Horatio Nelson

Hey! This is going to be a very short character profile on Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson, but if you would like more information on him, I have attached a link to my blog which contains a more thorough article. Nelson was born in 1758, and as so often was the case in those days, he started working for the Royal Navy at the age of 12. He worked his way up through the ranks during the wars over the West Indies, this group of islands here, which were fought over by various European colonisers, including Spain, France and England. With the outbreak of the French Revolution, he was promoted to captain of his first ship, HMS Agamemnon, shown here in battle at the top left of this painting. The ship was named after King Agamemnon of Ancient Greece, who attacked the city of Troy, whose map of Battle Mars you can see here. Nelson continued to be promoted to bigger and better ships, and after a particularly bad storm, where it shed down to his ship and had kept him in harbour for four days, he sailed to Egypt only to find the entire French fleet. The battle that ensued was called the Battle of the Nile, and really brought fame to Nelson for his daring and successful attack. He took port in Naples after the battle, where he was heralded as the saviour of Italy, and where he met his lover, Emma Hamilton, who you can find out more about here. He returned to England in 1800, but was soon out at sea again. He was now second in command to Admiral Parker, but went against Parker's instructions, accumulating in the Battle of Copenhagen, against the Dutch. This directly led to the Danish Armistice, and for this he was awarded the title of Viscount of the Nile and Burnham Thorpe. As seen in my previous video on the Battle of Trafalgar, which you can find here, the main task during this period was to keep the channel secure, and so when he found the Franco-Spanish fleet in Cadiz, he attacked. The resulting battle was extremely successful, called the Battle of Trafalgar, but Nelson was killed by a French sniper. He was buried in St Paul's Cathedral on 9th January 1806, and the public later, and grudgingly the government, contributed to the building of Nelson's Column, shown here, which is in Trafalgar Square in London, to commemorate his life. So that was a short introduction to Admiral Horatio Nelson. Please do subscribe for more of my videos each month on interesting events and the people who took part in them. Thank you for watching.