TRAFALGAR.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXXI, 23 February 1916, Page 3

TRAFALGAR.

Trafalgar was not the least bit like the Falkland Islands fight. Instead of the practice of our modern ecounters, when battleships open fire at a range of ten miles, it was an action —or, • rather, a "scrum" of vessels—at pistol-shot, "in which," says Professor Julian Corbett, "the captains on both sides supported and relieved one another with brilliance and devotion, and with as much skill of manoeuvre as mangled rigging, the clouds of hanging smoke, and that almost breathless afternoon permitted. Each side extorted bursts of admiration from the other; it was a fair fi^ht against foes worth fighting." Of the thirty-three enemy ships which had left Cadiz, only nine returned, and what a sight must those bleak waters have carried after the fray! Every British flag still flew, in spite of serious damages'; but of the enemy, seventeen wrecks— one burning—floated and drifted, as a record of British gunners and sailors.