Traces of Past Empires

By pastempires

Admiral Lord Nelson's Tomb in the crypt at St Paul

Sorry this is not a great photo, but it is so relevant to the theme that I have posted it anyway.

This is Horatio Nelson's sarcophagus originally carved for Cardinal Wolsey in the crypt under the crossing at St Paul's.

After he was shot by a French sharp-shooter, and died in the hour of victory at Trafalgar, Nelson's pickled corpse was moved from the HMS Pickle to the Victory. Unloaded at the Nore it was taken to Greenwich and placed in a lead coffin, and that in another wooden one, made from the mast of L'Orient which had been salvaged after the Battle of the Nile.

He lay in state at Greenwich for three days, before being taken up river aboard a barge. The coffin was taken into the Admiralty for the night. The next day, 9 January, a funeral procession consisting of 32 admirals, over a hundred captains, and an escort of 10,000 troops took the coffin from the Admiralty to St. Paul's Cathedral. After a four-hour service he was laid to rest within a sarcophagus originally carved for Cardinal Wolsey, which you see here.

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