Making the Admiral

Horatio Nelson was born on 29 September 1758 in the middle of the Seven Years' War and entered the navy on 1 January 1771 at the age of 12. All his formative years as a boy, captain's servant, midshipman and lieutenant were spent in the after-glow of British success in that war. He felt personally identified with it through the exploits of his uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, and looking for a lucky omen as his fleet sailed into battle at Trafalgar, he told those around him that 21 October was ‘the happiest day of the year among his family’. It was the anniversary of Suckling's most famous action, when, in command of the Dreadnought (60) off Cap François, Saint Domingue, in 1757, his was one of three British ships that took on a French squadron of superior power and numbers and battled with them for two and a half hours until both sides drew off to make repairs, battered and exhausted.

Suckling's fight against superior numbers had relevance for Trafalgar: ‘Our captains were too gallant to be terrified at their formidable force,’ his commander-in-chief had written. But the spirit of aggression and confidence of success that emerged from the Seven Years' War came to be symbolised by Hawke at Quiberon Bay. The actor David Garrick's celebratory song ‘Hearts of Oak’, to Dr William Boyce's music, for the pantomime Harlequin's Invasion, swept the country.