Calling all Brit guys --

jimmythetrucker · Full Member Joined: Mar 12, 2008 Posts: 1283

Hey you limeys, here's a question for you --

I recently read about how, when Adm. Horatio Nelson was killed at Trafalgar, the fleet wanted to carry his body home instead of doing a funeral and burial at sea. So they pickled the hero's corpse in a hogshead of rum (some kind of booze; I think it was rum) and sailed for home with the stiff in its cups, so to speak. When they got back to Blighty, they went to retrieve the body and found that sailors had got into the booze and drank it all up. Nowhere is it written if the corpse was still in good condition.

So what I want to know is what became of the body? Did the Brits really bury it somewhere? Did they stand it on end, touch a match to its hair and burn it, like a candle or a signal flare, so the Queen had a bedside reading lamp? Or was it too badly decomposed after the tars drank all that embalming fluid and they had to throw it away?

Tell me, please. I'm dying to know.

sschering · Posted: August 26, 2008, 2:09 pm Post subject: Re: Calling all Brit guys --

Google and Wikipedia are your friends

Found this

Victory was towed after the battle to Gibraltar, with Nelson's body preserved in a barrel of brandy. Legend has it that it was French brandy that had been captured during the battle. There was a rumour that on the voyage home to England, sailors drank the contents of the barrel, using tubes of macaroni as straws and then topped it up with wine, as they were toasting to their Admiral. This wasn't the case. The barrel was kept under armed guard and according to eyewitnesses, when it was opened in Portsmouth it seemed well topped up. However the legend was the origin of the Navy phrase "Tapping the Admiral" for the secret consumption of rum. Upon the arrival of his body in London, Nelson was given a state funeral (one of only eight non-royal Britons to receive the honour – others include the Duke of Wellington) and entombment in St. Paul's Cathedral. He was laid to rest in a wooden coffin made from the mast of L'Orient which had been salvaged after the Battle of the Nile, within a sarcophagus originally carved for Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (when Wolsey fell from favour, it was confiscated by Henry VIII and was still in the royal collections in 1805).

From his Wiki page
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...unt_Nelson

Nelson's body was placed in cask of brandy, mixed with camphor and myrrh, which was then lashed to the Victory’s mainmast and placed under guard.[89] Victory was towed after the battle to Gibraltar, and on her arrival, the body was transferred to a lead-lined coffin filled with spirits of wine.[89] Collingwood's despatches about the battle were carried to England aboard HMS Pickle, and on the arrival of the news in London, a messenger was sent to Merton Place to bring the news of Nelson's death to Emma Hamilton. She later recalled

They brought me word, Mr Whitby from the Admiralty. 'Show him in directly,' I said. He came in, and with a pale countenance and faint voice, said, 'We have gained a great Victory.' - 'Never mind your Victory,' I said. 'My letters - give me my letters' - Captain Whitby was unable to speak - tears in his eyes and a deathly paleness over his face made me comprehend him. I believe I gave a scream and fell back, and for ten hours I could neither speak nor shed a tear.[90]

The King, on receiving news, is alleged to have said, in tears 'We have lost more than we have gained.'[91] The Times reported

We do not know whether we should mourn or rejoice. The country has gained the most splendid and decisive Victory that has ever graced the naval annals of England; but it has been dearly purchased.[91]

The first tribute to Nelson was fittingly offered at sea by sailors of Vice-Admiral Dmitry Senyavin's passing Russian squadron which saluted on learning of the death.[92]

Funeral
Nelson's coffin was returned to Britain aboard the Victory. Unloaded at the Nore it was taken to Greenwich and placed in a lead coffin, and that in another wooden one, made from the mast of L'Orient which had been salvaged after the Battle of the Nile. He lay in state for three days, before being taken up river aboard a barge, accompanied by Lord Hood, Sir Peter Parker, and the Prince of Wales.[93] The coffin was taken into the Admiralty for the night, attended by Nelson's chaplain, Alexander Scott.[93] The next day, 9 January a funeral procession consisting of 32 admirals, over a hundred captains, and escorted by 10,000 troops took the coffin from the Admiralty to St. Paul's Cathedral. After a four hour service, he was laid to rest within a sarcophagus originally carved for Thomas Cardinal Wolsey.[94]

The bullet that killed Nelson was removed from his body and is now on public display in Windsor Castle, whilst the blood stained clothes he was wearing are at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

jimmythetrucker · Full Member Joined: Mar 12, 2008 Posts: 1283

Dang it, sschering -- yer no fun. Smile

tweedy64 · Posted: October 30, 2008, 12:05 pm Post subject: Re: Calling all Brit guys --

wow thats heavy going mate but very impressive, shame our navy aint so good now well its good just not very big. cheers tweedy

jayel · Posted: October 30, 2008, 3:15 pm Post subject: Re: Calling all Brit guys --

Drake and the Spanish Armada 130/140 vs. 30

to be fair most of the Spanish ships were armed merchant/troop ships, but that's what you get when you bring a knife to a gun fight

kingwj · Posted: October 30, 2008, 7:13 pm Post subject: Re: Calling all Brit guys --

If you make it to London make sure to get to Greenwich. Amazing area of town.

xs1961 · Posted: October 30, 2008, 7:19 pm Post subject: Re: Calling all Brit guys --

Yeah, but its London..A real s***-hole... When youre there you feel like a foreigner in yer own country... Evil or Very Mad

nj1639 · Posted: October 30, 2008, 7:27 pm Post subject: Re: Calling all Brit guys --

jayel wrote:

Drake and the Spanish Armada 130/140 vs. 30

to be fair most of the Spanish ships were armed merchant/troop ships, but that's what you get when you bring a knife to a gun fight

I believe I heard that the cannon balls on the spanish ships weren't all the proper diameter for the cannon bores. Or somthin'.

xs1961 · Posted: October 31, 2008, 4:42 am Post subject: Re: Calling all Brit guys --

You lot over there would all be speaking dago if we hadnt won that one.....(a bit like florida? ) Wink

tweedy64 · Posted: October 31, 2008, 6:21 am Post subject: Re: Calling all Brit guys --

more mosques than church spires in london now, used to like london and lived there for a year back in the 80's was a cool place then but now , well go see for yourself i guess its still ok for a days visit if you've never been. I guess xs191 we will be using english as our second language soon eh ! What will our first be i wonder. So much for living on an island. Were doomed like the titanic, were gonna sink lol.

jayel · Posted: October 31, 2008, 8:42 am Post subject: Re: Calling all Brit guys --

"You lot over there would all be speaking dago if we hadnt won that one.....(a bit like florida? )"

well you guys got over speaking French (1066) didn't you? Laughing

P.S. don't tell XSjohn you guys say God Bless the Queen, he'll think you're all gay

jimmythetrucker · Full Member Joined: Mar 12, 2008 Posts: 1283

actually, jayel, they didn't get over it. Nobody speaks English any more. We all speak a mix of English, French, German, Spanish, etc.

Before 1066, people on the island spoke one or another dialect of something -- I'll call it the anglo-saxon language. They had all of these neat, short little words -- 's***,' 'piss,' 'c***,' 'c***,' and other such -- all of them used by everyone in society. Then the Normans took over and instituted a tyranny in which -- if you were a Saxon and if you wanted anything from your Norman laird, you had to speak French or (in church) Latin. So people were forced to use 'excrement' when they really meant 's***,' and other, similar substitutions. The good, old, anglo-saxon words became 'foul language' and was no longer accepted in polite society. And that's how, today, we got all these namby-pamby rules about saying 's***' and other such words in public.

jayel · Posted: October 31, 2008, 9:38 am Post subject: Re: Calling all Brit guys --

you mean like ............
"The trouble with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepreneur'....

yamaman · Posted: October 31, 2008, 9:44 am Post subject: Re: Calling all Brit guys --

wasn't that, refering to the French, "you can't trust a country that doesn't have a word for espionage"

stew · Posted: November 20, 2008, 7:16 pm Post subject: Re: Calling all Brit guys --

I think were I live has was the first place in the UK to have a bigger imigrant population than natural one, the local papers are published in Polish.
You covered Nelson well there, the Victory is in dry dock in Portsmouth you can visit it if you come over, i've been its an amazing ship.

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