Trafalger Celebration

Libby Purvis in The Times is one of the few to mention this years 200th anniversary in October of the truly Europe forming battle being celebrated today. Her observations are mainly directed at the significance of the attempts to ignore the date and may be read from here. A brief quote: The trouble is that it does matter, this sea-blindness. It has caused enough concern for a campaign to be founded, Sea Vision, to point up the naval, merchant, industrial, fishing, technological and training contribution of seafaring. The maritime industry, after all, turns over £37 billion, twice as much as aerospace and agriculture; 96 per cent of goods go by ship; exploration and understanding of the marine environment are ever more pressing; the Royal Navy is one of the strongest in the world despite the earnest efforts of successive governments to shrink it in the wash.