21 October is Trafalgar Day, the anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar, 1805, in which a British fleet defeated the combined fleets of France and Spain, and Admiral Nelson was killed. Trafalgar, and Nelson, caught the public imagination: Southey in his Life of Nelson (1813) records that when the news of the Admiral's death reached England, "Men started at the intelligence, and turned pale, as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend." (Other tributes were more commercial: a book on furniture of 1822 notes with censure that, "Many cabinet-makers, for the sake of notoriety, ridiculously give names to furniture quite inconsistent, such as Trafalgar chairs, Waterloo feet, &c."). Trafalgar established itself in the public mind as the type of a British victory, to the extent that Hilaire Belloc used it in one of his Cautionary Tales of 1907, directed at "Hildebrand, Who was Frightened by a Passing Motor, and was Brought to Reason". Hildebrand in the poem is reminded of his notably heroic Great-Grandfather, who "lost a leg at Waterloo, And Quatre-Bras and Ligny too! And died at Trafalgar!"

Nelson himself was aware of the likely result of his exploits. "Before this time tomorrow I shall have gained a peerage, or Westminster Abbey", he said, before the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Three years later, at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, deliberately putting his telescope to his blind eye to look at the approaching Danish fleet, he uttered the words with which the phrase "turn a blind eye to" are associated: "I have only one eye, -- I have a right to be blind sometimes...I really do not see the signal!" He was conscious, too, of his own style of leadership, telling Lady Hamilton shortly before Trafalgar that, "I believe my arrival was most welcome, not only to the Commander of the Fleet but almost to every individual in it; and when I came to explain to them the "the Nelson touch", it was like an electric shock. Some shed tears, all approved -- It was new -- it was singular -- and it was simple!" From this, a masterly or sympathetic approach to a problem may be designated, "the Nelson touch".

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