Admiral Lord Nelson, the Battle of Trafalgar and Saturn in Aquarius

WORK IN PROCESS

This page celebrates the Aquarian qualities of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, the British Naval hero who is memoralized in Trafalgar Square. Nelson had Saturn in Aquarius. His life is a fabulous tribute to the Aquarian ideal.

Learn more about the Aquarian nature by seeing it under duress with Saturn in Aquarius. Here is Nelson's birth chart.

Nelson exhibited the brilliant mind, revolutionary tactics, ability to bridge the psychology gap between a new invention and its relevance for application, iconoclastic social behavior, iron will and "Band of Brothers" sense of brotherhood characteristic of the Aquarian.

"I have always been a quarter of an hour before my time, and it has made a man of me."

His signature, Nelson Bronte, a title he took on later in life.

Nelson is the naval counterpart to the Duke of Wellington. Together they joined to defeat Napoleon Bonaparte.

Horatio Nelson was born in England on September 29, 1758. His mother died when he was 9 and he was raised by his father, along with his seven brothers and sisters. Many feel the early loss of his mother led to his inappropriate choices later on in love.

Horatio enlisted in the Royal Navy when he was just 12 years old taking off to sea with an uncle.

By the time he was 20, the boy had been in naval and merchant service all over the world and had distinguished himself as both seaman and pilot. That year he reached the rank of captain and commanded ships in the West indies.

While in the West Indies, Nelson fell in love with Fanny Nisbet and married her on March 11, 1787. They were ill suited for one another but that did not become apparent right away.

England expects that every man will do his duty.

The famous messsage Nelson sent before the Battle of Trafalgar.

Band of Brothers - sense of brotherhood
Lord Nelson showed several strong Aquarian characteristics. A tactical genius (Aquarians are always genius at something unless they are unbalanced eccentrics!), Nelson also had a unique ability to command steadfast loyalty and draw out the particular skills and abilities of his fellow soldiers, a style which became known as The Nelson Touch. Certainly this is an excellent use of Aquarian energy. Unlike most officers of the day, Nelson included his subordinate officers in the tactical planning of engagements, and many who served under him regarded him as a personal friend in addition to a brilliant commander. Nelson was unique in sharing every aspect of his battle plans ahead of time with all of his officers.

The title Band of Brothers that was chosen by Stephen E. Ambrose for his bestseller and also used in the epic 10-part television miniseries telling the story of Easy Company, 506th Reginent of the 101st Airborne Division, US Army, is taken from Lord Nelson's life at sea. He referred to his men this way.

A good rendering of this kind of leadership is seen in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World -- in fact, while Captain Jack Aubrey of The Surprise (played by Russell Crowe) is at table, he gives a yarn about his boyhood encounter with Admiral Nelson. In the fiction of the movie they are contemporaries. The ship, Surprise, was docked at San Diego for many months this year and I was able to go aboard and see the completely reconstructed ship of a type similar to the kind Lord Nelson would have commanded. reconstructed

Admiral Nelson was a very small man, standing only 5'4" tall. He was often very ill with recurring bouts of malaria and dysentery which he contracted while serving in Madras, Calcutta and Ceylon.

He lost the sight of his right eye at the battle of Calvi in Corsica and hs right arm at Santa Cruz in Tenerife. There was a scene in Master and Commander where the young boy had his arm amputated by the ship's surgeon. He was then given a book about Lord Nelson for inspiration.

Iconoclastic Social Behavior - Insubordination
Another Aquarian characteristic of Nelson was shown in 1801 at the Battle of Copenhagen where he destroyed the Danish Navy. During the battle Nelson was sent a signal to break off action by a superior officer. Nelson put his telescope to his blind eye and said to his Flag Lieutenant "You know Foley I have only one eye. I have a right to be blind sometimes. I really do not see the signal".

Later Nelson was to commit a capital offense by disobeying orders for the standard method of attack in naval battle at the Battle of Trafalgar, completely reinventing naval warfare and producing one of the greatest victories at sea in all history. He lost his life in this battle.

Emma, Lady Hamilton

John Keegan in his book The Price of Admiralty

"These were men who had felt the electricity of Nelson's personality both on campaign and in action. If the others in the fleet had not personally been touched by it, they had lived for a decade in its field of force and were tense with expectation to serve it in person." p. 20

Aquarians are ruled by the planet Uranus which is associated with electricity. Not all Aquarians have the stature of Lord Nelson but they often have an electrifying effect on others.

Iconoclastic Social Behavior - Scandalous Personal Life
Nelson has an eccentric personal life. During his marriage to Fanny Nesbit, Nelson conceived an "illicit passion" for Emma Hamilton, a woman fo very questionable character, with whom he entered into a menage a trois at the Court of Naples -- Emma, her much older husband who "pretended to know nothing" and Nelson himself.

For all of his iron will, Nelson was a man. This is how Keegan describes his weakness in strategy from love o Emma Hamilton:

Iron Will
"For Villeneuve's escape had provoked one of Nelson's few strategic neuroses over anxiety about the security of the eastern Mediterranean. Perhaps because of his intimate association with the court of Naples, where he had conceived his passion for Emma Hamilton ...." p. 21

Like most Aquarians, Nelson's will was formidable. This is how Keegan describes his encounters with the French admiral Villeneuve, whose "nerve had cracked".

"Somewhere and sometime between his leaving Toulon in March and his reaching Spain in July, Villeneuve's nerve had cracked .... The disintegration had been brought about, however, not by any direct application of British force ... but by the fears and spectres with which five months of oceanic and draconian orders had fed those fears; worry at the poor state of his ships and members of his crews had sapped his will to resist them, but in the last resort it was the image of an implacable Nelson -- dogging his footsteps, lying in wait for him, anticipating his every move -- that had raised them to the level of the unbearable." p. 27, 28 He eventually committed suicide.

Revolutionary Ideas
This is the simple and confident way in which Nelson introduced his battle plan for Trafalgar which would revolutionize naval warfare and which was also proposed against standing orders which exposed him to capital punishment (death).

"It is a brilliantly straightforward statement of intention, "I have made up my mind," its substantive passages begin, "that the order of sailing is to be the order of battle." and goes on to analyse in the closest particulars how the battle must then develop, culminating in a totally confident prediction of the outcome. "If the van [leading division] of the energy tacks [turns into the wind] the captured ships must run to leeward of the British fleet, if the enemy wears [turns from the wind] the British must place themselves between the enemy and the captured and disabled British ships, and should the enemy close, I have no fears as to the result." pp. 33, 34

Here in a passage from Keegan, Nelson uses the words "electic shock" himself to describe the effect of "the Nelson Touch":

Band of Brothers - sense of brotherhood
He had his captains about the Victory to explain the plan to them. He later wrote Lady Emma, "When I came to explain to them the 'Nelson touch' ... it was like an electric shock [emphasis mine] . Some shed tears, all approved -- it was new -- it was singular -- it was simple, and from admirals downwards, it was repeated, 'It must succeed if ever they will us to get at them You are, my Lord, surrounded by friends whom you inspire with confidence!'" p 34

Here are some more quotes about Nelson's rare ability to lead his men. The attributes of a "revolutionary tactician" belng to the Aquarian. Uranus, the ruler of Aquarius, is the ruler of revolutions.

"... he had the actor's gift of attracting the attention but also the devotion of subordinate officers and -- a more difficult task -- men; and that he was a revolutionary tactician." p 35 [Keegan]

"Some inspirational appreciation of the revolutionary nature of the Saints [Admiral Rodney in the Battle of Saints, 4.12.1782] must nevertheless have lodged in Nelson's mind; and when to it was added his grasp of the potentialities offered by the most recent advances in British naval signaling, the resulting intellectual brew yielded the truly original tactical plan for Trafalgar." p. 50 [Keegan]

Nelson's ability to devise his revolutionary battle plan depended on the development of a new range of signal flags offering far greater flexibility in passing information from the flag ship to the others in the fleet on a moment by moment basis. It took a mind like Nelson's to seize the advantage of this invention.

"Admiral Home Popham ... devised a truly alphabetic signal book which, first published in 1805, at last put a flexible, comprehensive and instantly communicable range of signals at a sea commander's disposal [for the first time]." p. 51

Here is Professor Howard's commentary on a "mind like Nelson's" which can make a "mental leap in psychological acceptance of significant techical change" - very Aquarian.

Taking the Psychological Leap from Invention to Practical Application
"'Psychological change,' as Professor Sir Michael Howard observed in his notable 1986 Roskill Memorial Lecture, 'always lags behind technological change.' As he also observes, the psychological acceptance of significant technological change usually depends upon the making of a mental leap by a single individual, or by several individuals struck simultaneously by the same thought [emphasis mine] .... at the beginning of the 19th century, it was Nelson who grasped that the signaling evolution predicated, through the proper retraining of his subordinate captains, the realisation of the intrinsic power of sailing ship fleets to deliver decisive victory at sea. Trafalgar was to be the result." It was also a recipe for defeat should it fail. He was working in the dark. p. 52

"He intended the order of sailing to be the order of battle and the order of sailing was not to be a mere parallel formation but a pair of spearheads aimed at the gaps in the Combined Fleet." P. 61

Again, Keegan describes the interface of technology, psychology and brilliance characteristic of the Aquarian.

"... because, in the absence of a comprehensive system of signals, ... power [to control and concentrate gunnery] was lacking, battle lines escaped the effect of shock and engagements at sea petered out in stalemate. Trafalgar, a 'revolutionary' battle in its effects, owed its nature to revolutionary tactics; but those tactics, so the argument runs, were chiefly the practice of a revolutions in control, brought about by the innovation of Hume Popham's telegraphic signaling system. It was because Nelson had at his disposal the means to direct his ships wherever he wanted them to go at whichever moment he chose that he could risk the experiment of 'breaking the line from to windward'; and so encompass the destruction of the Combined Fleet." p. 98 [emphasis mine]

Keegan describes "how half-hearted had been the urge to victory of all European admirals before Nelson" ... again the ironwill of the Aquarian.

"Trafalgar was, in short, a massacre. As massacres go, it compared not at all with the worst of what Napoleon -- and Wellington -- was wreaking or would shortly wreak on land. The total of 8,500 killed and wounded out of some 50,000 present (17 per cent) must be set against ... 25 per cent at Marengo, ... 35 per cent at Borodino and 29 per cent at Waterloo. However, it was a figure unprecedented in sea fighting and, even though inflated by the drownings of crews wrecked in the gale that followed the action, one which set the battle altogether apart from any fought in the 250 preceding years of wooden-wall warfare. In its human horror, it both emphasized how half-hearted had been the urge to victory of all European admirals before Nelson and anticipated how very much more brutal naval warfare would become once truly ship-killing -- and therefore mass man-killing -- weapons appeared to lend Nelsonian naval tactics of do-or-die attack their essential point." pp 100, 101

Twelve of Napoleon's ships had floundered or run ashore in the great gale. "It was that outcome which allowed Napoleon, in his only public reference to Trafalgar, to remark that 'storms caused us the loss of several ships after an imprudently undertaken engagement.'" p. 102

Brilliant Mind
Here is the telegram announcing the tragic death of Lord Nelson at Trafalgar, described as having a "mind, which inspired ideas superior to the common race of men".

Iconoclastic Social Behavior - Scandalous Personal Life
Here are some mementoes of Nelson's iconoclastic relationship with Lady Emma Hamilton. His fellow officers scorned his illicit love affair. Many an Aquarian has been know to scorn back :-)

[Autograph in the possession of Mrs. Smith.]
Victory, October 19th, 1805, Noon, Cadiz, E.S.E., 16 Leagues.

My dearest beloved Emma, the dear friend of my bosom. The signal has been made that the Enemy's Combined Fleet are coming out of Port. We have very little wind, so that I have no hopes of seeing them before to-morrow. May the God of Battles crown my endeavours with success; at all events, I will take care that my name shall ever be most dear to you and Horatia, both of whom I love as much as my own life. And as my last writing before the Battle will be to you, so I hope in God that I shall live to finish my letter after the Battle. May Heaven bless you prays your

October 20th. In the morning, we were close to the Mouth of the Straits, but the wind had not come far enough to the Westward to allow the Combined Fleets to weather the Shoals off Trafalgar; but they were counted as far as forty Sail of Ships of War, which I suppose to be thirty-four of the Line, and six Frigates. A group of them was seen off the Lighthouse of Cadiz this morning, but it blows so very fresh and thick weather, that I rather believe they will go into the Harbour before night. May God Almighty give us success over these fellows, and enable us to get a Peace.

[Autograph in the possession of Mrs. Horatia Nelson Ward.]
Victory, October 19th, 1805.

My dearest Angel, I was made happy by the pleasure of receiving your letter of September 19th, and I rejoice to hear that you are so very good a girl, and love my dear Lady Hamilton, who most dearly loves you. Give her a kiss for me. The Combined Fleets of the Enemy are now reported to be coming out of Cadiz; and therefore I answer your letter, my dearest Horatia, to mark to you that you are ever uppermost in my thoughts. I shall be sure of your prayers for my safety, conquest, and speedy return to dear Merton, and our dearest good Lady Hamilton. Be a good girl, mind what Miss Connor says to you. Receive, my dearest Horatia, the affectionate parental blessing of your Father,

[Autograph, or facsimile Copy, in the possession of Philip Toker, Esq.]
Monday, October 21st, 1805.

At daylight saw the Enemy's Combined Fleet from East to E.S.E.; bore away; made the signal for Order of Sailing, and to Prepare for Battle; the Enemy with their heads to the Southward: at seven the Enemy wearing in succession. May the Great God, whom I worship, grant to my Country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious Victory; and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it; and may humanity after Victory be the predominant feature in the British Fleet. For myself, individually, I commit my life to Him who made me, and may his blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my Country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Two books which reinforce the efficacy of Nelson's leadership style are The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki and The Mask of Command by John Keegan.