On October 20 the combined French and Spanish fleets sailed out of Cadiz. Overnight, Admiral Nelson kept his fleet under sail to stay in contact, and at daybreak the British navy could see the enemy about twelve miles away. The British attacked in two lines led by Nelson and Admiral Collingwood; they had 27 men-of-war and 4 frigates, and the combined enemy fleet had 33 large ships and 7 frigates. When the battle ended several hours later, Napoleon's naval force was broken; he could no longer contemplate an invasion of England. Nelson, shot by a French sniper about 1:25 in the afternoon, lived long enough to know he had won a major victory.

Naval and Royal Marine Personnel
The ships of Nelson's fleet had more than 21,000 officers, non-commissioned officers, sailors, and marines on board. The Internet offers wonderful access points to all the information that can be found out about them.

The best starting point is PORT, the information portal of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, near London. At the home page, www.port.nmm.ac.uk, select Conflicts at Sea from the dozen or more topics. Inside that section, choose "Military and Naval History" and then "The Napoleonic Wars." You are presented with an array of offerings, links to many sites about H.M.S. Victory (Nelson's flag ship), battles of the period, and lists of servicemen. The link to the lists goes to the Age of Nelson website; it includes the names of all officers and men at the battle onboard British ships. The results that I examined did not include the name of the ship.

Officers and men in receipt of medals, about 1640 of them, appear in another list found at Genuki within the Great Britain--Military Records topic. This list includes rank, ship at Trafalgar, and some notes on additional awards. At this same location can be found lists of officers killed and wounded at Trafalgar.

The next step is to find the service records and to follow the career of your naval ancestor. Before anything else, seek out background on the records and general advice on researching sailors, marines, and officers. Still at PORT, you can find leaflets grouped by topic. For the Royal Navy there are nine, among them Tracing People and Ship Records.

The majority of records for tracing people are at The National Archives, Kew, and for tracing ships, at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Some classes of naval records have been filmed by the Family History Library; you can check its catalog.

At The National Archives website, select the Catalogues link on the home page and follow directions to their leaflets. Once again there are several, including Royal Navy: Ratings' Service Records 1667-1923. One item is worth highlighting, Certificates of Service 1802-1894, found in ADM 29. These certificates were derived from pay books and summarized the total time in pay of each sailor and warrant officer who applied for a naval pension or admission to Greenwich Hospital. An index to this class of records has just been completed by Bruno Pappalardo and incorporated into PROCAT, the online catalog of the National Archives (see Further Reading).

Background Research
For information about other naval battles and life at sea, 1792-1815, the best starting point remains PORT but any search engine will turn up hits on such topics as: Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson, Victory, press gang, Royal Navy, and Greenwich Hospital. Information on the collections and manuscripts of the Royal Naval Museum at Portsmouth can be found at www.royalnavalmuseum.org

Trafalgar was a tremendous occasion and it touched the lives of our English ancestors. News of the great victory was announced in churches, bells pealed, the Theatre Royal put on a special show, everyone celebrated, and almost everyone could find a connection to the navy. A good way to catch the mood is in newspapers of the day, or via an "images" search at Google. No doubt we will see much more on this topic in the months ahead, leading up to the 200th anniversary in 2005. You may want to research your man at Trafalgar in time for the celebrations.

Further Reading
Lavery, Brian. Nelson's Fleet at Trafalgar,
National Maritime Museum (to be released in December).

Pappalardo, Bruno. Indexing the Admiralty.
Ancestors Magazine, #15,
September/October 2003 (published by The National Archives).

Databases at Ancestry.com
Commissioned Sea Officers of the Royal Navy, 1660-1815
Covers past Trafalgar to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. I have checked to see that some officers at Trafalgar are in the list--even of the lowest rank--and they are. The list gives dates of first achieving different ranks, and occasionally includes date of death.

The Times, London, October 30 and after. Part of the Ancestry.com Historical Newspapers Collection