The Dawson Ledger
Event

Battle of Trafalgar (1805 CE)

Decisive fleet action securing British naval supremacy during the Napoleonic Wars (Rodger 2004).

Event Details

  • Date: 21 October 1805
  • Type: naval-battle
  • Civilizations: western-atlantic

Description

Decisive fleet action securing British naval supremacy during the Napoleonic Wars (Rodger 2004).

Quantitative facts and their sourcing

  • Date 21 October 1805; outcome: British victory.
  • Wikipedia-compiled (stub): British 458 killed, 1,208 wounded; Franco-Spanish 4,395 killed, 2,541 wounded, 7,000-8,000 captured, 17 ships of the line captured and 1 destroyed.
  • PRIMARY-SOURCE (read 2026-10-12): Collingwood's return of killed and wounded (Nicolas, Dispatches and Letters of Nelson, vol. 7, pp. 222-223): killed 21 officers, 16 petty officers, 299 seamen, 113 marines (= 449); wounded 43 officers, 59 petty officers, 900 seamen, 212 marines (= 1,214); "Total, 1663". British losses only. Nicolas also prints a Franco-Spanish "losses of the English fleet" account (pp. 298-299) that he calls "a lie with circumstance"; NOT used.

Confidence

medium. Numbers marked "Wikipedia-compiled (stub)" come from a secondary aggregator and must be upgraded to page-level scholarly citations before any Official use.

Citations

  • nicolas-nelson-v7-ia [PRIMARY-READ] Cuthbert Collingwood, Nicholas Harris Nicolas (ed.) (1846). N. H. Nicolas (ed.), The Dispatches and Letters of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson, vol. 7 (Henry Colburn, 1846), Collingwood's return of killed and wounded at Trafalgar; archive.org scan, read. Henry Colburn (scan: Internet Archive). https://archive.org/details/dispatchesletter07nels. Read 2026-10-12; location: pp. 222-223.
  • rodger2004-command-of-the-ocean [formal] N. A. M. Rodger (2004). The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815. Allen Lane / Penguin. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL933928W. Verified 2026-10-11 (Open Library record found; edition exists, page-level not checked).
  • wp-battle-of-trafalgar [STUB (secondary aggregator)] Wikipedia contributors (2026). Battle of Trafalgar (Wikipedia; secondary aggregator, stub-grade). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trafalgar. Verified 2026-10-11 (resolves).

Review status

SOFT draft. Not Official. Needs editor review of CAD tags (estimated) and page-level citation upgrade.

About this entry

A draft entry preserved from civilization.study. Evidence grade: low. 2 of 3 listed sources are fully documented; the rest are names only. Method and sources

Conflict card

This card is generated from Civitas's war record and carries the same evidence badge as every other conflict card.

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naval battle · 21 October 1805

Battle of Trafalgar (1805 CE)

Decisive fleet action securing British naval supremacy during the Napoleonic Wars (Rodger 2004).

Evidence: Primary text read Draft estimate

What the record says

  • Note Date 21 October 1805; outcome: British victory.
  • Unverified (Wikipedia-compiled) Wikipedia-compiled (stub): British 458 killed, 1,208 wounded; Franco-Spanish 4,395 killed, 2,541 wounded, 7,000-8,000 captured, 17 ships of the line captured and 1 destroyed.
  • Primary text PRIMARY-SOURCE (read 2026-10-12): Collingwood's return of killed and wounded (Nicolas, Dispatches and Letters of Nelson, vol. 7, pp. 222-223): killed 21 officers, 16 petty officers, 299 seamen, 113 marines (= 449); wounded 43 officers, 59 petty officers, 900 seamen, 212 marines (= 1,214); "Total, 1663". British losses only. Nicolas also prints a Franco-Spanish "losses of the English fleet" account (pp. 298-299) that he calls "a lie with circumstance"; NOT used.

Confidence. medium.

Where it sits

Sources and evidence

No page-level citation is claimed for any source. Figures marked unverified come from a Wikipedia aggregator and are not for Official use.

Link to this conflict

Art: Patterns of Civilization chronicle art, made with AI: illustrations, not historical evidence. Entries are drafts preserved from civilization.study. Method and sources.