Nelson's Death

(Nelson's Monument)

A.L. Lloyd version

All Britons long expected good news from our fleet, Commanded by Lord Nelson, the French for to meet, Till at length the news come over through the country was spread, That the French were defeated but Nelson was dead. He was a bold commander, as sail the ocean wide, He made the French to tremble with his terrible broadside; One hundred fights he'd been in, and never once was beat, Though he'd one arm and one eye no power could him defeat. This bold undaunted hero on the quarter deck he stood, You would admire his action with the decks awash with blood. But aloft all in the rigging a Frenchman fired a ball, And that was the cause of our bold Lord Nelson's fall. Then up steps the doctor in a hurry he did say: "My lord, indeed I'm sorry to see you bleed this way." "No matter, and no matter, whatever about me, It's to my gallant seamen your first duty should be." He called unto his captain: "How does the battle go? I hear our great guns rattle, oh death is near I know." "Oh, it's eighteen we have captured and our men they are on board, And we'll blow the French from the ocean, my lord." Come all you bold seamen, let the bottle go round, For Nelson was loyal and true to the crown. Here's God bless all seamen that speak of his good, And God bless our fleet and the brave Lord Collingwood. But mourn, England, mourn, oh mourn and complain, For the loss of Lord Nelson that died on the main.

Cortes journal version

Old England expected great news from the fleet, Commanded by Lord Nelson the French to defeat, At length the news came over and o'er England spread, The French they were defeated but Nelson was dead.

Source: Journal of William Histed, aboard the New Bedford whaler *Cortes*, 1847

Only the opening verse was recorded. It is a variant of the first verse of the broadside text.

The song commemorates Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), who fell at the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21, 1805, even as Britain’s fleet secured a decisive victory over Napoleon’s navy. Lord Collingwood was Nelson’s second-in-command at Trafalgar, taking over the fleet after Nelson was shot.

Unlike the triumphalist tradition of songs like Nelson's Death and Victory, this ballad lingers on grief, ending with a quiet toast to the fallen admiral and a lament for England’s loss. The version familiar today is partly a reconstruction: A.L. Lloyd drew the bulk of the text from 19th-century broadsides printed by Such of London and Firth of Pocklington, pairing it with an opening verse Ralph Vaughan Williams had collected in Hampshire. By mid-century the song had spread well beyond England, turning up in the journal of William Histed aboard the New Bedford whaler Cortes in 1847.

The broadside printings in the Bodleian Libraries archives are dated “between 1819 and 1844.” Further field recordings were made by Cecil Sharp (from Mrs. Lock of Muchelney Ham, Somerset, 1904), Percy Grainger (from George Wray, 1906), and Vaughan Williams from multiple sources around 1908.