Funeral of Horatio Nelson

Horatio Nelson died on board the HMS Victory on the 21st October 1805. Of this  Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood wrote

'a victory, such a this, has never been achieved, but at such an expense, in the loss of the most gallant of men, and best of friends, as renders it to me a victory I never wished to have witnessed'

The body of the hero of the Battle of Trafalgar had been preserved in a 'cask of brandy mixed with camphor and myrrh for preservation' and transported to Gibraltar onboard the Victory. Nelson’s body finally arrived at Greenwich Hospital on 23rd December 1805, and from the 5th January it lay in state for three days. Four days later his coffin, made from the timbers of Napoleon's flagship L'Orient, was carried from Greenwich in 'one of the greatest aquatic processions that ever was beheld on the River Thames' and then escorted by ten-thousand soldiers to St Pauls. Following a four-hour service, Nelson was laid to rest in a crypt within a sarcophagus that was originally carved for Cardinal Wolsey.

​Nelson's death was received by the nation as a personal grief, much like that of the death of the Princess of Wales in 1997. Just like that day, hundreds of thousands of people turned out to get a glimpse of his coffin as it passed by them carried on a monumental funeral car modelled on the Victory.

On the 9th January in 1806, Nelson's funeral took place at St Paul's Cathedral in London. He was the first commoner to have been given a State Funeral.

There's more about Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar here 

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