Today there are celebrations in the UK to mark the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. October 21 1805 was the day that Admiral Lord Nelson fought a naval battle against the French and Spanish off the Spanish coast at Cape Trafalgar, the last great sea battle of the era. Horatio Nelson, already a national hero, died some three hours after being hit by a sniper’s musket ball but his memory was immortalised.

The modern gambling term ‘long shot’ derives from the days when ship’s guns were very inaccurate, except at extreme close quarters. Only a lucky shot would hit anything from a distance. Gambling games aboard warships has been documented as far back as Tudor times and would almost certainly have alleviated the boredom of long sea voyages. From the recovery of the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s favourite warship, it is known that games of dice were very popular. Perhaps the biggest gamble of all in Nelson’s Navy was the prize money a sailor could get from enemy ships captured by Royal Navy vessels.

A high proportion of the seamen that manned the ships in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were brought onboard by members of the ‘impressment service’. These men, known as the press gang, would ‘persuade’ recruits to serve in the Royal Navy and their methods became so notorious that when naval ships arrived in port it was often found that the local men had moved deep into the countryside. The origins of prize money came from the Cruisers and Convoys Act of 1708, whereby the captors of an enemy ship were entitled to a share of the profits.

At the time of the Battle of Trafalgar the share-out of prize money gave one-quarter to be divided amongst the ordinary seamen and the rest going to the officers, with the largest share to the captain. Nelson reportedly bemoaned the fact that he had done so badly out of prize money when a flag officer, but fortunes could be made and captains become the multimillion lottery winners of the day. It was the prize money and not the pay that encouraged many to go to sea in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The man who led his ships to victory is buried at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, where today the First Lord of the Sea will lay a wreath in his memory. Apparently Nelson chose to be buried there and not at Westminster Abbey, the more usual burial site for national figures, because the latter was built on marshland and he thought the odds on it sinking were high and would make being buried there a gamble he would rather not take. (E-10.21.05)

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