Tonight is Trafalgar Night. How would Nelson fight the naval battle in the Red Sea today?

He wouldn’t be shy about shooting back when shot at

Tonight the Royal Navy celebrates Trafalgar Night. Two hundred and nineteen years ago today, Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson decisively beat the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar. By early afternoon, most of the enemy ships were either captured or disabled. Refusing to cower behind anything resembling protection, Nelson was shot by a sniper from high in the rigging of the French ship Redoutable. His lung punctured and his spine shattered he lay fatally wounded in the arms of his Flag Captain, Thomas Hardy. Having been told victory was assured he uttered, “Thank God I have done my duty” with his dying breaths. The great man certainly knew how to capture a moment.
On 19 October 2023, the USS Carney entered the Red Sea and within hours was involved in most probably the largest single drone and missile interception in naval history. That the Arleigh Burke class destroyer has the sensors, command systems and weapons to do this was not a surprise. What would have impressed even Nelson was that the ship’s company of the Carney did the unprecedented, without errors, on their very first day in a new area, having gone through the Suez Canal only the night before. Every warship thereafter knew what to expect and prepared accordingly. The Carney didn’t have that luxury.
Despite the passage of time, there are other comparisons between the Battle of Trafalgar and the battle for the Red Sea which started on 19 October. 
Perhaps the most obvious is the ongoing dependence of countries and world trade on the sea and the requirement, therefore, to be able to assure the safe passage of shipping across the seas and through their chokepoints. Nelson understood this, having spent much of his early career during the American War of Independence on convoy duties.
Roger Knight’s book ‘Convoys’ states: “A day before he reached Malta in 1803, Nelson sent order for a heavy frigate, HMS Anson (44 guns), with HMS Arrow (28) and HMS Bittern (18), to ‘expedite our commerce to and from the Adriatic and the Levant, keeping the French privateers from being insolent in the Morea, and about Cerigo and Zante.’
From this point Nelson never stopped issuing detailed orders, trying to find the most efficient way of covering convoys with insufficient small warships, under constant pressure from merchants to do more and often despairing of the shortage of escorts. On 20 March 1804, he wrote to Captain Benjamin Hallowell of HMS Tigre that “I consider the protection of our trade the most essential service that can be performed”. Nelson would have completely understood the need to protect trade in the Red Sea today. In his era, following his victory at Trafalgar, the Royal Navy dominated the sea.
I assumed throughout my own naval career that whilst the RN no longer had such dominance, the US Navy did, especially when working with us and other allies. The last year in the Red Sea has thrown this into doubt. Commercial shipping started to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope by mid-November last year and by December, many of the major carriers had followed suit. By late December, 50 per cent of all ships were going around and over 90 per cent of the larger and more expensive ones.
The two defensive groups formed to counter the Houthi attacks, US-led “Operation Prosperity Guardian” and EU-led “Aspides” have varied in numbers and tactics over the months, but trade has not returned. Shipping has not been reassured.
Nelson would not approve of this, but he was no stranger to the overstretch that today’s navies are facing. He wrote to Earl Spencer, then First Lord of the Admiralty, on 9th August 1798: “Was I to die this moment, ‘Want of Frigates’ would be found stamped on my heart. No words of mine can express what I have, and am suffering for want of them.” He would also have recognised the strategic complexity and interconnectivity of the many protagonists in today’s Red Sea.
Other elements of warfare today would not surprise the great man. One could argue that being sniped from a mast top was an early form of asymmetric warfare. We can also be sure that Nelson would understand the need for innovation: he was the great tactical innovator of his day. Crossing the enemy’s line of battle at ninety degrees wasn’t Nelson’s idea but he certainly refined it and, typically some might say, made it famous. Until he came along, large maritime battles typically involved two lines of battle slowly converging on similar courses whilst battering each other into submission with broadsides.
“Breaking the line”, as it became known, involved a perpendicular approach which allowed his ships to fire into the enemy ships’ bows and sterns. A well-timed broadside would send cannon shot flying along the whole length of the enemy ship, ripping through everything in their way. This also cut off a portion of the opposing fleet which you could now encircle and fire at from all directions.
The only downside to Nelson’s tactic was that for some time prior to the moment of “crossing the T” the enemy could shoot his broadside guns at your bows and you could only fire back with a few of your own, the bow-mounted “chasers”. In light winds as at Trafalgar, this period of not being able to shoot back lasted for hours. The ships of Prosperity Guardian and Aspides today would certainly recognise this feeling.
Once the line was broken, superior marksmanship, rate of fire, seamanship and discipline ensured dominance in the ensuing melee of tangled masts and hand-to-hand fighting. At Trafalgar, eighteen French and Spanish ships were captured or destroyed without loss to the Royal Navy. 
Leadership and discipline are just as essential today. Nelson had an extraordinary ability to engender loyalty from his subordinates. He gave them considerable leeway to act independently, having made sure they knew what he would want. This is now known as “mission command” and it is something good navies still do well. There is, also, still the scope for one person to stand out, lead well and capture the public’s imagination far beyond the realms of the actual fight, as proven by Captain Christopher “Chowdah” Hill’s leadership of the USS Eisenhower during her nine-month deployment to the Red Sea. Nelson would have approved of his leadership – as well as his proactive use of X-was-Twitter – every bit as much as Chowdah would object to being compared to him. 
There are, however, some matters today which would dismay the great admiral. Both relate to the Principles of War. 
First among these principles in the Royal Navy and US Navy is “selection and maintenance of the aim”, or “Objective” in the US. It’s not entirely clear in the Red Sea just now what the aim or objective is. Nelson would probably see it as “to assure freedom of navigation both there, and by extension, globally” and would not trouble himself too much with diplomatic solutions and talk of ceasefires that may or may not happen in the meantime. He wouldn’t hesitate to take the fight ashore if he thought it necessary: Nelson actually lost his eye in action on land.
He would, of course, write a letter to the Admiralty and while awaiting a reply act on his own initiative. And one can only imagine how many Nelsonian blind eyes would be turned if the orders he received back were, “while protecting British or other allied flagged ships, if you are engaged from ashore, you are not to fire back”.
There is a reason why “Offensive Action (to gain advantage, sustain momentum and seize the initiative)” comes just behind ‘selection and maintenance of the aim’ in the Principles of War. 
Nelson would be frustrated at the lack of Royal Navy ships in the Red Sea (currently none) and our almost total reliance on the US Navy to conduct offensive operations. He would recognise the professionalism of today’s Service and approve wholeheartedly of its increasing diversity – the ship’s company of HMS Victory and all the British ships of the time was made up of people from many countries and creeds, and the idea that he was a racist supporter of slavery has been exposed as untrue – but naval warfare, then as now, is a game of balance and mass and he would note that we have almost none of the latter. 
It is of course impossible to recreate the economic, political and social conditions that enabled Nelson’s successes, nor should we try. But we can do him the honour of transferring the elements that still resonate. 
We’re still an island country that depends on seaborne trade to survive, and the way we are neglecting our navy today is nothing short of madness. We can wish for peace and diplomatic solutions but in the meantime a powerful fleet and the logistics to support it are essential. This will cost proper money but it’s cheaper than the subsequent war against an enemy you failed to deter.
At sea, leadership, tactical innovation and bravery under fire are as important as they were  back then – and HMS Diamond among others has shown that the Royal Navy still has these things. But if you don’t select and maintain an achievable aim and don’t pursue that aim with appropriate assets and force, you will still fail. 
Lord Nelson was happy to tell it as it was. On 5 October, two weeks before his death, he wrote to William Marsden, First Secretary to the Admiralty, saying: “I am sorry ever to trouble their Lordships with anything like a complaint of a want of Frigates and Sloops; but if the different services require them, and I have them not, those services must be neglected to be performed. I am taking all Frigates about me I possibly can… At present I have only been able to collect two, which makes me very uneasy.”
Nelson would be very uneasy today as well. On the anniversary of his death and as the threat to the way of life Freedom of Navigation affords us increases, I like to imagine him in the House of Commons asking the assembled politicians present and past, tactfully but authoritatively, what he needs to do to get them to take the defence of this country seriously.
Tonight the Royal Navy will drink the traditional toast to the Immortal Memory. We as a nation need to remember Nelson and his lessons all year round, and rebuild the Service into one which would make him proud.
Tom Sharpe is a former Royal Navy officer