Horatio Nelson ‘was French football captain’, say children

Research carried out to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar shows many schoolchildren believe that Horatio Nelson was captain of the French national football team in the 1990s.

Almost one-in-four also said that ships evacuated British troops from Dover – not Dunkirk – during World War Two, Walter Raleigh invented the bicycle, Captain James Cook was the captain of the Starship Enterprise and Christopher Columbus discovered gravity.

The disclosure came in a study of 2,000 secondary school children in England to coincide with the anniversary of Admiral Lord Nelson’s defeat of the Spanish navy in 1805.

Children aged 12 to 16 were questioned about a series of key events in maritime history over the last 200 years.

The report found six-in-10 youngsters did not know the Battle of Waterloo was fought in Belgium, with one-in-six opting for London’s train station as their answer instead.

Ignorance of history is by no mens limited to British school children.  A recent poll on this side of the pond revealed that twenty-six percent of those surveyed did not know that the United States achieved its independence from Great Britain.