Lord Horatio Nelson was not an imposing figure. At 5 feet, 4 inches, with one arm and one eye, he hardly looked like the debonair, swashbuckling terror of Napoleon Bonaparte’s nightmares. Yet he was exactly that. Few figures in naval history accomplished so much—or secured so lasting a place in the imagination of their nation.
An Unlikely Figure of Legend
Fittingly, Nelson grew up by the sea. Born in 1758 to Catherine and Edmund Nelson, he spent his early years in a quiet village in Norfolk, England two miles inland. That peaceful childhood ended with his mother’s death. With 10 other children to support on a rector’s modest income, his father sent him to sea.Like many naval officers of the era, Nelson began young. At 12, he joined his uncle, Capt. Maurice Suckling, in the Royal Navy. Frail and slight, he hardly seemed suited to the life. Suckling reportedly asked, “What has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he, above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea?” Yet he took the boy under his wing, beginning one of the most remarkable careers in naval history.
