"Kiss me Hardy..."
Among the famous last words (allegedly) from one of England's finest naval commanders who managed to lead the English navy to victory against the French and Spanish...The Battle of Trafalgar put paid to Napoleon's ideas of having a little saunter over the Channel and invading Britain...not unlike Drake and the Spanish Armada some 200 years previously.
Today marks the bicentennial of the Battle of Trafalgar...an historic era for England and a sea battle that has produced so many stories that are part of growing up English (or British!)...the heroic, 'manly' Georgian naval commander asking the captain of HMS Victory to kiss him, the flags spelling out a sentence that will be used for many hundreds of years to come, the fact that this battle showed England's ability as a small nation to fend off would be attackers and finally the amusing name (well, it amused me at school anyway!!) of the ship tasked with carrying the great news of the victory and tragic news of Nelson's death....HMS Pickle
And this gives me an excuse to show another of my favourite paintings...yet another by Turner....but who can resist this? Although not historically accurate this painting of HMS Victory is spectacular...the historic innacuracies of the painting are (if memory serves correctly - no time left to search!) - as the Victory is showing the "Every man" etc flags the painting is timed at about 11:50 and the French ship Achille is on fire in the background which didn't happen until late afternoon and French ship Redoutable is shown sinking in the foreground which didn't happen until the next day...also something about the flags being on the wrong mast/pole...Anyway, who cares..it's a great painting...
Before the battle commenced, Nelson famously ordered the flags raised to communicate one of the most famous lines in British history - "England expects that every man will do his duty".
There was a good article in the IHT yesterday (full article here) about the Battle of Trafalgar..
(Alex Beam is a columnist for The Boston Globe, where this article first appeared.)
Friday marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, when Lord Horatio Nelson whipped the bloody bejesus out of the combined French and Spanish fleets off Gibraltar. It was perhaps England's finest hour. In one of history's most famous rallying cries, the one-eyed, one-armed Nelson informed his sailors that England expected "every man to do his duty," and for the most part they did.
Cool Britannia has turned the anniversary into a year-long orgy of nostalgia. Understandably so. Once Nelson expired in a pool of his own blood after the battle, it was pretty much downhill from there.
Here is a nation that ruled and, yes, civilized, much of the known world for centuries that is now best known for 1) domiciling a transoceanic airline that offers in-flight massages (Virgin Atlantic) and 2) a monarch-in-waiting who talks to his plants (Charles)
As an aside - but not completely off topic (she was after all at Trafalgar)...I forgot to mention that obviously others in Britain agree with me that Turner's "The Fighting Temeraire" is the greatest painting that Britain has within its shores...
Today marks the bicentennial of the Battle of Trafalgar...an historic era for England and a sea battle that has produced so many stories that are part of growing up English (or British!)...the heroic, 'manly' Georgian naval commander asking the captain of HMS Victory to kiss him, the flags spelling out a sentence that will be used for many hundreds of years to come, the fact that this battle showed England's ability as a small nation to fend off would be attackers and finally the amusing name (well, it amused me at school anyway!!) of the ship tasked with carrying the great news of the victory and tragic news of Nelson's death....HMS Pickle
And this gives me an excuse to show another of my favourite paintings...yet another by Turner....but who can resist this? Although not historically accurate this painting of HMS Victory is spectacular...the historic innacuracies of the painting are (if memory serves correctly - no time left to search!) - as the Victory is showing the "Every man" etc flags the painting is timed at about 11:50 and the French ship Achille is on fire in the background which didn't happen until late afternoon and French ship Redoutable is shown sinking in the foreground which didn't happen until the next day...also something about the flags being on the wrong mast/pole...Anyway, who cares..it's a great painting...
Before the battle commenced, Nelson famously ordered the flags raised to communicate one of the most famous lines in British history - "England expects that every man will do his duty".
There was a good article in the IHT yesterday (full article here) about the Battle of Trafalgar..
(Alex Beam is a columnist for The Boston Globe, where this article first appeared.)
Friday marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, when Lord Horatio Nelson whipped the bloody bejesus out of the combined French and Spanish fleets off Gibraltar. It was perhaps England's finest hour. In one of history's most famous rallying cries, the one-eyed, one-armed Nelson informed his sailors that England expected "every man to do his duty," and for the most part they did.
Cool Britannia has turned the anniversary into a year-long orgy of nostalgia. Understandably so. Once Nelson expired in a pool of his own blood after the battle, it was pretty much downhill from there.
Here is a nation that ruled and, yes, civilized, much of the known world for centuries that is now best known for 1) domiciling a transoceanic airline that offers in-flight massages (Virgin Atlantic) and 2) a monarch-in-waiting who talks to his plants (Charles)
As an aside - but not completely off topic (she was after all at Trafalgar)...I forgot to mention that obviously others in Britain agree with me that Turner's "The Fighting Temeraire" is the greatest painting that Britain has within its shores...
posted by Madame Chiang at 7:25 am
8 Comments:
Cool Britannia has turned the anniversary into a year-long orgy of nostalgia.
Wow, an orgy of nostalgia. What form does that take?
for the uninitiated an 'orgy of nostaligia' is where you have an orgy where all attendees remember past orgies...or alternatively this
When I lived in Spain I actually had a chance to visit the Cape of Trafalgar. Surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly since the Spanish lost) there is not a plaque or anything commemorating the battle -- much less anything like London's Traflagar Square
I love Turner as well! For me, in decades to come, long after the colours of Constable or even the neo-Raphaelites has faded away, I will always remember my first awestruck trip to the Tate Britain.
So obviously before his time, Turner was the Shakespeare of the canvas...
a great way to describe Turner..."Shakespeare of the canvas"....wonderful!
I suppose an orgy in the eye of the beholder.
Nelson wasn't Victorian, he was Georgian.
You are so right...apologies...I got myself confused because I had written another paragraph about how Victorian school children later learnt about Nelson and the infamous "Kiss me Hardy"...and how Victorian society reacted. I later deleted it because I didn't like the paragraph...
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