A letter which only recently resurfaced gives an ordinary seaman’s view of the famous battle which was fought 205 years ago today.

‘They won’t send their fleets out again in a hurry’: Remarkable letter from hero who survived the Battle of Trafalgar

His ship safely home from the Battle of Trafalgar, sailor Robert Hope was brimming with pride.

‘What do you think of us lads of the sea now? I think they won’t send their fleets out again in a hurry,’ he wrote in a letter to his brother about the victory over the French and Spanish.

Hope, a sailmaker, was part of the crew of the gunship HMS Temeraire, which went to the aid of Admiral Lord Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory at the height of the fighting.

Yesterday Quintin Colville, curator of naval history at the National Maritime Museum, which has purchased the letter from Hope’s descendants for an undisclosed sum, said: ‘There are numerous accounts of Trafalgar written by officers but this is a very rare example of a voice from the lower decks.’

Hope wrote the letter to his brother John, a carpenter, from Ashford, Kent, a fortnight after the battle while his ship was moored at Portsmouth.

He gives a vivid account of the conflict, telling how his 98-gun ship engaged the Santisima Trinadada, a Spanish four-decker, for 45 minutes alongside Nelson’s Victory before they came under heavy attack.

Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing the article along.