What was it really like to serve in Nelson's navy? Did it live up to Winston Churchill's famous description: 'rum, sodomy and the lash'? In 2005, as Britain was celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, this film reconstructed the emotional and psychological realities of life for the ordinary men - and women - who actually had to fight in such glorious conflicts. Eschewing the grand narratives of war for direct first-person testimony, this drama documentary explores how the history of the Nelsonic era would have looked from the point of view of the underdog.