TURNING A BLIND EYE

On April 2, 1801, the British fleet destroyed the Danish navy.  Out of this battle came a famous phrase.

                In 1801, Great Britain was interested in preventing a Franco-Dutch alliance.  Denmark had a powerful fleet, which if joined to the French fleet, might have changed the naval balance of power.  The elderly Admiral Sir Hyde Parker was sent to neutralize the fleet at Copenhagen.  His second in command was Horatio Nelson.  The Danish fleet was parked in an inlet as floating forts defending the city.  To get to them would mean navigating shallow water and exposing ships to not only the Danish ships guns, but powerful shore batteries.  Nelson, who believed in going right at the enemy, decided to risk it to win a decisive battle.  On his own initiative, he led the fleet into the inlet.  His HMS Elephant was in the lead.  Some of his ships ran aground, but the rest opened fire on the Dutch.  It was a slugfest and from afar Admiral Parker was concerned about the danger Nelson had put his fleet in.  He ran up signal flags telling Nelson to withdraw.  When the message was relayed to him, Nelson (who had lost an eye at the siege of Calvi) made a show of putting his telescope to his bad eye and looking towards Parker’s ship.  “I really do not see the signal”.  Turning to his second-in-command, he commented: “I have only one eye – I have the right to be blind sometimes.”  Nelson went on to win a great victory which deprived France of a naval alliance with the Dutch.  He sank two ships, one exploded, and twelve were captured.  He lost no ships.  We get the phrase “turn a blind eye” from this incident.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Copenhagen_(1801)

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/why-nelson-turned-a-blind-eye-at-copenhagen-1.297163

–  The Greatest War Stories Never Told  pp. 62-63