Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) was Britain’s most celebrated naval commander, a man who turned personal boldness into national strategy at the exact moment Britain’s survival depended on sea power. He joined the Royal Navy as a boy, learned his trade in the brutal practical school of storms, scurvy, and gunnery, and rose fast because he combined nerve with an instinct for reading an enemy’s mind. Nelson’s legend hardened at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent (1797), where he disobeyed strict orders to b