Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson

• 1. Introduction

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  Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, died on the 21st of October 1805 with his fleet still fighting around him, a French marksman's bullet lodged in his chest. He had just won Britain's greatest naval victory. And yet his last words, spoken to the men carrying him below the deck of HMS Victory, were not a command but a farewell: "I am killed. Remember me to my wife."

  Nelson was born on the 29th of September 1758 in Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, the sixth of eleven children born to the Reverend Edmund Nelson. He went to sea at twelve years old and lost sight in one eye defending Corsica, then lost his right arm storming Santa Cruz de Tenerife, then died at forty-seven defeating the combined fleets of France and Spain off Cape Trafalgar. What drove a man who suffered so much physical destruction to keep returning to battle? And how did a clergyman's son from a Norfolk village become the figure whose column stands at the centre of London today?

• 2. The Making of a Naval Officer

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  On the 1st of January 1771, a twelve-year-old Horatio Nelson reported aboard the third-rate as an ordinary seaman and coxswain under his uncle Maurice Suckling, who commanded the vessel. Within days he was appointed a midshipman. He also discovered that he suffered from chronic seasickness, a condition that would never leave him.

  Suckling's influence was the engine of Nelson's early career. When Nelson learnt of an Arctic expedition commanded by Constantine Phipps, intended to survey a North-East Passage to India, Suckling arranged for his nephew to join as coxswain aboard the converted bomb vessel under Commander Skeffington Lutwidge. The ship reached within ten degrees of the North Pole before ice turned it back. Lutwidge later circulated a story that Nelson spotted a polar bear during the expedition and gave chase, explaining when recalled that he wished to get the skin for his father.

  From the Arctic, Suckling arranged Nelson's transfer to the East Indies, where Nelson arrived at Madras on the 25th of May 1774. His first combat came on the 19th of February 1775, when two of Hyder Ali's ketches attacked Nelson's ship Seahorse off the Indian coast. In early 1776 he contracted malaria and was invalided home. Suckling, now Comptroller of the Navy, used his position to place Nelson in further promotions. By April 1777, Nelson had passed his lieutenant's examination in London before a board that included his uncle and two other captains. The following day he received his commission.

• 3. The Caribbean Years

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  In the Caribbean, Nelson's career simultaneously advanced and nearly ended. Captain William Locker took him to Jamaica aboard Lowestoffe in 1777, and after impressing Sir Peter Parker, the new commander-in-chief, Nelson was appointed master and commander of the brig Badger on the 8th of December 1778. Parker promoted him to post-captain on the 11th of June 1779 and gave him the 28-gun frigate Hinchinbrook, newly captured from the French. Nelson handed Badger over to Cuthbert Collingwood.

  Nelson's most costly Caribbean episode was Major-General John Dalling's attempt to seize the Spanish colonies in Central America. Hinchinbrook escorted the invasion force in February 1780, and Nelson's men obtained the surrender of the Fortress of the Immaculate Conception on the San Juan River in Nicaragua after a two-week siege. The 160 Spanish defenders capitulated. But the British force never reached Lake Nicaragua; decimated by yellow fever, they retreated to Jamaica. The campaign produced more than 2,500 casualties, making it the costliest British disaster of the entire American War.

  Nelson himself fell gravely ill in 1780, possibly with dysentery or yellow fever contracted in the jungles of Costa Rica. He was nursed in Kingston, Jamaica, by a woman the sources identify only as "doctoress" Cubah Cornwallis, then discharged in August and returned to Britain. The episode illustrated a pattern that would recur throughout his life: near-fatal illness followed by an impatient return to service. He was appointed to a new frigate by the 15th of August 1781.

• 4. Marriage, Unemployment, and Return

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  During a peacetime assignment enforcing the Navigation Acts near Antigua, Nelson met Frances "Fanny" Nisbet on the island of Nevis. Her uncle John Herbert offered a substantial dowry, but both Herbert and Nisbet concealed that their apparent wealth was a fiction, and Fanny did not disclose that she was infertile. After they became engaged, Herbert offered nothing close to what he had promised. Breaking a marital engagement in the Georgian era was considered dishonourable, and so Nelson and Nisbet were married at Montpelier Estate in Nevis on the 11th of March 1787. The marriage was registered at Fig Tree Church in St John's Parish.

  Nelson's assignment brought him into frequent conflict with his superior officer, Admiral Sir Richard Hughes, over the interpretation of the Navigation Acts. American captains whose vessels Nelson had seized sued him for illegal seizure. Because merchants on Nevis supported the American claim, Nelson remained sequestered on his ship Boreas for eight months until the courts ruled in his favour.

  Boreas was paid off in November 1787 and Nelson went on half-pay. He and Fanny settled at his childhood home in Burnham Thorpe in 1788. He spent years lobbying the Admiralty for a command, trying to find employment for former crew members, and appealing to senior contacts including Admiral Hood, who did not intercede on his behalf. The peacetime navy had too few ships. It was the French revolutionary government's annexation of the Austrian Netherlands in 1792 that ended the wait; the Admiralty recalled Nelson and gave him command of the 64-gun Agamemnon in January 1793.

• 5. Eye, Arm, and Audacity

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  On the morning of the 12th of July 1794, Nelson was directing bombardment at Calvi in Corsica when a shot struck a nearby sandbag. Debris sprayed across the position and struck him in the right eye. He returned to action after bandaging, but afterwards could only, as he put it, "distinguish light from dark but no object." The loss of the eye would become one of history's most famous tactical assets.

  At the Battle of Cape St Vincent on the 14th of February 1797, Nelson found himself towards the rear of the British line and calculated that his ship Captain would arrive at the action too late to matter. He disobeyed orders, wore ship, broke from the line, and steered to engage the Spanish vanguard, including the 130-gun Santísima Trinidad. After an hour of broadsides left Captain badly damaged, Nelson led a boarding party onto the Spanish ship San Nicolas, reportedly crying "Westminster Abbey or glorious victory!" He then pressed on from the deck of San Nicolas onto the 112-gun San Josef and captured her as well. It was the first time in three hundred years that a British flag officer had personally led a boarding party. Admiral Jervis did not reprimand him publicly but wrote to First Lord George Spencer that Nelson "contributed very much to the fortune of the day."

  Five months later at Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Nelson's luck ran out. As he stepped ashore during a night assault, a musketball fractured his right humerus in multiple places. Rowed back to Theseus, he refused assistance boarding, saying: "Let me alone! I have yet legs left and one arm. Tell the surgeon to make haste and get his instruments. I know I must lose my right arm and the sooner it is off, the better." Surgeon Thomas Eshelby amputated the arm and within half an hour Nelson was issuing orders again. He would later develop phantom limb sensation in the missing arm and declared he had "found the direct evidence of the existence of soul."

• 6. The Nile and Naples

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  Tracking Napoleon's invasion fleet across the Mediterranean in 1798, Nelson arrived at Alexandria on the 28th of June only to find no French ships. Napoleon had actually arrived there on the 1st of July, a few days after Nelson departed in a fruitless search further east. Brueys anchored the French fleet in Aboukir Bay. Nelson finally found them there on the 1st of August.

  Before ordering the attack, Nelson reportedly told his captains: "Before this time tomorrow, I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey." The French were anchored close to a line of shoals, assuming no British ship would attempt to pass between the shoals and their port side. Captain Thomas Foley aboard Goliath found a gap and led British ships through it. The French found themselves attacked on both sides simultaneously. During the battle, a piece of French shot struck Nelson in the forehead, sending a flap of torn skin across his good eye. Blinded and stunned, he told the men around him he was killed and asked to be remembered to his wife. The surgeon found the wound non-threatening. He returned to the quarterdeck in time to watch the French flagship Orient, a 118-gun ship, catch fire under British bombardment and explode. By dawn, seven 74-gun ships and two 80-gun ships were captured. Napoleon's army in Egypt was stranded.

  The aftermath pulled Nelson into Neapolitan politics. When the French marched on Naples in late 1798, he organised the evacuation of King Ferdinand IV, the royal family, and British nationals including Sir William Hamilton and his wife Emma. He fell deeply in love with Emma during his long stay at the Hamilton residence. Sultan Selim III of the Ottoman Empire sent Nelson the diamond chelengk from his own turban. Emperor Paul I of Russia sent a personal gift. The First Lord of the Admiralty, George Spencer, reportedly fainted when the news of the Nile victory reached London.

• 7. Copenhagen and the Blind Eye

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  On the morning of the 2nd of April 1801, Nelson advanced into Copenhagen harbour against the fortified Danish fleet. Three British ships, including HMS Agamemnon, ran aground immediately. The shore batteries proved heavier than expected. Watching from the Kattegat, fleet commander Sir Hyde Parker sent the signal to withdraw.

  When signal lieutenant Frederick Langford reported the withdrawal order, Nelson told him to keep his eyes on the Danish commodore and report when he surrendered. Nelson then turned to his flag captain Thomas Foley and said: "You know, Foley, I have only one eye. I have a right to be blind sometimes." He raised his telescope to his sightless eye and said: "I really do not see the signal." The battle lasted three more hours.

  Nelson sent a letter to Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark calling for a truce, which the Prince accepted. That evening at a banquet, Nelson told Prince Frederick the action was the most severe he had ever participated in. The outcome was a fourteen-week armistice. Parker was recalled in May, and Nelson was appointed commander-in-chief in the Baltic Sea. He was created Viscount Nelson of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe in the County of Norfolk on the 19th of May 1801. When he arrived in Reval and learnt the armed neutrality pact among the northern powers was to be disbanded, the Baltic mission was complete.

• 8. Trafalgar

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  On the 24th of September 1805, Nelson sat in a waiting room in London anticipating a meeting with the Secretary of State for War, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh. Another officer waiting there was Major General Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. Wellington later recalled that Nelson entered immediately into conversation that was almost entirely about himself, in a style Wellesley found vain and silly. Nelson left the room, learnt who Wellesley was, returned, and the two men spent a quarter of an hour discussing the war, the colonies, and the geopolitical situation. Wellesley said he had rarely had a more interesting conversation. It was the only time they met.

  Nelson left England from Portsmouth on the morning of the 14th of September 1805, stopping for breakfast at the George Inn with George Rose, the Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and George Canning, the Treasurer of the Navy. A crowd gathered and accompanied him to his barge. He raised his hat in acknowledgment and told a colleague: "I had their huzzas before; I have their hearts now." English Romantic poet Robert Southey, reporting on the scene, wrote that many onlookers were in tears and that many knelt before Nelson and blessed him as he passed.

  Nelson devised a plan for the anticipated battle that drew on his experience at the Nile and Copenhagen: rather than forming a parallel line to the enemy, he would split his fleet into squadrons to cut the enemy's line in several places at once, forcing a chaotic close-range engagement before unengaged ships could come to their opponents' aid. The combined Franco-Spanish fleet under Villeneuve numbered 33 ships of the line.

  On the 21st of October 1805, the fleet came out of Cadiz. Before the engagement, Nelson sent his celebrated signal: "England expects that every man will do his duty." A French marksman aboard an enemy vessel fatally wounded him during the battle. HMS Victory's fleet prevailed; the Battle of Trafalgar became Britain's greatest naval victory. Nelson's body was returned to England, where he was accorded a state funeral. In 2002, he was named among the 100 Greatest Britons of all time.