George Augustus Westphal

He began life before the world had heard much of Napoleon, and he lived to see the last Napoleon seek refuge in England after his flight from France

He was a midshipman of thirteen in 1798, and he was only 20 at the Battle of Trafalgar, where he fought with Nelson on the Victory. He was wounded in the same hour as Nelson, and was carried to the cockpit immediately after him.

They laid him near the great commander, and while the surgeon was busy looking after Nelson somebody rolled up Nelson's coat and made a pillow of it for the middy. It happened that the blood from his wound drenched the coat and stuck to his face as it congealed so that when the surgeon came to attend to him he had to cut the coat away. These fragments of Nelson's coat were treasured by Westphal all his life.

Years afterwards, when Nelson's coat was offered for sale and the Admiralty wished to buy it for Greenwich Hospital to be placed among the relics there, Westphal was asked to identify it. He assured them that if part of the epaulette was missing the coat might be bought as genuine, and so it was, as we may see to this day among the Nelson relics at Greenwich.

Westphal served after Trafalgar on the flagship of Lord Collingwood, became a lieutenant, and proved so gallant an officer that a few years saw him in the rank of commander. A few years more and he was a knight, and in the end he became an Admiral.

On his retirement he lived for nearly forty years in the same house in Brunswick Square at Hove, and there he died, in 1875, having lived 70 years after seeing Nelson die as he lay on the Admiral's coat. He was 90 years old when they laid him in the old church at Hove.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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