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Nelson received a head wound at the Nile which he was convinced was mortal. But he survived for Trafalgar seven years later. There, just west of Gibraltar, 27 British ships bore down on 33 of the enemy in two columns, one led by Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood Collingwood, the other by Nelson himself aboard his 100-gun flagship Victory. Nelson flashed his famous signal: "England expects every man to do his duty." Collingwood struck the enemy's rear, Nelson the centre. The British lost no ships, in the end captured or destroyed 22 of the Frenchmen. Nelson himself was mortally wounded just as victory was in his grasp. In the arms of his flag-captain, Thomas Hardy, Nelson said, "Thank God I have done my duty," and died.
To these historic engagements, the Battle of 1941 bears only such resemblances as are dictated by laws of naval warfare which not even the gap between trireme and dreadnaught can change. To many of the tactics of Nelson, as well as to his eagerness for combat, the British Navy sticks. But this battle is unprecedented.
It is unprecedented in scale. It covers the whole Mediterranean Sea, and spills out on to the lands around the sea. It has already lasted eight months and shows no signs of abating. In it are engaged vessels ranging from unwieldy monitor to the swiftest aircraft. By it may be decided fates of nations, by it entire areas of human philosophy may be affected. It tests, perhaps finally, the fundamental power of Britain.
Whose Lake? On June 10, thinking that his team had already won, Benito Mussolini rushed to war, and rashly precipitated this whole new conflict, the Battle of the Mediterranean.
Every British boy knows the importance of the Mediterranean. If a bitter enemy to the U. S. controlled the narrow waters off Florida with a terrible stronghold where Havana's feeble old Morro Castle now stands, if this enemy also sat astraddle the Panama Canal and had bases at Trinidad, Jamaica and Tampico, U. S. citizens would probably be alarmed. But the Gulf Stream is not in the U. S. bloodstream. Although perhaps there should be, there is no U. S. tradition of responsibility for the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico comparable to the innate, hereditary British concern for a sea which is both smaller (see map) and much farther from home ground. The British know that, in Gibraltar and Suez, much more than a trade line is at stake: without them, Britain has no hope of maintaining two fronts in a European war. Neither Italy nor Germany is blind to the two Mediterranean gates, and the British constantly expect a German campaign aimed at them.
Because of the crucial importance of the strongholds at each end of the Mediterranean, and also because the Italian promontory and islands jut down into midMediterranean, the Battle fell from the first into two major spheres, Western and Eastern. Last week Winston Churchill confirmed this division by referring specifically to "the Western Mediterranean Fleet."
But the Battle was not all tag. There were sharp and dramatic episodes in both Western and Eastern basins.