Britain's greatest admiral suffered seasickness for his whole career
Horatio Nelson lost the sight of one eye, then his right arm, and finally his life at Trafalgar, Britain's greatest naval victory. Less famously, he never stopped getting seasick. As a teenager on an Arctic expedition, he reportedly chased a polar bear across the ice hoping to bring its skin home.
Nelson grew up in a rectory at Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk, born on 29 September 1758. His parents, the clergyman Edmund Nelson and Catherine Suckling, had eleven children, and Horatio was sixth. His godfather was Horatio Walpole, a nephew of Britain's first de facto prime minister. His mother's brother, Maurice Suckling, a senior naval officer, shaped his life. On 1 January 1771 the boy joined Suckling's ship HMS Raisonnable, soon becoming a midshipman, and quickly discovered the seasickness that would dog him ever after.
His uncle arranged a broad education at sea. Nelson crossed the Atlantic twice on a merchant ship bound for Jamaica and Tobago, then joined an expedition under Constantine Phipps seeking a North-East Passage to India. It got within ten degrees of the North Pole before ice forced it back. Decades later, Commander Skeffington Lutwidge told how young Nelson had pursued a polar bear, explaining that he wanted the skin for his father.
He had his own ship at 20, in 1778, but spells of illness and unemployment followed the American war. The French Revolutionary Wars brought him back to the Mediterranean, where he was wounded at Corsica and partly lost the use of an eye. He shone commanding HMS Captain at Cape St Vincent in 1797, then lost his right arm in a failed attack at Santa Cruz de Tenerife. A year later he routed the French at the Battle of the Nile, and in 1801 he beat neutral Denmark at Copenhagen.
In 1805, after chasing the French and Spanish fleets to the West Indies and back without forcing battle, he took over the blockade of Cádiz. When the allied fleet emerged on 21 October, he engaged it at Trafalgar, signalling that England expected every man to do his duty. A French marksman fatally wounded him aboard HMS Victory. A state funeral followed, and Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square now honours him.
Source: Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson
