Audiobook · read by volunteers
Death of Lord Nelson
William Beatty (1773–1842)
Read by FNH · 5 chapters · 1 h 35
About the book
The twenty-first of October, 1805, ended with the greatest naval victory of its age and the loss of the man who had made it possible. William Beatty was the surgeon aboard HMS Victory, and he was at Nelson’s side when the wounded admiral was carried below. In 1807 he published an account of what he saw, heard and did, because he felt that the British nation was owed an exact account from the one person in the position to give it. The result is a plain, careful and deeply affecting narrative, written by a professional observer who takes pains to be accurate. There is little decoration in his prose. The weight of the subject does the work. Five chapters, about an hour and a half, and a vivid view of a famous day from the cockpit of a ship of the line.
Introduction
William Beatty (1773-1842) was a naval surgeon and later a physician, and in 1807 he published his Authentic Narrative of the Death of Lord Nelson. He had served as surgeon of the Victory at Trafalgar, and his account draws on what he observed in the ship’s lower decks as well as on statements from those who were present.
The book is an unusual kind of primary source. It is not a battle history, though the battle is its setting; it is the report of a medical man who tries to describe the final hours of a national hero with exactness and without display. Beatty explains why he writes at the outset: he held a position of responsibility on that day and felt obliged to lay the facts before the public.
Readers who know Nelson only as a name on a column will find a more human figure here, and they will also find a rare and unsentimental glimpse of how a warship cared for its injured in the age of sail.
This recording was made by a LibriVox volunteer. It is divided into five chapters and lasts about an hour and a half. It is a good choice for anyone interested in naval history, in the Napoleonic wars, or in the way eyewitnesses write when the stakes are as high as they could be. The narrative is short enough to hear in a single evening, yet it leaves a strong impression. Listeners who have visited Greenwich or Portsmouth, or who have read about Trafalgar elsewhere, will find the surgeon’s close attention to detail a valuable counterpart to the more familiar stories of command and strategy.
Public domain
William Beatty died in 1842: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text