Celebrated national heroes are rarely treated unceremoniously after shaking off their mortal coil. It’s rarer still that such treatment might befall someone so beloved as to have a 50-meter-tall column dedicated to them in the center of London’s Trafalgar Square.
Yet this is precisely what happened in the case of Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson; not through any animosity towards him, but because sometimes, not least in times of war, needs simply must.
Who Was Horatio Nelson?
A man of modest birth, Horatio Nelson enjoyed a phenomenally successful military career, rising through the ranks through personal merit rather than privileged entitlement. First taking to the seas in the early 1770s at the tender age of 12, he served in the merchant navy, took part in a failed scientific expedition to the Arctic, and campaigned against the Americans during the War of Independence, traveling as far afield as the Falklands.
By the age of 20, he was in command of his own ship, the HMS Albermarle, which he captained to great effect, capturing several Spanish and French ships in the West Indies and taking them as prizes.
By the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792 and the Siege of Toulon in 1793 (a military engagement in which the young Napoleon Bonaparte was also involved), Nelson was already starting to show his remarkable commanding genius. His crowning moment, however, was to come at the Battle of St. Vincent (February 14, 1797).
During the battle Nelson decided to break line with the commander of the British fleet, Admiral Sir John Jervis. Had he lost the battle, this would have earned him a court-martial for disobeying orders. As it happened, however, Nelson’s quick thinking saved the British from certain defeat at the hands of the numerically superior Spanish. Nelson won a knighthood for his actions. And he would go on to build on his success the next year in the warm seas of the Mediterranean, though not before suffering some setbacks.
Nelson was badly wounded in July 1797 while assaulting the Spanish port city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. A whiff of grapeshot shredded his right arm, and most of what was left of it had to be amputated to prevent infection from spreading. Yet he didn’t let this deter him: from his surgery bed he continued to issue commands, and would later joke about the matter, referring to what was left of his amputated arm as his “fin”.
Now holding the rank of rear admiral, Nelson won a heroic victory at the Battle of the Nile (1798). Nelson’s fleet scuppered Napoleon’s navy under the command of François-Paul Brueys d’Aigalliers, stranding the French army in Egypt. The crushing victory against the French marked the first step in establishing British dominance of the seas. It also made Nelson an undisputed hero, the darling of Britain, and the man who was to be entrusted the command of British forces in the Mediterranean. As fate would have it, this would also make him the man to face off against the French and Spanish at the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21, 1805.
The Battle of Trafalgar
Nelson’s heroic victory at Trafalgar marks a watershed in British naval history. After Trafalgar Britannia truly did “rule the waves”, dashing Napoleon’s hopes of controlling the English Channel and mounting an invasion on British shores.
Despite the importance of the battle, however, few would have imagined Nelson could have won it.
The Spanish outnumbered the British 33 ships to 27. But Nelson’s tactical nouse made up for the disparity in numbers. Rather than arranging his ships in line, as was customary, Nelson ordered his fleet to form up in two perpendicular columns, cutting through the enemy’s line at two crucial points in the centre. As the battle got underway Nelson refused to remove his official insignia—which made him an easy target for enemy sharpshooters—but remained on deck with the appropriately named Captain Hardy, exhorting his men to fight bravely in spite of the bloody carnage around them. Yet his bravery was to be his undoing.
At around 1 pm, roughly an hour after the battle had started, Hardy turned around to see that Nelson had been struck by a musket ball. Fired from the mast of the French ship Redoutable, the ball had passed through the admiral’s shoulder and lodged deep within his spine. In the throes of agony, the admiral gasped, “they finally succeeded, I am dead”, before being carried below decks to the surgeon’s quarters.
Before the battle, Nelson had sent a signal from his flagship reading, “England expects that every man will do his duty.” The sentiment clearly had just as much impact on the admiral who sent it did on the victorious sailors under his command. For as the battle died down around him, Nelson’s uttered his last words: “Thank God that I have done my duty… To God and my country.”
Such is the story of Nelson’s life.
Now for the bizarre episode that followed his death.
As smoke lifted over the seas off Cape Trafalgar, the late admiral’s men found themselves in the tricky predicament of how to transport their beloved leader’s body back to Britain for proper burial. The crippled, prisoner-laden fleet was still a good two-month journey away from Britain. If Nelson’s corpse were to make it, the crew would need to get creative.
The man behind the resultant plan was Nelson’s surgeon, an Irishman named William Beatty. As a nineteenth-century naval surgeon, he had remarkable success rates. Of his 102 casualties at Trafalgar, 96 had survived. He had also had to amputate 11 men, 9 of whom had lived to tell the tale. Considering that at the time, however, average post-amputation survival rates were around 33 percent, this pays strong testament to his abilities.
Beatty suggested that Nelson’s body be stored in alcohol.
This wasn’t actually all that novel. The preservative qualities of alcohol were widely known at the time. But navy rum was considered the safest, most effective bet. Beatty’s decision to entrust one of Britain’s best-loved figures to a barrel of brandy mixed with camphor and myrrh showed bravery and conviction of character becoming of his esteemed, deceased patient.
Pickling the Admiral
And so, as the HMS Victory started its long, slow craw back towards Britain, Admiral Horatio Nelson was dunked in a barrel of brandy. Fortunately, the great man was small of stature (5”6 or 1.68 meters) so his crew didn’t have too much trouble stuffing him in. Things weren’t all plain sailing though. Over the course of the voyage gases emitting from Nelson’s corpse caused a build-up of pressure within the vat. Eventually, it caused the lid of the barrel to pop off; scaring the living daylights out of a sailor sitting nearby who thought his late admiral had risen—one assumes in a state of complete inebriation—from the dead.
Once the fleet reached Gibraltar, Beatty was forced to transfer Nelson’s pickled remains into a lead-lined coffin and replace the alcoholic mixture. Rumours began circulating that the men aboard the HMS Victory had discreetly drunk the entire barrel of brandy in which their late admiral was pickling. Hardcore (or indeed horrendous) as this would have been however, thankfully for the prestige of the British navy it turns out this was all they were: rumours.
While the Victory limped on, other ships were sent ahead to Britain to relay news of Nelson’s victory. The first to arrive was the aptly named HMS Pickle (its name had actually been changed from the HMS Sting four years prior to Trafalgar). After in Falmouth, Cornwall, on November 4, 1805, its captain Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood made his way to London to deliver the message. Despite Britain’s great victory, the news of Nelson’s death was painfully received.
In floods of tears, the reigning monarch George III was reported to have said, “We have lost more than we have gained.” The Times newspaper printed daily publications on the late, great admiral, and the HMS Victory’s homeward bound progress. Poems, written both in British and Latin, flooded magazines and newspapers to such an extent that editors had to implore their readership not to send any more.
Nobody had any details about precisely what had befallen Nelson mind you. But this didn’t stop people from speculating.
When the HMS Victory finally docked in Britain, it was to a panoply of national interest. Amongst the chaos caused by visitors to the ship, Nelson’s body had to be transferred yet again into another lead-lined casket (it’s a small miracle that his skin didn’t fall off during the move) during which Beatty performed an autopsy, recovering the prized musket ball.
After a fourth and final move to a wooden casket, Nelson, by this stage thoroughly pickled, was prepared to lie in state. On January 9, 1806, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London held his spectacular funeral, which, in today’s terms, came to the cost of around $1.2 million.
The legendary pickle into which Nelson got himself soon began to seep its way into British drinking culture. Navy rum became known as “Nelson’s blood” while drinking cask liquor through a straw was commonly referred to as “tapping the admiral”. It’s a legacy that still survives today: Shepherd’s Neame Brewery produces a pretty decent draft called “Tapping the Admiral” and many pubs up and down the country bear the name – or a variation thereof – of “The Lord Nelson”.
Showing that just like the brandy in which he was stored, Nelson’s reputation is something that has only refined with age.
