By Russell Boyce and Stephen Hird

PORTSMOUTH (Reuters) - The Queen arrived in Portsmouth on Tuesday to conduct the world's biggest review of navies, gathered off the southern English coast to commemorate naval hero Horatio Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar 200 years ago.

She was greeted with a guard of honour and met naval families ahead of her review of more than 160 warships and other vessels from 35 navies, which have assembled in the Solent in front of the naval base at Portsmouth. The heads of 59 navies have also come along.

"In total 63 nations are represented here," a spokeswoman for Trafalgar 200 told Reuters. "It is the biggest ever international naval assembly in terms of the number of fleets involved."

France, the United States, Spain and Italy have sent aircraft carrier battle groups to join a Royal Navy carrier group at Spithead, with navies from Australia to Russia also sending warships, merchant ships and tall masted sailing ships.

The Queen will be aboard the Endurance, the Royal Navy's Antarctic survey vessel, sailing up and down the lines of assembled ships.

It is the first fleet review since the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977.

The battle off the Spanish coast on October 21, 1805 spelled the start of the end for French Napoleon Bonaparte's conquest of Europe and gave Britain command of the seas for a century.

But Nelson, aged just 47, was killed by a French sniper in the epic sea battle that pitted the combined Franco-Spanish fleet of 33 warships against just 27 English ships of the line.

As part of the celebrations on Tuesday there will be a recreation of a 19th century sea battle.

But in a nod to diplomacy that has drawn a broadside from Nelson's closest living relative, there will be no mention of the nationalities of the fleets involved in the original battle -- the combatants will instead be the Red and Blue fleets.

"I think the idea of the blue team fighting the red team is pretty stupid," said 75-year-old Anna Tribe, great-great-great granddaughter of the married Nelson and his lover Emma Hamilton.

"I am sure the French and Spanish are adult enough to appreciate we did win that battle. I am anti political-correctness. Very much against it. It makes fools of us," she added.

The fleet review is one among a host of festivities to mark the 200th anniversary of the battle, including an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum comparing Nelson and Bonaparte and noting how similar they were in character.

Nelson -- who was blinded in his right eye and lost his right arm in different battles -- had celebrity status in 19th-century Britain.

He won a series of naval victories but also shocked society with a flagrant affair with Emma Hamilton -- living under the same roof with her and her husband while his own abandoned wife pined.

But he was a hero to his officers and history has been kind.

The naval spectacular will end with a fireworks display and then the ships will dramatically turn on all their lights.