Admiral Horatio Nelson died today at the Battle of Trafalgar- women sailors were there too
Published on: 10/21/20 9:28 AM
The Battle of Trafalgar is where Nelson defeated Napoleon.He led a smaller British fleet against a combined Spanish and French fleet who lost 22 ships without losing a single British vessel. During the battle Nelson was shot by a French musketeer and died soon after on this day, October 21st 1805
Fighting in the battle on board ships were women sailors in male disguise. But there were also, as research now uncovers, women and children on board the British fleets. Naval records do not declare or list them. But in 2000, Italian archaeologist Dr Paolo Gallo, while excavating Hellenistic and Pharaonic structures on Nelson’s Island, Aboukir Bay, discovered a lost Royal Navy burial ground from Nelson’s time. It revealed graves containing officers, sailors, soldiers, marines, women and children.
Buried were three babies carefully wrapped in wood shavings and material. Also a woman. On the coffin lid had been nailed a large metal letter ‘G’. There are currently three possible candidates for this burial. John Nicol, one of Nelson’s sailors who took part in the Battle of the Nile (1798), wrote that a woman sailor from Leith, Scotland, was injured whilst serving the guns on HMS Goliath, subsequently died of her wounds, and was ‘buried on a small island in the Bay’.Two other women sailors from the army regiments from the 1801 expedition were recorded to have died on board the ships moored in Aboukir Bay. One was Mrs Lambe, of the 3rd Guards Regiment (now the Scots Guards), and the other was Sarah Webber of the Coldstream Guards. Any one of these could have merited the mysterious ‘G’ (standing perhaps for ‘Goliath’ or ‘Guards’).