Could a Single WWI Battleship Win the Battle of Trafalgar?

For anyone wondering why i used a WWI battleship, i know it is overkill, lol. It was a specific request.

Having toured the last remaining WW1 battleship, the USS Texas (BB35). She doesn't even need even need to shoot, she can run them down, speed of 21 knots and an armored bow.

Child: My Lord how did we win at Trafalgar?
Napoleon: We cheated.

Without watching the video yet..... Yes!

The real question to be asked is whether Danton would even need to bother using its main guns. Its 9 inch guns and defensive guns were faster-firing and entirely capable of wrecking wooden ships.

It takes nearly 16 min to say "Obviously"
The technological gap is so huge as to make the question dumb.
As long as her coal stocks and ammunition held out the Danton (the last French Pre-Dreadnought actually built after HMS Dreadnought) would rule the oceans in this time period

Pinnacle of engineering? The Danton was obsolete when it was launched. The British, Americans, and Japanese already had dreadnoughts at that point. Danton was a late pre-dreadnought.

There were 6 hours between the beginning of the battle and the first fighting, the Danton would try trickshots in that time and the 9.2 inch guns would shoot high explosive guns, even the 4 inch would destroy 1st rates with ease.

If it’s HMS Warspite she’d take out all three fleets, then proceeded to intervene in the Battle of Waterloo.

How? Damned if I know. She’s HMS Warspite.

We saw less extreme version of this during the Opium Wars and Crimean War, where iron clads completely obliterated older more numerous fleets of wooden ships of the line.

The difference in combat capability between the two eras is truly insane. A single WWI battleship would be largely immune to cannon fire, denting the hull plating and scratching the paint isn't going to deter a battleship. And if the BB stayed out at a couple thousand yards then few cannon balls would even manage to that little damage.

Meanwhile, a ship of the line might be about 250 feet long, that's feet, not meters. meaning that a single HE shell blowing up mid ship would me a mere 125 feet, at most, from everyone on the ship. That's about 38 meters for metric people. Wooden walls and decks would provide some protection from shrapnel but would also serve to channel the blast wave down whatever deck was hit. That's easily within the kill zone of a 12" explosive shell. And while not everyone would be killed by a single hit, the damage would be severe enough, with enough casualties, that the ship hit would likely be combat ineffective... to the extent it ever was combat effective when faced with a WWI era battleship. And this doesn't count the fires started by the hot shrapnel... or the chance of powder magazines being hit. A single secondary shell (about 5" give or take) would still do massive damage, start fires, and kill lots of people. It wouldn't take too many secondary hits to guarantee that the wooden ship was either a burning and sinking wreck or bunch of floating matchsticks after a powder explosion.

The WWI battleship has no concern about wind direction and can out run the sailing ships in any direction so the sailing shops can't run or outmaneuver the battleship.

A WWI battleship at Trafalgar would be nothing but a simple gunnery exercise.

The one issue with these scenarios is that it is not "what if the French had Danton", but "what if the French were given Danton, a ship from the future". The core of that issue is that this would of course appear as a supernatural event, which would shape the morale of the whole event without the ship even taking a direct role in it.

IF we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs.

Honestly, this might be the most one-sided engagement this channel has ever done. I think it's another case of bringing technology too advanced to make for an interesting engagement, despite the fact that it's only a hundred years' difference. I think this battle is where you should have sent the Civil War ironclads that went to Lepanto. Oceangoing ironclads like the Kalamazoo class are resistant but not immune to cannon, have more powerful guns than a man o' war but a far lower rate of fire. But most importantly, while they were slightly slower than sailing ships, they could maneuver in any manner they chose regardless of wind.

Stupid question. A battleship is overkill. It could just ram every Franco-Spanish ship. A single destroyer could have won at Trafalgar.

Assuming she comes pre-stocked with fuel, knowledgeable crew, ammunition, and supplies, then yes. Easily.

A few thoughts:
1. This scenario would be more realistic if the British had heard of a French super weapon, so wouldn't be caught entirely off guard.
2. The Danton would have great success if it launched brotasides from directly in front of a ship of the line as for gunnery, direction was easier to determine than distance.
3. It seems likely the Danton could defeat the British fleet without any help from the French/Spanish fleet.
4. This scenario would be much more intriguing if the French substituted several ironclad ships like those used in the American Civil War, 50 years ahead rather than 100.

This is Mike Tyson versus coughing baby.
Dat baby gon die

A lot of what is described here takes place pretty much exactly like that in the later installments of Taylor Anderson's alternative history "Destroyermen" series - wooden ships of the line versus steamers with armour and modern naval guns. Granted, in that case the "modern" ships are far smaller than the Danton, WW1 destroyer(s) in fact, and the wooden warships in some cases even feature crude steam propulsion, but the only chance the liners have is to somehow lure the modern steamers into range and try for a long-range broadside, going for a shotgun effect. The ability to maneuvre at will independent of the wind and having far longer range should make Danton vs Nelson's fleet a foregone conclusion. Explosive shells do a real number on ships made of oak.

Here's another thought: you're bringing in a WWI ship with a WWI naval leader.

I think if anything he's gonna tell Nelson and the opposing French ships to stop quarreling like children and focus on keeping central Europe in check, and one salvo would be more than enough to make both sides cooperate.