1805 in the United Kingdom
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Events from the year 1805 in the United Kingdom. This is the year of the Battle of Trafalgar.
Incumbents
- Monarch â George III
- Prime Minister â William Pitt the Younger (Tory)
- Foreign Secretary â Dudley Ryder, 1st Earl of Harrowby (until 11 January) Henry Phipps, 1st Earl of Mulgrave (from 11 January)
- Home Secretary â Lord Liverpool
- Secretary of War â Lord Camden (until 10 July) Lord Castlereagh (from 10 July)
Events
- 20 January â London Docks open.[1]
- 5 February â East Indiaman Earl of Abergavenny is wrecked in Weymouth Bay with the loss of 263 lives.[2]
- 21 February â Charles Manners-Sutton confirmed as Archbishop of Canterbury.[3]
- 18 April â Ordnance Survey begins systematic publication of its General Survey of England and Wales ("Old Series") maps to a scale of one inch to the mile (1:63,360) with those for Essex.[4]
- 4 June â The first Trooping the Colour ceremony at the Horse Guards Parade in London.[1]
- 3 August â The annual cricket match between Eton College and Harrow School is played for the first time.[1]
- 21 October
- Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Trafalgar â British naval fleet led by Admiral Horatio Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain. Admiral Nelson is fatally shot.[5]
- An underground explosion at Hebburn colliery on Tyneside kills 35.[6]
- 23 October â Troopship Aeneas is wrecked off Newfoundland with the loss of 340 lives.[2]
- 6 November â News of the victory at Trafalgar and Nelson's death reaches London.[7]
- 26 November â The Ellesmere Canal's Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is opened in Wales, the tallest and longest in Britain.[8]
Ongoing
- Anglo-Spanish War, 1796â1808
- Napoleonic Wars, 1803â1815
Publications
- John Dalton's paper "On the Absorption of Gases by Water and Other Liquids". Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, 2nd series 1: pp. 271â87, including the first published list of standard atomic weights.
- Walter Scott's narrative poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel.
- First printed version of the nursery rhyme "Little Miss Muffet" in Songs for the Nursery.[9]
- First printed version of the nursery rhyme "Old Mother Hubbard" in The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and her Dog.[9]
- First printed version of the folk song "Bobby Shafto's Gone to Sea" in its modern (Tyneside) version.
- First printed version of the nonconformist hymn tune "Cranbrook",[10] later used for the folk song "On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at".
Births
- 27 January â Samuel Palmer, landscape watercolourist (died 1881)
- 4 February â W. Harrison Ainsworth, historical novelist (died 1882)
- 8 March â Rayner Stephens, Scottish-born radical reformer and Methodist minister (died 1879)
- 20 March â Thomas Cooper, Chartist, poet and religious lecturer (died 1892)
- 5 July
- Jérôme Napoléon Bonaparte, agriculturalist, nephew of Napoleon I (died 1870 in the United States)
- Robert FitzRoy, admiral and meteorologist (suicide 1865)
- 9 August â Joseph Locke, railway civil engineer (died 1860)
- 29 August â Frederick Denison Maurice, theologian (died 1872)
- 7 November â Thomas Brassey, railway contractor (died 1870)
- 20 December â Thomas Graham, Scottish-born chemist (died 1869)
- 22 December â John O. Westwood, entomologist (died 1893)
Deaths
- 2 January â Alexander Wedderburn, 1st Earl of Rosslyn, Lord Chancellor (born 1733)
- 3 January â Charles Towneley, antiquary (born 1737)
- 30 January â John Robison, physicist (born 1739)
- 18 January â John Moore, Archbishop of Canterbury (born 1730)
- 2 February â Thomas Banks, sculptor (born 1735)
- 25 February
- William Buchan, doctor (born 1729)
- Thomas Pownall, colonial statesman (born 1722)
- 7 May â William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, Prime Minister (born 1737)[11]
- 25 May â William Paley, philosopher (born 1743)
- 3 August â Christopher Anstey, writer (born 1724)
- 28 August â Alexander Carlyle, church leader (born 1722)
- 5 October â Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, general (born 1738)
- 21 October â Horatio Nelson, admiral (mortally wounded in battle) (born 1758)