Every fleet, every battle, every ship that fought in them*

1803–1815

Britain went back to war with France in May 1803, and Spain joined France at the end of 1804. Napoleon gathered an army at Boulogne to invade England and needed his fleets to hold the Channel for a few days. Villeneuve led the Toulon fleet to the West Indies to draw the British away, with Nelson chasing him there and back. Calder caught him off Cape Finisterre on his return, and he went south to Cádiz instead of north to the Channel. In October he sailed again and met Nelson off Cape Trafalgar, where the Franco-Spanish fleet was destroyed and Nelson was killed. After Trafalgar Britain held the sea for the rest of the war. Its fleets seized the Danish fleet at Copenhagen in 1807 to keep it from Napoleon, attacked the French squadrons in their harbours with fireships at the Basque Roads, and fought frigate actions from Mauritius, where the French won their one victory at Grand Port, to the Adriatic, where Hoste beat a Franco-Venetian squadron at Lissa.

9 battles · 154 ships · 11 fleet movements

1861–1865

The first battle between ironclads, at Hampton Roads, made every wooden navy in the world obsolete overnight. The Union used its fleets to blockade the South and force its way past the forts guarding New Orleans and Mobile Bay, while Confederate raiders such as Alabama hunted Union merchant ships across the oceans.

5 battles · 44 ships · 5 fleet movements

1914–1918

The war at sea between the Allies and the Central Powers, fought in every ocean. Battlefleets met only once in full, at Jutland, but cruisers hunted raiders across the globe, mines and submarines sank battleships from the Dardanelles to the North Sea, and small torpedo craft proved they could sink dreadnoughts. It also saw the first naval codebreaking to decide battles and the first air raids launched from a ship.

29 battles · 298 ships · 26 fleet movements