A Union Jack from the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 — complete with splinters of wood and cannonball shrapnel

On 21 October 1805, the fate of Europe hung in the balance, as the British navy, under the command of Vice-Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, clashed with combined French and Spanish forces in the Atlantic, off Cape Trafalgar, southwest Spain.

The British were vastly outnumbered: the enemy fleet had six more ships, carrying an extra 484 guns, and almost 30,000 men to fight a force of 18,000. But thanks to Nelson’s unorthodox tactics, he achieved one of the most spectacular and consequential naval victories in history. During the fight he lost his life, but set the scene for more than a century of British dominance of the seas.

In The Exceptional Sale on 1 July 2025, Christie’s will offer one of just three British flags known to have survived the Battle of Trafalgar. The flag was flown by HMS Spartiate, then presented to the ship’s lieutenant, and its surface is blistered by gunfire and embedded with splinters of wood and cannonball shrapnel.

Roughly halfway between Cadiz and the Strait of Gibraltar, at around midday — some six hours after the two fleets had first sighted one another — the French ship Fougueux hoisted her tricolour and pierced the tense silence by firing the first broadside of 37 guns at the approaching Royal Navy.

In a risky manoeuvre, the British formed two columns and sailed straight into the enemy’s line at right angles. For the next five hours, as onboard bands played God Save the King and Rule, Britannia, 60 ships pummelled each other with a barrage of cannon-fire from nearly 5,000 guns.

At close range — 30 yards (27 metres) or less — cannonballs from 18-pounder guns could penetrate oak planks 30 inches (0.76 metres) thick, the approximate width of the largest ships’ hulls at just above the waterline.

At Trafalgar, however, many of the British guns were firing at considerably shorter range, sometimes with their muzzles pressed against parts of the enemy’s ship where the planking was much thinner. Making matters worse for the French and Spanish, the British also had a range of heavier weapons, including 24-, 32- and even a handful of 68-pounder guns, which were nicknamed ‘smashers’.

With a high charge, a cannonball from one of these could easily be blasted in one side of an enemy ship and out the other. A smaller charge, however, could be much more devastating, causing the cannonball to ricochet around a deck’s interior — a space so cramped that no adult could stand upright in it. Anything in the ammunition’s path would be obliterated.

In order to prevent friendly fire amid the confusion and clouds of smoke, Nelson had ordered that all the ships under his command fly the Union Jack from their fore-topgallant stay — a signal typically reserved for port. Extra flags were also lashed to various masts, ensuring that if one were shot away it wouldn’t be mistakenly thought to have been lowered — a sign of surrender.

At about 3pm, Spartiate, captained by Francis Laforey, sailed up Nelson’s northern windward column and joined the melee.

The French were no strangers to the 183ft (56-metre), 74-gun ship of the line. Launched in 1797, it had originally formed part of Napoleon’s fleet, but was captured by the British at the Battle of the Nile on 1 August the following year. According to some accounts, it was the ship that fired the round which wounded Nelson’s forehead.

At Trafalgar, along with HMS Minotaur, its crew of 620 engaged the Spanish 80-gun Neptuno with a volley of gunfire that lasted an hour. Three of Spartiate’s men were killed and 20 wounded, and according to sources the ship ‘had her fore topsail yard shot away, and her masts, yards, and rigging in general were a good deal damaged’.

Neptuno surrendered, but any sense of jubilation was short-lived, overshadowed by the news of Nelson’s death. He had been shot through the shoulder while standing on the deck of his flagship, HMS Victory, by a French marksman on Redoutable. By the time a surgeon was able to remove the musket ball, it had already caused fatal damage to the admiral’s spine and lungs.

The British Navy’s problems worsened when a fierce storm blew up, compelling it to scuttle many of the 20 enemy ships it had captured. Nevertheless, it enjoyed a resounding victory, without the loss of a single ship. And while Nelson’s forces suffered around 450 deaths, some 4,400 French and Spanish crewmen perished.

Immediately after the battle, the crew of Spartiate presented the Union Jack flown on the ship’s flagstaff to James Clephan, who had been instantly promoted to first lieutenant in recognition of his courage during the fighting. The presentation of the flag was the highest compliment they could pay ‘one of their own’.

The flag’s design was the second (and current) version of Union Jack, introduced on 1 January 1801 following the 1800 Act of Union with Ireland, which added the red saltire of St Patrick. The fact that it is incorrectly counterchanged on this example suggests that the 31 panels of wool bunting, which combined measure roughly 2.3 by 3.5 metres, were hand-stitched together by the crew.

Born in Fife, Clephan had been press-ganged into the navy aged 26. He climbed quickly through the ranks, and in 1801 was promoted to lieutenant for distinguished conduct during the capture of the French ship Chevrette at Brest, where, under a hail of musket-fire, and despite having been knocked overboard and injured, he was the first man to reach the enemy’s deck.

In 1811, Clephan was made commander of the sloop HMS Charybdis, capturing two American vessels in the Caribbean during the War of 1812 against the United States. He retired to Edinburgh in 1840 with the rank of captain — one of fewer than 20 press-ganged men to reach the rank during the Napoleonic era. He died in 1851, aged 83.

A century-and-a-half later, Clephan’s Trafalgar flag was discovered in a drawer by his descendants. At the time, it was the only British flag thought to have survived the battle. Offered at auction on Trafalgar Day in 2009 with an estimate of £10,000-15,000, it realised £396,800.

The winning bidder was Ben Zaricor, owner of the Zaricor Flag Collection. Following the sale, microscopic analysis conducted by the McCrone Research Institute in Chicago revealed shards of cannonball shrapnel embedded in the flag’s woven cloth, especially around the half-moon-shaped hole on one edge, which is likely the ‘footprint’ from a round. Similarly, surviving wooden splinters corroborate the details of the damage Spartiate sustained in combat.

The flag has been exhibited just once, in 2011, as part of the 24th International Congress of Vexillology and the 45th annual meeting of the North American Vexillological Association, in Washington, D.C., and Virginia.

Two other complete Trafalgar Union Jacks have been discovered in recent years. The first, from Minotaur, was preserved by Master’s Mate Stephen Hilton and presented by his descendants to the church of St Mary the Virgin, Selling, in Kent. In 2012, it was acquired by the National Maritime Museum in London. Roughly the same size as Spartiate’s flag, it has a large loss to the right-hand edge.

The second, smaller flag, from HMS Royal Sovereign, was held by Charles Aubrey Antram, also a master’s mate, and remains in private hands.

Several fragments of a Union Jack from Victory, which was cut up for souvenirs after Nelson’s funeral, have also appeared at auction. The largest, measuring 86 by 92 cm, fetched £297,000 in 2018.

As for the fate of Spartiate, after Trafalgar the ship limped back to its home port of Plymouth for repairs. Between 1807 and 1808, it participated in the blockade of Rochefort, and in June 1809 was involved in the capture of the islands of Ischia and Procida in the Gulf of Naples. During the 1820s and 1830s, it was assigned to the Royal Navy’s South America Station, before being converted to a sheer hulk (a vessel used in shipbuilding) in 1842, then finally broken up in 1857.

The Exceptional Sale takes place on 1 July 2025, and will be on view from 26 June to 1 July as part of Christie’s Classic Week season in London