Trafalgar and Nelson: From Portsmouth to St Paul's

Nelson reached Portsmouth early on 14 September 1805, bound for the fleet off Cádiz. He breakfasted at the George Inn with his friends George Rose and George Canning, and word spread. A crowd gathered, walked with him to his barge and cheered him off, and he raised his hat in reply. He is recorded as saying: "I had their huzzas before; I have their hearts now." The pin marks Old Portsmouth's High Street area, not the inn itself.

Location precision: The sources name the George Inn but give no address, so the pin marks the High Street area of Old Portsmouth.

The Battle of Trafalgar was fought on 21 October 1805 off Cape Trafalgar, a headland in the Province of Cádiz. The combined fleet had sailed from Cádiz for the Straits of Gibraltar. At 06:00 Nelson ordered his fleet into two columns. Winds were very light, so the ships crept forward, and Collingwood told his officers: "Let us do something today which the world may talk of hereafter." The battle took place at sea; the pin marks the cape on the coast.

Location precision: The fighting happened at sea off the coast; the pin marks the headland that gave the battle its name.

Victory, Nelson's flagship, broke the enemy line between the French flagship Bucentaure and Redoutable and fired a devastating broadside. At 13:15 a musket ball entered Nelson's left shoulder and lodged in his spine. He died at 16:30. The ship that carried him is still here: Victory is now maintained as a museum ship at Portsmouth, the port he had left only weeks before.

Visitor guidance: Victory is kept in dry dock at Portsmouth as a museum ship.

Badly damaged, Victory could not move under her own power, and HMS Neptune towed her to Gibraltar for repairs, a port of strategic importance in the Napoleonic Wars. Nelson's body had been placed in a cask of brandy mixed with camphor and myrrh, lashed to the mainmast and guarded. At Gibraltar it was moved to a lead-lined coffin filled with spirits of wine.

Location precision: The sources say Victory went to Gibraltar without naming a berth; the pin marks the port.

Nelson's body was taken upriver to Greenwich and placed in a lead coffin, inside a wooden one made from the mast of L'Orient. He lay in state for three days in the Painted Hall of Greenwich Hospital, where arrangements all but disintegrated under crowds far greater than authorities had anticipated. Today the site is the Old Royal Naval College, and the room where his coffin was held opened as the Nelson Room in 2005.

Visitor guidance: The Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich includes the Nelson Room, opened in 2005.

On 9 January 1806 a funeral procession of 32 admirals, over 100 captains and an escort of 10,000 soldiers took the coffin to St Paul's. He was interred in a crypt, in a sarcophagus originally carved for Cardinal Wolsey. The sailors were to fold the flag onto the coffin; instead they tore it into fragments, each taking a piece as a memorial. His tomb lies in the crypt, next to that of Wellington.

Visitor guidance: The tomb is in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, next to Wellington's.

London's memorial to the victory gave a square its name. Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square was built between 1840 and 1843, a Corinthian column of Dartmoor granite. Four bronze reliefs on the pedestal were cast from captured French guns; John Edward Carew's relief of the death of Nelson was put in place on the side facing Whitehall.

Visitor guidance: Nelson's Column stands in Trafalgar Square in central London.