The Boys' Nelson

Thus[3] runs one of the verses of a song dear to the British sailor for many a long year. Nelson, dead over a century, is still revered in the King’s Navy. To the landsman there...

We are fortunate in having an account of Nelson’s early career at sea penned by himself, otherwise the material at our disposal would be extremely scanty. The story of the next...

Nelson took the greatest possible interest in everything he saw in France: “Sterne’s ‘Sentimental Journey’ is the best description I can give of our tour.” He travelled in a cha...

So far back as 1753 Lord Chesterfield prophesied a revolution in France. “All the symptoms,” he said, “which I have ever met with in history, previous to great changes and revol...

The French fleet at Toulon mustered fifteen ships; Hotham had fourteen at his disposal, including one Neapolitan sail-of-the-line. On the 8th March 1795 it was known that the en...

Sir John Jervis had concentrated his fleet in Gibraltar Bay. Nelson was making his way from thence to Elba in the _Minerve_, accompanied by the _Blanche_, both 32-gun frigates....

All hopes on the part of Britain’s enemies for the invasion of the British Isles were quashed for a time by the victory off Cape St Vincent. Although the distressed Spanish flee...

The year 1797 had been a particularly trying one for Nelson both as regards health and reputation; the succeeding twelve months were to test his powers of endurance and his skil...

It is difficult for a landsman to appreciate the joy with which Nelson’s captains, his “Band of Brothers,” as he called them, as well as the men of lower rank, beheld the enemy...

Truth has no secrets. It is the duty of the historian to reveal all and to hide nothing. The archæologist with pick and spade unearths a buried city, disclosing alike the mansio...

In the middle of March 1799 Troubridge returned from the Levant, his command there having been given to Sir Sidney Smith. Vexatious as was the arrangement to both Nelson and Lor...

King Ferdinand was again on board the _Foudroyant_, holding his Levées on the quarter-deck, and making himself as affable as was possible to a man of his morose temperament. Nel...

Malta was in a pitiful, half-starved condition. Nelson urged Sir James Erskine at Mahon, and Brigadier-General Graham at Messina, to send troops to its relief. They were as adam...

Ostensibly Nelson had come back to England because of illness. That his health was improved by the prolonged journey home via the overland route is quite possible. The relief fr...

Admiral Mahan, the most scientific of biographical historians, assures us that the fullest and most interesting account of the Battle of Copenhagen is that of Colonel William St...

However much Nelson may have appreciated the visits to London, Box Hill, and Staines, which he now made in the company of Sir William and Lady Hamilton, it was soon evident that...

For over a year Nelson spent the greater part of his time at Merton Place or at 23 Piccadilly, Sir William Hamilton’s town house. Any monotony there may have been was relieved b...

A new year had dawned. “The storm is brewing,” Nelson wrote, and he thought Sardinia “one of the objects of its violence.” If that island were captured or ceded to the enemy, “S...

Napoleon had now completed further plans. These he fondly hoped would lead to the downfall of British rule in the United Kingdom and the eventual dismemberment of the Empire. Hi...

In the previous chapter we left Nelson at Portsmouth after having chased the enemy nearly seven thousand miles, and been absent from home twenty-seven months. When “England’s da...

The 21st October 1805 is a red-letter day in the history of England. Dawn had scarcely succeeded night ere Nelson was up and doing. He wore his Admiral’s frock-coat, the only de...