As some of you may know , today is the 200th aniversary of the battle of Trafalgar : when 27 ships of the British navy fought a navel battle against a combined fleet of Spanish and French warships . The British won a decisive victory , sinking 22 enemy ships with no loses to themselves ( casualties amongst the crews being 449 - and as the British flagship Victory , still to be seen at Portsmouth harbour , alone carried a crew of about 850 - this will have to be considered light in the circumstances ) with the exception of the death of the admiral commanding , Lord Nelson , at the hands of snipers .
Now while the napoleonic wars were to drag on for another ten years , from this point on Napoleon was doomed : why ? because while the British now controled the seas literally world wide and could trade and generate the money and supplies worldwide ( income tax was invented about now ) needed to fight the war the French could only assetstrip the countries that they occupied .
This suppremacy of the seas was to go uncontested until 1914 , more than a 100 years later , when the British were challenged by the German Imperial navy - except for a few minor engagments - just once , at Jutland , where the fleets fought out a bloody draw ( the British losiing a number of capital ships to a stupid design flaw - look up what happened to HMS Hood in WW2 ) after which the Germans never left port again .
So ...
What we have is a very important date for the British and on this bicentenary there are ships from 32 countries taking part in the celebrations including the French and Spanish navies ( why ? I don´t know ) and what is the American navy sending to their principal supporter in Iraq ? the coast guard ship Eagle ( a training ship , crew 14 ) !!!!!
even the Irish sent the Le Eithne ( patrol boat , crew 73 plus 8 aircrew ) , the French sent an aircraftcarrier and a destroyer , the Spanish sent a miniaircraftcarrier and a frigate -
so ..
Why are the US p*ssing on their allies again ? it does show either a total lack of sensitivity or an arrogance that explains their lack of popularity in the world and in Europe in particular - even the Japonese sent 2 destroyers and a training ship ( crew 389 ) and they can´t have been " in the area " and dropped in for tea ; you´d think the largest navy in the world would have had something bigger in the area wouldn´t you ( by the way the Russians sent a destroyer and a training yacht , crew 249 ) 😕