Page 221 - The Secret Museum

was too big for the building; we wouldn’t get away with that now.’

‘We wanted to exhibit the flag during a Nelson and Napoleon exhibition we had at

the museum in 2005, but we just didn’t have the space. Instead, we decided to
photograph it and put the pictures online, so at least people can find out that it exists.’

The iconic flag from Trafalgar was slowly unravelled on the floor by a team of
curators as a photographer hovered above, snapping away from a cherry picker – a
platform on a hydraulic lift.

Lots of journalists turned up to watch, but then Prince Charles and Camilla
announced their engagement on the same day, and the press, as Barbara put it, ‘took
off like scalded cats’. Since then, no one has set eyes upon it. It’s unlikely it will ever
go on display, and only a handful of people have been lucky enough to see it since it
was removed from St Paul’s over a century ago.

I visited the flag in its current home, inside one of the museum’s storage units in

Greenwich. There are lots of flags kept in storage, besides this one. They are kept on
rollers – much the best way to store a flag, as you can unroll it when you like, and it
doesn’t get creased.

The museum hasn’t found a roller big enough for Nelson’s trophy flag yet, so it is
folded up, wrapped in tissue paper and stored in a long cardboard box on the bottom
shelf of a cabinet. We heaved the box out from its shelf and lifted the tissue paper.

The flag is made of wool and feels very coarse. It is red and yellow striped, with
the arms of Castile and Leon in the middle. The name of the ship is written on the
hoist in ink: SAN ILDEFONSO. It has holes in it from where it was shot at during the
Battle of Trafalgar, and it is frayed on the edges from when it flapped in the winds
upon the stormy seas.

It’s amazing to think of the flag being hoisted up from the Spanish ship off Cape
Trafalgar as Nelson’s fleet sailed towards it at noon on 21 October 1805.
That morning, the British fleet of 27 ships had prepared to attack a line of 33

French and Spanish ships in a daring move called ‘crossing the T’.

As the enemy lined up across the bay from Cape Roche in the north to Cape
Trafalgar in the south, Nelson decided the British would form two lines and charge
right at the middle of the enemy line.

If you had been in the air above it, like the photographer in the cherry picker high
above the flag, you would have seen the T – the enemy all across the top, the British
heading towards it, up into the top of the T. This daring move, he called the ‘Nelson
Touch’.

Nelson, aboard his ship, HMS Victory, led one line, and Cuthbert Collingwood,
aboard the Royal Sovereign, led the other. Collingwood had his dog, Bounce, on
board. Bounce was tied up in the hold for safety. Collingwood is supposed to have

said, on the day of the battle, ‘I wish Nelson would stop signalling. We all know