Transcriber’s Note: Boldface text is enclosed in =equals signs=; italics text is enclosed in _underscores_. THE STORY OF NELSON _Uniform with this Volume_ THE STORY OF NAPOLEON By HAROLD F. B. WHEELER, F.R.Hist.S. With 16 full-page Illustrations. FAMOUS VOYAGES OF THE GREAT DISCOVERERS By ERIC WOOD. With 16 full-page Illustrations. THE STORY OF THE CRUSADES By E. M. WILMOT-BUXTON, F.R.Hist.S. With 16 full-page Illustrations by M. MEREDITH WILLIAMS. STORIES OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER By Mr and Mrs WILLIAM PLATT. With 16 full-page Illustrations by M. MEREDITH WILLIAMS. [Illustration: The “Belleisle” went into action at Trafalgar with the words “Victory or Death” chalked on her guns Frank Craig, from a sketch by C. W. Cole _Fr._] THE BOYS’ NELSON _BY_ HAROLD F. B. WHEELER F.R.Hist.S. MEMBER OF THE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION JOINT-AUTHOR OF ‘NAPOLEON AND THE INVASION OF ENGLAND’ AND ‘THE WAR IN WEXFORD 1798’ AUTHOR OF ‘THE MIND OF NAPOLEON’ ‘THE BOYS’ NAPOLEON’ AND ‘THE MAXIMS OF NAPOLEON’ ‘_He is the only man who has ever lived who, by universal consent, is without a peer_’ ADMIRAL SIR CYPRIAN BRIDGE G.C.B. NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY PUBLISHERS _Printed by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh_ DEDICATED TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER Foreword The career of the little one-eyed, one-armed man who frustrated Napoleon’s ambitious maritime plans for the subjugation of England, who is to sailors what Napoleon is to soldiers, who represented in his person all that sea power meant when the very existence of our forefathers was threatened in the latter days of the eighteenth century and the first half-decade of its successor, must ever appeal to those for whom Great Britain means something more than a splash of red on a coloured map. I do not wish to suggest that his fame is insular. On the contrary, it is universal. Other lands and other peoples share in our admiration of him. We must not forget that it was an American naval officer, Admiral Mahan, who first gave us a really great book about this truly great man. In his “Life of Nelson,” we have the hero’s career reviewed by an expert whose knowledge of tactics has not blinded him to the more romantic aspects of Nelson’s forty-seven years of life. Before its appearance readers were dependent upon the facts and fancies of the biography by Clarke and McArthur, the “Memoirs” of Pettigrew, or the stirring but often inaccurate pictures of Southey. The seven substantial tomes of “Nelson’s Letters and Despatches,” edited with indefatigable industry by Sir Harris Nicolas, were not compiled for the general public, although they have furnished much material for later historians and must necessarily be the foundation of every modern book on Nelson.