00:00 Wide
- HMS Victory & Cannon fired
CU
- HMS Victory & Cannon fired
CU
– HMS Victory, Cannon Firing, smoke
Wide
– HMS Victory, cannons stop
Wide
– Actors on deck of HMS Victory
MS
– Spectators with HMS Victory in background
MS
- Nelson Actor on deck of HMS Victory
Wide
- Nelson’s column
CU
– engraved panel on Nelson’s Column
ECU
– Nelson on engraved panel on Nelson’s Column
Wide
- Ext King’s College London
MS
- Prof Andrew Lambert at desk
CU
Book
CU
– Professor Andrew Lambert
CU
– book – “Nelson: Britannia’s God of
War”
Guide Voice: The French and Spanish navies were
annihilatedby the cannon of HMS Victory at the battle of Trafalgar
on the 21st October 200 years ago.
This was one of a series of re-enactments this year
commemorating the bicentenary of the greatest of naval battles,
that put an end to French dreams of European domination. But two
hundred years ago celebration of victory was marred by the fact
that its architect, Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson, had paid for it
with his own life, cut down by a French sniper.
At King's College London’s naval history department,
Professor Andrew Lambert has recently published a new biography of
Nelson in which he argues that we have much to learn from this
great naval Commander and are in danger of forgetting the
significance of his tremendous victory at Trafalgar.
00:47 SOT: Andrew Lambert, Laughton Professor of
Naval History, King’s College London -
“In 1805 the rest of Europe was dominated by Napoleon and
the French Empire, Britain was holding out against a wave of
European integration propelled from Paris. What Nelson did at
Trafalgar and in the campaign that led up to it was destroy
Napoleon’s dreams of a global empire and to make sure that in
the long run Napoleonic ambition would collapse. He paved the way
for Britain’s success and saved Europe from tyranny,
domination and the creation of a French empire that would stretch
all the way to Moscow.”
01:23 Wide
- Trafalgar Square, with Nelson’s Column
CU
- Nelson’s column
MS
– Details of Cape St Vincent engraved panel
CU
– Details of Cape St Vincent engraved panel
MS
– Nelson on Cape St Vincent engraved panel
CU
– Nelson on Cape St Vincent engraved panel
Wide
– flag on HMS Victory
Wide
– Period Actors on deck
MS
– Nelson actor with modern times servicemen
CU
– Nelson actor
Wide
– tall ships
MS
– masts
MS
– HMS Victory masts
MS
– HMS Victory
Wide
– tall ship
Wide
- masts
Guide Voice: While Trafalgar was the decisive
turning point commemorated by the square at the heart of
London, where Nelson’s statue towers above all others, it was
eight years earlier at Cape St Vincent that he became
Britain’s first national hero demonstrating a brilliant
tactical understanding and great personal bravery to overcome the
Spanish fleet.
Another staggering victory at Aboukir Bay destroyed
Napoleon’s Asian offensive and Nelson was ennobled, both fame
and wealth were heaped on Britain’ s most successful Admiral,
the man Byron named “Britannia’s God of War".
While the techniques of fighting in wooden ships under sail may no
longer be relevant today, at King’s College London they are
studying both his tactics, and the extraordinary leadership
qualities he displayed, in order to exert his will over the men and
ships under his command.
02:11 SOT Andrew Lambert - “What
he had really was genius he translated the normal and humdrum into
that rarest of things – decisive victories, battles of
annihilation. He transcended the art which he picked up as a boy
and turned it into something very different. By the time he died
naval warfare had been transformed by his imprint.”
02:31 MS
-Detail Nelson on engraved panel
CU
– Nelson on engraved panel
Wide
- Greenwich Naval College
Wide-
Painted Hall & Chapel
Wide
- Funeral Flotilla period cutters and costumes
CU
– Funeral Flotilla, various period cutters and crewMS –
Nelson’s cutter, Jubilant
CU
– Funeral Flotilla, various period cutters and crew
MS
– Funeral Flotilla, various period cutters and crew
MS
– actors in period costume
MS
– Nelson’s cutter, Jubilant
Wide
- Ext St Paul’s
MCU
– Ext St Paul’s
Wide
- Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s column
MS
- Nelson’s column
Guide Voice: Nelson’s personal popularity
was such that the news of his death almost eclipsed the importance
of his stunning victory. He became the first person outside the
Royal family to be awarded a state funeral and it lasted five days.
After lying in state in the painted hall at Greenwich his body was
taken up river by a funeral flotilla as weeping crowds lined the
riverbank.
In this recent re-enactment Jubilant, the cutter from his
flagship HMS Victory, led the largest procession seen on the river
in recent times as it retraced the funeral’s route upriver.
Two hundred years ago the Naval Chronicle reported that the public
outpouring of grief at the news “ was impossible to overcome.
The loss was more lamented than the victory was rejoiced
at.”
Nelson’s state funeral ended with his burial in a place of
honour in St Paul’s Cathedral but the mourning went on Thirty
years later Nelson’s column was constructed at the heart of
the country he had saved, where his statue stands today gazing down
Whitehall in a position of unparalleled prominence, Britain’s
first and greatest super hero.
03:35 SOT: Prof Andrew Lambert -
“Nelson remains central to the very nature of what it
means to be British. He is our icon, but more than that he’s
a remarkable example of leadership, the ability to manage people,
to manage time. An example of the 99% of work that goes into genius
and the 1% that transforms it all into a winning formula. If you
look at the way he fights his battles, the way he leads his men,
the way he inspires the loyalty, the love, the admiration of an
entire country. History is not over blessed with people of that
quality, he really is quite spectacularly different."
End of Cut 4 minutes 15
seconds
Additional material:
04:17 MS
– Funeral Flotilla, period cutter and crew
Wide
– masts
Tilt
down on masts
MS
– lion by Nelson’s Column, Trafalgar Square
CU
– lion by Nelson’s Column, Trafalgar Square
CU
– Nelson’s Column, engraved panel
Pan
across engraved panel
CU
– detail on engraved panel
CU
– detail on engraved
panel
04:55 Ends
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