
28:17Flushed with victory, the French turned their attention and their fleets south.
28:22They were after an even greater prize,
28:24the very foundation of Britain's imperial economy,
28:27her colonies in the Caribbean and their most precious commodity, sugar.
28:39Barbados, St Lucia, Antigua and, most importantly of all, Jamaica
28:46were the jewels in Britain's imperial crown.
28:49These Caribbean islands were much more valuable than the 13 colonies
29:00clinging to the eastern seaboard of North America.
29:03Their lush soil and plenty of rainfall, they were home to the sugar plantations.
29:10The lucrative sugar trade powered the British economy.
29:13Slaves in the Caribbean harvested 80,000 tonnes of sugar each year.
29:21Customs duties on this contributed the equivalent of well over £250 million annually to the treasury.
29:28The British sweet tooth paid for the war effort.
29:31King George III himself warned that if we lose our sugar islands,
29:36it will be impossible to raise money to continue the war.
29:39We must defend these islands, even at the risk of an invasion of Britain.
29:55This site at Kenilworth in north-west Jamaica was a great sugar estate.
30:00It stretched over 500 acres and was one of hundreds of plantations built along this coast
30:10so that their produce could easily be exported to Britain.
30:14But Kenilworth's proximity to the sea also made it vulnerable.
30:19Kenilworth wasn't just a sugar factory, it was also, by necessity, a fortress.
30:24And this is what remains of an 18th century gun battery.
30:30This cannon pointed out to sea to stave off the threat of attack by pirates and privateers,
30:39as well as the French and Spanish navies.
30:41But never was the risk to this island greater than in the spring of 1782.
30:46On 8th April, a French fleet of 36 warships, accompanied by over 15,000 troops, set sail from Martinique.
31:01Their commander, the Comte de Grasse, planned to invade Jamaica's northern coast
31:06and grabbed the spoils for France.
31:12De Grasse was so confident of victory that his fleet was accompanied by a convoy of merchant ships,
31:17their holds stuffed with trade goods to supply his new colony.
31:22But Jamaica was just the beginning, the first step.
31:24His plan was to drive the British entirely from the Caribbean and destroy the British economy.
31:30The future of Britain's transatlantic empire depended on defending this coast, this island, from those French forces.
31:38The task of protecting Jamaica fell to the Royal Navy's Caribbean fleet,
31:49and its recently upgraded, but as yet untested, copper-bottomed ships.
31:55Their commander, Admiral Sir George Rodney, seemed a bit of a liability.
32:00A gambler and a womaniser, he was deeply unpopular at the Admiralty.
32:04But Rodney did have what it took to be an outstanding leader.
32:10He'd joined the Navy at just 14. Since then, he'd served 50 years.
32:15And in that half-century, he'd become thoroughly imbued with the Royal Navy's aggressive ethos.
32:21In battle, he was violent and single-minded.
32:25If anyone could save Jamaica, Rodney could.
32:29On the 12th of April, at the Saints' Islands, Rodney attacked.
32:34Conditions were actually quite similar to those today.
32:43The wind was very changeable and kept moving direction.
32:46But this gave Rodney one key advantage.
32:48His fleet was copper-bottomed and much quicker and more manoeuvrable,
32:52particularly in these light-breeze conditions.
32:54The French general, Antoine de Bougainville, the man who'd raced Captain Cook across the Pacific,
33:03was now serving with de Grasse's fleet.
33:06He was stunned by the speed and agility of the British ships.
33:10Bougainville described the British advantage.
33:14He said the French ships were like tortoises chasing British stags.
33:18One British midshipman who fought at the Saints said that we knocked the French fleet to atoms.
33:34It was, he said, the best day Old England ever saw.
33:37After 11 hours of fighting, the French surrendered.
33:47Their admiral, Conde de Grasse, conceded that his navy was operating a full century behind the British.
33:54Rodney had saved Jamaica and her precious sugar trade, the keystone of the British economy.
34:07In the Jamaican capital, Kingston, a giant marble statue was erected in his honour.
34:13And here on the side, there's some fantastic detail.
34:16Britannia here in the middle, her Union flag on the shield.
34:19And at the very bottom, Britannia is trampling on the French flag.
34:24You can see here the fleur-de-lis, symbol of the French monarchy.
34:31It's fascinating to think what would have happened if de Grasse had won that battle.
34:35Perhaps his statue would be up there now looking down on me.
34:39Britain would almost certainly have lost her sugar islands
34:42and all the trade with them that was such a mainstay of her economy.
34:46But even more important than that, confidence, the great elixir of the capitalist system, would have dried up.
34:52The stock market would have collapsed and with it, the government.
34:56Britain would have been no better than a third-rate power.
34:59Rodney's aggression was widely credited as the reason for the preservation of Britain's Caribbean empire.
35:16But he had an even greater edge over his rivals,
35:19thanks to the efforts of a little-known bureaucrat
35:21working in a side street 3,000 miles away in the city of London.
35:25Charles Middleton, the Navy board controller.
35:31The man who had the foresight and resolve to launch a copper revolution.
35:40Global peace was restored in 1783.
35:45Britain gave up her 13 colonies in North America,
35:48but retained key possessions all across the globe,
35:52including her vital Caribbean colonies.
35:54Over the next 20 years,
35:59the revenues from imperial trade trebled in value,
36:02with much of the profits reinvested in a rejuvenated Royal Navy.
36:08The French king, Louis XVI,
36:10had failed in his attempt to dismember the British Empire,
36:14and he'd pay for it with his head.
36:18In chasing his dream of defeating the Royal Navy,
36:22Louis bankrupted his kingdom.
36:24France was torn apart by revolution,
36:27and on 21st January 1793,
36:31he was executed as a traitor.
36:35Within days, the new Republic of France
36:38had declared war on Britain for the sixth time in 100 years.
36:43But this time,
36:45their aim was to eradicate the British state.
36:48A year after war was declared,
37:03a vicar, James Hurdis,
37:06made his way to St Andrew's Church in Bishopston, Sussex,
37:10for a Sunday service.
37:11He was an Oxford professor and an ardent anti-Republican,
37:20who believed it was his patriotic duty to give political guidance to his flock.
37:25And he used a particular naval illusion to do it.
37:29Hurdis asked his congregation to imagine that Britain was a ship of war,
37:34and they, the British people,
37:36were her crew.
37:38The ship would operate effectively if they did as they were told by their senior officers
37:43and respected their superiors.
37:46But, he warned,
37:47if they should all conceive themselves to be equal and each to be guided by his own will,
37:54then the ship would change its course and they must be wrecked.
37:59He went on to say that if they deposed the captain in a mutiny,
38:03then they would instantly divide and fall asunder.
38:09To his audience, the symbolism was clear.
38:12Across the channel in France, the reign of terror was in full swing.
38:23Thousands of enemies of the state had followed Louis XVI to the guillotine.
38:31The congregation listening to Hurdis here would have been filled with a fear of French Republican terror.
38:37And his solution was that they unite behind traditional values,
38:42respect for church and king, parliament and law.
38:46It was a call to arms.
38:56Hurdis' sermon struck a chord with the people of Bishopston.
39:01Their parish was just a mile inland from the English Channel.
39:04And if the Royal Navy was defeated at sea,
39:07they'd be on the front line when the French invaded.
39:11Britain had faced invasion from France countless times before.
39:15But this time would be different.
39:17This wouldn't just be a physical conquest,
39:19a bit of regime change,
39:21a subtle exchange of one group of politicians for another.
39:25This time, it was ideological.
39:27At stake was nothing less than the entire British way of life.
39:31The fear of French invasion quickly spread across the country.
39:40And faced with utter destruction,
39:43Britons looked yet again to their navy for salvation.
39:46The British public were well used to paying for their navy.
39:59Now, if Britain was to preserve her national security,
40:02they'd have to man it too.
40:05The fleet had expanded to more than 1,000 ships,
40:09and the biggest required crews of up to 900 skilled men.
40:12Commodore Nelson explained the extent of the problem to his brother, William.
40:20I've only got a few men, and very hard indeed are they to be got, he said.
40:24The Admiralty embraced a solution that it's used so often in wars of the past,
40:32and that's legalised kidnapping.
40:34For centuries, the government had sanctioned the use of so-called press gangs.
40:38These groups of armed men now roamed the country,
40:42looking for sailors to send to sea without their own consent.
40:46This was a practice that didn't really sit well with Britain's reputation
40:50as the home of personal liberty,
40:52but it was the only sure way of manning the fleet.
40:58In the Bodleian Library in Oxford,
41:00the archive holds a collection of The Gentleman's Magazine,
41:04a monthly publication which often carried stories about press gang activity.
41:08I found one here that's a case heard by the old Bailey
41:12about a Mr William Godfrey,
41:15who's a citizen and cooper, or barrel maker, of London.
41:19It says that this particularly lawless body of sailors
41:21burst into his house in open defiance of the law,
41:25seized him, knocking him down,
41:26dragged him through the streets of London
41:28with only one of his slippers on.
41:31And then...
41:32The press gang clearly looms large
41:36in the popular imagination of the 18th century.
41:40But despite some of the scare stories,
41:42it wasn't total anarchy.
41:45Most press gangs operated only in ports.
41:49Their mission was to try and press merchant seamen,
41:52men who knew their way around the tall ship.
41:55It was in no-one's interest to fill ships up with a bunch of landsmen,
41:59people that had never been to sea before.
42:00They'd be a danger to themselves and the rest of the crew.
42:03And, in fact, most sailors were pressed when they were out at sea,
42:06when their ships were intercepted by the press gang in small boats.
42:10They were seized before they'd set foot on dry land.
42:17At the height of the war,
42:19almost 40% of crews were pressed into service.
42:24Although widely criticised,
42:26impressment did boost naval manpower to 140,000 sailors,
42:31seven times its peacetime level.
42:35This was just as well,
42:38because the Royal Navy was now outgunned at sea.
42:41In February 1797,
42:50a British force of 15 ships sailed south along Portugal's Atlantic coast,
42:56searching for a Spanish convoy.
43:00A few months earlier,
43:01Spain had joined forces with France to wage war against Britain.
43:05The commander of the British fleet was Admiral John Jarvis,
43:11and this ship, HMS Victory, was his flagship.
43:14For some time, he'd been waiting off the coast of Portugal,
43:17hoping to intercept the Spanish.
43:19But terrible storms had made it impossible for him to track them down.
43:24Then, on the 13th of February 1797,
43:27a new ship arrived to reinforce Jarvis.
43:30On board was a senior officer with some vital information.
43:36That officer was Horatio Nelson.
43:41In 25 years of service,
43:43he'd earned a reputation as an impulsive, aggressive leader.
43:48It is my disposition, he wrote,
43:50that dangers do but increase my idea of attempting them.
43:54Now Nelson would prove his words with action.
44:00The night before reaching HMS Victory,
44:05Nelson had, by chance,
44:07sailed right through the Spanish fleet
44:09at nearby Cape St. Vincent.
44:12Armed with this intelligence,
44:14the British had the advantage of surprise.
44:19Early the next morning,
44:21they attacked.
44:25Amid the smoke and chaos,
44:27Nelson spotted an opportunity.
44:29And he would never look back.
44:33Without waiting for orders,
44:35Nelson spun his ship round
44:36and tore into the heart of the enemy fleet.
44:40Once he was there,
44:41he drove it alongside a Spanish vessel.
44:44And roaring,
44:45Westminster Abbey,
44:46your glorious victory,
44:48he led his crew,
44:49armed with cutlasses and pistols,
44:52on to the enemy deck.
44:53He managed to capture that ship
44:57and the one next to it.
45:01Taking two enemy vessels like this
45:03was a unique achievement.
45:10Before the Battle of Cape St. Vincent,
45:13Nelson was considered just one of a gifted generation of sailors.
45:16But after,
45:18he'd marked himself out as someone exceptional,
45:21a daring leader,
45:22with confidence and abilities beyond his contemporaries.
45:27Now Nelson showed that he didn't just have a flair for combat,
45:30but also self-publicity.
45:32He immediately sought out an author
45:34called Colonel Drinkwater,
45:35who was travelling with the fleet
45:37to make a record of any fighting.
45:40He made sure that Drinkwater
45:41was well aware of his heroics.
45:44By the time he returned back to Britain,
45:46he decided to write a rather dramatic account of the battle,
45:49which he modestly called
45:51A Few Remarks Relative to Myself.
45:54A copy of this was hand-delivered to the king,
45:57and it appeared in two popular newspapers,
46:00True Britain and The Sun.
46:02Nelson was front-page news.
46:05For the Admiralty,
46:09Nelson's heroics were a godsend,
46:11some good PR to lift the morale of a war-weary nation.
46:21By the summer of 1798,
46:24Britain faced economic disaster.
46:27The war was being fought on a scale never before seen.
46:32Through its course,
46:33the government would spend a staggering £1,657 million on defence,
46:40a ten-fold increase on peacetime military expenditure,
46:44and the equivalent of over £100 billion today.
46:50Taxes had to be raised time and again.
46:53The political satirist James Gilray condemned the financial burden.
46:59In his cartoon,
47:01The Friend of the People,
47:02a tax collector is shown knocking on the door of a modest British home.
47:07Taxes, taxes, taxes,
47:09bemoans the owner.
47:10How am I to get money to pay them all?
47:13But it still wasn't enough.
47:15In the parliamentary archive in the House of Lords,
47:21there is a remarkable document revealing the government's radical response
47:25to the growing fiscal crisis.
47:27In 1799, Parliament passed an act designed to raise revenue.
47:34In typically flowery language,
47:36the preamble explains what they intended to do.
47:39It said,
47:40We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects,
47:43do voluntarily grant Your Majesty several rates and duties.
47:49It was a new tax,
47:51designed to be just a temporary measure
47:53to help pay for the war and fund the army and the navy.
47:56It was called income tax.
48:01From 1799,
48:03every British subject earning more than £60 a year
48:06was charged income tax at a rate of 10%.
48:10Here at the end of the act
48:13is the first example of a tax return,
48:16listing all the types of income to be taxed,
48:18from property, rent and employment.
48:24This document is such a fascinating reminder
48:27of the way in which this war of unprecedented cost and intensity
48:31was revolutionising British life,
48:33in industry, commerce and now here in finance.
48:37And of course, we're still living with the legacy of this act
48:40in the present day.
48:45In its first year,
48:46income tax raised £6 million towards the war effort,
48:51enough to build 100 warships.
48:57Income tax, like impressment,
48:58was highly contentious,
49:00but its impact was felt way beyond Westminster.
49:04At sea, the Royal Navy entered the most critical phase of the war
49:09in rude health, fully funded and well-manned.
49:15It was the high tide of British naval power.
49:21Dominant on the seas of Europe,
49:23the navy began a campaign of attrition
49:25designed to crush the enemy's trade and morale.
49:29From 1803, major French and Spanish ports were blockaded,
49:35encircled by the fleet's wooden walls.
49:41It was a highly effective strategy.
49:44While the British trained at sea,
49:46the enemy were trapped in harbour,
49:49impotent and immobile.
49:50Here in Cadiz, in autumn 1805,
49:59a Franco-Spanish force of 33 warships was tied up in port,
50:04its commanders desperate to break out of the navy's stranglehold.
50:11But a few miles out to sea,
50:13Admiral Nelson was waiting for them,
50:16with a fleet of 27 heavily armed warships.
50:18Aboard the flagship HMS Victory,
50:26Nelson summoned his senior officers to his cabin
50:28to discuss the battle plan,
50:31what he called the Nelson Touch.
50:35Nelson's plan was confident and aggressive,
50:38but it was also risky.
50:40He was going to divide his ships up
50:42and send them right at the heart of the enemy.
50:45This, he hoped, would break up their formation
50:47and provoke the kind of anarchic melee that he desired.
50:52He wanted his captains to use their initiative
50:54in selecting their targets,
50:56but he told them,
50:58no captain can do very wrong
50:59if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy.
51:03One-on-one, he was certain that his ships would prevail.
51:10Nelson knew that he was outnumbered and outgunned,
51:12but he also knew that he commanded the finest naval weapon
51:16of the Age of Sail,
51:18a combination of men, ships, and cannon
51:21that had been honed to the point of perfection
51:24over more than 200 years.
51:27And this was the moment that Nelson was going to use that weapon
51:30to annihilate Britain's greatest enemies.
51:33On 19th October, the enemy attempted to break out of the blockade.
51:44Two days later, the British caught up with them
51:47near Cape Trafalgar.
51:50An able seaman, serving aboard HMS Victory,
51:54said the sight cheered the heart of every British sailor.
51:58He described the men around him
51:59as being like lions, anxious to be at it.
52:25The Battle of Trafalgar
52:27has seared itself into the national psyche.
52:31In the Royal Gallery at the House of Lords,
52:34a vast fresco commemorates the battle
52:36in the very heart of government.
52:40It measures almost 15 metres wide.
52:45This gigantic fresco shows the quarterdeck of HMS Victory,
52:50Nelson's flagship,
52:51at the very climax of the Battle of Trafalgar,
52:53and it's locked in single combat
52:55with the French warship, the Redutable,
52:58which you can just see in the background.
53:00The Victory and the French ship were so close together
53:02that their rigging became entangled.
53:05They couldn't part from each other.
53:06The Victory's gun crews
53:08couldn't even wheel out their cannon to their full extent.
53:10They were actually touching the hull of the French ship.
53:13Men here suffering from musket wounds
53:26and terrible jagged wounds from splinters
53:29that would have spiralled, cartwheeled through the air
53:32as cannonballs carved into the oak decks of the ship.
53:35In many ways, the first half of the Battle of Trafalgar,
53:46the forgotten half, is the blockade of Cadiz.
53:49The Spanish and French ships rotting at their moorings,
53:52their crews unable to train
53:54to go through their gunnery practice like the British.
53:57Yellow fever broke out.
53:59They had scurvy.
54:00And perhaps most of all, the depression,
54:02the malaise that came from being bottled up in port,
54:04knowing that you couldn't go out to sea
54:06because a far superior British fleet was waiting for you.
54:10In just four hours of fighting,
54:12highly drilled crews on HMS Victory
54:14fired more than 3,000 cannonballs.
54:18They fired so fast that one French sailor claimed
54:22the devil loaded their guns.
54:25The Royal Navy crews were tough veterans
54:28that had spent years sailing the Mediterranean, the Atlantic.
54:31They'd gone through these drills hundreds of times.
54:34They'd fired these guns thousands of times.
54:37They knew exactly what they were doing
54:38and they were able to keep doing their jobs
54:40in the most hideous, destructive environment imaginable.
54:46What you can see here are actually the rhythms,
54:49the discipline of the Royal Navy working
54:51despite coming under tremendous stress from enemy fire.
54:56At around 4.30pm, the cannons fell silent.
55:04Britain had secured an overwhelming victory.
55:09But as the Royal Navy celebrated,
55:12news began to spread of a terrible loss.
55:16In the very centre of the painting lies Admiral Nelson.
55:20He's just been fatally wounded by a shot fired by a sniper
55:24who was perched high in the rigging of the Redutabla.
55:27The shot had shattered his left shoulder,
55:30entered his body, cut his spinal column
55:32and is slowly filling his chest cavity with blood.
55:38The man who'd begun his naval career as a young midshipman,
55:42rowing past HMS Victory 34 years before in Chatham,
55:46was now lying mortally wounded on her oak deck.
55:50...
55:53...
55:59...
56:05...
56:11More positions where possible, set on Charlie Groove.
56:16Today, Nelson is remembered as the greatest commander in naval history.
56:21So would the consequences of his death be disastrous for Britain and her navy?
56:26Well, no.
56:28Nelson had inherited a fleet that was an unparalleled military machine,
56:33and his death had little impact on it.
56:36The powerful ships, the well-trained crews,
56:39the spirit of aggression and ambition all lived on.
56:43The commander of the Channel Fleet, Admiral Cornwallis,
56:49described the true foundations of Nelson's greatness.
56:55Everything seemed as if by enchantment to prosper under his direction, he said,
57:00but it was the effect of system, not of chance.
57:06At Trafalgar, the navy's band of brothers had paved the way
57:10for France's ultimate defeat in 1815,
57:14safeguarding Britain's independence and her identity.
57:21Thanks to the navy, Britain had decisively won the greatest war in her history
57:25and proved that no land empire, no matter how powerful or large,
57:31could ever defeat a nation that dominated the sea.
57:34The sea was the true source of wealth and power,
57:38and to control it was to control the world.
57:50And Empire of the Seas continues a week on Wednesday at 7 o'clock,
57:55next to nights, life before the World Wide Web existed, apparently,
57:59and only 20 years ago.
58:00.
58:02.
58:10.
58:11.
58:11.
58:17.
58:21.
58:22.
Recommended
57:26
|
Up next
1:26:15
27:15
47:09
42:46
44:00
58:13
25:03
59:11
59:10
59:24
58:52
1:58:57
44:05