DOMINIC SANDBROOK: Plan to review Nelson’s ‘heroic status’ is an assault on history

For more than two centuries, Horatio Nelson has been one of the greatest heroes in British history. 

His naval victories over the French – most famously at the Nile in 1798 and Trafalgar in 1805 – are unsurpassed landmarks of leadership and courage.

If Nelson had lost at Trafalgar, the result would probably have been a French invasion of southern England.

Napoleon Bonaparte, a cruel, corrupt dictator, would have been master of Britain – and effectively the world.

But we remember Nelson not just because of what he did, but because of who he was – a man whose bravery and charisma have rarely been rivalled.

Always eager to lead by example, the Norfolk vicar’s son lost an eye in Corsica, an arm at Tenerife and was almost blinded at the Nile.

At Trafalgar, he strode the deck of HMS Victory in full naval regalia, the medals glittering on his coat, as French gunshots and cannonballs ricocheted around him.

And his final signal before battle – ‘England expects that every man will do his duty’ – has gone down as a symbol of patriotic resolution.

It is no wonder, then, that every year Nelson’s Trafalgar coat – the coat he was wearing when he was fatally shot on the deck of the Victory – draws thousands of visitors to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

To most normal people he is a truly great Briton, comparable only to the likes of Winston Churchill. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before the hysterical hate-mobs came for Nelson, as they have already come for Churchill.

But how depressing that this move should originate with the bosses of the museum – the very people who should be defending him to the hilt. Instead, they are set to review his ‘heroic status’ – the academic equivalent of tarring and feathering.

It’s true, of course, that Nelson wasn’t perfect. No human being is. Like Churchill, he could be a shameless attention-seeker, and he was an adulterer.

And yes, there is circumstantial evidence that suggested he supported slavery, although some Nelson scholars question this.

So are the National Maritime Museum bosses right?

To use the latest cant phrase, should they ‘re-contextualise’ their Nelson galleries to highlight themes of ‘race, colonialism and representation’? The answer is surely obvious. No. Nelson did not own a single slave. 

Nor did he ever take part in slaving activities. It is telling that in more than 2,000 pages, his definitive, prize-winning biographer, John Sugden, can find no links between Nelson and slavery at all.

What on earth are the Greenwich bosses thinking? How can they possibly believe that when youngsters inspect Nelson’s Trafalgar coat, they need to think about his position on slavery?

The truth, I fear, is that they have fallen victim to the lazy historical illiteracy that has infected other institutions such as the National Trust. 

In its own words, the museum is seeking to capitalise on the ‘momentum built up by the Black Lives Matter movement’ and to lecture its visitors about the ‘barbaric history of race, colonialism and representation in British maritime history’.

But this is rank stupidity. Yes, of course, slavery has its grim place in our naval history – along with the Royal Navy’s key role in bringing about the end of the slave trade.

In the grand scheme of things, Nelson’s views about slavery are utterly irrelevant to his historical reputation. 

But his story, like so many others, has been hijacked by a tiny minority of crazed academic mediocrities, determined to ram their own obsessions with race and slavery down everybody else’s throats.

The National Maritime Museum’s plan isn’t just a betrayal of a great national character. By forcing our past into a modish, monomaniacal straitjacket, it’s an assault on the integrity of history itself.

And Nelson, who gave his life for his country, deserves better.