Nelson, HORATIO, VISCOUNT NELSON, English admiral, was born on 29th September 1758, at Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk, of which parish his father was rector. His mother, daughter of Dr Suckling, prebendary of Westminster, was related to the Walpoles. He entered the navy in 1770, under the patronage of his uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling; made a voyage to the West Indies in a merchant-ship; served in the Arctic expedition of 1773, and was afterwards sent to the East Indies in the Seahorse. Two years of the climate severely tried his constitution, never very strong, and he came home, invalided, in September 1776. In April 1777 he passed his examination, and by the interest of his mother's family was at once promoted to be lieutenant of the Lowestoft frigate, with Captain Locker. In her he went to Jamaica, where he was taken by the admiral into the flag-ship, and on 8th December 1778 was promoted to command the Badger brig, from which, six months later, he was posted to the Hinchinbrook frigate.
In January 1780 he commanded the naval force in the expedition against San Juan; in the heavy boat-work up the pestilential river his health broke down, and he returned to England in an apparently dying condition. A few months' rest and careful treatment, however, restored him; and in August 1781 he commissioned the Albemarle, in which, after a winter in the North Sea, he went to North America, where he joined the squadron under Lord Hood, and made the acquaintance of Prince William Henry, afterwards William IV., with whom he always maintained the most cordial relations. In the spring of 1784 he was appointed to the Boreas frigate, again for service in the West Indies, where, by enforcing the Navigation Act against the Americans, he roused the ill-will of the merchants, which took effect in numerous actions for damages. The law, however, was clear on the point, and Nelson's proceedings were sustained, though not without causing him much trouble and annoyance.
Whilst on this station he married Mrs Nisbet, the widow of a Dr Nisbet of Nevis, niece of Mr Herbert, the president of the island; and on the Boreas being paid off, in December 1787, he with his wife retired to Burnham Thorpe, where he lived for the next five years. His frequent applications for employment were unsuccessful, till, on the imminence of war with France in January 1793, he was appointed to the Agamemnon of sixty-four guns, in which he accompanied Lord Hood to the Mediterranean. When Toulon was given up to the allies Nelson was ordered to Naples to urge the necessity of troops being sent at once to their assistance; on his return he was employed in the blockade of Corsica, and in the following spring commanded the naval brigade which largely conducted to the reduction of Bastia and of Calvi, where an unlucky blow from a bit of gravel, scattered by a shot, destroyed the sight of his right eye. In 1795 he was with the fleet in the two actions fought by Admiral Hotham outside Toulon. In both the French were defeated with some loss, but they were allowed to escape, and Nelson in his private letters expressed an angry opinion that more might and ought to have been done.
In the autumn of 1795 Hotham was succeeded by Sir John Jervis, and during the whole of 1796 the strictest blockade of Toulon was enforced, Nelson being for the most part, as in preceding years, with a small squadron in the Gulf of
Genoa, where he put a stop to all coasting traffic, and commanded the road along the shore so completely as to warrant his assertion that, had he had an adequate force, the invasion of Italy would have been impossible. Towards the close of the year Spain concluded a treaty of alliance with France, and sent her fleet into the Mediterranean to co-operate with the French. Jervis thus found himself opposed by very superior forces; and, with Spain and Italy both in hostile hands, his position was no longer tenable. He withdrew the troops from Corsica, and retired to Gibraltar, and afterwards to Lisbon. He was, however, determined that the Spanish fleet, which had been instructed to join the French at Brest, should not pass; and, on its endeavouring to do so, met it off Cape St Vincent on 14th February 1797, and inflicted on it a signal defeat. This was rendered more decisive by the action of Nelson, who, having been appointed commodore, with his broad pennant on board the Captain, was in the rear of the line, and, interpreting a manoeuvre of the Spanish admiral as an attempt to rennite the two divisions of his fleet, which Jervis had separated, wore out of the line to meet him, and for nearly half an hour withstood, single-handed, the attack of the whole Spanish van. When support arrived and the Spaniards fled, the Captain had suffered severely; and Nelson, being unable to join in the pursuit, let his ship fall foul of the Spanish San Nicolas, which he boarded and took possession of, and, leading his men across her deck to the San Josef, took possession of her also.
Nelson's conduct on this occasion deservedly won for him the cross of the Bath; and, being promoted in due course to be rear-admiral, he continued with the fleet off Cadiz till, in July 1797, he was sent with a small squadron to seize a richly-laden Spanish ship which had taken refuge at Santa Cruz. He was instructed to levy a heavy contribution on the town if the treasure was not given up; but the troops which he had asked for were not granted, the ships were powerless, and the landing force at his disposal was quite inadequate. With it, such as it was, however, the attack was made on the night of 21st July; but in the darkness the boats missed the mole, and landing irregularly were repulsed with severe loss. Nelson himself had his right elbow shattered by a grape-shot. He was carried on board his ship, where the arm was amputated, but on rejoining the fleet he was compelled to return to England.
In the following March, 1798, he hoisted his flag on board the Vanguard of seventy-four guns, and sailed from St Helens to rejoin the fleet off Cadiz. He was immediately sent into the Mediterranean in command of a small squadron, with orders to ascertain the object of the French armament at Toulon. The secret was, however, too well kept; and the Vanguard, being dismasted in a violent gale, was obliged to put into San Pietro off Sardinia to refit, while the French expedition sailed on its way to Egypt. On 7th June Nelson was reinforced by ten sail of the line; but his frigates had all parted company, and, under some misapprehension of orders, did not rejoin him. He was thus left without means of learning anything about the French further than that they had sailed from Toulon. His hope to get news at Naples proved vain, and it was only when he arrived off Messina that he heard that the French had captured Malta, but had sailed again some days before. Their destination was unknown; he conjectured that it might be Egypt, and he hastened thither, only to find that there was no trace of them. He had in fact passed within a few leagues of them, but without seeing them. He returned by the coast of Asia, put into Syracuse, where he watered, and was meditating going up the Archipelago to Constantinople, when he at last learned that, after all, they had gone to Egypt. Thither he immediately followed, and on the evening of 1st August found their fleet lying at anchor in Aboukir Bay. His plans had long before been formed and discussed with the several captains under his orders, everything was ready, and no explanatory signals were needed. His fleet was numerically inferior to that of the French, and became still more so by the accident of the Culloden getting aground and being unable to take any part in the battle; but the wind was blowing along the French line, and, by concentrating his attack on the weather end of it, it was crushed by superior force, while the leeward-most ships were unable to render any assistance; and thus, creeping gradually down the line, he captured or destroyed the whole, with the exception of the two rear-most ships, and two of the frigates, which fled.
Never, in recent times, had there been a victory so complete, so overwhelming; and when Nelson with his shattered fleet returned to Naples he was the object of an enthusiastic adoration which knew no bounds. The queen, in her intense hatred of the murderers of her sister, welcomed their conqueror with all the ardour of a passionate nature, and Lady Hamilton (q.v.), the wife of the English ambassador, fell on his breast in a paroxysm of hysterical rapture. A woman of extreme beauty, winning manners, and shady antecedents, first the mistress and then the wife of Sir William Hamilton, she enslaved Nelson by her charms, and the two became bound by a liaison which death only severed. At home Nelson was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Nelson of the Nile; parliament voted him a pension of £2000 a year, and the East India Company awarded him a sum of £10,000. Turkey and Russia sent him handsome and costly presents, and the king of Naples conferred on him the title of Duke of Bronte, in Sicily, with an estate valued at £3000 a year, though during Nelson's life its revenues seem to have been in abeyance.
The government of Naples had already concluded an alliance with Austria and declared war against France; but the French army swept away the Neapolitan troops almost without resistance, and the Neapolitan Jacobins received their French brethren with open arms. For the king and his court safety was only in flight, and Nelson conducted them to Palermo. Afterwards, returning as the king's representative, he sternly annulled the convention which Cardinal Ruffo, contrary to the king's express orders, had made with the rebels; he forced the traitors to surrender at discretion, and he promptly hanged Caracciolo (q.v.), one of their leaders, who had added perjury to treason, and having accepted a command as commodore in the king's navy had betrayed his trust, and waged war against the authority he was pledged to maintain.
The affairs of Naples were not yet regulated, the outposts held by the French and their sympathisers were not yet all reduced, when, on July 19, 1799, Nelson received an order from Lord Keith, the commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, to bring or send the greater part of his force to Minorca, which he conceived to be threatened by a joint attack of France and Spain. Nelson refused to obey the order; and when it was repeated in still more positive terms, he contented himself with sending Sir John Duckworth, his second in command, while he himself remained at Naples or Palermo, and controlled the blockade of Malta which was carried on unremittingly during the whole time. The Admiralty censured him for his disobedience; and indeed it can scarcely be main- tained that the affairs of Naples were of such paramount importance as to justify this extraordinary breach of discipline, the motives of which have been much discussed. Perhaps the true explanation of his conduct is that a severe wound in the head, which he had received at the Nile, had seriously affected his general health, and caused a depression of spirits which it needed some violent stimulus to overcome. Happy at last in the capture of the two ships which had escaped from Aboukir Bay, he obtained leave to resign his command, which the state of his health rendered irksome, and made his way home overland, by way of Vienna and Dresden, in company with Lady Hamilton and her husband, for whom he professed and appears to have truly entertained a real affection and esteem. He arrived in England in November 1800. The four months spent on the journey had done much to re-establish his health, and he immediately volunteered for active service. His meeting with his wife could not possibly be a happy one; and after an angry interview they parted never to see each other again.
On 1st January 1801 Nelson was promoted to be vice-admiral, and a few days later was appointed second in command of the expedition ordered to the Baltic, under Sir Hyde Parker. He hoisted his flag in the St George, but that ship being too large for the approaches to Copenhagen, he moved into the Elephant when the attack was determined on. The whole conduct of this attack was entrusted to Nelson, with the smaller ships of the fleet, Parker, with the others, remaining at anchor some miles distant. After a furious combat of from three to four hours' duration, the enemy's ships were subdued. The shore batteries still continued to fire, till Nelson sent a flag of truce on shore to point out that the worst sufferers from the continued engagement were the crews of the beaten ships, which received a great part of the fire of both parties. A suspension of hostilities was agreed on to permit of the prisoners being removed; and this led to an armistice, which the news of the czar's death shortly afterwards converted into a peace. Nelson, who was raised a step in the peerage and became a viscount, succeeded Parker as commander-in-chief; but, his health having given way, he was permitted to return to England. He arrived in the beginning of July, and was at once ordered to undertake the defence of the coast, in view of the preparations for invasion which were being made in France; and though he failed in an attempt to destroy the flotilla collected in Boulogne, his watch was so vigilant that the boats never ventured from under the protection of their chains and batteries.
On the renewal of the war Nelson was at once sent out to the Mediterranean, where, with his flag in the Victory, he cruised for more than eighteen months in front of Toulon, drawing back occasionally to Madalena for water and refreshment. During one of these absences, in March 1805, the French fleet put to sea under the command of Vice-admiral Villeneuve, and got clear away to Gibraltar, to Cadiz, and to Martinique, where they expected to be joined by the fleet from Brest. Nelson, however, though delayed for six weeks by his ignorance of where Villeneuve had gone, was only twenty days behind him; and Villeneuve, deceived as to the English numbers, and unwilling to risk an engagement which might frustrate his ulterior object, hastily returned to Europe. Nelson again followed, again outshined his enemy, and arrived off Cadiz some days before the French approached the shores of Europe. Then, conceiving that Villeneuve's aim might be to overpower the fleet off Brest, he went north and reinforced it with most of his ships, returning himself to England. It was but for a few weeks. Within a fortnight it was known that Villeneuve had gone to Cadiz, and Nelson was ordered to resume the command. He did so on 25th September, and for the next month kept a close watch on the port, while his fleet was being gradually increased in numbers. He was especially desirous that he should have sufficient force. What he wanted was not merely an honourable victory gained by an inferior fleet, but the annihilation of the enemy. Villeneuve was meantime urged by positive and repeated orders to put to sea, and on 20th October, having learned that some of the English ships had gone to Gibraltar, he reluctantly came out. Of French and Spanish ships combined there were with him thirty-three; with Nelson there were twenty-seven.
At daybreak on the 21st the two fleets were in presence of each other off Cape Trafalgar, and Nelson, who several days before had given out and explained his plan of attack, at once made the signal to bear up towards the enemy. The wind was very light, and it was noon before the lee division of the fleet, under Collingwood in the Royal Sovereign, broke through the rear of the Franco-Spanish line. Nelson, with the other division, had reserved to himself the duty of overawing the van, till, convinced that they had no immediate intention of turning to support their rear, he bore up and threw himself on their centre. As the Victory passed astern of Villeneuve's flagship, she fell foul of the Redoutable of seventy-four guns, and her quarter-deck became exposed to the musketry fire from the Redoutable's tops. Nelson, while standing speaking to Captain Hardy, fell mortally wounded by a shot on the left shoulder, which, striking obliquely downwards, passed through the spine. He was carried below, and died some three hours later, just as the battle ended in the decisive victory of the English. The enemy's fleet was annihilated.
Nelson's body was brought home, and, after lying in state at Greenwich, was interred with much pomp in the crypt of St Paul's. In the cathedral above a gorgeous monument has been erected to his memory, and numerous others throughout the land bear witness to the deep feeling which his splendid services awakened.
His Life by Clarke and M'Arthur (2 vols. 1809) is written with more credulity than critical accuracy. Southey's famous Life (2 vols.) dates from 1813. The best record of Nelson's services is his Dispatches and Letters, edited by Sir N. Harris Nicolas (7 vols. 8vo, 1844-46); there is a selection from the Letters and Dispatches (1886) and a Life (1896) by the author of the present article; Capt. A. T. Mahan's Life of him is dated 1897. See also Jeaffreson's The Queen of Naples and Lord Nelson (1889) and Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson (1888); and Mrs Gamlin's Nelson's Friendships (1899).