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00:00Un april morning in 1771, a 12-year-old boy was rowed along the river Medway in Chatham, Kent
00:12to begin a new life as a midshipman in the Royal Navy.
00:20In 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.
00:39As 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 could he ever have imagined that their fates would one day collide.
00:53Thirty-four years later, he would stand on the quarterdeck of the victory, commanding
00:58the fleet in the most epic naval battle in British history, Trafalgar.
01:07The boy's name was Horatio Nelson, and within his lifetime, Britain would construct the most
01:15powerful maritime fighting force in history.
01:19Far 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
01:35radical financial reforms which we still live with today.
01:39At sea, its highly trained crews and ambitious officers laid claim to a burgeoning empire and
01:49pushed back the horizons of the known world.
01:52But 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 had
02:04ever 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.
02:14And 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 the
03:02cloud.
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.
03:29The 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
04:05Pacific.
04:07In 1768, Cook set off from Plymouth with a crew of 70, including artists, astronomers,
04:21and 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 crews
04:49could 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.
05:03The sextant.
05:05Every day at noon, the ship's officers would line up here on the rail of the quarter-deck
05:09with their 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.
05:24So it 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.
05:56As 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.
06:13But for the Admiralty, Cook's expedition was not simply to satisfy the Royal Society's
06:18thirst for knowledge.
06:22While 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.
06:52In 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.
07:10Britain, 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.
07:29Bougainville 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.
07:51Rougainville 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.
08:15Cook 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.
08:44This 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
09:09conquest to the far side of the world.
09:21Captain Cook drew up more than 40 maps and surveys as he sailed across the South Pacific.
09:28Today 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.
09:47Then it shows him 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.
09:58He's written probably quite proudly here, discovered in 1770.
10:05Previous to his voyage, much of this space here just would have been blank, but now he's sailing
10:10through it, filling in the gaps.
10:12What I find so fascinating about the Navy in this period is how these expeditions were unlocking
10:19the secrets of the globe.
10:25This age of naval exploration may not have involved spectacular battles, but its impact
10:31was every bit as significant, both 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
10:46were 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, which Cook
10:56even called New South Wales.
10:58And if you look at the other names he's choosing, they're ostentatiously patriotic, particularly
11:03this one, Cape St George, I mean you can't get more British than that.
11:18Australia would prove one of Britain's most valuable colonies.
11:22English speaking, cricket playing, British in institution and law.
11:28But for the personalities and skills of the crews involved, it could all have been very different.
11:36One 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.
11:55By 1771, goods from her colonies were pouring into Britain.
12:00Dockside, merchant ships unloaded precious hardwoods from North America, salted fish from Canada,
12:07exotic 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.
12:20This 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.
12:31Just as Nelson would have done more than 200 years ago, these cadets aboard the training ship Royalist are being taught the dangerous and demanding arts of tall ship sailing.
12:38What these guys are learning here is that in order to make this ship work safely and efficiently, you've got to work as a team and you've got to obey orders.
12:45Everything has a set procedure.
12:52The Royal Navy was a meritocracy. The Royal Navy was a meritocracy. The sea was an unforgiving master, and to get promoted up through the ranks,
12:59you had to prove that you could sail and fight. Nelson initially showed little sign of such promise.
13:06The Royal Navy was a meritocracy. The sea was an unforgiving master, and to get promoted up through the ranks, you had to prove that you could sail and fight.
13:14Nelson initially showed little sign of such promise. The captain of his first warship asked, what had poor Horace done, who is so weak that he above all the rest should be sent to rough it out at sea?
13:39Nelson was far from alone. Recruits as young as 10 were sent to sea for months at a time, surrounded by the same faces, confined within the same wooden walls.
13:52It was as much a psychological test as a physical one.
13:56The Navy's solution to this was to insist on a strict routine, the same no matter what ship you're on, no matter where you were in the world.
14:05The young men would have learned self-reliance, and to obey orders in order to overcome the terror and the tedium of being at sea.
14:12It was often a life of hard labour, of lifting, mending sails and rigging, carrying cannonballs and gunpowder.
14:24Yet 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, with emphasis on the complex mathematics and trigonometry required for navigation.
14:44Through this regime, the Navy turned children like Nelson from unpromising raw recruits into experienced fighting men.
14:53Nelson himself remembered, thus, by degrees, I became a good pilot and confident of myself.
15:00By the age of just 19, when he became a lieutenant, Nelson had travelled over 45,000 miles around the world.
15:15Like thousands of other young boys, Nelson was seeing the sheer scale of Britain's global ambition at first hand, and visiting her growing empire.
15:25He'd been down into the southern oceans, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian Ocean.
15:30He almost died of malaria in Bombay, helping safeguard British trading interests in the east.
15:36And he'd even fought pirates in the Caribbean.
15:39Nelson had joined the ranks of a highly professional force, sailors filled, as he said, with ardent ambition.
15:56They were a band of brothers, dedicated to the projection of British power on a world stage.
16:04The Navy's increasing global reach changed how Britain saw the world, and their place within it.
16:21In 1768, the Royal Academy of Arts was established in central London.
16:27It was an opportunity seized upon by a canny admiralty.
16:32They put on display paintings of naval missions, some of which are held today at the National Maritime Museum.
16:40The admiralty collection includes works by Captain Cook's onboard artist, William Hodges.
16:47His paintings depicted Britain's growing empire.
16:52Britain was naming and mapping the world.
16:55Now, by capturing it on canvas, in 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.
17:11Visitors to the exhibitions could furnish their own homes with copies of these images as print shops opened up in the streets around the Royal Academy.
17:26Marine art had never been so popular.
17:30This is a view of Portsmouth Harbour, painted in 1770 by Dominic Sayers.
17:37It's dominated by this fantastic ship of the line, a battleship anchored here in the middle,
17:42with its two rows of camons run out, hatches open, and the captain on the stern perhaps talking to the first lieutenant.
17:49And there's some figures here in the foreground, an unfeasibly smart-looking seaman here, perhaps in his Sunday rig,
17:56talking to a naval officer and two marine officers here, lounging around on some cannon.
18:04This, then, is how the admiralty wanted the British to see their navy, ordered, well-equipped, ready for any eventuality.
18:12But these images disguised an extraordinary truth, that a navy that wasn't fighting risked falling into neglect and disrepair.
18:24After a decade of peace, British naval expenditure was at less than a quarter of its wartime levels,
18:31and much of the fleet was mothballed or simply tied up in port.
18:35One admiral complained that out of 35 ships under his command, only six were seaworthy.
18:41To make matters worse, across the Channel in France, the king wasn't just painting pretty pictures of his fleet,
18:47he was building an entirely new one.
18:53Louis XVI was determined to end the Royal Navy's pre-eminence at sea.
19:00He ordered the construction of new docks and oversaw the completion of 80 new warships.
19:05Ready to pounce, Louis now waited for the right moment to deploy his powerful new fleet and ruin Britain.
19:22His opportunity would come from 3,000 miles to the west, across the Atlantic Ocean, from within the British Empire.
19:30On the 9th of May, 1768, British customs officials in Boston Harbour boarded an American merchant ship, the Liberty.
19:51It was carrying a cargo of imported Madeira wine.
19:56The next morning, customs officials inspected the hold of the ship.
20:00They were a little bit suspicious when they discovered that it contained only a quarter of her total capacity.
20:07They thought that during the night people had been secretly unloading the cargo to avoid paying customs duties.
20:13They asked the Royal Navy to impound the Liberty.
20:20Working alongside customs officials, naval ships were enforcing stringent tariffs on American trade.
20:28The revenues raised helped pay for the Royal Navy and for colonial defence.
20:33But the very principle was anathema to the Americans.
20:36The Liberty's owner, John Hancock, was arrested for tax evasion.
20:46He sat in the dock for five months before the case collapsed.
20:53All across the eastern seaboard, American traders faced what they saw as harassment from an aggressive British fleet.
20:59The Navy, which for centuries had been held up by the British as the defender of their liberties from foreign tyranny, was 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.
21:17The tension would culminate on the 4th of July 1776 with the Declaration of American Independence.
21:30Most prominent among the signatures was John Hancock, the owner of the Liberty.
21:37Britain was now at war with her own subjects.
21:40Back home, the Navy board went into overdrive to supply over a hundred ships now fighting a transatlantic war.
22:01But after two years of conflict, as the new Navy board controller, Charles Middleton, made his way to work in London's Seething Lane,
22:08the Navy was in deep crisis.
22:12What had begun as a local civil war between Britain and her rebellious colonists with a ragtag army had now turned into a truly global contest.
22:21Because a few months before, France, sensing her opportunity for revenge, had declared war on Britain.
22:27In 1778, King Louis XVI ordered his new fleet across the Atlantic to support the American rebels.
22:40Within months, the French Navy had forced British troops to abandon America's biggest city, Philadelphia.
22:47The situation was perilous. The enemy, Middleton warned, outnumber us at every station.
22:58The solution to the problem seems obvious. To build more ships.
23:03But it could take up to five years and 2,000 trees to construct a single warship.
23:08Middleton didn't have the time or resources to build a new fleet. The only option was to improve the ships he already had.
23:21Just a few weeks after he began work at the Navy board, a letter from a Mr Fisher arrived on Middleton's desk.
23:29Fisher's original correspondence doesn't survive, but 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 on 27 January 1779, and it contains a vital clue.
23:49It mentions Mr Fisher, calls him a shipbuilder from Liverpool, whose ships did a brisk trade with West Africa.
23:56Now, in these warm tropical waters, shipworm were a real problem.
24:01These little worm would burrow into the hull of the ship and weaken the fabric of the vessel.
24:06But also, long tentacles of seaweed would form, clinging onto the sides of the ship and really slow it down.
24:11Mr Fisher's solution was copper sheathing. Coating the underside of the hull beneath the waterline with copper panels.
24:20Thus protecting the integrity of the ship and crucially, making it travel a lot faster through the water.
24:34Middleton saw in this experimental technology a possible solution to his problem.
24:40He would sheathe the bottoms of his wooden fleet in copper.
24:44It was, though, an expensive process, and Middleton urgently needed money if 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.
25:04He said it was a matter of the greatest consequence.
25:10What 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.
25:24The detail is wonderful. You can see the wood carvings up there and the paintings along the side there.
25:29But 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.
25:40But this detail is so intricate you can see the nails that actually hold the copper plates to the hull.
25:46It must have really impressed the king because he threw his support behind the Navy's bold project
25:52to spend huge amounts of money on a totally unproven technology.
26:00It was a great industrial challenge.
26:03Sheathing just one ship could require 15 tonnes of copper.
26:07But Middleton drove the project forward.
26:11At Portsmouth docks, he placed orders to copper bottom 51 Navy ships within the year.
26:16It was a uniquely British triumph.
26:23Only British industry had the ability to produce copper on such a scale.
26:30Here at Paris Mountain in North Wales, 5,000 men worked the rich seams of an open-cast copper mine.
26:38During its lifetime, Paris produced over 130,000 tonnes of copper,
26:46much of it to supply the Navy with this vital munition of war.
26:50The copper was sourced exclusively from British mines
26:54and the smelting process required a vast quantity of coal which itself needed mining,
27:00often using new steam engines which drained water out of the deepest shafts.
27:05The finished product needed to be carried on new roads and in new merchant ships.
27:11All of this created new jobs and economic communities all over the country.
27:16The Royal Navy wasn't just benefiting from domestic industrialisation,
27:21it was also accelerating it.
27:22But as the naval dockyards rushed to complete the task of coppering the fleet across the Atlantic in America,
27:34the war effort was crumbling.
27:38In 1781, the French Navy had blockaded the British Army in Chesapeake Bay,
27:43cutting off their supply lines by sea and forcing them to surrender.
27:47In that moment, the American colonies were lost.
27:53One naval defeat and half a continent slipped out of Britain's grasp.
28:0120,000 stranded British troops had to be evacuated.
28:06The newly promoted Captain Nelson joined a naval force sent to bring them home.
28:11And Louis XVI looked to build upon his sudden maritime advantage.
28:16Flushed with victory, the French turned their attention and their fleets south.
28:21They were after an even greater prize,
28:24the very foundation of Britain's imperial economy,
28:27her colonies in the Caribbean,
28:29and their most precious commodity, sugar.
28:31Barbados, St Lucia, Antigua, and most importantly of all, Jamaica,
28:46were the jewels in Britain's imperial crown.
28:49The Caribbean islands were much more valuable than the 13 colonies clinging to the eastern seaboard of North America.
29:03Their lush soil and plenty of rainfall, they were home to the sugar plantations.
29:07The lucrative sugar trade powered the British economy.
29:13Slaves in the Caribbean harvested 80,000 tonnes of sugar each year.
29:19Customs duties on this contributed the equivalent of well over 250 million pounds annually to the Treasury.
29:27The British sweet tooth paid for the war effort.
29:30King George III himself warned that if we lose our sugar islands,
29:35it 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.
29:43This site at Kenilworth in North West Jamaica was a great sugar estate.
30:02It stretched over 500 acres and was one of hundreds of plantations built along this coast
30:09so that their produce could easily be exported to Britain.
30:13But Kenilworth's proximity to the sea also made it vulnerable.
30:18Kenilworth wasn't just a sugar factory.
30:21It was also, by necessity, a fortress.
30:24And this is what remains of an 18th century gun battery.
30:32This cannon pointed out to sea to stave off the threat of attack by pirates and privateers,
30:37as well as the French and Spanish navies.
30:41But never was the risk to this island greater than in the spring of 1782.
30:50On 8th April, a French fleet of 36 warships, accompanied by over 15,000 troops, set sail from Martinique.
30:58Their commander, the Comte de Grasse, planned to invade Jamaica's northern coast and grab the spoils for France.
31:11De 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.
31:20But 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.
31:37The task of protecting Jamaica fell to the Royal Navy's Caribbean fleet, and its recently upgraded, but as yet untested, copper-bottomed ships.
31:53Their commander, Admiral Sir George Rodney, seemed a bit of a liability.
31:57A gambler and a womaniser, he was deeply unpopular at the Admiralty.
32:04But Rodney did have what it took to be an outstanding leader.
32:09He'd joined the Navy at just 14, since then he'd served 50 years.
32:14And in that half century, he'd become thoroughly imbued with the Royal Navy's aggressive ethos.
32:20In battle, he was violent and single-minded.
32:23If anyone could save Jamaica, Rodney could.
32:28On the 12th of April, at the Saints Islands, Rodney attacked.
32:38Conditions were actually quite similar to those today.
32:42The wind was very changeable and kept moving direction.
32:45But this gave Rodney one key advantage.
32:47His fleet was copper-bottomed and much quicker and more manoeuvrable,
32:50particularly in these light-breeze conditions.
32:56The French general, Antoine de Bougainville, the man who'd raced Captain Cook across the Pacific,
33:02was now serving with de Grasse's fleet.
33:05He was stunned by the speed and agility of the British ships.
33:09Bougainville described the British advantage.
33:13He said the French ships were like tortoises chasing British stags.
33:17One British midshipman who fought at the Saints said that we knocked the French fleet to atoms.
33:33It was, he said, the best day Old England ever saw.
33:36After 11 hours of fighting, the French surrendered.
33:45Their admiral, Con de Grasse, conceded that his navy was operating a full sentry behind the British.
33:53Rodney had saved Jamaica and her precious sugar trade, the keystone of the British economy.
34:06In the Jamaican capital, Kingston, a giant marble statue was erected in his honour.
34:11And here on the side, there's some fantastic detail. Britannia here in the middle with her Union flag on the shield.
34:19And at the very bottom, Britannia is trampling on the French flag.
34:23You can see here the fleur-de-lis, symbol of the French monarchy.
34:26It's fascinating to think what would have happened if de Grasse had won that battle.
34:34Perhaps his statue would be up there now looking down on me.
34:38Britannia would almost certainly have lost her sugar islands and all the trade with them that was such a mainstay of her economy.
34:45But even more important than that, confidence, the great elixir of the capitalist system, would have dried up.
34:50The stock market would have collapsed, and with it, the government.
34:55Britain would have been no better than a third-rate power.
35:08Rodney's aggression was widely credited as the reason for the preservation of Britain's Caribbean Empire.
35:13But he had an even greater edge over his rivals, thanks to the efforts of a little-known bureaucrat working in a side street 3,000 miles away in the city of London.
35:26Charles Middleton, the Navy board controller.
35:30The man who had the foresight and resolve to launch a copper revolution.
35:35Global peace was restored in 1783.
35:43Britain gave up her 13 colonies in North America, but retained key possessions all across the globe,
35:51including her vital Caribbean colonies.
35:56Over the next 20 years, the revenues from imperial trade trebled in value,
36:01with much of the profits reinvested in a rejuvenated Royal Navy.
36:07The French king, Louis XVI, had 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, Louis bankrupted his kingdom.
36:23France was torn apart by revolution, and on the 21st of January 1793, he was executed as a traitor.
36:34Within days, the new Republic of France had declared war on Britain for the sixth time in a hundred years.
36:43But this time, their aim was to eradicate the British state.
36:53A year after war was declared, a vicar, James Hurdis, made his way to St Andrew's Church in Bishopston, Sussex, for a Sunday service.
37:13Hurdis was no typical country cleric.
37:15He was an Oxford professor and an ardent anti-Republican who believed it was his patriotic duty to give political guidance to his flock.
37:25And he used a particular naval allusion to do it.
37:29Hurdis asked his congregation to imagine that Britain was a ship of war,
37:34and they, the British people, were her crew.
37:36The ship would operate effectively if they did as they were told by their senior officers, and respected their superiors.
37:46But, he warned, if 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.
37:57He went on to say, that if they deposed the captain in a mutiny, then they would instantly divide and fall asunder.
38:08To his audience, the symbolism was clear.
38:14Across the channel in France, the reign of terror was in full swing.
38:18Thousands of enemies of the state had followed Louis XVI to the guillotine.
38:30The congregation listening to Hurdis here would have been filled with a fear of French Republican terror.
38:37His solution was that they unite behind traditional values, respect for church and king, parliament and law.
38:44It was a call to arms.
38:56Hurdis' sermon struck a chord with the people of Bishopstone.
39:00Their parish was just a mile inland from the English Channel.
39:04And if the Royal Navy was defeated at sea, they'd be on the front line when the French invaded.
39:09Britain had faced invasion from France countless times before, but this time would be different.
39:17This wouldn't just be a physical conquest, a bit of regime change, a subtle exchange of one group of politicians for another.
39:24This time, it was ideological.
39:27At stake was nothing less than the entire British way of life.
39:30The fear of French invasion quickly spread across the country.
39:39And faced with utter destruction, Britons looked yet again to their navy for salvation.
39:45The British public were well used to paying for their navy.
39:58Now, if Britain was to preserve her national security, they'd have to man it too.
40:04The fleet had expanded to more than a thousand ships, and the biggest required crews of up to 900 skilled men.
40:11Commodore Nelson explained the extent of the problem to his brother William.
40:18I'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 was used so often in wars of the past, and that's legalised kidnapping.
40:32For centuries, the government had sanctioned the use of so-called press gangs.
40:38These groups of armed men now roamed the country, looking 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 as the home of personal liberty.
40:51But it was the only sure way of manning the fleet.
40:54In the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the archive holds a collection of The Gentleman's Magazine, a monthly publication which often carried stories about press gang activity.
41:07I found one here that's a case heard by the Old Bailey about a Mr William Godfrey, who's a citizen and cooper, or barrel maker, of London.
41:18It says that this particularly lawless body of sailors burst into his house in open defiance of the law, seized him, knocking him down, dragged him through the streets of London with only one of his slippers on.
41:29And then there's the wedding party that turns into a huge brawl as a press gang tried to grab the groom.
41:36Luckily, he and his new wife managed to escape.
41:38And there's the man who was torn from his carriage on his way home.
41:42On another occasion, it says that after some particularly vigorous press gang activity, the River Thames was swept clean of mariners.
41:51The press gang clearly looms large in the popular imagination of the 18th century.
41:56But despite some of the scare stories, it wasn't total anarchy.
42:02Most press gangs operated only in ports.
42:06Their mission was to try and press merchant seamen, men who knew their way around a tall ship.
42:12It was in no one's interest to fill ships up with a bunch of landsmen, people that had never been to sea before.
42:17They'd be a danger to themselves and the rest of the crew.
42:20And in fact, most sailors were pressed when they were out at sea, when their ships were intercepted by the press gang in small boats.
42:28They were seized before they'd set foot on dry land.
42:31At the height of the war, almost 40% of crews were pressed into service.
42:41Although widely criticised, impressment did boost naval manpower to 140,000 sailors, seven times its peacetime level.
42:51This was just as well, because the Royal Navy was now outgunned at sea.
43:05In February 1797, a British force of 15 ships sailed south along Portugal's Atlantic coast, searching for a Spanish convoy.
43:15A few months earlier, Spain had joined forces with France to wage war against Britain.
43:22The commander of the British fleet was Admiral John Jarvis.
43:28And this ship, HMS Victory, was his flagship.
43:31For some time, he'd been waiting off the coast of Portugal, hoping to intercept the Spanish.
43:36But terrible storms had made it impossible for him to track them down.
43:41Then, on the 13th of February 1797, a new ship arrived to reinforce Jarvis.
43:48On board was a senior officer with some vital information.
43:54That officer was Horatio Nelson.
43:57In 25 years of service, he'd earned a reputation as an impulsive, aggressive leader.
44:05It is my disposition, he wrote, that dangers do but increase my idea of attempting them.
44:12Now Nelson would prove his words with action.
44:15The night before reaching HMS Victory, Nelson had, by chance, sailed right through the Spanish fleet at nearby Cape St Vincent.
44:30Armed with this intelligence, the British had the advantage of surprise.
44:37Early the next morning, they attacked.
44:40The noise down here on the gun deck during battle would have been extraordinary.
44:52The men's ears bled.
44:54Some were deafened for the rest of their lives.
44:57Just one enemy cannonball coming through these wooden walls could kill an entire gun crew.
45:03The deck was sprinkled with sand to soak up the blood.
45:06But within minutes of battle being joined, it was strewn with severed limbs, torsos and other unidentifiable human remains.
45:16It's no surprise that the men who fought down here called it the slaughterhouse.
45:23Amid the smoke and chaos, Nelson spotted an opportunity.
45:28And he would never look back.
45:29Without waiting for orders, Nelson spun his ship round and tore into the heart of the enemy fleet.
45:38Once he was there, he drove it alongside a Spanish vessel.
45:42And roaring, Westminster Abbey, your glorious victory, he led his crew, armed with cutlasses and pistols, onto the enemy deck.
45:50He managed to capture that ship and the one next to it.
45:59Taking two enemy vessels like this was a unique achievement.
46:03Before the Battle of Cape St Vincent, Nelson was considered just one of a gifted generation of sailors.
46:15But after, he'd marked himself out as someone exceptional.
46:19A daring leader with confidence and abilities beyond his contemporaries.
46:23Now, Nelson showed that he didn't just have a flair for combat, but also self-publicity.
46:30He immediately sought out an author called Colonel Drinkwater, who was travelling with the fleet to make a record of any fighting.
46:38He made sure that Drinkwater was well aware of his heroics.
46:42By the time he returned back to Britain, he decided to write a rather dramatic account of the battle,
46:46which he modestly called, a few remarks relative to myself.
46:52A copy of this was hand-delivered to the king, and it appeared in two popular newspapers,
46:58True Britain and The Sun.
47:00Nelson was front-page news.
47:05For the Admiralty, Nelson's heroics were a godsend.
47:09Some good PR to lift the morale of a war-weary nation.
47:13By the summer of 1798, Britain faced economic disaster.
47:25The war was being fought on a scale never before seen.
47:30Through its course, the government would spend a staggering £1,657 million on defence.
47:38A ten-fold increase on peacetime military expenditure,
47:41and the equivalent of over £100 billion today.
47:47Taxes had to be raised time and again.
47:52The political satirist James Gilray condemned the financial burden.
47:57In his cartoon, The Friend of the People, a tax collector is shown knocking on the door of a modest British home.
48:03Taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes bemoans the owner. How am I to get money to pay them all?
48:11But it still wasn't enough.
48:16In the parliamentary archive in the House of Lords, there is a remarkable document revealing the government's radical response to the growing fiscal crisis.
48:24In 1799, Parliament passed an act designed to raise revenue.
48:32In typically flowery language, the preamble explains what they intended to do.
48:37It said,
48:38It was a new tax, designed to be just a temporary measure to help pay for the war and fund the army and the navy.
48:54It was called income tax.
48:56From 1799, every British subject earning more than £60 a year was charged income tax at a rate of 10%.
49:09Here at the end of the act is the first example of a tax return, listing all the types of income to be taxed, from property, rent and employment.
49:19This document is such a fascinating reminder of the way in which this war of unprecedented cost and intensity was revolutionising British life in industry, commerce and now here in finance.
49:35And of course, we are still living with the legacy of this act in the present day.
49:39In its first year, income tax raised £6 million towards the war effort, enough to build a hundred warships.
49:54Income tax, like impressment, was highly contentious, but its impact was felt way beyond Westminster.
50:02At sea, the Royal Navy entered the most critical phase of the war in rude health.
50:08Fully funded and well-manned.
50:13It was the high tide of British naval power.
50:19Dominant on the seas of Europe, the navy began a campaign of attrition designed to crush the enemy's trade and morale.
50:28From 1803, major French and Spanish ports were blockaded, encircled by the fleet's wooden walls.
50:38It was a highly effective strategy.
50:42While the British trained at sea, the enemy were trapped in harbour, impotent and immobile.
50:48Here in Cadiz, in autumn 1805, a Franco-Spanish force of 33 warships was tied up in port.
51:02Its commanders desperate to break out of the navy's stranglehold.
51:06But a few miles out to sea, Admiral Nelson was waiting for them, with a fleet of 27 heavily armed warships.
51:21Aboard the flagship HMS Victory, Nelson summoned his senior officers to his cabin to discuss the battle plan.
51:27What he called the Nelson Touch.
51:32Nelson's plan was confident and aggressive, but it was also risky.
51:37He was going to divide his ships up and send them right at the heart of the enemy.
51:42This, he hoped, would break up their formation and provoke the kind of anarchic melee that he desired.
51:48He wanted his captains to use their initiative in selecting their targets.
51:54But he told them, no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy.
52:01One on one, he was certain that his ships would prevail.
52:05Nelson knew that he was outnumbered and outgunned.
52:11But he also knew that he commanded the finest naval weapon of the age of sail.
52:16A combination of men, ships and cannon that had been honed to the point of perfection over more than 200 years.
52:25And this was the moment that Nelson was going to use that weapon to annihilate Britain's greatest enemies.
52:35On the 19th of October, the enemy attempted to break out of the blockade.
52:42Two days later, the British caught up with them, near Cape Trafalgar.
52:48An able seaman, serving aboard HMS Victory, said the sight cheered the heart of every British sailor.
52:56He described the men around him as being like lions, anxious to be at it.
53:05The Battle of Trafalgar has seared itself into the national psyche.
53:27In the Royal Gallery at the House of Lords, a vast fresco commemorates the battle in the very heart of government.
53:36It measures almost 15 metres wide.
53:41This gigantic fresco shows the quarterdeck of HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship, at the very climax of the Battle of Trafalgar.
53:51And it's locked in single combat with the French warship, the Redutable, which you can just see in the background.
53:58The Victory and the French ship were so close together, their rigging became entangled.
54:02They couldn't part from each other. The Victory's gun crews couldn't even wheel out their cannon to their full extent.
54:08They were actually touching the hull of the French ship.
54:10There are men here suffering from musket wounds and terrible jagged wounds from splinters that would have spiralled, cartwheeled through the air as cannonballs carved into the oak decks of the ship.
54:32In many ways, the first half of the Battle of Trafalgar, the forgotten half, is the blockade of Cadiz.
54:46The Spanish and French ships rotting at their moorings, their crews unable to train to go through their gunnery practice like the British.
54:54Yellow fever broke out, they had scurvy, and perhaps most of all, the depression, the malaise that came from being bottled up in port,
55:02knowing that you couldn't go out to sea because a far superior British fleet was waiting for you.
55:08In just four hours of fighting, highly-drilled crews on HMS Victory fired more than 3,000 cannonballs.
55:16They fired so fast that one French sailor claimed the devil loaded their guns.
55:22The Royal Navy crews were tough veterans that had spent years sailing the Mediterranean, the Atlantic.
55:29They'd gone through these drills hundreds of times. They'd fired these guns thousands of times.
55:34They knew exactly what they were doing, and they were able to keep doing their jobs in the most hideous, destructive environment imaginable.
55:42What you can see here are actually the rhythms, the discipline of the Royal Navy working, despite coming under tremendous stress from enemy fire.
55:53At around 4.30pm, the cannons fell silent. Britain had secured an overwhelming victory.
56:06But as the Royal Navy celebrated, news began to spread of a terrible loss.
56:14In the very centre of the painting lies Admiral Nelson.
56:18He's just been fatally wounded by a shot fired by a sniper who was perched high in the rigging of the Redutable.
56:24The shot had shattered his left shoulder, entered his body, cut his spinal column and is slowly filling his chest cavity with blood.
56:36The man who'd begun his naval career as a young midshipman, rowing past HMS Victory 34 years before in Chatham,
56:43was now lying mortally wounded on her oak deck.
56:48The man who'd begun his arms and his arms and his arms and his arms and his arms and his arms and his arms and his arms and his arms and his arms.
57:11More positions where possible, set watch on Charlie Group.
57:14Today, Nelson is remembered as the greatest commander in naval history.
57:19So would the consequences of his death be disastrous for Britain and her navy?
57:24Well, no.
57:26Nelson had inherited a fleet that was an unparalleled military machine and his death had little impact on it.
57:34The powerful ships, the well-trained crews, the spirit of aggression and ambition all lived on.
57:44The commander of the Channel Fleet, Admiral Cornwallis, described the true foundations of Nelson's greatness.
57:53Everything seemed, as if by enchantment, to prosper under his direction, he said.
57:58But it was the effect of system, not of chance.
58:04At Trafalgar, the navy's band of brothers had paved the way for France's ultimate defeat in 1815,
58:12safeguarding Britain's independence and her identity.
58:15Thanks to the navy, Britain had decisively won the greatest war in her history and proved that no land empire, no matter how powerful or large,
58:29could ever defeat a nation that dominated the sea.
58:32The sea was the true source of wealth and power and to control it was to control the world.
58:38Next time, Nelson's victory gave the navy mastery of the seas, but in time, new challenges and new enemies would take Britain to the very brink of disaster.
58:52And Empire of the Seas continues a week on Wednesday at seven o'clock.
59:08Next to nights, life before the World Wide Web existed, apparently, and only 20 years ago.
59:13The Sea was the right and only 20 years ago.
59:14The Sea was the right and only 21 years ago.
59:22The Sea was the right and only 30 years ago.
59:26The Sea was the right and only 21 years ago,
59:30but it was the wrong thing that the moon was buried,
59:35but we had no pain back in the dark and cold,
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