Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson

Born into a modest Norfolk family in 1758, Nelson entered the Royal Navy at his uncle's hand and had his own command by twenty. The American war left him idle and sick, but the French Revolution pulled him back to the Mediterranean, where he lost an eye at Corsica, then his right arm at Tenerife when an amphibious assault went wrong. In 1798 he crushed the French fleet at the Nile; three years later he broke neutral Denmark at Copenhagen. By 1805 he was blockading Cádiz, and when the Franco-Spanish fleet finally came out on 21 October, he met them off Cape Trafalgar. The British won decisively…