Between 1 and 3 August 1798 a British fleet, under Admiral Horatio Nelson, defeated a French fleet, under François-Paul Brueys d'Aigalliers, in Aboukir Bay, in the Battle of the Nile. The French fleet consisted of thirteen ships of the line and four frigates. Nelson had fourteen ships of the line. All but four of the French ships were destroyed or captured. No British ships were lost. After Nelson's death at the Battle of Trafalgar, it is believed that Charles Douglas, 6th Marquess of Queensberry, a friend of Nelson's mistress, Emma Hamilton, planted clumps of beech trees on his estate near Amesbury to commemorate him. Each clump represented the location of a British or French ship at a particular point in the battle. There may have been as many as twenty-six clumps originally, spread out over three quarters of a mile, of which some seventeen remain.
Today
Seventeen clumps remain today and are now under preservation orders. However, as beech has a natural life of some 200 years many are dying off. Many clumps are being replanted by local volunteers, each with about 200 mixed trees including beech, maple and hawthorn. Amongst the clumps that have been replanted are those for Swiftsure, Defence, L'Orient and Bellerophon.
The evidence that the clumps were planted to commemorate the battle is based on local lore and a similarity between the layout of the woods and the position of ships shown in Robert Dodd's map of the battle. The UKNational Maritime Museum has also suggested that the link between the Battle of the Nile and the clumps is "quite likely". Most of the surviving clumps stand on the north side of the A303 to the west of Amesbury and inside the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, although several used to stand south and along the course of the road. Several of the remaining clumps stand on land owned by the National Trust's Stonehenge Landscape property.
Other woods
A plaque on the Nelson Memorial at Swarland mentions a line of trees in the shape of the coastline of the Nile delta, with other trees in the positions of the British and French ships, to the west of the monument. Aerial photographs suggest that the trees may be at. The Nile Clumps are sometimes incorrectly referred to as the Trafalgar Clumps. There is a separate Trafalgar Woods project to plant a total of 250,000 trees in a series of woods across the UK to commemorate the 2005 bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. There will be a total of 33 clumps, each representing a ship which took part in the battle. The largest will be Victory Wood in Kent with 100,000 trees.
