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“Perseverance . . . will most probably meet its reward”
Issue number: 38 – November 2013 (KA 38)
Call me a romantic if you will, but I have started writing this issue’s Chairmans’ Dispatch at 6am on Monday, 21st October on the very weekday (Monday) of the 208th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar and at the time that the Combined Fleet of France and Spain was sighted by the British fleet! Thomas Atkinson, VICTORY’s sailing master, recorded in the ship’s log, ‘At 6 observed the enemy E by S distance 10 or 12 miles.’
Given that the battle did not start for another six hours. Nelson and the fifty thousand other souls present that day had much time to contemplate their fate. We know that at the climax of his career Nelson was composed and in excellent spirits. He wrote a codicil to his will bequeathing Lady Hamilton and their daughter Horatia to the nation, and then wrote the few lines that are regarded as amongst the finest written by any soldier or sailor about to go into battle. The prose is unfussy and mellifluous and surgeon William Beatty described it as a ‘devout and fervent ejaculation, which must be universally admired as truly characteristic of the Christian hero’. The prayer was written in his personal pocket book and, as ever thinking of posterity, he made a copy of it. It is always worth quoting in full:
