Chapter 6 Trafalgar Day: naval heritage, tradition and national commemoration

Origins and invention

At the suggestion of Arnold White, the league first placed a wreath on Nelson’s Column on 21 October 1895.¹¹ This modest, ephemeral tribute – which commemorated Britain’s victory over the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar – had much deeper resonance. Indeed, reflecting on the first Trafalgar Day, White later wrote that ‘popular support which cannot easily be gained by academic controversy, may generally be secured by linking a great idea to a great personality’. ‘So Nelson’s life and death’, he continued, could be ‘utilised to personify British Sea Power to the children, if not to the veterans, of British democracy throughout the world … Everything that emphasises the fact that England lives on a foundation of Sea Power exerts a healthy influence on national life and character.’¹²

Nevertheless, the Navy League’s commitment to Trafalgar Day – and to the promotion of naval heritage more broadly – has been the subject of some debate. Barbara Tomlinson suggests that, following the first Trafalgar Day, it ‘subsequently became popular nationwide but the League regarded this involvement with heritage as a distraction from its contemporary political objectives’.¹³ Marianne Czisnik similarly describes Trafalgar Day as one of the ‘greatest non-political attractions’ of the league.¹⁴ Yet, politics and the promotion of naval heritage were closely entwined.

Trafalgar Day was an essential – and often highly politicised – vehicle for the promotion of league propaganda and an important ritual of legitimation for the league itself. Following Trafalgar Day in 1896, the league held a meeting to consider how it could benefit from annual celebrations, deciding to expand its activities alongside The Navy League Journal.¹⁵ Nelson formed a central part of the visual iconography of Navy League literature, with the league’s crest bearing his image and famous clarion call: ‘England expects that every man will do his duty’. The league used the ‘invented tradition’ of Trafalgar Day not only to expound its own political objectives, but also to promote sea-mindedness to children and adults alike. The league’s use of the past, and of Britain’s naval heritage, was crucial for the construction of naval and national identity.

While the first Trafalgar Day commemorations were modest and crowds somewhat sparse, there had been no regular habit of celebrating Trafalgar Day outside the Royal Navy until 1895.¹⁶ Following the first Trafalgar Day, the scale of celebrations rapidly increased. The following year, The Navy League Journal expressed satisfaction that the ‘hundreds of thousands’ of visitors to Nelson’s Column had shown that ‘Britons do care, that they have not forgotten, that they are still capable of devotion and self-sacrifice. Trafalgar – the very name, with its stirring associations, is a trumpet-call to the nation to do its duty.’ While the journal admitted that many simply came to observe, it argued that the majority were ‘pilgrims, rather than mere spectators’ who realised that ‘the British Navy still regards Nelson as its chosen hero’.¹⁷ The Times similarly reported that celebrations were marked by an ‘extraordinary manifestation of public interest and of patriotism’ and that celebrations represented ‘widely-spread enthusiasm for a great hero of the past’.¹⁸ Some estimated that over half a million people saw the decorations on Nelson’s Column that year.¹⁹ Commemorations seemingly traversed class boundaries, with crowds comprising ‘every class of her Majesty’s subjects, from the Peer and member of Parliament to the street gamin’.²⁰ Given the popularity of early Trafalgar Days, it is perhaps unsurprising that many saw the commercial possibilities of the annual event. There was a considerable sale by hawkers of literature relating to the battle and Nelson, particularly facsimiles of the Trafalgar number of The Times and Robert Southey’s Life of Nelson, as well as a range of other souvenirs and ephemera including buttons, handkerchiefs and postcards.²¹ The broad range of commemorative material culture produced – and the consumption and collection of such artefacts – further points to the popularity of the annual event.

Trafalgar Day celebrations received widespread support from both national and local newspapers. The Morning Post suggested that the Navy League should be congratulated on the ‘complete success’ of commemorations. The Liverpool Mercury, meanwhile, lamented Britain’s general neglect of anniversaries as ‘almost criminal’, although praised the Navy League for ‘rescu[ing] one of the most notable of our national triumphs from virtual oblivion’.²² As such comments suggest, the commemoration of Trafalgar Day invested early Navy League activities with the ‘authority and weight of tradition’.²³

Despite extensive praise, the annual event was not without opposition. In commemorating Trafalgar Day, the Navy League stressed that the object was not to celebrate ‘triumph over former foes, but recognition of the principles of duty and courage personified in the life and death of Nelson’.²⁴ Nevertheless, the Increased Armaments Protest Committee – which represented ‘a large number of reformers and lovers of peace’ – warned the public against the league’s use of Trafalgar Day for promoting increased armaments and the ‘general purposes of jingo Imperialism’. The author Arthur Conan Doyle – later a member of the IML – similarly felt that it would be ‘unchivalrous to exult over a beaten foe’, suggesting that the Navy League instead name Nelson’s birthday ‘Nelson Day’.²⁵ The playwright George Bernard Shaw went further, arguing that rather than decorating Nelson’s Column, the league might be best advised to pull it down.²⁶ As Shaw’s ties with the Fabian Society and Conan Doyle’s imperialist sentiments suggest, the meaning and significance of Trafalgar Day was contested by individuals and organisations from across the political spectrum.

Such protests had little impact on the form of Trafalgar Day, although the league did feel the need to publicly respond. Letters appeared from prominent Navy League figures in national newspapers, while The Navy League Journal declared:

to those who would forget Trafalgar and erase its lesson from the nation’s heart, we can say nothing. They are beyond reminders and reproofs. They had better emigrate to some distant island of the Southern Seas, where, safe from war’s alarms and the exhilarating call of national duty, they can live the life of a tame rabbit in its hutch.²⁷

Clearly conscious of French sensibilities, however, the league decided from 1900 to dedicate a wreath to French and Spanish sailors who died fighting at Trafalgar.²⁸

Trafalgar Day commemorations marking the centenary of the conflict in 1905 enjoyed particular resonance. Alongside the customary lavish wreaths and tributes at Nelson’s Column, a service including prayers, a reading of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Recessional’, the playing of Braham’s The Death of Nelson, the sounding of the Reveille and a rendition of the national anthem was arranged. Other events included a ‘patriotic musical celebration’ in the Royal Horticultural Hall, a Nelson centenary dinner and a religious service the following day.²⁹ Despite this, the patriotic elements were somewhat muted – following the entente cordiale agreement in 1904 – to avoid offending Britain’s new ally, France.³⁰ As the league’s annual report noted that year, it was ‘above all things, essential to avoid wounding, in any way, the susceptibilities of our friends across the Channel’.³¹ The league was seemingly successful in its endeavours. As The Times wrote, the day was marked by a spirit of ‘solemn gratitude’ rather than the celebration of ‘triumph over fallen foes’.³² Despite the reduced pageantry, there was undoubtedly something of the ‘cult of the centenary’ surrounding celebrations in 1905.³³ For example, it was estimated that up to 100,000 people were in Trafalgar Square in the afternoon, while The Navy League Journal reported that queues for Nelson’s Column reached nearly three miles in length.³⁴ Prince Edward was among those present, reportedly rising from his carriage to salute the column. The short trip round the column took approximately an hour and twenty minutes.³⁵

Ceremony, ritual and commemoration

The principal form of commemoration on Trafalgar Day was the decoration of Nelson’s Column. Located in Trafalgar Square in the heart of the nation’s capital, Nelson’s Column was completed in 1843 after several years of construction. Reaching 169 feet in height, the symbolic value of the column was unmistakeable; for many, it represented the ‘ultimate expression of global maritime power’.³⁶ Sanctioned by the Office of Works, the column on Trafalgar Day was ‘encircled from top to bottom by a winding chain of laurel leaves’. A spiral garland was hung in festoons over each side of the square which was carried and entwined round the heads of the Landseer lions.³⁷ Red, white and blue ensigns were often flown, alongside the Union Jack, while the column was illuminated by searchlights in the evening. The scale of early decorations was certainly impressive. In 1899, one newspaper estimated that around fourteen and a half tons of laurel were used to decorate the column.³⁸ Alongside decorations organised by the Navy League’s central office, numerous wreaths and floral tributes were laid at the column’s base by domestic and overseas Navy League branches, descendants of men who fought at Trafalgar, members of the public, and various schools and youth organisations. Inscriptions were chiefly dedicated to the spirit and legacy of Nelson. The Navy League’s own wreath initially bore the inscription: ‘To the immortal memory of Nelson’. From 1900, this was accompanied by the message: ‘Respect and homage to the memory of the gallant sailors of France and Spain, who fell fighting at Trafalgar’ and later with the league’s motto: ‘Keep Watch’.³⁹ While such decorations were reportedly ‘universally admired’ and ‘could hardly have been more effective and striking’, decorations were largely confined to the column’s base and plinth from 1900.⁴⁰

Complementing the decoration of Nelson’s Column, a range of other commemorative traditions were initiated by the league. For instance, a chaplet of bay leaves and other wreaths were placed at the foot of Nelson’s tomb in St Paul’s Cathedral. This was invariably done by the wife of either the league’s president or secretary. This was the main role that women played in the commemorative process on Trafalgar Day, although women of the league (albeit unenthusiastically) later bore responsibility for flag-day collections.⁴¹ The league also requested that municipal authorities hoist flags on public buildings to accompany increasingly popular regional celebrations of the annual event. Flown at Trafalgar Square and on Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, was Nelson’s ‘England Expects’ signal. Commemorations on the Victory were not a Navy League initiative and, in fact, took place long before the league’s annual celebration at Trafalgar Square.⁴²

As part of Trafalgar Day commemorations, a religious service was held each year at churches including St Martin-in-the-Fields, St Bartholomew the Great and St Paul’s Cathedral.⁴³ The sermons would frequently address Britain’s naval position and evoke the spirit and legacy of Nelson and Trafalgar. An annual Trafalgar Day or ‘Nelson Day’ banquet was also held, which was attended by hundreds of influential figures including dominion statesman, foreign ambassadors, prominent British politicians, members of the royal family, Admiralty representatives, delegates of the British and dominion Navy Leagues and members of the press. Each year a toast was made to the ‘memory of our great and immortal hero, Nelson’.⁴⁴ By the outbreak of the First World War, the main commemorative traditions of Trafalgar Day had been established: the decoration of Nelson’s Column, the tribute at Nelson’s tomb, a religious service, an annual banquet and the decoration of the Victory. Throughout the First World War, however, the form and ceremony of Trafalgar Day changed to reflect broader shifts in commemorative practices.

Trafalgar Day and the First World War at sea

Arrangements for Trafalgar Day were significantly modified after the outbreak of hostilities in 1914. The annual banquet was cancelled and no lavish decorations were displayed on Nelson’s Column. Instead, the league suggested that the flags of Britain’s allies should be hoisted on public buildings, that schools should give lectures on Nelson and the navy and that committees should be formed in towns and villages to care for the dependents of men at sea. Finally, the league urged that during wartime, Trafalgar Day should be utilised for the ‘especial object of concentrating public thought upon the incalculable blessings which have been conferred upon this nation, and upon the British Empire as a whole, through our supremacy at sea’ and to ‘stimulate interest in the minds of the masses of the people in the welfare of officers and men of the fleet’.⁴⁵

In 1914, despite the muted pomp and pageantry, Trafalgar Day drew vast crowds. On the eve of Trafalgar Day, there was already an ‘unending silent procession’ passing by Nelson’s Column.⁴⁶ On the day itself, one observer doubted whether such crowds had ever been seen on any previous anniversary.⁴⁷ Commemorations and tributes at Nelson’s Column that year certainly suggest that ‘the minds of the masses’ needed little encouragement to reflect upon the welfare of those serving at sea during the war. As The Manchester Guardian wrote, multitudes gathered ‘not only to pay simple homage to an historic name and tradition but to do honour to the memory of those who have died in another and a greater conflict’. Nelson’s Column was no longer solely a ‘symbol of a grand tradition but of a nation’s spirit’.⁴⁸ Trafalgar Day offered a source of unity for families, communities and even the nation throughout the conflict.

In 1914, instead of the usual festoons and laurels, floral tributes were largely dedicated to those who perished in ships lost during the first few months of war. Tributes were made to HMS Amphion, Aboukir, Cressy, Hogue, Pathfinder, Pegasus, Speedy and the submarine HMAS AE 1 alongside wreaths to the memory of ‘the brave men who have been lost in trawlers and auxiliary ships while engaged upon duties relating to the defence of the country’.⁴⁹ For three days prior to 21 October, the column was roped in so that the relatives of men who had died at sea were able to place their own wreaths. Among the many wreaths and floral tributes were messages from ‘bereaved mothers and sorrowing widows’, siblings and from ‘women to their lovers, “in sorrowful and affectionate pride”’.⁵⁰ One wreath, dedicated to Alfred Muskett, who died on HMS Hogue, bore the inscription: ‘In loving memory of my dear sweetheart asleep in the North Sea’, while another was devoted to ‘our dear brother, Philip Henry Ford’, who lost his life in the sinking of HMS Pathfinder, from ‘his heartbroken sisters’.⁵¹ As commemorations became increasingly linked with the First World War at sea, personal and familial connections with the annual event correspondingly grew. Distinct from pre-war commemorations, Trafalgar Day in wartime was marked by more immediate solemnity, sorrow and grief.

The commemoration of ordinary sailors on Trafalgar Day in wartime reflected broader shifts in commemorative practices and was part of a wider ‘democratization of death’.⁵² The commemoration of those who lost their lives at sea was a feature of each Trafalgar Day throughout the First World War. In 1915, a ten-foot wreath of white chrysanthemums, heather, lilies and asparagus fern was dedicated to officers and men of HMS Bulwark, Formidable, Irresistible, Ocean, Goliath, Triumph and Majestic. Another tribute was dedicated to those who served at the Battle of Coronel, where 1,569 officers and men died after the sinking of HMS Good Hope and Monmouth.⁵³ In 1916, Trafalgar Day celebrations were devoted to the officers and men of the fleet ‘for their brilliant achievement in the Battle of Jutland … and for the incalculable services which our sea power has rendered to civilization and liberty since the beginning of the war’.⁵⁴ For many, Nelson’s Column had been ‘transformed into a war shrine, noble and beautiful beyond all comparison’.⁵⁵ Wreaths and flowers once solely dedicated to a national icon were now seemingly primarily placed in memory of officers and ordinary sailors.

While Trafalgar Day in wartime provided a space for families and friends to commemorate their loved ones, it was not solely British officers, sailors and ships that were remembered. Instead, wreaths were also dedicated to French sailors serving in the First World War. Furthermore, in 1916, at the suggestion of Arnold White, the league decided to change the title of commemorations from ‘Trafalgar Day’ to ‘Nelson Day’. ‘Jutland Day’ had been considered, however it was felt that ‘Nelson Day’ would best express the ‘warmest friendship with France’ and ‘increase the interest of the British people in the sea power of the Empire which is personified in the name of Nelson’.⁵⁶ In fact, both Nelson Day and Trafalgar Day were used almost interchangeably by both the Navy League and the press, however the league was increasingly conscious of French attitudes and aware that the significance of Trafalgar had perhaps been superseded by more recent naval encounters.

Beyond commemoration and remembrance, two other aspects of Trafalgar Day throughout the First World War are worthy of attention: education and recruitment. The Navy League made a concerted effort to instil the lessons of Trafalgar and the First World War at sea to schoolchildren. In 1915, for example, educational authorities in 236 districts requested that headteachers in public elementary schools devote half an hour to a ‘discourse on the achievements of the British Fleet’ during the First World War, with approximately 27,000 schools in England, Wales and Scotland reportedly delivering such addresses.⁵⁷ Such endeavours were commonplace on Trafalgar Day throughout the conflict. Lessons were given on subjects including ‘What England owes to the sea’ and the ‘Story of the Battle of Trafalgar’. Children saluted the Union Jack and sang the national anthem, while some schools even held Trafalgar Day matinees. At a school in Catton, Northumberland, ‘children gave patriotic speeches and sang patriotic songs’, teachers ‘pointed out to them the importance and meaning of such a celebration to every English boy and girl’, with proceedings drawn to a close by the singing of the national anthem and three cheers for the king and Britain’s allies.⁵⁸ Although it is difficult to measure how such lessons were received, one newspaper was in little doubt that they ‘could not fail to stir the youthful imagination, and instil the minds of the boys and girls with something of the dauntless spirit and devotion to duty of England’s unforgettable hero’.⁵⁹

Prior to the introduction of conscription in early 1916, Trafalgar Day in wartime was characterised, at least in part, by patriotism, duty and recruitment efforts. In 1914, Nelson’s Column was flanked with hoardings ‘carrying [an] appeal to the patriotism of the nation’, including a message from King George V declaring: ‘We are fighting for a worthy purpose, and we shall not lay down our arms until that purpose has been achieved’.⁶⁰ Trafalgar Day was reportedly celebrated the following year with a ‘spirit of patriotic fervour’, with ‘[h]undreds of thousands of English people’ visiting Nelson’s Column. The Manchester Guardian suggested that the event was ‘mainly a recruiting rally’ and that crowds were not allowed to ‘admire in peace the giant lions with wreaths in their mouths … there were recruiters on every plinth shouting a summons to duty.’⁶¹ In 1915, the league itself also encouraged members to devote their energy on Trafalgar Day to recruitment campaigns.⁶² Perhaps the greatest stimulus in terms of recruitment, however, was the death of Edith Cavell, the British nurse who had been executed by a German firing squad in German-occupied Belgium only nine days previously. At the Trafalgar Day service that year, the Bishop of London wondered ‘what Nelson would have said if he had been told that an English girl had been shot in cold blood’. He felt Nelson ‘would have made more than the diplomatic inquiries which have been made by a great neutral into this crime … he would have made his inquiries by the thunder of the guns of the British Fleet.’ He furthermore suggested there was no need for a recruitment campaign, feeling that the execution of Cavell was enough.⁶³

Throughout the conflict, Trafalgar Day was supported by numerous figures from the social, political and military elite. The league received messages from King George V, Arthur Balfour, Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Jellicoe, Beatty and a range of other figures.⁶⁴ Although there was less pomp and ceremony surrounding Trafalgar Day celebrations in wartime, the event remained a key part of the Navy League’s activities and was imbued with ever-increasing reverence. Messages championing Nelsonian qualities of duty, discipline and self-sacrifice remained, but were increasingly accompanied by highly personalised messages of loss. Nelson’s Column became a public repository for both individual and collective mourning.

Local commemoration

While Nelson’s Column naturally provided a focal point for Trafalgar Day commemorations, the annual event was celebrated in villages, towns and cities throughout Britain and beyond. In Britain, Trafalgar Day was particularly popular in coastal locations, as well as port and shipping communities such as Portsmouth, Bristol, Liverpool and Newcastle. Trafalgar Day provided an opportunity for forms of commemoration devoted to the navy and the nation, yet provincial celebrations were also important in fostering civic pride. While most Trafalgar Day commemorations were organised by Navy League branches, municipal authorities, schools, dignitaries and local societies often staged events without pressure from the league. Provincial newspapers also covered the event – both smaller, regional celebrations and Navy League activities in London – in great detail. As local celebrations suggest, there was undoubtedly a desire within communities to actively engage with navalist public ritual. Exploring these local forms of commemoration is crucial for gauging Trafalgar Day’s popularity and for providing a sense of the event’s scale and geographical reach. Moreover, it is important to shift the focus from the purely ‘national and grandiose to the particular and mundane’. As Jay Winter argues, ‘great national sites of remembrance are exceptional, and their histories provide a misleading impression of thousands of others’.⁶⁵

Reflecting national forms of commemoration, wreaths were placed on Nelson’s Monument at Portsdown Hill in Portsmouth on Trafalgar Day, with ceremonies being held to mark the occasion. From late 1920, Portsmouth also staged Trafalgar Orphan Fund procession pageants and flag days. These events were organised by a lower-deck committee and aimed to raise money for orphans of naval men who had died in the First World War. However, it was Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, that was the main site of Trafalgar Day commemorations in Portsmouth. Laurel wreaths were suspended from Victory’s masts, a wreath was placed on the spot where Nelson suffered his fatal wound, Nelson’s ‘England Expects’ signal was hoisted while the Victory’s anchor on Southsea Front was also decorated.⁶⁶ For many, the value of the Victory in Trafalgar Day commemorations was clear: the ship represented a ‘lasting symbol of the Nelson spirit, and all that it stands for in the sea service of Great Britain’.⁶⁷

The Society for Nautical Research’s post-war Victory restoration campaign, launched on Trafalgar Day in 1922, provides further indication of the significance of Trafalgar Day in Portsmouth. Established by Admiral Frederick Charles Doveton Sturdee, the society’s president, the campaign sought to raise funds to restore Victory to its ‘condition at Trafalgar’.⁶⁸ As part of fundraising efforts, the society requested support from the Navy League, although the latter felt unable to provide financial assistance.⁶⁹ The league did, however, publish appeals for the Victory fund in The Navy, while local branches assisted the society in publicity efforts.⁷⁰ The Victory appeal was not simply about preserving the physical remnants of Nelson’s ship; as Don Leggett notes, the campaign sought to ‘memorialize a moment in British history when sea power was at its height and the British Empire was securely guarded’.⁷¹ The campaign also played an important role in post-war commemorative culture with the Victory acting as a memorial to the navy, nation, empire and those who lost their lives at sea during the First World War.⁷² Much like the annual commemoration of Trafalgar Day, the Victory restoration campaign sought to preserve and promote Britain’s rich naval heritage.

As in London and Portsmouth, members of the Navy League and various other naval organisations attended Trafalgar Day celebrations at the local Nelson Monument in Liverpool. The monument was draped and decorated with wreaths and laurels under the auspices of the Liverpool Branch of the Navy League. Commemorations often included an inspection of a gathered naval detachment by the Lord Mayor before an address extolling the ‘bravery and patriotism of the hero of Trafalgar’. The ceremony invariably ended with three cheers for king and country followed by a rendition of the national anthem.⁷³ As at Nelson’s Column, post-war commemorations – particularly those in the 1920s – were dedicated in part to sailors who died during the First World War. In 1927, for instance, members of the public were invited to place a wreath in ‘memory of friends lost at sea in the services of their country’.⁷⁴

Accompanying commemorative events in Portsmouth and Liverpool, Trafalgar Day celebrations were particularly popular in the North East of England. Admiral Lord Collingwood, second-in-command at Trafalgar, was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and so the popularity of commemorations at Collingwood’s Monument in nearby Tynemouth and in Newcastle itself is perhaps unsurprising. It was claimed that the region had ‘every reason to feel proud of the part taken by men of the North in securing for England her greatest naval victory’ and that ‘there was no more suitable place [than Tynemouth]’ for Trafalgar Day commemorations.⁷⁵ Following the formation of the Navy League’s Northumberland Branch in 1923, Trafalgar Day commemorations in the North East became an annual event.⁷⁶ In Newcastle, the lord mayor placed a laurel wreath on the Collingwood Monument in St Nicholas’s Cathedral and at the bust of Collingwood at Milburn House.⁷⁷ Commemorations in Newcastle were, on occasion, also attended by descendants of Lord Collingwood. At Tynemouth, a public procession was held before a wreath was placed at the foot of the Collingwood Monument. This was often followed by a service by the vicar of Tynemouth. Youth bodies such as the SCC, Boy Scouts, Guides and Boys’ Brigade all took part in Trafalgar Day celebrations, while essay prizes on the subject of Collingwood were organised for local schoolchildren. Commemorations at the Collingwood Monument frequently ended with the Last Post and the Reveille, before a rendition of the national anthem. In later years, the monument was illuminated by a searchlight.⁷⁸

A range of other Trafalgar Day commemorations were held in Norwich, where Lord Nelson’s statue was decorated, in Plymouth, where officers and men of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines paraded, and in Bristol, where the local Navy League branch arranged viewings of naval films for thousands of schoolchildren each year.⁷⁹ In Leeds, services and parades were held in the City Square, wreaths were placed on the local war memorial and proceedings were drawn to a close with the singing of Rule, Britannia!⁸⁰ The commemoration of Trafalgar was not, however, an exclusively English phenomenon. In Edinburgh, the occasion was marked – mainly under the auspices of the local Navy League branch – by the placing of wreaths on the Nelson Monument at Calton Hill, the flying of Nelson’s signal and a short ceremony.⁸¹ In Cardiff, parades, religious services and banquets were held, while Trafalgar Day dinners were a feature of celebrations in Belfast.⁸²

Navalist public ritual clearly enjoyed resonance far beyond the purely national level. Newsreel footage of Trafalgar Day celebrations highlights that local newspaper reports boasting high attendance figures were hardly exaggerated.⁸³ It was not just littoral communities that commemorated Trafalgar Day; it was celebrated in a variety of towns, villages and cities – in places with strong ties to Nelson and Trafalgar and in places without. The commemoration of Trafalgar Day was a nationwide (and indeed global) event. Although many local forms of commemoration often mirrored national Trafalgar Day celebrations, regional commemorations were important for the expression of civic pride and local patriotism.

The Navy League and naval theatre

Beyond Trafalgar Day, the Navy League contributed to the ‘cult of the navy’ in a variety of other settings. As Rüger reveals, the league took an active interest in pre-war naval theatre – both as a promoter and a participant. The league organised excursions to fleet reviews and ship launches, advertised these events in its official organ and even produced souvenir programmes for several fleet reviews.⁸⁴ These lavishly illustrated guides provided an overview of proceedings and contained articles on the aims and objects of the Navy League, the history of naval reviews, the importance of the navy to Britain’s island status and its empire, and pieces lobbying for increased naval spending.⁸⁵ Although the Navy League was unable to shape the form or character of naval theatre, at least in terms of fleet reviews and warship launches, it undoubtedly recognised the importance of theatre and pageantry as a way to engage the British public with the navy.⁸⁶ As displays of military strength and prestige, naval theatre represented visual and symbolic manifestations of the navalism preached by the Navy League. For the league, the message of such displays was straightforward: ‘if you wish for peace, be prepared for war’.⁸⁷

Following the First World War, the Navy League continued to promote naval theatre. In 1923, the league called for the ‘institution of a Navy Day throughout the British Empire’. This proposal initially received support from the Admiralty, who found the scheme ‘most acceptable’, although it later informed the league that ‘it was impossible to co-operate as suggested’.⁸⁸ While the Admiralty rejected the Navy League’s proposal, it nevertheless staged ‘Navy Weeks’ only a few years later. Held from 1927 to 1938, Navy Weeks were ‘at home’ days where members of the public were permitted entry into naval dockyards at Portsmouth, Plymouth and Chatham.⁸⁹ Although the Navy League was not directly involved in the event, organisers did seek the league’s assistance for publicity and propaganda.⁹⁰ The Navy subsequently advertised the annual event and produced detailed articles outlining the organisation and purpose of Navy Weeks, while senior Navy League figures also wrote descriptive articles on Navy Weeks for other publications.⁹¹ In return, the league was granted free advertising space in Navy Week programmes, with Portsmouth and Chatham additionally ordering copies of The Navy to sell to attendees.⁹²

While Navy Weeks provided the league with a valuable form of self-promotion, the league also arranged excursions for local schoolchildren to attend the event, continuing ‘its work of interesting and informing the younger generation of the British Navy’.⁹³ Members of the league’s SCC frequently visited Navy Weeks on one-day excursions or while at annual camp.⁹⁴ HMS Victory was reportedly a particular draw for cadets, although boys were ‘profoundly interested’ by ‘a demonstration of working the big guns’ onboard HMS Barham.⁹⁵ For The Navy, such enthusiasm confirmed that the ‘love of things maritime was in the blood of the youngsters’.⁹⁶ Local SCC branches also participated in a number of ship launches in this period. Members of the Sunderland SCC attended the launch of the battleship HMS King George V in 1939, while the Barrow SCC formed a guard of honour at the launching of HMS Greyhound and Griffin in 1935.⁹⁷

The presence of youth at such displays was not without opposition. For instance, the LNU’s General Council resolved in 1927 that ‘in view of the urgent necessity for moral disarmament as a condition of the material reduction of arms’, it would request the union’s Executive Committee to ask public authorities to refrain from allowing children to attend military displays, because ‘the mind of a child, lacking an adult’s mature knowledge of the horror of war, is likely to be carried away by its meretricious glamour’.⁹⁸ Responding to claims that the LNU had passed the resolution, the Navy League criticised the decision as ‘unpatriotic and contrary to the best interests of the Empire’.⁹⁹ Gilbert Murray saw fit to issue a lengthy response to the Navy League, noting that the LNU itself had not passed such a resolution, but had instead referred the matter to its Education Committee.¹⁰⁰ Murray wrote that he, like the LNU’s Education Committee, only objected to the martial and militaristic nature of events such as the bombing of a ‘native village’ at air displays. He felt it was ‘not a piece of fun, nor a thing over which children should be encouraged to crow with delight’.¹⁰¹

Despite such criticism, the Navy League used fleet reviews, warship launches, Navy Weeks and other forms of military theatre as vehicles to promote both navy and nation and to lobby for greater naval armaments. Planning the content of a pamphlet to accompany the fleet review for George V’s silver jubilee in 1935, Lord Lloyd suggested it should give an overview of the event alongside a comparison with contemporary and pre-war figures ‘showing the deplorable reductions which had been made in our Naval Defence Forces and our grave weakness at sea’.¹⁰² Nevertheless, the league felt the review would be a ‘spectacular’ occasion and decided to make a special appeal, sending material to more than 20,000 non-members. In doing so, it hoped to ‘take advantage of the large publicity which would be given to naval matters at that time’.¹⁰³ Similarly, at the suggestion of Lord Lloyd, the league’s entire office staff visited George VI’s coronation fleet review in 1937.¹⁰⁴ Furthermore, it was invited by various shipping companies to provide commentators and lecturers for the event, with the league privately expressing satisfaction that ‘it would be possible to ensure a certain amount of Navy League propaganda in their commentaries’.¹⁰⁵ If the league was less active in its promotion of the 1935 and 1937 fleet reviews than their pre-war counterparts, it still saw the propagandistic value of such events and remained keen participants in naval theatre and pageantry. It was Trafalgar Day, however, that represented the league’s primary vehicle for the public promotion of navalist propaganda.

Navalism and Nelson Day messages

In his study of Empire Day in Britain, Jim English notes that in the aftermath of the First World War ‘the survival of and (in some places) extension of Empire Day celebrations appears curious, given that its attendant militaristic rituals and jingoistic legacy appeared anachronistic after the catastrophe of the war’.¹⁰⁶ English’s reflection provides a useful comparison for an examination of Trafalgar Day.¹⁰⁷ One would certainly expect there to have been little enthusiasm for Trafalgar Day after the First World War, particularly in light of long-standing narratives that suggest that the post-war period was characterised by bitter disillusionment and scepticism, where ideas of patriotism and glory were rejected by an emerging artistic modernism which portrayed the ‘true horrors of war’.¹⁰⁸ While the extent to which the First World War marked a point of rupture has been increasingly revised and nuanced, many still point to the ‘outpouring of pacifist and anti-war literature’ and an apparent hostility towards ‘exuberant patriotic display’ as evidence of a hostility towards both patriotism and militarism after 1918.¹⁰⁹

Nevertheless, Trafalgar Day retained much of its pre-war significance. Writing in 1921, The Times suggested that as ‘the years advance, and as the event, so fresh in the memory, of the greatest of all wars tend to recede into historical retrospect, Trafalgar Day assumes an ever larger and wider meaning’.¹¹⁰ Several years later, The Daily Mirror similarly declared that ‘[n]othing diminishes the attraction of Trafalgar Day as an anniversary – not even the passage of time and the intervention of a war which made those of Napoleon look insignificant’.¹¹¹ Representing similar ‘militaristic rituals’ as Empire Day, Trafalgar Day promoted heritage, commemoration and naval nostalgia. However, it was also a crucial platform for the Navy League to narrate the navy’s place in post-war Britain and stood in stark contrast to the competing use of public ritual by liberal internationalist bodies such as the LNU.¹¹²

The form and ceremony of Trafalgar Day after 1918 closely resembled pre-war celebrations. However, Trafalgar Day also occupied a significant part of the post-war commemorative landscape. This is especially important to highlight because the navy is often overlooked, if not excluded entirely, in the commemoration of the First World War.¹¹³ In the years following the armistice, wreaths on Nelson’s Column were often dedicated to the ‘remembrance of officers and men of the Navy who lost their lives in the Great War’.¹¹⁴ Beyond Nelson’s Column, wreaths were placed at the Cenotaph on Trafalgar Day. Yet, for some in the Royal Navy, Nelson’s Column provided a more natural focal point for naval commemoration than other national sites of mourning such as the Cenotaph or the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior as they considered ‘the latter two as belonging to the Army’.¹¹⁵

Alongside events at Nelson’s Column, many Navy League branches made pilgrimages to local war memorials on Trafalgar Day so that ‘the great heroism and self-sacrifice of our seafarers during the war shall not pass unrecorded’.¹¹⁶ The league’s East Suffolk Branch, for example, placed wreaths on Ipswich’s war memorial. The wreaths were dedicated to the ‘undying memory of the men of the Royal Navy, Merchant Service and fishing fleets, as well as many soldiers and civilians who gave their lives at sea for England and for us in the Great War’.¹¹⁷ By situating the event in the post-war commemorative landscape, the Navy League ensured that Trafalgar Day remained relevant, unifying and that the First World War at sea did not fade from public consciousness.

The desire for remembrance did not mean that Trafalgar Day was entirely formal or solemn. In the post-war period, a much broader range of events emerged. These aimed to engage the public in acts of remembrance, commemoration and naval ritual. Concerts, pageants, plays, dances, balls, film screenings, museum exhibitions, sea shanties, lectures, parades and football matches were held as fundraising initiatives, for educational purposes and simply to broaden the appeal of the annual event. Moreover, such events were increasingly accessible. In 1926, the BBC broadcast Trafalgar Day proceedings from the deck of the Victory. It also arranged special Trafalgar Day programmes, including musical items, lectures, plays, naval sketches and even Trafalgar Day talks for Children’s Hour.¹¹⁸ As well as articles in local and national newspapers, military periodicals and naval journals, and coverage by the BBC, newsreels including British Pathé, British Movietone and Gaumont British all broadcast the event ensuring that much larger audiences than those who attended commemorations were reached.¹¹⁹

Although Trafalgar Day was a Navy League initiative, a number of other naval, military and ex-service organisations commemorated the event for numerous financial, educational, political and propagandistic purposes. The Navy Records Society, Society for Nautical Research and branches of the Old Comrades’ Association, Royal Naval and Royal Marines’ Association, Navy and Army Veterans’ Association, White Ensign Club, British and Foreign Sailors’ Society and Missions to Seamen all staged banquets, church services, lectures, balls, sea shanties or parades for Trafalgar Day.¹²⁰ As the number of organisations involved in such a broad range of activities indicates, Trafalgar Day remained a central part of the popular civic ritual of interwar Britain. Indeed, as one newspaper suggested, ‘[w]hatever else grows dim with years, the memory of Trafalgar Day is not allowed to die … In the long roll of gallant Englishmen Nelson remains the people’s hero.’¹²¹

In a period in which British naval power was threatened by disarmament, economic instability and the rise of airpower, Trafalgar Day provided an important source of confidence and continuity.¹²² The Navy League was certainly among those in post-war society ‘whose epochal consciousness was premised on continuity’ and who ‘refused to see history as irretrievably past’.¹²³ However, while Trafalgar Day clearly retained much of its pre-war currency, celebrations in the post-war period continued to attract opposition. Some criticised the ‘madness’ and ‘wanton stupidity’ of continuing to celebrate Britain’s victory over France at Trafalgar, which was not in the ‘interests of peace’.¹²⁴ Others questioned the commemoration of Trafalgar Day in schools. Instead of fostering the spirit of internationalism, one letter in The Coming Day – the monthly paper of the Free Church League – bemoaned that ‘our elementary schools destroy it. Even during the war, when the French nation was our closest ally, Trafalgar Day has been celebrated in the schools. Navy League pamphlets are still distributed by Local Education authorities to the teachers in their employ as a basis for lessons on that day.’¹²⁵ Alongside such concerns, newspapers such as the Daily Herald lamented that the event was being ‘exploited to work up panic and rush Parliament into spending millions’ on ‘preparations for war’.¹²⁶

Conversely, while the Navy League could not claim to be the sole custodian of Nelson’s Column, it often objected to its use by other societies. For example, the league’s Islington Branch protested the ‘desecration of Nelson’s Column by the Communist and Socialist meetings held from this national monument, such demonstrations being an insult to the memory of the gallant Admiral in whose honour it was erected’.¹²⁷ The legacy and meaning of Trafalgar Day was clearly the source of conflict, yet opposition for the most part was sporadic and did little to affect its popularity.

While there was widespread participation in commemorative rituals surrounding the navy on Trafalgar Day, the meaning of the annual event was varied. For some, Trafalgar Day was a patriotic celebration of navy and nation. To others, the event was characterised by its militaristic, conservative and anachronistic nature. For many families, Trafalgar Day provided an opportunity to publicly mourn and commemorate the loss of loved ones who died during the First World War. To provide their own narrative, the Navy League published a ‘Nelson Day’ message each year which outlined its views on the legacy of Nelson, his relevance for contemporary society and provided a critique of the naval situation at the time. Through Nelson Day messages, the league attempted to nurture feelings of patriotism, duty and naval identity, while stressing the ongoing importance of the navy to the British public. As the league declared in one Nelson Day message:

In Nelson’s day … the Navy needed no advertisement, and British Sea Power wanted no advocate … Nowadays, the people require instruction in sea sense and sea knowledge, advertisement is necessary, and an advocate for the Silent Navy must be found … it is the Navy League which supplies these requirements of the age.¹²⁸

Such sentiments were echoed in the speeches of the widely publicised ‘Nelson Day’ dinners that were attended by a range of influential figures. Notable speakers included, among many others, Leo Amery, Churchill, Lord Runciman, the Earl of Derby, Hoare, Nuffield, Beatty, Jellicoe and Sir Roger Keyes. Members of the royal family also spoke at Nelson Day dinners, while proceedings annually opened with a message of good wishes from the reigning monarch. In his speech in 1930, Prince George warned that ‘the Navy is connected with every detail of our national and personal history … If the Navy had not existed we should not have existed, and when it did not exist we also should cease to exist.’¹²⁹ In 1932, the Prince of Wales reflected that the Navy League was one of the first organisations he could remember, that he was an avid reader of the organisation’s publications as a child and that he agreed with ‘all the purposes of the Navy League’.¹³⁰ The Duke of York, later George VI, was to be the principal speaker in 1933, although was unable to attend due to illness.¹³¹ Nelson Day dinners were a high point in the league’s social calendar – with figures from the Admiralty and royal family in particular legitimising the league’s aims and activities.

The presence of the royal family on Trafalgar Day reflected a long-standing monarchical association with the maritime world, a wider ‘ “navalization” of monarchy’ and the broader significance of the annual event in the popular civic ritual of interwar Britain.¹³² However, while advisors had previously warned members of the royal family not to align with the Air League as it was ‘run on the same lines as the Navy League’, there was clearly an increasing willingness among members of the monarchy to use the Navy League as a platform from which to champion the navy and its ongoing centrality to the nation, empire and the national character.¹³³ Equally, the presence of members of the royal family at Nelson Day dinners was crucial for the dissemination of league propaganda. As Lloyd reflected, such patronage was ‘of greater assistance than anything else I could imagine’ in the league’s ‘struggle against defeatism and pacifism’.¹³⁴

Nelson Day speeches and messages were not solely directed at Navy League members or subscribers of The Navy, but were published (and scrutinised) in local and national newspapers as well as in prominent naval journals and magazines.¹³⁵ Such messages provided the Navy League with a platform to lobby the government on naval issues and to shape the attitudes of British society on the centrality of the navy to the nation and empire. Trafalgar and Nelson provided the league with a ‘usable past’, one which could reinforce its contemporary propaganda on a wide range of issues.¹³⁶ A number of distinct themes were evident in Nelson Day messages and on Trafalgar Day throughout the period – namely, a hostility towards collective security, disarmament, pacifism and internationalism alongside calls for naval supremacy.

The Navy League’s willingness to embrace ideals of collective security and the preservation of peace through international agreement in the immediate post-war period did little to curtail public enthusiasm for Trafalgar Day, however the annual event was not immune from this temporary shift in policy. For example, the league used its Nelson Day message in 1921 to welcome the upcoming Washington Naval Conference as the ‘first real step towards eliminating the suicidal policy of competition in building of ships of war’.¹³⁷ Such statements were transitory. By 1923, the league was again urging that the ‘nation must continue to realise that by the sea it has its being’ and argued that both the nation and empire must be maintained by ‘a force of fighting ships ready to defend it’.¹³⁸ The following year, the league used its Nelson Day message to remind readers that ‘our security, our livelihood, and the future of our race at home and throughout the world, rest, under Providence, upon the Fleets of the King’.¹³⁹ While Nelson and Trafalgar were used by the league to promote Britain’s national and naval heritage, Trafalgar Day was also utilised to express the league’s opposition towards pacifism, disarmament and collective security.

Echoing the league’s wider policy, Nelson Day messages from the late 1920s to mid-1930s lobbied against the Geneva Naval Conference, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the London Naval Conference and the World Disarmament Conference. Nelson Day messages lamented that ‘no country is being so heavily dosed with pacifist propaganda as our own’, while the 1929 message was particularly hostile:

To Nelson the pacifism that is fashionable to-day would have been as inconceivable as the pathetic trust in treaties unsupported by force … it is the aim of the Navy League, in days when the strength of the national navy has become a subject of political bargaining, to strive to keep alive the spirit which created and held our vast Empire – the spirit that Nelson embodied.¹⁴⁰

For the Navy League, peace, stability and security rested not upon treaties or pacts, but upon force. Much like other forms of naval theatre in this period – such as the annual celebration of Navy Weeks – Trafalgar Day was used to remind both state and society of the importance of a strong navy and to criticise calls for naval disarmament.¹⁴¹ The Navy League’s Nelson Day messages during the World Disarmament Conference, for instance, were similar in tone to its wider pronouncements, although propounded highly idealised Nelsonian traits in relation to disarmament and national defence. As Lloyd declared at the Nelson Day dinner in 1933: ‘Now for ten or fifteen years the leaders of every party have preached pacifism. They forgot that, when Nelson said that England expected every man to do his duty, he was not suggesting that every man was to do his duty by Geneva or the League of Nations.’¹⁴² In opposing pacifism and international treaties, the league pointed to the importance of naval power in relation to the protection of trade, commerce and communication alongside the maintenance of empire, imperial unity and national defence. Such statements met with at least some approval by members of the public. One Trafalgar Day wreath in 1927, for example, reportedly read ‘England expects, and the mother of a young sailor hopes, that he and his generation will follow in the footsteps of the immortal Nelson and do their duty’.¹⁴³

From the mid-1930s, Nelson Day messages principally revolved around issues of rearmament and national defence, yet were far less martial than one might expect. This resulted in part, as previous chapters detailed, from the league’s focus on the SCC and Merchant Navy, but it also reflected an increasing closeness between the league and the Admiralty. If Nelson Day messages hardly represented a call to arms, they were certainly cautionary in tone. As the 1934 Nelson Day message warned, the ‘future security of the Empire hangs precariously in the balance, for we are no longer supreme by sea, land or air, and our security depends on whether the peoples of the Empire are prepared and determined to maintain their strength at sea’.¹⁴⁴ The Nelson Day message the following year was more ominous, warning that ‘crisis and the creeping mists of war have reawakened the sense of reality and exposed the perils of a weakened Fleet’.¹⁴⁵ At the Nelson Day dinner in 1935, Lloyd described how the league had throughout ‘this long and dark decade of opportunism and naval neglect’ stressed the need for a ‘strong, a sufficient and a supreme Navy’. The league had the sympathy of Jellicoe, that year’s principal speaker, who declared ‘the voice of a powerful nation carries weight: that of a weak one does not’. Churchill went further, stating that unless the Royal Navy was rebuilt, Britain’s empire would be brought ‘clattering down in ruin’.¹⁴⁶

The Nelson Day message of 1936 was the last formal statement issued before the outbreak of the Second World War, although the league continued to mark Trafalgar Day with commemorations at Nelson’s Column and with Nelson Day dinners. At the Nelson Day dinner in that year, Hoare assured his audience that the ‘British Navy had never been more efficient’ and would ‘ensure the highways of the ocean’.¹⁴⁷ Such sentiments were echoed in the Nelson Day message, which spoke of the ‘country going to work in earnest to make good the dangerous gaps in her defences and to build her fleets again’. Reflecting on the league’s work, the message declared that ‘the Navy League through many years, in all the alternating gusts of apathy and enthusiasm, has laboured diligently, unceasingly and successfully to see that the great lesson taught at Trafalgar is not forgotten or ignored’. ‘We are’, the message continued, ‘entering a new phase of national and Imperial endeavour … The Navy League has greater responsibilities and new opportunities … the Navy League means to shoulder these responsibilities and seize these opportunities.’¹⁴⁸

The final Trafalgar Day in peacetime occurred only several weeks after the Munich Agreement. While war had been temporarily averted, Lloyd felt that the country could ‘look back with pride and satisfaction possibly to only one thing, namely, the power and preparedness of our Fleet, whose mobilisation … undoubtedly constituted almost the only effective argument in the conversations that took place on the other side of the Channel’. The temporary peace that had been secured at Munich did little to alter the league’s calls for naval supremacy or criticism of naval disarmament. Speaking at the Nelson Day dinner that year, Lloyd reflected that throughout the ‘last 10 years of pacifism and disarmament, the Navy League has never ceased for one day in the year, with its speakers up and down the country, to warn this country of the dangers of Lord Baldwin’s policy of disarmament’. ‘[I]n the days of toil and sacrifice that await us in the near future’, Lloyd declared, ‘the Navy League has a great part to play’. The American Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy was more reserved in his address, fearing that recent events would ‘undoubtedly stimulate the already frenzied race for arms’. While he suggested that it would be ‘hard to quarrel with the decision of any nation to build up its military forces’, he feared that the ‘armaments burden’ was reaching a point that threatened ‘to engulf us all in a major disaster’.¹⁴⁹ Less than a year later, this disaster was realised.

Conclusion

As in 1914, Trafalgar Day in 1939 was shorn of its usual grandeur. The annual dinner and religious service were cancelled and no Nelson Day message was published. Plans for King George VI to attend Trafalgar Square to unveil memorial fountains in honour of Jellicoe and Beatty were similarly delayed. Nelson’s Column was devoid of decoration, although wreaths were laid at the column’s base on behalf of the Navy League and the high commissioners of the dominions, while a wreath was also placed on Nelson’s tomb in St Paul’s Cathedral. The league’s wreath on Nelson’s Column bore the inscription: ‘In memory of those who fought at sea in the past for Britain’s freedom, and in gratitude to the seamen of Britain and France, fighting side by side to-day’. Alongside these decorations, Nelson’s ‘England Expects’ was flown in Trafalgar Square. If the column lacked the usual resplendent decorations, Trafalgar Day was still reportedly observed with a ‘quickened interest and depth of feeling that are natural at a time when the best-loved of British sailors lives again in the thoughts of his people’.¹⁵⁰ As part of the brief ceremony surrounding the placing of the Navy League’s wreath, a small SCC detachment formed a guard of honour. While there was ‘rather less Nelson touch’ in a ceremonial sense than in previous years, a number of sailors, soldiers and airmen took part in the league’s ceremony to pay tribute to ‘Britain’s greatest naval victory’.¹⁵¹

Although the key commemorative and ceremonial aspects of Trafalgar Day – the decoration of Nelson’s Column, the tribute at Nelson’s tomb, a religious service and an annual banquet – remained largely unchanged, the meaning and significance of the annual event shifted on a number of occasions. From the late nineteenth century until the First World War, Trafalgar Day championed Nelson and highly idealised Nelsonian qualities of duty, discipline and sacrifice. Heritage, nostalgia, continuity and tradition were all key characteristics of the event, although the day was also used to impress upon both state and society the importance of sea power for the preservation of nation and empire. For some, the more martial, anachronistic elements of Trafalgar Day were clear, although the event nevertheless remained popular. Upon the outbreak of the First World War, the form and ceremony of Trafalgar Day shifted to align with wider changes in commemorative practices. No longer was the day merely about Nelson or Trafalgar (although many attempted to evoke Nelson in calls for military service). Instead, Trafalgar Day in wartime also commemorated the ordinary sailor and provided a space for families and friends to publicly mourn and venerate their loved ones who died at sea. Such practices were replicated in the post-war period, where Trafalgar Day formed an important part of the commemorative landscape. Yet, it was not long until Trafalgar Day was, once again, far more martial, militaristic and overtly politicised in nature. From the mid-1920s, the Navy League employed the annual event to call for British naval supremacy and to lobby against collective security, pacifism, internationalism and disarmament.

From its inception, Trafalgar Day occupied an important place in British civic ritual. As John Mackenzie notes:

Trafalgar Day remains a resonant date in the calendar, commemorated in many places in the Anglophone world. The continuing significance of this day, remembered annually in so many places for almost two hundred years, is ample evidence of the mythic status of the action it commemorates and the most famous actor at the centre of that victory. Indeed, the legendary status of Horatio Nelson is probably the greatest of all the heroic myths created by the British to explain the essence and uniqueness of their history.¹⁵²

As in the case of fleet reviews, warship launches and Navy Weeks, Trafalgar Day fostered sea-mindedness and popular navalism on a local, national and imperial scale. It was widely reported on in local and national newspapers and in a broad range of naval journals and magazines. It was celebrated in schools, by organised youth movements and was supported by senior members of the royal family alongside numerous figures from the social, political and military elite. Unlike Armistice Day – which was abandoned for the duration of the Second World War – Trafalgar Day was celebrated throughout the conflict, albeit in a somewhat muted and more solemn form.¹⁵³ For the Navy League, Trafalgar Day commemorations in wartime would demonstrate that ‘sea power still rules the events of man … sea power will determine this dreadful and abhorrent conflict.’¹⁵⁴

Notes

1. The Times, 21 October 1895, 8; 22 October 1895, 4.

2. Shields Daily Gazette, 22 October 1897, 3; East of Fife Record, 28 October 1904, 3.

3. For example, Marianne Czisnik, ‘Commemorating Trafalgar: Public Celebration and National Identity’, in Trafalgar in History: A Battle and Its Afterlife, ed. David Cannadine (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 139–54, the most detailed study of Trafalgar Day to date, only devotes slightly more than a page to the commemoration of Trafalgar Day after 1914.

4. See Chapter 7 of Daniel Owen Spence, Colonial Naval Culture and British Imperialism, 1922–67 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015) and Chapter 6 of John Griffiths, Imperial Culture in Antipodean Cities, 1880–1939 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

5. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

6. Quintin Colville and James Davey, eds, A New Naval History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019).

7. Helen McCarthy, ‘The League of Nations, Public Ritual and National Identity in Britain, c.1919–56’, History Workshop Journal, 70 (2010): 108–32; BLPES, LNU/5/26, LNU Education Committee Minute Book, Meeting of the Education Committee, 26 May 1931, 5.

8. Anne Summers, ‘Militarism in Britain Before the Great War’, History Workshop Journal, 2 (1976): 118.

9. Jan Rüger, The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1.

10. Matthew C. Hendley, Organized Patriotism and the Crucible of War: Popular Imperialism in Britain, 1914–1932 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012), 4.

11. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/2, NL Minute Book, MEC, 7 October 1895, 1.

12. NMM, White Papers, WHI/142, Arnold White, The Navy League and the Public, 1914, 8–9.

13. Barbara Tomlinson, Commemorating the Seafarer: Monuments, Memorials and Memory (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2015), 55.

14. Czisnik, ‘Commemorating Trafalgar’, 143.

15. Czisnik, ‘Commemorating Trafalgar’, 144.

16. Czisnik, ‘Commemorating Trafalgar’, 143.

17. The Navy League Journal, November 1896, 131.

18. The Times, 22 October 1896, 4.

19. The Spectator, 24 October 1896, 2.

20. The Cardiff Times, 24 October 1896, 4.

21. The Times, 22 October 1896, 4; The Daily Telegraph, 22 October 1902, 7.

22. Cited in The Navy League Journal, November 1898, 164–5; November 1899, 176.

23. T.G. Otte, ‘Centenaries, Self-Historicization and the Mobilization of the Masses’, in The Age of Anniversaries: The Cult of Commemoration, 1895–1925, ed. T.G. Otte (London: Routledge, 2018), 27.

24. The Times, 7 June 1898, 12.

25. N.C. Fleming, ‘The Imperial Maritime League: British Navalism, Conflict, and the Radical Right, c.1907–1920’, War in History, 23 (2016): 297; The Times, 20 October 1897, 12.

26. W. Mark Hamilton, The Nation and the Navy: Methods and Organization of British Navalist Propaganda, 1889–1914 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1986), 146.

27. The Navy League Journal, November 1896, 131. See also White’s response to Conan Doyle, The Navy League Journal, November 1897, 276. For the league’s response to Shaw, see The Navy League Journal, November 1898, 158.

28. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/6, NL Minute Book, MEC, 24 September 1900, 3–4.

29. The Navy League Journal, October 1905, 246; November 1905, 273.

30. John M. MacKenzie, ‘Nelson Goes Global: The Nelson Myth in Britain and Beyond’, in Admiral Lord Nelson: Context and Legacy, ed. David Cannadine (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 157. Cf. Andrew Lambert, ‘An Entente Centenary: Commemorating Trafalgar Without Wounding “The Susceptibilities of France”’, in The Age of Anniversaries, ed. Otte, 61–81.

31. NMM, MSY/6/2/2, NLAR 1905, 8.

32. The Times, 23 October 1905, 10.

33. Roland Quinault, ‘The Cult of the Centenary, c.1784–1914’, Historical Research, 71 (1998): 303–23.

34. CWAC, F136 (191), Postcard, 1905; The Navy League Journal, November 1905, 273–4.

35. The Navy League Journal, November 1905, 273–4.

36. Andrew Lambert, ‘Nelson, Trafalgar and the Meaning of Victory’, History Today, 54 (2004): 58.

37. The Navy League Journal, November 1898, 163–4.

38. Daily Mail, 21 October 1899, 3.

39. The Navy League Journal, November 1900, 180; November 1901, 201.

40. The Times, 22 October 1898, 9; The Navy League Journal, November 1900, 180.

41. The Navy, June 1934, 179.

42. Colin White, ‘Nelson Apotheosised: The Creation of the Nelson Legend’, in Admiral Lord Nelson, ed. Cannadine, 109.

43. See, for example, CWAC, 1851/3b, Navy League Annual Service, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Programme, 1911.

44. The Navy League Journal, November 1906, 281.

45. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/19, NL Minute Book, MEC, 30 September 1914, 9–10; Western Mail, 13 October 1914, 4.

46. Pall Mall Gazette, 20 October 1914, 6.

47. The Times, 22 October 1914, 8.

48. The Manchester Guardian, 22 October 1914, 6.

49. Western Mail, 8 October 1914, 4.

50. Hull Daily Mail, 21 October 1914, 4; The Navy, November 1914, 317.

51. The Navy, December 1914, 355.

52. Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 320.

53. Leeds Mercury, 22 October 1915, 3.

54. The Times, 3 October 1916, 5.

55. The Daily Telegraph, 23 October 1916, 10.

56. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/21, NL Minute Book, MEC, 12 September 1916, 6; 14 November 1916, 6. Cf. NMM, WHI/118, Jutland Day versus Trafalgar Day.

57. The Navy, December 1915, 377.

58. Northumberland Archives, Woodhorn, CES 68/1/2, Log Book. Blyth Princess Louise Road Schools, Blyth, 1914–1949, 22 October 1917, 43; CES 62/1/5, Log Book. Blyth Plessey Road First School, Blyth, 1910–1923, 20 October 1916, 143–4; CES 269/1/3, Log Book. Howick Church of England School, Howick, 1901–1924, 20 October 1916, 187; CES 94/1/1, Log Book. Catton County Primary School, Catton, 1880–1921, 21 October 1915, 446–7.

59. The Scotsman, 22 October 1915, 9.

60. London Daily News, 20 October 1914, 5.

61. The Manchester Guardian, 22 October 1915, 9.

62. The Navy, December 1915, 377.

63. The Daily Telegraph, 22 October 1915, 11.

64. The Navy, December 1917, 160; The Daily Telegraph, 21 October 1915, 8; NMM, MSY/6/5/7, Letter from Field Marshal Douglas Haig to the Navy League, 1918; The Navy, October 1918, 83.

65. Jay Winter, Remembering War: The Great War Between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 135.

66. The Naval & Military Record and Royal Dockyards Gazette, 28 October 1931, 677. See also ‘Trafalgar Day’ (London: British Movietone, 24 October 1938).

67. Portsmouth Evening News, 21 October 1920, 6.

68. The Naval & Military Record and Royal Dockyards Gazette, 25 October 1922, 550.

69. NMM, SNR/7/2, Society for Nautical Research Papers (SNR), Victory Correspondence, ‘Save the “Victory” Fund’. However, the Navy League’s Hawke’s Bay Branch donated £53.01 to the Society. NMM, SNR/7/2, SNR, Victory Correspondence, Letter from the Hawke’s Bay Branch of the Navy League to the Society for Nautical Research, 8 August 1923, 1.

70. NMM, SNR/7/2, ‘Save “The Victory” Fund – Scottish Appeal’.

71. Don Leggett, ‘Restoring Victory: Naval Heritage, Identity, and Memory in Interwar Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 28 (2017): 61.

72. Leggett, ‘Restoring Victory’, 57.

73. Liverpool Echo, 21 October 1922, 6.

74. Liverpool Echo, 20 October 1927, 8.

75. The Newcastle Journal, 22 October 1928, 8; The Shields Daily News, 23 October 1933, 3.

76. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/26, NL Minute Book, MEC, 12 November 1923, 1–2.

77. Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 22 October 1926, 7.

78. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 10 September 1931, 2; The Newcastle Journal, 19 October 1936, 9.

79. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 2 October 1930, 2; The Naval & Military Record and Royal Dockyards Gazette, 26 October 1921, 676; Western Daily Press, 25 October 1926, 10.

80. Leeds Mercury, 19 October 1929, 4.

81. The Scotsman, 22 October 1937, 12.

82. Western Mail, 25 October 1926, 9; 21 October 1926, 12; 19 October 1933, 6; Belfast News-Letter, 10 October 1929, 7.

83. For example, see ‘Trafalgar Day in Liverpool’ (London: British Pathé, 1928).

84. Rüger, The Great Naval Game, 96–7.

85. NMM, PBB0617, The Navy League Guide to the Naval Review, 1897; PBB9810, Navy League Guide to the Coronation Review, 1902; PBB9873, Navy League Guide to the Thames Review, July 1909.

86. Rüger, The Great Naval Game, 97–8.

87. NMM, PBB9810, Navy League Guide to the Coronation Review, 1902, 33.

88. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/26, NL Minute Book, MEC, 12 November 1923, 2; 8 October 1923, 6; 10 December 1923, 1.

89. Rowan Thompson, ‘No More Parades? Navy Weeks, Naval Theatre and Navalism, 1927–38’, Historical Research, 96 (2023): 222–42.

90. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 1 March 1934, 4.

91. The Navy, June 1935, 182–3; The Graphic, 26 July 1930, 152.

92. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/26, NL Minute Book, MEC, 5 June 1930, 2; Portsmouth History Centre, The Naval Collection, Portsmouth Navy Week Programme, 1930, 32.

93. The Navy, September 1930, 271.

94. The Navy, September 1934, 283; Kent & Sussex Courier, 7 August 1936, 9.

95. The Navy, October 1930, 306.

96. The Navy, November 1932, 342.

97. The Sunderland Echo and Shipping Gazette, 18 January 1939, 4; The Lancashire Daily Post, 15 August 1935, 7.

98. BLPES, LNU 1/2, Minutes of a Meeting of the LNU General Council, 16–17 December 1927, 11. Cf. BLPES, LNU 2/8, LNU Executive Committee Minutes, 1926–8, MEC, 30 June 1927, 3.

99. The Times, 28 June 1928, 17.

100. The Times, 6 July 1928, 12; BLPES, LNU 5/24, LNU Education Committee, 1926–30, Meeting of the Education Committee, 16 February 1928, 3.

101. The Times, 6 July 1928, 12. Cf. Headway, August 1929, 146–7.

102. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/27, NL Minute Book, MEC, 11 July 1935, 5. For the pamphlet, see NMM PBB982, Programme of the Royal Naval Review, 1935.

103. The Navy, June 1935, 172; NMM, MSY/6/3/4/6, FGP Minute Book, MFGPSC, 6 June 1935, 3; 11 July 1935, 1.

104. NMM, MSY/6/3/4/6, FGP Minute Book, MFASC, 6 May 1937, 4.

105. NMM, MSY/6/3/4/6, FGP Minute Book, MFASC, 10 March 1937, 3.

106. Jim English, ‘Empire Day in Britain, 1904–1958’, The Historical Journal, 49 (2006): 260.

107. As Daniel Owen Spence suggests in his study of Trafalgar Day in Hong Kong. Spence, Colonial Naval Culture, 187.

108. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975); Angela Bartie et al., ‘ “And Those Who Live, How Shall I Tell Their Fame?” Historical Pageants, Collective Remembrance and the First World War, 1919–39’, Historical Research, 90 (2017): 639.

109. Hendley, Organized Patriotism, 4. For challenges to the idea of the First World War as a point of rupture, see Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Stefan Goebel, The Great War and Medieval Memory: War, Remembrance and Medievalism in Britain and Germany, 1914–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Mark Connelly, The Great War, Memory and Ritual: Commemoration in the City and East London, 1916–1939 (Woodbridge: The Royal Historical Society, 2002). In the naval context, see Rowan Thompson, ‘Naval Pageantry, Heritage, and Commemoration in Interwar Britain’, The Historical Journal, 68 (2025): 376–96.

110. The Times, 21 October 1921, 11.

111. The Daily Mirror, 22 October 1923, 7.

112. McCarthy, ‘The League of Nations’.

113. Leggett, ‘Restoring Victory’, 60.

114. The Times, 22 October 1923, 19.

115. Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 21 October 1926, 6.

116. Gloucester Journal, 23 August 1919, 3.

117. The Navy, December 1919, 163.

118. Portsmouth Evening News, 21 October 1926, 7; 21 October 1933, 11; The Times, 2 October 1926, 5.

119. For example, see ‘Trafalgar Day’ (London: British Pathé, 1923); ‘Trafalgar Day celebrated in Portsmouth and London’ (London: Gaumont British, 1935); ‘Trafalgar Day’ (London: British Movietone, 1937).

120. Leeds Mercury, 21 October 1932, 4; The Illustrated London News, 29 October 1938, 797; The Western Morning News, 23 October 1933, 3; Burton Observer and Chronicle, 26 October 1933, 3; Torquay Times, 26 October 1923, 9; Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 26 October 1934, 13; Northampton Daily Echo, 18 October 1922, 2.

121. Northern Whig, 22 October 1928, 6.

122. Leggett, ‘Restoring Victory’, 57.

123. Goebel, The Great War, 1; Thompson, ‘Naval Pageantry’, 388.

124. NRS, Balfour Papers, GD433/2/25/21–22, Letter from J.H. Bath to A.J. Balfour, 18 February 1922, 1–4.

125. The Coming Day, September 1919, 55.

126. CAC, Noel-Baker Papers, GBR/0014/NBKR 7/35/1, ‘Arms and Industry’, 1934, Newspaper cutting: Daily Herald, 21 October 1933.

127. NMM, MSY/6/3/3/25, NL Minute Book, MEC, 17 May 1923, 5.

128. Cited in Philip Noel-Baker, The Private Manufacture of Armaments: Volume I (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1936), 292.

129. The Naval & Military Record and Royal Dockyards Gazette, 29 October 1930, 698.

130. The Navy, December 1932, 363.

131. The Navy, November 1933, 323.

132. Miriam M. Schneider, The ‘Sailor Prince’ in the Age of Empire: Creating a Monarchical Brand in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 8.

133. RA, EVIIIPWH/PS/MAIN/2161, Air League of the British Empire, Letter from Sir Hugh Trenchard to Lionel Halsey, 2 October 1929, 1–2.

134. RA, EVIIIPWH/PS/MAIN/1254, The Navy League, Letter from Lord Lloyd to Lionel Halsey, 29 May 1931, 2.

135. See, for example, Brassey’s Naval and Shipping Annual, 1934, 3.

136. Mark Freeman, ‘ “Splendid Display; Pompous Spectacle”: Historical Pageants in Twentieth-Century Britain’, Social History, 38 (2013): 426.

137. Parliamentary Archives, Hannon Papers, HNN/3/2, Nelson Day, 1921.

138. The Navy, November 1923, 291.

139. The Navy, November 1924, 297.

140. The Times, 22 October 1928, 11.

141. Thompson, ‘No More Parades’, 226–7.

142. The Navy, November 1933, 324.

143. The Nottingham Evening Post, 21 October 1927, 1.

144. The Navy, November 1934, 317.

145. The Navy, November 1935, 320.

146. The Navy, November 1935, 328; CAC, Churchill Papers, CHAR 9/115A–B, 1935, Speech at the Navy League Dinner, 17 October 1935, 4.

147. Cambridge University Library, Manuscripts Reading Room, Papers of Sir Samuel Hoare, Viscount Templewood, GBR/0012/MS Templewood/IX/4/7, Speech at the Annual Banquet of the Navy League, 27 October 1936, 2; 5.

148. The Navy, November 1936, 296.

149. The Navy, November 1938, 336; 338–9.

150. The Times, 23 October 1939, 5.

151. Liverpool Daily Post, 19 October 1939, 4; The Observer, 22 October 1939, 11.

152. MacKenzie, ‘Nelson Goes Global’, 144.

153. Adrian Gregory, The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day, 1919–1946 (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 207.

154. The Navy, November 1939, 341.