A London Itinerary Must Include Nelson's Column
One of the Top Attractions in London is a Statue in Trafalgar Square
Sep 10, 2009
It will be near the top of the list of anyone touring London, one of the great London tourist sights, yet very few people have been within thirty yards of the most famous statue in the land. Which is less surprising when you consider that it is situated 150 feet above the ground. It is, of course, the statue of Lord Nelson, which stands 18 feet tall atop Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square.
His monument may be on every London itinerary, but who was Horatio Nelson? Well, everyone remembers him as England’s greatest seaman, who fell in the hour of his greatest victory. But beyond that, how many people really know anything about him?
Let’s fill in a little of the detail. Born in Burnham Thorpe in the county of Norfolk in 1758, Nelson joined the navy at the age of twelve, and received his first command before his twenty-first birthday.
Lord Nelson, National Hero
In action in 1794 he lost the sight of his right eye, and three years later, another battle wound led to the amputation of his right arm. But in the meantime, his intrepid (and insubordinate) behavior at the Battle of Cape St Vincent, had made Horatio Nelson a national hero.
He went on to distinguish himself at the battles of Copenhagen (where he famously put a telescope to his blind eye, and claimed to be unable to see an unwelcome signal) and the Nile, where his victory left Napoleon and his army stranded in Egypt.
And then in 1805, his rout of the combined French and Spanish fleets off Cape Trafalgar ended for ever Napoleon’s hopes of invading England. But the triumph cost Nelson his life. Pacing the quarter-deck of his flagship Victory at the height of the action, he was hit by a musket ball fired by a French sharp-shooter. In order that his men should not know that their leader was down, he ordered that his face be covered as he was carried below.
Nelson’s Column, One of the Top Attractions in London
Surprisingly, it was not until more than thirty years after his death that a subscription was finally raised to erect a fitting must-see London monument to the fallen hero. The granite column designed by William Railton was completed in 1843, by which time E.H. Baily’s sandstone statue was ready to take its place on the top. Before it did so, however, fourteen stonemasons held a celebratory dinner on the flat surface.
Now that the effigy is in place, a good look through a pair of binoculars disproves one persistent myth about Lord Nelson: the eye patch. The injury to his right eye deprived him of sight, but the eyeball remained in place, and he was not disfigured. The patch is a much later invention.
The Landseer Lions, Part of London's Heart
London tourist sights don't come any bigger, and even without binoculars, Nelson’s Column offers much of interest. There are, for instance, the four enormous bronze lions which look out watchfully from each of the corners below the pedestal. They are the work of Sir Edwin Landseer, and were a long time coming: they did not appear until 1867. Today, children of all ages are to be found scrambling over the Landseer lions in order to have their pictures taken.
Then there is the pedestal itself. Each face bears a bronze panel depicting one of Lord Nelson’s four greatest victories – St Vincent, Copenhagen, the Nile and Trafalgar.
The last-named shows the admiral being carried below, moments after receiving his fatal wound. On the left, interestingly, stands a black sailor carrying a musket. As the Victory had ten black crew members, he cannot be identified with confidence.
There are so many things to see when touring London that no one can be expected to get through them all. But a London itinerary which does not include Nelson's Column is unimaginable.
Sources:
Warner, Oliver. A Portrait of Lord Nelson. London, 1958 (published in the USA as Victory: The Life of Lord Nelson)
–––Nelson's Battles. London, 1965
Mace, Rodney. Trafalgar Square: Emblem of Empire. London, 1976
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