Nelson's Trafalgar Coat
Unknown naval tailor · about 1805
In the dim light of this case hangs the blue undress coat that Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson was wearing on the quarterdeck of HMS Victory on the twenty first of October eighteen hundred and five, the day he won the Battle of Trafalgar and died. Look at the left shoulder, just below the epaulette. There is a small, neat hole where a musket ball fired from the rigging of the French ship Redoutable entered his body, passed through his lung and lodged in his spine. He was carried below and died about three hours later, knowing that the battle was won.
The coat itself tells you about the man. It is a working uniform, not full dress, but Nelson had the embroidered stars of his four orders of knighthood sewn permanently onto the left breast so that they showed even in battle, and his officers had worried that they made him a target. The right sleeve is pinned across the chest because he had lost that arm at Tenerife in seventeen ninety seven. Dark stains on the tail and the left sleeve are believed to be the blood of his secretary John Scott, killed by a cannonball earlier in the action. The buttons carry the fouled anchor of the Royal Navy and the fabric shows the wear of a life at sea.
After the battle the coat was given to Nelson's mistress Emma Hamilton, who later, in debt, parted with it. In eighteen forty five Prince Albert bought it and presented it to the Greenwich Hospital, whose collection passed to the museum. It is one of the most personal relics in Britain, and the museum has recently spent years carefully conserving the fragile cloth. Visitors often fall silent in front of it, which is perhaps the right response.
Did You Know? The bullet hole is on the left shoulder because the shot came from above, fired by a marksman in the rigging of the Redoutable.
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