Horatio Nelson
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| Horatio Nelson
Viscount Nelson of the Nile and Burnham Thorpe | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 29, 1758 |
| Died | October 21, 1805 |
Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson was a British naval commander during the wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and the winner of important victories in the battles of the Nile (1798), Copenhagen (1801), and the crucial battle at Trafalgar (1805), where he was mortally wounded onboard his flagship HMS Victory at the moment of his greatest triumph. His private life was known for his love affair with Lady Emma Hamilton, while both were married to other people.
Contents
Early years
Horatio Nelson was the sixth of eleven children born to Edmund and Catherine Nelson. Edmund was the rector of the parish of Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, England. Although of good manners and scholarly, the Nelsons were poor. Preferment for an education was difficult, but it was hoped that a distant relation, Lord Walpole, could provide the means. However, Catherine’s brother, at the time a captain in the Royal Navy, made the decisive act and agreed to take the boy, then aged twelve, to sea after his mother’s death (Durant, pg. 518).
He was a slight boy, not physically strong, and often sick, but at every opportunity he would seize the initiative and learn all he could. He had to learn how ships operate, and as a midshipman, how to lead men. But there were also times for adventure, such as his first voyage to the West Indies and a scientific expedition to the Arctic in 1773, where, on the ice, he stood up to an advancing polar bear; only a shot from a ship’s gun prevented the bear from killing him and drove it away. He was reprimanded for leaving the ship without authorization (Durant, pg. 518).
By 1777, Nelson was a lieutenant, and had sailed for the West Indies to conduct operations against the Americans during the Revolution. By age 20, he was promoted to captain, the youngest officer to hold that rank in the Royal Navy, and was given command of a frigate, taking part in operations against the Spanish in what is now Nicaragua. Although the attack on San Juan was successful, it proved to be costly in the weeks afterward, as nearly the entire British force succumbed to yellow fever.
In 1783 he was back in England, and given the command of another frigate the following year. Sailing again for the West Indies, he strictly enforced the Navigation Act, with the unfortunate result of making enemies of British authorities and merchant ship owners stationed in the Caribbean islands who had profited with the American trade that the Act had forbidden. Vulnerable due to the experience there, as well as the lonliness of command, he made a port call on the island of Nevis in March, 1785, and met the widow Francis Nisbet and her young son Josiah. He courted her for two years, and they married in March, 1787 on Nevis.
Nelson returned with his bride to England and found himself without a ship’s appointment and on half pay, which continued for the next five years, possibly the result of prejudice related to his enforcement of the Navigation Act. But by 1793 events in France would determine the Navy’s course of action: the Terror would run rampant, King Louis XVI would face the guillotine, and Nelson was given command of the 64-gun HMS Agamemnon.
Grief
Assessment
References
- Durant, Will and Ariel. The Age of Napoleon, Simon And Schuster, New York (1975).
