Horatio Nelson

Whether or not Captain Maurice Suckling recognized the seeds of failure or insignificance in the two eldest and two youngest boys at Burnham Thorpe parsonage house, he evidently regarded the middle son in a different light.

This was Horatio or, as he preferred to be known then - and signed himself - Horace, to the displeasure of his father, who once crossed out the offending signature in a register and substituted the Latin version of the name. Horatio was, after all, as the rector pointed out, the name of their revered kinsman the first Lord Walpole of Wolterton, as well as of the second Lord Walpole, who was the boy's godfather. It had also been the name of the boy's elder brother who had died in infancy, and of Sir Robert Walpole's fourth son, the writer and connoisseur, though he, like Master Nelson, preferred Horace, 'an English name for an Englishman'.

From the accounts of Horatio Nelson's childhood that have come down to us and from reports by family, servants and friends, no doubt embellished in the telling, it seems that he was well able to withstand the rigours of Mr Jones's discipline, which apparently did not deter him from stealing the martinet's pears, maintaining that he 'only took them because every other boy was afraid'. It is also said - and has been retold in almost every biography of Nelson - that the boy, lost on a bird-nesting exhibition and cut off from home by a fast-flowing river, was scolded when he eventually found his way back to Burnham Thorpe by his grandmother who said, 'I wonder that fear did not drive you home.'

Horatio Nelson had long had thoughts of becoming a sea officer. In later years he well remembered how as a boy he had ridden to the coast at Burnham Overy Staithe or Wells-next-the- Sea to watch the coasters warping their way up the creek or passing down with the tide, how he had learned to recognize the sails and rigging, the masts and cut of the jibs of the vessels that sailed in and out of the harbours, the luggers and hoys, the brigantines and wherries, the galliots and billanders; and he would remember, too, the smell of the sea and of the boats, the smell of fish and tar and wet rope carried by the wind across the sand dunes and salt marshes.

The boy certainly looked as though he would find it difficult to 'rough it out at sea'. Twelve years old, he seemed even younger, and, although there were numerous midshipmen and captains' servants of his age, there were few who appeared as vulnerable as Horatio Nelson. His father thought it as well to travel with him to London and to see him from there on to the coach for Chatham. When he arrived at Chatham on a cold day early in January 1771 he made his way with his baggage down the cobbled streets to the dockyard where the first seamen he approached knew nothing of the Raisonnable or of Captain Suckling.

In this West Indiaman, Horatio Nelson twice crossed the Atlantic, dreadfully seasick at first; and, on his return to Captain Suckling, he was considered to have gained sufficient experience of seamanship to be appointed to command the longboat of his uncle's ship, which was used to ferry goods, men and dispatches to and from Sheerness, Gravesend, Woolwich, Greenwich, Deptford and the Pool of London. Thus it was, as he later put it himself, that 'by degrees' he became 'a good pilot for vessels of that description ... and confident of myself amongst rocks and sands'

In April 1777 the eighteen-year-old Horatio Nelson, eager and confident, taking his former captains' references with him, presented himself at the Admiralty for the interview which was to determine his suitability for a promotion to which he was too young to be officially entitled. He was shown into a room where several senior officers sat behind a table. Among them was his uncle, the Comptroller; but Captain Suckling looked at him as though he had never seen him before in his life.