Admiral Nelson: The Little Man Who Ruled the Seas and Saved Britain

He was five feet four inches tall. He had one eye. He had one arm. He suffered chronic seasickness for his entire naval career.

He was the greatest naval commander in the history of the world.

Horatio Nelson is one of those figures so wrapped in mythology and monument that it becomes difficult to see the actual man underneath — the driven, vain, brilliant, physically fragile, personally complicated human being who stands at the centre of one of the most remarkable military careers any nation has ever produced. The man who turned the tide of the Napoleonic Wars, saved Britain from invasion, and died at the moment of his greatest triumph in the most perfectly dramatic fashion imaginable.

He deserves to be known completely. Here he is.

The Boy from Norfolk

Horatio Nelson was born on the 29th of September 1758 — Michaelmas Day, as it happens — in Burnham Thorpe, a small village in Norfolk. He was the sixth of eleven children of a country clergyman. He was small, frequently ill, and from childhood possessed of an absolute, unshakeable certainty that he was destined for greatness.

He joined the Royal Navy at twelve years old. Twelve. A child from a Norfolk vicarage, slight and sickly, going to sea in the Georgian navy — one of the most brutal institutional environments in the British world. He survived it. He thrived in it. By his mid twenties he was already marked as an officer of exceptional ability.

The career that followed was one of almost continuous action. He fought in the Caribbean, in the Baltic, in the Mediterranean. He lost the sight of his right eye at the Siege of Calvi in Corsica in 1794. He lost his right arm at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797 — a rare defeat, an amputation without anaesthetic that he bore with the stoicism expected of an officer, though his letters reveal the full horror of it. He continued to fight. He continued to win.

He also discovered, during these years, that he was genuinely and chronically seasick. The greatest naval officer Britain ever produced spent much of his time at sea feeling profoundly unwell. He noted it matter-of-factly in his letters and got on with commanding his fleet.

The Nile

The battle that made Nelson's name across Europe was fought in Aboukir Bay on the Egyptian coast on the night of the 1st and 2nd of August 1798. Napoleon had taken an army to Egypt — a strategic move aimed at threatening British India and establishing French power in the eastern Mediterranean. His fleet, commanded by Vice-Admiral Brueys, lay at anchor in the bay, confident it was secure.

Nelson disagreed.

He attacked at dusk — an almost unthinkably bold decision, since fighting a fleet action among shoals in failing light was considered suicidal by conventional naval thinking. Half his captains sailed between the French fleet and the shore, on the assumption that where there was room for a French ship to swing at anchor there was room for an English ship to sail. The other half attacked from seaward. The French were engaged on both sides simultaneously.

The result was annihilation. Eleven of thirteen French ships of the line were captured or destroyed. The French flagship L'Orient exploded in an eruption so enormous it was heard miles away and caused both sides to stop fighting in sheer shock. Napoleon's army was stranded in Egypt, cut off from France. His eastern ambitions were finished.

Nelson wept after the battle. Not from grief — from the relief of a man who had staked everything on a single audacious decision and been vindicated completely.

Back in Britain the celebrations were unlike anything seen since. He was created Baron Nelson of the Nile. Cities celebrated. Women named their children after him. He was the most famous man in the country.

He was forty years old. He had six years left.

The Man

Nelson was not a simple hero. He was vain — acutely, almost comically conscious of his fame, his decorations, his place in history. His uniform was covered in medals and stars and orders that made him a conspicuous target in battle, which his officers begged him to cover or remove, which he consistently refused to do.

He was conducting one of the most public love affairs in British history with Emma Hamilton — the wife of the British Ambassador to Naples, Sir William Hamilton — a relationship that scandalized polite society and produced a daughter, Horatia, whom Nelson adored. He was separated from his own wife, Frances, who he had abandoned with a bluntness that reads badly at any distance. He was capable of warmth and ruthlessness in roughly equal measure.

He was also genuinely loved by the men who served under him in a way that was unusual even by the standards of a navy that produced exceptional officers. The Nelson Touch — his term for his own tactical philosophy, the aggressive, initiative-driven, close-action style of fighting that won his battles — was built on his relationships with his captains, whom he briefed personally, trusted completely, and allowed to exercise their own judgement in the heat of action. His fleet fought as a team because Nelson had made it one.

Copenhagen

In 1801 Nelson served under Admiral Sir Hyde Parker in an attack on the Danish fleet at Copenhagen — Denmark having joined the Armed Neutrality of the North in a way that threatened British trade. The battle was fierce and the Danish resistance stronger than expected. Hyde Parker, watching from a distance, was sufficiently alarmed to signal the fleet to discontinue the action.

Nelson, in the thick of the fighting, raised his telescope to his blind eye, announced that he could not see the signal, and kept fighting. Within two hours the Danes had agreed to negotiate.

The blind eye. It is probably the most famous act of deliberate insubordination in military history. It was also completely correct — Parker's order, if obeyed, would have left the British fleet in an extremely dangerous position. Nelson's disobedience won the battle and saved his ships.

He knew exactly what he was doing. He always did.

Trafalgar

By 1805 Napoleon had assembled a vast army at Boulogne on the Channel coast and was waiting for his combined Franco-Spanish fleet to control the Channel long enough to get it across to England. If the invasion succeeded the consequences for Britain — and for Europe — were incalculable.

Nelson was given command of the Mediterranean fleet and tasked with finding and destroying the French and Spanish fleets under Admiral Villeneuve. After months of pursuit across the Atlantic and back, Villeneuve's fleet was brought to battle off Cape Trafalgar on the southwest coast of Spain on the 21st of October 1805.

Nelson's plan was characteristically audacious. Instead of the conventional parallel engagement — fleet against fleet in a line — he would attack in two columns, perpendicular to the enemy line, cutting through it and destroying the rear and centre before the van could turn back to help. It was a plan that exposed his lead ships to devastating fire before they could reply. It was a plan that required absolute trust in his captains to carry it through.

Before the battle he dictated his most famous signal to the fleet: England expects that every man will do his duty.

His captains knew what was expected. So did every man aboard every ship.

The battle was one of the most complete naval victories in history. Twenty seven British ships against thirty three French and Spanish. Not one British ship was lost. Eighteen enemy ships were captured or destroyed. Villeneuve was taken prisoner. The invasion of Britain was finished — Napoleon would never again seriously threaten these shores.

Nelson did not live to see it confirmed.

The Death

He was shot at approximately 1:15 in the afternoon, at the height of the battle, by a French sharpshooter firing from the rigging of the Redoutable. The bullet entered his left shoulder, passed through his lung, and lodged in his spine. He was carried below decks.

He lived for three hours and fifteen minutes. Long enough to know the battle was won. Long enough to give his final orders. Long enough to say, to his flag captain Thomas Hardy who knelt beside him in the hold of the Victory: Thank God I have done my duty.

He died at approximately 4:30 in the afternoon, as the guns were falling silent above him.

The news reached Britain weeks later. The country went into mourning unlike anything it had known since the death of a monarch. His body was brought home preserved in a barrel of brandy, lay in state at Greenwich, and was buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral beneath a sarcophagus that had originally been made for Cardinal Wolsey.

Trafalgar Square was built in his honour. The column was erected. The lions were added later. It all stands today in the centre of London — the city he died protecting — looking out over the capital he saved.

His Legacy

The Royal Navy's dominance of the world's oceans that followed Trafalgar lasted for over a century. The Pax Britannica — the long period of relative global stability underwritten by British naval power — was made possible by what Nelson achieved in those three hours off the Cape. The safe passage of British trade, the enforcing of the abolition of the slave trade, the projection of British power and British law across the globe — all of it rested on the naval supremacy that Trafalgar established.

He was five feet four inches tall. He had one eye and one arm and a tendency to seasickness. He was vain and complicated and occasionally ruthless and entirely, utterly magnificent.

He saved Britain. Then he died doing it.

England expected every man to do his duty. Nelson did more than his duty. He always had.