Calliope’s massive steering wheels stood on the deck beside the wheelhouse. Above this wheelhouse was carved that most famous of maritime signals: “England Expects That Every Man Will Do His Duty”, the exhortation made by Nelson to his men as the 21st October, 1805 dawned over Cape Trafalgar and two grand fleets of 27 British and 33 French and Spanish ships. But did you know...?

The Message.

The message was composed almost in a spirit of levity, as Nelson pondered the battle to come. Desiring to amuse the fleet, he told his officers to make the signal:”Nelson Confides That Every Man Will Do His Duty”. He asked the signaller to be quick about it, since he was keen to follow with what was probably his most favorite, and most frequently used, signal:”Engage The Enemy More Closely”, number 16 in the set.

It was somehow suggested that it might be prudent to replace “Nelson” with “England”, to which the great Admiral consented without murmur. And to save time, the signaller also suggested replacing “Confides”, a word for which no pre-set code existed and which would therefore need to be spelt out individually, each of the 8 letters requiring 1 or 2 flags to identify it, with “Expects” for which a single, 3 flag code existed. In early 19th Century, the verb ‘to confide’, (meaning ‘has confidence’) was more popular than it is today. Again, Nelson consented, and the famous message was born.

It was not appreciated by all the recipients, Admiral Collingwood on HMS Royal Sovereign grumbling that he knew right enough what he had to do. But once it was repeated to them, most of the thousands of men on the British ships cheered the sentiment most heartily, and the signal has become one of those phrases almost every British schoolboy could recite even today (well, I hope so!).

The Signalling System.

At Trafalgar, the method of signalling was the one originally designed by Sir Home Popham in around 1800. This set up 10 gaily coloured, distinctively different flags to represent the numbers 0 through 9, and to assign a word or phrase to each of the 999 possible 3-flag combinations (or 1,000 if “000” was permitted, I don’t know if it was). Thus, a message which used only those most popular words, obviously selected for the maritime setting in which they were being utilised, could be very quickly composed, created and understood by the fleet. The flag-codes eventually used by the signaller were: “England” (253); “Expects” (269); “That” (863); “Every” (261); “Man” (471): “Will” (958): “Do” (220); “His” (370); “Duty”. Strangely, that last word did not carry a preset code and so had to be spelt out by its four letters, “D” (4); “U” (21); “T” (19); “Y” (24), each corresponding to its position in the alphabet.

But have you noticed a couple of quirks? To save flags, I is the ninth letter of the alphabet, but the flag code for it ("9") was used for both I and J since it was felt the context would be sufficient to differentiate - (so that K, the 11th letter of the alphabet was identified with flag combination "10" and the rest followed suit). Thus "Y" was "24" and "Z" was "25". But then, surely "U" which immediately follows "T" should be code "20"? NO, because in the alphabet of 1805, "V" came before "U", so T=19, V=20 and U=21. One other quirk made the signal just a little more complex. The 3 flag code for “DO”, (220) repeats the number 2, a blue rectangle outlining a white centre. To avoid possible confusion when reading the flags via a telescope at distance, this was not permitted, and in such cases, a distinctively different “ditto” or “repeat” flag, in this case a yellow flag with blue bars top and bottom, was used to indicate the repeated “2”. By the way, the recipient knew a word was being spelled because only one or two flags would be displayed in the group for letters, and 3 for the word.

Yes, that is the much simplified signalling system that revolutionised British Naval communications in the nineteenth century!

0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	"Ditto"

And here below is that famous signal in all its glory! See if you can follow it using the code table above...

ENGLAND	EXPECTS	THAT	EVERY	MAN	WILL	DO	HIS	D	U	T	Y
253	269	863	261	471	958	220	370	4	21	19	24

I have encountered a Calliope of one sort or another in the following:

Book: Sharpe’s Trafalgar by Bernard Cornell. The story opens with Sharpe in Bombay awaiting transport to England on HMS Calliope.

Fictional Character: Calliope Day is a children’s character about whom a number of books have been written, and which flesh out the e-bay listings somewhat.

Film: Sahara, based on a Clive Cussler book of the same name. The heroes travel to an African country on a speedboat named Calliope which doesn’t last very long!

Musical Group:There appears to be a lot of Calliope CDs on E-Bay. Does this make them very popular, or very unpopular?

Organ Surround: Mike Scott kindly contacted me to let me know that a large amount of the oak panelling from the Calliope’s wardroom was salvaged by the Rev. Harry Chappell RNVR chaplain, for use in the Christ Church, North Shields, Tyne and Wear when it was refurbished just after the war. Mike sent me a couple of photos, click here to view the Christ Church Organ.

Ladies Underwear: As well as the CDs and books, my e-bay searches for Calliope memorabilia have been further hampered by the appearance of a large number of offers of ladies underwear, each of which has a little illustrative picture and there are rows and rows of them, making me look like a pervert when I am searching. [And how many of you have decided to take a look...?]