Horatio, Lord Nelson, was the most celebrated admiral in British history. Born on Sept. 29, 1758, he entered (1770) the Royal Navy at the age of 12 and was a captain by 1778. He served at various stations before Britain's entry into the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793 gave him an opportunity to excel.
Nelson played a distinguished part in the defeat of the Spanish fleet off Cape Saint Vincent in 1797. The following year he achieved one of his most brilliant and crushing victories in the Battle of the Nile; finding the French fleet in the Bay of Abukir, he adopted the adventurous and unexpected tactic of approaching his opponents from the shore side. Stationed next at Naples he began a celebrated liaison with Emma, Lady Hamilton, wife of the British ambassador there; she bore him a daughter in 1801. At the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, Nelson put a telescope to his blind eye--he had been blinded in battle in 1794 and had also lost his right arm in 1797--to avoid seeing a signal from his commander, Sir Hyde Parker, that would have prevented him from crippling the Danish fleet. A baron since his triumph at the Nile, Nelson now received a viscountcy.
On the renewal of war with France in 1803, Nelson was given the crucial task of blockading the French fleet at Toulon. Although he failed to prevent the French from breaking out and uniting with the Spanish fleet in 1805, he eventually brought the combined navies to battle after crossing and recrossing the Atlantic. He was killed in the resulting Battle of Trafalgar on Oct. 21, 1805, but he lived long enough to know that his victory was complete and that it had saved Britain from the danger of a Napoleonic invasion. Nelson's reckless courage and flamboyant manners masked a shrewd, strategic mind and a brilliant mastery of naval tactics. The Victory, his flagship at Trafalgar, is preserved at Portsmouth, England.
