January 17, 2026 • 34 mins
Naval legend Admiral Nelson died on October 21st, 1805 shortly after being shot by a French sniper while standing on the deck his ship, Victory. Following the British victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, the survivors of the conflict were left with a dilemma -- how could they preserve Nelson's body long enough for the corpse to receive an appropriate burial back home?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Phil Ridiculous Historians. Welcome back to our weekly classic episode.
Have you ever had a moment where you thought, if
I don't change my ways, I'm gonna end up dead
in a barrel of brandy?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Totally happens to me every day. Is what makes me
fly right, Ben and live clean?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
There we go, right. We are big fans of larger
than life historical figures, and this episode from twenty nineteen
features none other than the naval legend Admiral Horatio Nelson.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Not to be confused with Horatio Hornblower. That's a different person.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
That's a different person, Okay, right on.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
That is a fictional person, a British Royal naval captain
during the Napoleonic Wars, from a series of novels from
the nineteen thirties by C. S.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Forrestern. I wonder if some of Admiral Nelson's real life
maritime adventures informed that character. What do you think?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, I think it's entirely accurate.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
So okay, this guy dies on October twenty first, eighteen
oh five. He is shot while standing on the deck
of his ship, and his crew is left with a dilemma,
a real pickle. How do they bring his body back to.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Bury it home. Yeah, why don't we jump right in?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Well, here we
(01:50):
are again, friends and neighbors. It is a Friday afternoon
here in the studio. We are off to adventures historical
and contemporary. And this weekend we may be tapping the
Admiral sampling a bit of Nelson's blood.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, I'm definitely gonna do that, like immediately after we
record this. And I don't mean getting vampiric right up
in the pub right, this is this is a little
bit different.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, tapping the Admiral is not poking military right right.
It's also known it's a phrase from the Royal Navy.
It's also called bleeding the monkey or sucking the monkey,
which I think are both kind of weird. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I did not come across the hose Ben, which is
your name, and your.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Knowls's true And we're joined with our super producer, Casey Pegram.
Casey and I have had a very very very scant
amount of sleep. So if there are any inaccuracies or
weirdness in today's episode, that's on me and Noel. Thank you,
(02:59):
and I hope your back doesn't hurt after carrying us
through this one.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Man. You know, I love it when you're a little punchy,
whether it be from emerging from crazy jet lag or
dare I say, still in the throes of it, or
being a little sleep deprived. I always find you a
fun and punchy character. Thanks man, Thanks, I appreciate it.
And likewise, of course, tapping the admiral, what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (03:22):
What's that refer to?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
It is when you drink liquor or any kind of
fermented beverage directly from the cask using a straw.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yes, that's it, And that's also what they what they're
referring to when the members of the Royal Navy say
bleeding the monkey or sucking the monkey, which still seems
woefully inadequate in comparison to tapping the admiral. That sounds classy,
even though drinking straight up liquor from a barrel through
(03:52):
a straws maybe not the classiest thing. It seems, dare
we say, slightly barbaric. But that's life at sea, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Oh my god, goodness, boy, will you get a load
of some life at sea, some harrowing life at sea
in this particular story. So why don't we start from
the beginning, Yes, to introduce our main character, the admiral
in question.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yes, there is a specific admiral to whom the British
Royal Navy is referring to as Admiral Horatio Nelson, and
Admiral Horatio Nelson is a pretty larger than life figure, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Larger than life legacy wise, but in terms of his stature,
I think he was under six feet tall.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yes, yes he was. He was not NBA status right.
He eventually became the first Viscount Nelson and the first
Duke of Bronte. He was born on the twenty ninth
of September seventeen fifty eight in Norfolk, England. He was
the sixth of eleven children.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
See I feel like that matters, I really do. Some
of the greatest men and women in history have been
part of big families because they have to figure out
how to like scrap and you know, carry their own weight,
you know, among all of the competition, whether they're vying
for their parents' affection or just like learning how to
do stuff right right, or.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
They're in some cases fighting for food, which was not
Nelson's situation.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
As far as we don't know. We don't think so either.
Yet at the age of twenty. By the age of twenty,
he already had command of his own ship, which was
the Albemarle, and he became a very important figure during
the outbreak of the French Revolution in seventeen ninety two.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Mm.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Yep, it's absolutely true. Now this guy had been this
guy hit the high seas by the age of twelve,
that's right. So by the age of twenty, this was
not his first maritime rodeo.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
No, you're right, but still at twenty, that's a pretty
big responsibility. Like you said, he joined the Merchant Marines
and that was during the the fight against the Americans
during the War of Independence.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah, and he even took part in a failed scientific
expedition to the Arctic. He was living life, you know.
But you're bringing this sword a pivotal point in his
life because it was during his twenties, during these French
revolutionary wars, that he began to exhibit a tactical talent,
(06:27):
a knack for command. He was considered remarkable and a genius.
And in seventeen ninety seven, on Valentine's Day, which was yesterday, right,
he had his huge crowning achievement at the Battle of
Saint Vincent. How did that go down?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, he really exhibited some mobility to think outside the
box militarily when he decided that he would break line
with the actual commander of the British fleet, which sounds
to me a little bit like disobeying.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Orders in subordination.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
And apparently if they would have lost this particular battle,
he would have gotten his wrists slapped or you know,
dare I say, been put in the stockades.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
He would have been booted out, he would have been
court martials, that's right.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
But instead it proved to be his crowning achievement, like
you said, or at least one of his early claims
to fame. So what ended up happening was he saved
the British from defeat at the hands of the Spanish,
who had them licked in terms of number, in terms
of sheer volume of troops. Would you call them troops
(07:36):
when they're at sea? They're not really troops at sea,
are there? They're more they're sailors.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I guess they're the enemy.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
They that's all the matters, That's all the matters.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
It's also weird how whenever you hear a historical account
that refers to a group of actual human beings as
just the French or the Spanish, it sounds like they're
way more insidious than they actually are.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's true. So instead of that court martial that he
was just cruising four, he got knighted.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yes he did, he did, and he continued on this
upward trajectory career wise, he did not have a perfect record,
and he did not escape unscathed. He was wounded in
July seventeen ninety.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Seven in a grizzly turn.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yes, yes, the way that you'll hear it phrased. For instance,
in a great article we read on history Collection dot
co by Alexander Meddings, a whiff of grape shot shredded.
His arm shredded, and most of what was left of
it had to be amputated to prevent infection from spreading
(08:44):
and grape shot For anyone who does it, do we
talk about what this is?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I think we did. I mean, it's sort of the
equivalent of like buckshot, but it's like steel balls like
that spread out and just literally rip into everything at
viscerate flesh and bone.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Right, yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's a number of small iron
balls fire all together at once.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
You shoot that from a cannon, not like a musket
or something, right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Exactly, And when they're assembled they look like a cluster
of grapes, very very nasty ammunition. So get this. This
is I think this is cool. After he had his
right arm cut off, he kept issuing commands while he
was on the surgery bed. And keep in mind, in
the late seventeen hundred, surgery is very very dangerous.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, and another important player in this story is, in fact,
his surgeon, who will come into the picture when we
get into the kind of the main focus of the story. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, So, like you said, he had the arm amputated,
he survived, which was incredibly rare in any kind of amputation.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
And he got into stand up pretty much as a
result of this.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, he made some good banter on the on the
surgery bed and also had a nice little pet name
for what was left of of his arm.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yes, he called it his fin and is adorable. It's weird.
It's definitely military humor, and it's also nautical humor. It's
also nautical humor. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think
that if he had not pursued a military fame, you know,
maybe he could have gotten into the stand up circuit.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, you know, got a little bit of a running
start into that field, because I don't think it really
picked up steam until like the you know, the Catskills
kind of era. Right, Well, there were gestures, that's true,
that's true, But this is he was doing more bits
though he was doing.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Right, this is way before vaudeville. And if you would
like to learn more about vaudeville and you haven't checked
it out yet, do listen to our two part episode
on the history of stand up with our pow Wayne Fetterman.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah, and please don't hold it against us that for
the first whole half of the first episode, my mic
is not on.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
It was saved. It it gets saved, It.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Did get saved. It's just it's not our it's not
our best body represented. No, it's definitely not. But it's
such a good episode that we had to push it
out there. Really recommend you giving that one a listen.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
So, despite the sad, tragic misstep of not going immediately
into comedy, Nelson did try to make something of his life.
He in seventeen ninety eight. Just a year later he
held the rank of rear admiral. He scuppered Napoleon's navy.
I'm sorry, scuppered. He's scuppered, which is is deliberately sinking
(11:20):
a ship, kind of like scuttling.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
But is it scuttling where you deliberately sink your own ship?
Is there a differentiation? I know there's a lot of
very specific like foundering or to founder is when a
ship is filling with water and sinking. So he scuppered,
they foundered. He scuppered, they foundered, and ultimately the ships
were scuttled. That's right, Yes, we got there. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Oh, if you're in the navy, please feel free to
write to us about this. We want to learn. But
these are great words, they really aren't. So this victory
of his stranded the French in Egypt. This was the
first step in establishing the British Empire's dominance of the seas.
(12:04):
And this also made Nelson, by the way, a friggin hero.
He was straight seahorse teeth as far as the rest
of the country was concerned.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, because I mean he put himself in harm's way.
He was there like out there putting himself in harm's
way with the troops side by side, not like commanding
from some bunker or something like that. Like he was
right there and then he survived. So, like I said,
because of the fact that you typically would die in
agony from some horrible infection, this probably instilled people with
(12:36):
this sense of him as being some kind of indestructible superman.
I'm editorializing here of it, but that's what it seems
like to me.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Sure man. Yeah, he was the Muhammad Ali of the seas,
you know what I mean. People thought that he could
do no wrong. People thought he was a national hero,
and he pretty much was. So let's fast forward through
his career and let's go to the Battle of Trafalgar
on October twenty first, eighteen oh five. And this is
(13:06):
when things take a turn for the worse.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, because you can't outrun the reaper forever, especially when
you're like in a live fire zone with terrifying stuff
like grape shot flying everywhere. So the Battle of Trafalgar
was between the French and the Spanish, and when I
say between, I mean the English were like between them.
They were in the mix there, right, And it was
(13:32):
a huge naval victory for the British because it completely
if they owned the seas before, they had complete dominance
and obliterated Napoleon's desire and any future hope that he
had of controlling these waterways the English Channel. Right, and
there was going there would be no Napoleonic invasion of
(13:53):
Britain after the Battle of.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Trafalgar right right, and the Spanish are still in the mix.
As we said, they outnumber the British with thirty three
ships to Britain's twenty seven. But Nelson was going to
use his tactical prowess to outsmart the Spanish. Essentially, so
instead of putting his ships in a line, just making
(14:16):
them all sail together in a line, he ordered them
to form two perpendicular columns that cut through the enemy's
line because they had just a straight line at two
crucial points in the center. And here's where he got
He started styling on it, as we would say in
the early two thousands. Wait, quick slang check casey. Do
(14:39):
you remember when people would say styling on it? Absolutely
was that in the early two thousands, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Maybe even earlier. It's I don't know that one seems
like it's been around for a.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Long time, no sense of time.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Okay, yeah, I don't either. It could be from you know,
six months ago.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Maybe it was from the early eighteen hundreds. Maybe he
said I'm going to style on him.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I'm just thinking subtitle from Barry Linden. By what means,
Redmond Berry acquired the style and title of Barry Lindon.
So he was styling that on the way back in
like the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
So that reminds me of people being able to be
styled as something like his Royal Highness and so on.
So maybe there is a precedent to that. Oh, casey
on the case indeed, indeed, so this is what he
does that's we could count as styling on people. He's
(15:31):
on the deck. Nelson is on the deck of the ship,
and he does not remove his insignia, his indicators of office.
And when you don't remove your indicators of office and
you're standing on a ship deck.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
It's like you got a big old target painted on
your back, a metal shape target or an array of
tiny metal shape targets that if you were a sharpshooter
on one of the enemy ships, that's who you would
shoot for, because it's like, you know, it would bring
it would drive the troops into disarray, and chaos would
create chaos, right, because that's the person who's calling the plays.
You put an end to that, dude, and then everyone
(16:07):
else just kind of goes running and they don't know
what to do. There's no order.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
So it's ballsy, it's kutspa.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
It's like, hey, come at me the Spanish, right.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
That's exactly right. So he knew this was a possibility.
But he stayed on deck with a guy named Captain Hardy,
and he was he was trying to instill bravery in
his men. He was yelling at them, you know, don't
worry about all the blood around you. Fight, fight with me,
Fight for Britain. And around one pm in that afternoon,
(16:41):
the battle started around noon. Around one pm that afternoon,
this Captain Hardy guy looks around and he sees that
Admiral Nelson has indeed been fired upon. A musketball has
passed through his shoulder and lodged in his spine. And
this is when in the Admiral gasp and famously says
(17:04):
they have and he succeeded. I am dead, I am dead,
I am dead. I am dead before being carried below
decks back to the surgeon's quarters.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, and the surgeon was a brilliant man, as discussed before,
by the name of William Beatty, who they had him
ferried below deck and realized that all hope was was
pretty much lost. He I don't know was he did
he die? Was he dead on arrival when they when
they found him, when he got to him, or did
you think he died a little bit below deck?
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Uh, he died a little bit below deck, his last
words being thank God, I have done my duty. Too
cold and my country.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
What a guy.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, So he died, you know, with no regrets regarding
his actions because he he felt that, from what we
can surmise, he felt that the same rules that he
applied to the pople under his command applied to him
as well. So if I'm going to send you to die,
then I'm dancing with the reaper myself.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
That's so rare. Like if we think about we're talking
to get back to Kubrick. You know what Casey was
talking about. The movie Paths of Glory is all about
these commanders making these life or death choices from their
posh you know, villas and with no real sense of
what's going on on the ground. So in these days,
when was that casey, when it was paths of that's
(18:27):
World War one. That's World War one.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yeah, And I'm making the decisions basically to give themselves,
you know, earn and rank in the military.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Earn rank. Yeah, and that's I don't know, like I'm
not not to throw any military leaders into the bus.
That's that's certainly not how all of them are. But
that's sometimes the impression that I get of some of
the high level commanders. And this guy was not that
way at all. He was right there in the trenches
with his men and he literally took one for the team.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
He did, indeed. And so there ends the life of
Horatio Nelson and first Viscount Nelson. He dies on the
twenty first of October eighteen oh five, aged forty seven,
at the Battle of Trafalgar, and really, not to be
all bait and switchy, this is where the ridiculous part
(19:14):
of today's episode begins because the late admiral's men, who
by the way, adored this guy, were trying to figure
out how they could take him back to Britain for
the burial that they felt he deserved.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
She got to remember. I mean they were far from home,
and sea travel is not quick. I mean it was
they were like a two month's journey or something like
that back to Britain.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah, two months journey away. The fleet was almost crippled
because of the damage they had taken during the conflict.
And then that's when this surgeon, Irish will William Beattie,
that's when he has his own light bulb moment.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
He really does. One thing they do you have that
acts as a as a dam fine preservative is alcohol.
What they had were some barrels of brandy, and so
Beatie had the idea that they could stick this diminutive man,
who was thankfully not a very very tall man. They
(20:18):
were able to shove him into this barrel of brandy,
and they added a few extra things to maybe make
him smell nice, I guess, like camphor and what else
been mirror mror, you know, like Frankinson of course, of course,
and then they sealed him up in there to prepare
for the long journey home. Yep.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And it was a slow crawl because of the terrible
shape of the ships, and it wasn't a perfect solution.
This surgeon had a brilliant innovative solution, but it was
not perfect because as the body decayed over the course
of the two month voyage, he caused a buildup of
(20:57):
pressure within the vat and.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Then from like asses and stuff being emitted from the
body corpse parts.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yes, and it caused the lid of the barrel to pop.
That scared the hell out of some people. And one case,
there's a report that a sailor who was sitting near
the barrel thought that Nelson had.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Risen surely stinking drunk, right, stinking drunk zombie admiral walking
the decks of this ramshackled ship. That's a pretty pretty
spooky image right there.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, and here's where we find a strange legend about
this journey. So they do eventually reach Gibraltar, right, and
the surgeon says, Okay, we're gonna transfer this guy to
an actual coffin. After this point, rumors started circling scuttle
(21:54):
butt hearsay, and the rumors said that the sailor's aboard
his ship, the HMS Victory, had been drinking from this
barrel of brandy.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Wait tapping the admiral, yes.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Literally tapping the admiral putting little straws in the cask
and just taking a little nip for the entire length
of the journey. And this meant that again according to
the rumors, that by the time they arrived at Gibraltar,
they had drank the entire barrel of brandy. Now, Ben,
(22:30):
surely that would have caused some upset stomachs, right, one
would imagine.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I mean, that just does not seem very sanitary at Well.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
We have to wonder. There are so many there are
so many different spirits that are distilled with other dead
bodies in them, like spirits with snakes in.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
The bottle, or straps, that's true.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Or mice, I guess tequila worms. Well, I think a
worm is less agreed. I think that's true. But that's
I don't you know. We're we're not brilliant Irish surgeons yet,
so we can't speak to the safety of drinking corpse brandy.
(23:15):
But we can say it's a it's a weird flex.
I would call that a weird flex bigtime. So what
what happens next?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Really they get his body back. Reports circulate in the
British press that Admiral Nelson has died and it is
a national tragedy because yeah, not only did his men
love him, he was, like you said, a national hero
or hero and just you know, considered to be the
(23:42):
bravest of the brave, and many tears were shed, including
the tears of the reigning monarch at the time.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, and just like we had discussed an earlier episode
with Christopher Hasiotis about George Washington, almost immediately after news
of Nelson's death is official, people begin building his legend,
you know what I mean, Because of the way his
body was initially transported, His legend spreads into the world
(24:13):
of drinking culture. Navy Rum becomes known as Nelson's blood,
even though they were they put him in brandy And
did you see that was that was one of the
differences too, That was like a significant difference.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I did. So once the victory actually gets back to Britain.
As I said earlier, the news of Horatio's demise was
pretty much out there and one of the first ships
to get there was called the HMS Pickle, which is
which is really adorable. It's an adorable It's an adorable
(24:47):
name for it for a ship. I like it very much.
So Yeah, then George the third you know, in the
throes of Sadness was quoted in saying that they had
lost more than they had gained. And by the way,
on that ship, I think they had one hundred and
(25:08):
two casualties the British did overall at Trafalgar, and then
ninety six people survived. Back to William Baty's credit, he
amputated the arms or the limbs of eleven men and
nine of them survived, So his acumen as a surgeon
was unimpeachable.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Which is, by the way, that is a fantastic ratio
for this time, almost unbelievably. So, yeah, it's true the Pickle.
The Pickle reached Britain before Nelson's Pickled Body did. I
do want to point out for any popular musicians in
the audience today that the Pickle's name was originally the
(25:45):
HMS Sting. So if you were a musician who happens
to go by the name Sting, you're listening to our
show and you're thinking, what's my new brand name? You
know what's my new change?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Pickle?
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Pickle, not pickles, just pickle.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
That's really cute. I'm into that. That's a great rockstar
name because it's bold, because it's so cute sounding and.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
You get the flavor. It promotes synesthesia when you say it.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
You know, it's funny. What happens if you have a
cut on your finger and you spill pickle juice on it?
What does it do? Stings?
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Stings, they're connected, Oh man, all the pieces are coming together.
That's a really good point. So it was a little
bit of a tangent there, but it's advice to you
if you're listening sting. And as you said, Noel George
the third is beside himself. He is lachrymose. And when
(26:40):
the body finally arrives, William Beatty, the faithful surgeon, performs
an autopsy, takes that musketball out of the guy's body.
He's been transferred to a second lead lin coffin, and
then he's finally moved to a wooden casket, and on
January ninth, eighteen oh six, at Saint Paul's Cathedral in London,
(27:04):
his funeral is held.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
And fun fact, the musketball in question is actually mounted
in like a hinged lockett kind of situation with a
piece of golden rope that I believe was from one
of Admiral Nelson's uniforms. But I'm not quite sure if
I see that here, and it's part of the Royal
Collection Trust, so I'm not sure. I'm not seeing if
(27:27):
you can actually get a look at it, or if
it's in any kind of museum. But it definitely exists.
But yeah, our crestfallen monarch, you know, says we will
spare no expense for the funeral of this great man.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Right boy George three makes the call, and this funeral
ends up costing around modern terms one point two million
US dollars. But they would say that's money well spent.
And now we have a little bit of liquor science.
We talked about navy rum, which had its own reputation,
(28:03):
but then we also mentioned that Nelson's body was kept
in brandy and ethanol technically, which at the time was
called spirit of wine. That all goes down to the
surgeon William, because Irish Will. I've just decided to call
him Irish Will. I know a guy that I call
Irish Will. He is Irish, by the way, and he's
(28:25):
fine with the name.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. I'm okay with this nickname. Okay, great,
so Irish Will. The surgeon he knows that if he
wants the body to have the best chance of surviving
this grueling two month journey, he should try to use
the liquor on board that has the strongest alcohol proof,
the highest alcohol content.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Right. But if that didn't work, it was politically safer
for him to use navy rum. Because get this, folks,
At this time, it was commonly known, not just by
members of the navy, but by members of the regular
public that the best way to preserve a body at
sea was in navy rum.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
They didn't use navy rum though, right, No, they used brandy. Ah, okay,
but so they not have any They had both, but
he figured that the higher alcohol content one would do
the job better.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, the brandy and ethanol. And also, imagine we have
to empathize with him a little bit. Imagine what a
huge responsibility it is if that guy's body had been
lost at sea, or if he, as the surgeon, had
done something that was seen as disrespectful, or if he
(29:38):
had been seen as kind of dropping the ball on
this got him. It would have been very, very bad
for his reputation and his career. So he was motivated
to do his level best, and people asked him at times,
why didn't you use rum instead of brandy? And numerous
(29:59):
reports of the time said that he did use rum,
because of course he did. Everyone assumed, you know, that's
what you use. And that's how navy rum came to
be called Nelson's blood. That's how people came to call
drinking liquor from a cask tap in the Admiral Oh,
I guess for a side note, we do have a
(30:19):
quote where Beady in what eighteen oh seven finally gets
sick of everybody needling him about this brandy versus rum thing.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
A very general but erroneous opinion was found to prevail
on the victory's arrival in England that rum preserves the
dead body from decay much longer and more perfectly than
any other spirit, and ought therefore to have been used.
But the fact is quite the reverse, for there are
several kinds of spirits much better for that purpose than rum,
(30:49):
and as their appropriateness in this respect arises from their
degree and strength, on which alone their antiseptic quality depends.
Brandy is superior spirit of wine, however, is certainly by
far the best when it can.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Be prokilled, and that is a very well read quote
kudos snool from Batty's book Authentic Narrative of the Death
of Lord Nelson.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Just and then of being like his claim to fame anyway,
he wrote a whole book about it. He y, you know,
this was like something that he gained some notoriety for
for a good reason. I mean, he was Johnny on
the Spot with Pickle in the body. He was so
good at his job as a surgeon. I think he's
the real star of the show here amputating limbs left
and right. But ultimately Batty lost his fight for accuracy
(31:36):
because people love this rum idea so much that they
just went with it. And that's why, despite Nelson never
being pickled in rum, people started calling this stuff Nelson's blood.
And that's why to this day there's still pubs across
England called the Lord Nelson. That's right. I believe I've
(31:56):
heard of a few of those. Here's a little tidbit
to and the show with. On January seventeenth and twenty eighteen,
Sotheby's sold something called a grog chest, a very small
velvet lined plush chest that contain it was like his
liquor kit. Basically, it had glasses flasks, and you know,
(32:20):
containers that were used to hold grog, which would have
been a particular type of alcoholic beverage that sailors are
known for drinking. There's a lot of tiki drinks that
are tight that are called grogs.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Oh man, and speaking of tiki drinks, speaking of grog
in general, it might be time for the three of
us to call it a day. Thank you so much
for journeying with us through the life and death of
Lord Horatio Nelson. We also want to mention, on an
(32:53):
unrelated note, there's an excellent article in Smithsonian called Lord Nelson,
Hero and cad by Michael Ryan. We didn't have time
for it today.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Why was he a cat?
Speaker 1 (33:05):
He's a cat man. There was a in two thousand
and four people discovered letters that darkened his honor.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Cliff, hang us with that man. We've been building this
guy up, but some kind of giant among men, and
now all of a sudden you're gonna impeach his his
pristine reputation posthumously. That's hurt that's hurtful, man, That is hurtful. Dude.
We'll have to leave the dark legacy of Admiral Horatio
Nelson for another day.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
He's just not the best husband.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
That's fair. Well, okay, that's you know, often great men aren't.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
That's true. That's true.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Not giving him a pass, but this has been a
fun one and interesting story for sure. And I don't
know you want to be pickled in brandy when you go.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
No man, I'm a shot in the space kind of guy.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Shot in sem is very expensive.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Ben, I'm really waiting for the price to break.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
I've been taking care of myself till that part.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
That's fair.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
So we want to say thanks to our super producer,
Casey Pegram, Thanks of course to Gabe, our research associate.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Thanks to you,
Benjamin Bolan, my Sleepy Sleepy co host and dear friend.
I'm looking forward to tapping the Admiral with you shortly.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
And thanks to you, Noljaman Brown, I look forward to
that as well. This ends today's episode, but not our show.
Please tune in next time when we explore the strange
tale of Heavy Water and Operation Will Operation Freshmen, but
(34:37):
also Operation gun Runner. What are we talking about?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I'll tell you next time for more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Phil Ridiculous Historians. Welcome back to our weekly classic episode.
Have you ever had a moment where you thought, if
I don't change my ways, I'm gonna end up dead
in a barrel of brandy?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Totally happens to me every day. Is what makes me
fly right, Ben and live clean?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
There we go, right. We are big fans of larger
than life historical figures, and this episode from twenty nineteen
features none other than the naval legend Admiral Horatio Nelson.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Not to be confused with Horatio Hornblower. That's a different person.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
That's a different person, Okay, right on.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
That is a fictional person, a British Royal naval captain
during the Napoleonic Wars, from a series of novels from
the nineteen thirties by C. S.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Forrestern. I wonder if some of Admiral Nelson's real life
maritime adventures informed that character. What do you think?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, I think it's entirely accurate.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
So okay, this guy dies on October twenty first, eighteen
oh five. He is shot while standing on the deck
of his ship, and his crew is left with a dilemma,
a real pickle. How do they bring his body back to.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Bury it home. Yeah, why don't we jump right in?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Well, here we
(01:50):
are again, friends and neighbors. It is a Friday afternoon
here in the studio. We are off to adventures historical
and contemporary. And this weekend we may be tapping the
Admiral sampling a bit of Nelson's blood.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, I'm definitely gonna do that, like immediately after we
record this. And I don't mean getting vampiric right up
in the pub right, this is this is a little
bit different.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, tapping the Admiral is not poking military right right.
It's also known it's a phrase from the Royal Navy.
It's also called bleeding the monkey or sucking the monkey,
which I think are both kind of weird. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I did not come across the hose Ben, which is
your name, and your.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Knowls's true And we're joined with our super producer, Casey Pegram.
Casey and I have had a very very very scant
amount of sleep. So if there are any inaccuracies or
weirdness in today's episode, that's on me and Noel. Thank you,
(02:59):
and I hope your back doesn't hurt after carrying us
through this one.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Man. You know, I love it when you're a little punchy,
whether it be from emerging from crazy jet lag or
dare I say, still in the throes of it, or
being a little sleep deprived. I always find you a
fun and punchy character. Thanks man, Thanks, I appreciate it.
And likewise, of course, tapping the admiral, what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (03:22):
What's that refer to?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
It is when you drink liquor or any kind of
fermented beverage directly from the cask using a straw.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yes, that's it, And that's also what they what they're
referring to when the members of the Royal Navy say
bleeding the monkey or sucking the monkey, which still seems
woefully inadequate in comparison to tapping the admiral. That sounds classy,
even though drinking straight up liquor from a barrel through
(03:52):
a straws maybe not the classiest thing. It seems, dare
we say, slightly barbaric. But that's life at sea, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Oh my god, goodness, boy, will you get a load
of some life at sea, some harrowing life at sea
in this particular story. So why don't we start from
the beginning, Yes, to introduce our main character, the admiral
in question.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yes, there is a specific admiral to whom the British
Royal Navy is referring to as Admiral Horatio Nelson, and
Admiral Horatio Nelson is a pretty larger than life figure, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Larger than life legacy wise, but in terms of his stature,
I think he was under six feet tall.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yes, yes he was. He was not NBA status right.
He eventually became the first Viscount Nelson and the first
Duke of Bronte. He was born on the twenty ninth
of September seventeen fifty eight in Norfolk, England. He was
the sixth of eleven children.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
See I feel like that matters, I really do. Some
of the greatest men and women in history have been
part of big families because they have to figure out
how to like scrap and you know, carry their own weight,
you know, among all of the competition, whether they're vying
for their parents' affection or just like learning how to
do stuff right right, or.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
They're in some cases fighting for food, which was not
Nelson's situation.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
As far as we don't know. We don't think so either.
Yet at the age of twenty. By the age of twenty,
he already had command of his own ship, which was
the Albemarle, and he became a very important figure during
the outbreak of the French Revolution in seventeen ninety two.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Mm.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Yep, it's absolutely true. Now this guy had been this
guy hit the high seas by the age of twelve,
that's right. So by the age of twenty, this was
not his first maritime rodeo.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
No, you're right, but still at twenty, that's a pretty
big responsibility. Like you said, he joined the Merchant Marines
and that was during the the fight against the Americans
during the War of Independence.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah, and he even took part in a failed scientific
expedition to the Arctic. He was living life, you know.
But you're bringing this sword a pivotal point in his
life because it was during his twenties, during these French
revolutionary wars, that he began to exhibit a tactical talent,
(06:27):
a knack for command. He was considered remarkable and a genius.
And in seventeen ninety seven, on Valentine's Day, which was yesterday, right,
he had his huge crowning achievement at the Battle of
Saint Vincent. How did that go down?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, he really exhibited some mobility to think outside the
box militarily when he decided that he would break line
with the actual commander of the British fleet, which sounds
to me a little bit like disobeying.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Orders in subordination.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
And apparently if they would have lost this particular battle,
he would have gotten his wrists slapped or you know,
dare I say, been put in the stockades.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
He would have been booted out, he would have been
court martials, that's right.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
But instead it proved to be his crowning achievement, like
you said, or at least one of his early claims
to fame. So what ended up happening was he saved
the British from defeat at the hands of the Spanish,
who had them licked in terms of number, in terms
of sheer volume of troops. Would you call them troops
(07:36):
when they're at sea? They're not really troops at sea,
are there? They're more they're sailors.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I guess they're the enemy.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
They that's all the matters, That's all the matters.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
It's also weird how whenever you hear a historical account
that refers to a group of actual human beings as
just the French or the Spanish, it sounds like they're
way more insidious than they actually are.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's true. So instead of that court martial that he
was just cruising four, he got knighted.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yes he did, he did, and he continued on this
upward trajectory career wise, he did not have a perfect record,
and he did not escape unscathed. He was wounded in
July seventeen ninety.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Seven in a grizzly turn.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yes, yes, the way that you'll hear it phrased. For instance,
in a great article we read on history Collection dot
co by Alexander Meddings, a whiff of grape shot shredded.
His arm shredded, and most of what was left of
it had to be amputated to prevent infection from spreading
(08:44):
and grape shot For anyone who does it, do we
talk about what this is?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I think we did. I mean, it's sort of the
equivalent of like buckshot, but it's like steel balls like
that spread out and just literally rip into everything at
viscerate flesh and bone.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Right, yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's a number of small iron
balls fire all together at once.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
You shoot that from a cannon, not like a musket
or something, right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Exactly, And when they're assembled they look like a cluster
of grapes, very very nasty ammunition. So get this. This
is I think this is cool. After he had his
right arm cut off, he kept issuing commands while he
was on the surgery bed. And keep in mind, in
the late seventeen hundred, surgery is very very dangerous.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, and another important player in this story is, in fact,
his surgeon, who will come into the picture when we
get into the kind of the main focus of the story. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, So, like you said, he had the arm amputated,
he survived, which was incredibly rare in any kind of amputation.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
And he got into stand up pretty much as a
result of this.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, he made some good banter on the on the
surgery bed and also had a nice little pet name
for what was left of of his arm.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yes, he called it his fin and is adorable. It's weird.
It's definitely military humor, and it's also nautical humor. It's
also nautical humor. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think
that if he had not pursued a military fame, you know,
maybe he could have gotten into the stand up circuit.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, you know, got a little bit of a running
start into that field, because I don't think it really
picked up steam until like the you know, the Catskills
kind of era. Right, Well, there were gestures, that's true,
that's true, But this is he was doing more bits
though he was doing.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Right, this is way before vaudeville. And if you would
like to learn more about vaudeville and you haven't checked
it out yet, do listen to our two part episode
on the history of stand up with our pow Wayne Fetterman.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah, and please don't hold it against us that for
the first whole half of the first episode, my mic
is not on.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
It was saved. It it gets saved, It.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Did get saved. It's just it's not our it's not
our best body represented. No, it's definitely not. But it's
such a good episode that we had to push it
out there. Really recommend you giving that one a listen.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
So, despite the sad, tragic misstep of not going immediately
into comedy, Nelson did try to make something of his life.
He in seventeen ninety eight. Just a year later he
held the rank of rear admiral. He scuppered Napoleon's navy.
I'm sorry, scuppered. He's scuppered, which is is deliberately sinking
(11:20):
a ship, kind of like scuttling.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
But is it scuttling where you deliberately sink your own ship?
Is there a differentiation? I know there's a lot of
very specific like foundering or to founder is when a
ship is filling with water and sinking. So he scuppered,
they foundered. He scuppered, they foundered, and ultimately the ships
were scuttled. That's right, Yes, we got there. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Oh, if you're in the navy, please feel free to
write to us about this. We want to learn. But
these are great words, they really aren't. So this victory
of his stranded the French in Egypt. This was the
first step in establishing the British Empire's dominance of the seas.
(12:04):
And this also made Nelson, by the way, a friggin hero.
He was straight seahorse teeth as far as the rest
of the country was concerned.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, because I mean he put himself in harm's way.
He was there like out there putting himself in harm's
way with the troops side by side, not like commanding
from some bunker or something like that. Like he was
right there and then he survived. So, like I said,
because of the fact that you typically would die in
agony from some horrible infection, this probably instilled people with
(12:36):
this sense of him as being some kind of indestructible superman.
I'm editorializing here of it, but that's what it seems
like to me.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Sure man. Yeah, he was the Muhammad Ali of the seas,
you know what I mean. People thought that he could
do no wrong. People thought he was a national hero,
and he pretty much was. So let's fast forward through
his career and let's go to the Battle of Trafalgar
on October twenty first, eighteen oh five. And this is
(13:06):
when things take a turn for the worse.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, because you can't outrun the reaper forever, especially when
you're like in a live fire zone with terrifying stuff
like grape shot flying everywhere. So the Battle of Trafalgar
was between the French and the Spanish, and when I
say between, I mean the English were like between them.
They were in the mix there, right, And it was
(13:32):
a huge naval victory for the British because it completely
if they owned the seas before, they had complete dominance
and obliterated Napoleon's desire and any future hope that he
had of controlling these waterways the English Channel. Right, and
there was going there would be no Napoleonic invasion of
(13:53):
Britain after the Battle of.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Trafalgar right right, and the Spanish are still in the mix.
As we said, they outnumber the British with thirty three
ships to Britain's twenty seven. But Nelson was going to
use his tactical prowess to outsmart the Spanish. Essentially, so
instead of putting his ships in a line, just making
(14:16):
them all sail together in a line, he ordered them
to form two perpendicular columns that cut through the enemy's
line because they had just a straight line at two
crucial points in the center. And here's where he got
He started styling on it, as we would say in
the early two thousands. Wait, quick slang check casey. Do
(14:39):
you remember when people would say styling on it? Absolutely
was that in the early two thousands, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Maybe even earlier. It's I don't know that one seems
like it's been around for a.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Long time, no sense of time.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Okay, yeah, I don't either. It could be from you know,
six months ago.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Maybe it was from the early eighteen hundreds. Maybe he
said I'm going to style on him.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I'm just thinking subtitle from Barry Linden. By what means,
Redmond Berry acquired the style and title of Barry Lindon.
So he was styling that on the way back in
like the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
So that reminds me of people being able to be
styled as something like his Royal Highness and so on.
So maybe there is a precedent to that. Oh, casey
on the case indeed, indeed, so this is what he
does that's we could count as styling on people. He's
(15:31):
on the deck. Nelson is on the deck of the ship,
and he does not remove his insignia, his indicators of office.
And when you don't remove your indicators of office and
you're standing on a ship deck.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
It's like you got a big old target painted on
your back, a metal shape target or an array of
tiny metal shape targets that if you were a sharpshooter
on one of the enemy ships, that's who you would
shoot for, because it's like, you know, it would bring
it would drive the troops into disarray, and chaos would
create chaos, right, because that's the person who's calling the plays.
You put an end to that, dude, and then everyone
(16:07):
else just kind of goes running and they don't know
what to do. There's no order.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
So it's ballsy, it's kutspa.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
It's like, hey, come at me the Spanish, right.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
That's exactly right. So he knew this was a possibility.
But he stayed on deck with a guy named Captain Hardy,
and he was he was trying to instill bravery in
his men. He was yelling at them, you know, don't
worry about all the blood around you. Fight, fight with me,
Fight for Britain. And around one pm in that afternoon,
(16:41):
the battle started around noon. Around one pm that afternoon,
this Captain Hardy guy looks around and he sees that
Admiral Nelson has indeed been fired upon. A musketball has
passed through his shoulder and lodged in his spine. And
this is when in the Admiral gasp and famously says
(17:04):
they have and he succeeded. I am dead, I am dead,
I am dead. I am dead before being carried below
decks back to the surgeon's quarters.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, and the surgeon was a brilliant man, as discussed before,
by the name of William Beatty, who they had him
ferried below deck and realized that all hope was was
pretty much lost. He I don't know was he did
he die? Was he dead on arrival when they when
they found him, when he got to him, or did
you think he died a little bit below deck?
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Uh, he died a little bit below deck, his last
words being thank God, I have done my duty. Too
cold and my country.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
What a guy.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, So he died, you know, with no regrets regarding
his actions because he he felt that, from what we
can surmise, he felt that the same rules that he
applied to the pople under his command applied to him
as well. So if I'm going to send you to die,
then I'm dancing with the reaper myself.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
That's so rare. Like if we think about we're talking
to get back to Kubrick. You know what Casey was
talking about. The movie Paths of Glory is all about
these commanders making these life or death choices from their
posh you know, villas and with no real sense of
what's going on on the ground. So in these days,
when was that casey, when it was paths of that's
(18:27):
World War one. That's World War one.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yeah, And I'm making the decisions basically to give themselves,
you know, earn and rank in the military.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Earn rank. Yeah, and that's I don't know, like I'm
not not to throw any military leaders into the bus.
That's that's certainly not how all of them are. But
that's sometimes the impression that I get of some of
the high level commanders. And this guy was not that
way at all. He was right there in the trenches
with his men and he literally took one for the team.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
He did, indeed. And so there ends the life of
Horatio Nelson and first Viscount Nelson. He dies on the
twenty first of October eighteen oh five, aged forty seven,
at the Battle of Trafalgar, and really, not to be
all bait and switchy, this is where the ridiculous part
(19:14):
of today's episode begins because the late admiral's men, who
by the way, adored this guy, were trying to figure
out how they could take him back to Britain for
the burial that they felt he deserved.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
She got to remember. I mean they were far from home,
and sea travel is not quick. I mean it was
they were like a two month's journey or something like
that back to Britain.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah, two months journey away. The fleet was almost crippled
because of the damage they had taken during the conflict.
And then that's when this surgeon, Irish will William Beattie,
that's when he has his own light bulb moment.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
He really does. One thing they do you have that
acts as a as a dam fine preservative is alcohol.
What they had were some barrels of brandy, and so
Beatie had the idea that they could stick this diminutive man,
who was thankfully not a very very tall man. They
(20:18):
were able to shove him into this barrel of brandy,
and they added a few extra things to maybe make
him smell nice, I guess, like camphor and what else
been mirror mror, you know, like Frankinson of course, of course,
and then they sealed him up in there to prepare
for the long journey home. Yep.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And it was a slow crawl because of the terrible
shape of the ships, and it wasn't a perfect solution.
This surgeon had a brilliant innovative solution, but it was
not perfect because as the body decayed over the course
of the two month voyage, he caused a buildup of
(20:57):
pressure within the vat and.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Then from like asses and stuff being emitted from the
body corpse parts.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yes, and it caused the lid of the barrel to pop.
That scared the hell out of some people. And one case,
there's a report that a sailor who was sitting near
the barrel thought that Nelson had.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Risen surely stinking drunk, right, stinking drunk zombie admiral walking
the decks of this ramshackled ship. That's a pretty pretty
spooky image right there.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, and here's where we find a strange legend about
this journey. So they do eventually reach Gibraltar, right, and
the surgeon says, Okay, we're gonna transfer this guy to
an actual coffin. After this point, rumors started circling scuttle
(21:54):
butt hearsay, and the rumors said that the sailor's aboard
his ship, the HMS Victory, had been drinking from this
barrel of brandy.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Wait tapping the admiral, yes.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Literally tapping the admiral putting little straws in the cask
and just taking a little nip for the entire length
of the journey. And this meant that again according to
the rumors, that by the time they arrived at Gibraltar,
they had drank the entire barrel of brandy. Now, Ben,
(22:30):
surely that would have caused some upset stomachs, right, one
would imagine.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I mean, that just does not seem very sanitary at Well.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
We have to wonder. There are so many there are
so many different spirits that are distilled with other dead
bodies in them, like spirits with snakes in.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
The bottle, or straps, that's true.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Or mice, I guess tequila worms. Well, I think a
worm is less agreed. I think that's true. But that's
I don't you know. We're we're not brilliant Irish surgeons yet,
so we can't speak to the safety of drinking corpse brandy.
(23:15):
But we can say it's a it's a weird flex.
I would call that a weird flex bigtime. So what
what happens next?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Really they get his body back. Reports circulate in the
British press that Admiral Nelson has died and it is
a national tragedy because yeah, not only did his men
love him, he was, like you said, a national hero
or hero and just you know, considered to be the
(23:42):
bravest of the brave, and many tears were shed, including
the tears of the reigning monarch at the time.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, and just like we had discussed an earlier episode
with Christopher Hasiotis about George Washington, almost immediately after news
of Nelson's death is official, people begin building his legend,
you know what I mean, Because of the way his
body was initially transported, His legend spreads into the world
(24:13):
of drinking culture. Navy Rum becomes known as Nelson's blood,
even though they were they put him in brandy And
did you see that was that was one of the
differences too, That was like a significant difference.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I did. So once the victory actually gets back to Britain.
As I said earlier, the news of Horatio's demise was
pretty much out there and one of the first ships
to get there was called the HMS Pickle, which is
which is really adorable. It's an adorable It's an adorable
(24:47):
name for it for a ship. I like it very much.
So Yeah, then George the third you know, in the
throes of Sadness was quoted in saying that they had
lost more than they had gained. And by the way,
on that ship, I think they had one hundred and
(25:08):
two casualties the British did overall at Trafalgar, and then
ninety six people survived. Back to William Baty's credit, he
amputated the arms or the limbs of eleven men and
nine of them survived, So his acumen as a surgeon
was unimpeachable.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Which is, by the way, that is a fantastic ratio
for this time, almost unbelievably. So, yeah, it's true the Pickle.
The Pickle reached Britain before Nelson's Pickled Body did. I
do want to point out for any popular musicians in
the audience today that the Pickle's name was originally the
(25:45):
HMS Sting. So if you were a musician who happens
to go by the name Sting, you're listening to our
show and you're thinking, what's my new brand name? You
know what's my new change?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Pickle?
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Pickle, not pickles, just pickle.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
That's really cute. I'm into that. That's a great rockstar
name because it's bold, because it's so cute sounding and.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
You get the flavor. It promotes synesthesia when you say it.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
You know, it's funny. What happens if you have a
cut on your finger and you spill pickle juice on it?
What does it do? Stings?
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Stings, they're connected, Oh man, all the pieces are coming together.
That's a really good point. So it was a little
bit of a tangent there, but it's advice to you
if you're listening sting. And as you said, Noel George
the third is beside himself. He is lachrymose. And when
(26:40):
the body finally arrives, William Beatty, the faithful surgeon, performs
an autopsy, takes that musketball out of the guy's body.
He's been transferred to a second lead lin coffin, and
then he's finally moved to a wooden casket, and on
January ninth, eighteen oh six, at Saint Paul's Cathedral in London,
(27:04):
his funeral is held.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
And fun fact, the musketball in question is actually mounted
in like a hinged lockett kind of situation with a
piece of golden rope that I believe was from one
of Admiral Nelson's uniforms. But I'm not quite sure if
I see that here, and it's part of the Royal
Collection Trust, so I'm not sure. I'm not seeing if
(27:27):
you can actually get a look at it, or if
it's in any kind of museum. But it definitely exists.
But yeah, our crestfallen monarch, you know, says we will
spare no expense for the funeral of this great man.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Right boy George three makes the call, and this funeral
ends up costing around modern terms one point two million
US dollars. But they would say that's money well spent.
And now we have a little bit of liquor science.
We talked about navy rum, which had its own reputation,
(28:03):
but then we also mentioned that Nelson's body was kept
in brandy and ethanol technically, which at the time was
called spirit of wine. That all goes down to the
surgeon William, because Irish Will. I've just decided to call
him Irish Will. I know a guy that I call
Irish Will. He is Irish, by the way, and he's
(28:25):
fine with the name.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. I'm okay with this nickname. Okay, great,
so Irish Will. The surgeon he knows that if he
wants the body to have the best chance of surviving
this grueling two month journey, he should try to use
the liquor on board that has the strongest alcohol proof,
the highest alcohol content.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Right. But if that didn't work, it was politically safer
for him to use navy rum. Because get this, folks,
At this time, it was commonly known, not just by
members of the navy, but by members of the regular
public that the best way to preserve a body at
sea was in navy rum.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
They didn't use navy rum though, right, No, they used brandy. Ah, okay,
but so they not have any They had both, but
he figured that the higher alcohol content one would do
the job better.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, the brandy and ethanol. And also, imagine we have
to empathize with him a little bit. Imagine what a
huge responsibility it is if that guy's body had been
lost at sea, or if he, as the surgeon, had
done something that was seen as disrespectful, or if he
(29:38):
had been seen as kind of dropping the ball on
this got him. It would have been very, very bad
for his reputation and his career. So he was motivated
to do his level best, and people asked him at times,
why didn't you use rum instead of brandy? And numerous
(29:59):
reports of the time said that he did use rum,
because of course he did. Everyone assumed, you know, that's
what you use. And that's how navy rum came to
be called Nelson's blood. That's how people came to call
drinking liquor from a cask tap in the Admiral Oh,
I guess for a side note, we do have a
(30:19):
quote where Beady in what eighteen oh seven finally gets
sick of everybody needling him about this brandy versus rum thing.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
A very general but erroneous opinion was found to prevail
on the victory's arrival in England that rum preserves the
dead body from decay much longer and more perfectly than
any other spirit, and ought therefore to have been used.
But the fact is quite the reverse, for there are
several kinds of spirits much better for that purpose than rum,
(30:49):
and as their appropriateness in this respect arises from their
degree and strength, on which alone their antiseptic quality depends.
Brandy is superior spirit of wine, however, is certainly by
far the best when it can.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Be prokilled, and that is a very well read quote
kudos snool from Batty's book Authentic Narrative of the Death
of Lord Nelson.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Just and then of being like his claim to fame anyway,
he wrote a whole book about it. He y, you know,
this was like something that he gained some notoriety for
for a good reason. I mean, he was Johnny on
the Spot with Pickle in the body. He was so
good at his job as a surgeon. I think he's
the real star of the show here amputating limbs left
and right. But ultimately Batty lost his fight for accuracy
(31:36):
because people love this rum idea so much that they
just went with it. And that's why, despite Nelson never
being pickled in rum, people started calling this stuff Nelson's blood.
And that's why to this day there's still pubs across
England called the Lord Nelson. That's right. I believe I've
(31:56):
heard of a few of those. Here's a little tidbit
to and the show with. On January seventeenth and twenty eighteen,
Sotheby's sold something called a grog chest, a very small
velvet lined plush chest that contain it was like his
liquor kit. Basically, it had glasses flasks, and you know,
(32:20):
containers that were used to hold grog, which would have
been a particular type of alcoholic beverage that sailors are
known for drinking. There's a lot of tiki drinks that
are tight that are called grogs.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Oh man, and speaking of tiki drinks, speaking of grog
in general, it might be time for the three of
us to call it a day. Thank you so much
for journeying with us through the life and death of
Lord Horatio Nelson. We also want to mention, on an
(32:53):
unrelated note, there's an excellent article in Smithsonian called Lord Nelson,
Hero and cad by Michael Ryan. We didn't have time
for it today.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Why was he a cat?
Speaker 1 (33:05):
He's a cat man. There was a in two thousand
and four people discovered letters that darkened his honor.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Cliff, hang us with that man. We've been building this
guy up, but some kind of giant among men, and
now all of a sudden you're gonna impeach his his
pristine reputation posthumously. That's hurt that's hurtful, man, That is hurtful. Dude.
We'll have to leave the dark legacy of Admiral Horatio
Nelson for another day.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
He's just not the best husband.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
That's fair. Well, okay, that's you know, often great men aren't.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
That's true. That's true.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Not giving him a pass, but this has been a
fun one and interesting story for sure. And I don't
know you want to be pickled in brandy when you go.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
No man, I'm a shot in the space kind of guy.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Shot in sem is very expensive.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Ben, I'm really waiting for the price to break.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
I've been taking care of myself till that part.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
That's fair.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
So we want to say thanks to our super producer,
Casey Pegram, Thanks of course to Gabe, our research associate.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Thanks to you,
Benjamin Bolan, my Sleepy Sleepy co host and dear friend.
I'm looking forward to tapping the Admiral with you shortly.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
And thanks to you, Noljaman Brown, I look forward to
that as well. This ends today's episode, but not our show.
Please tune in next time when we explore the strange
tale of Heavy Water and Operation Will Operation Freshmen, but
(34:37):
also Operation gun Runner. What are we talking about?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I'll tell you next time for more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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