The successful outcome of the battle against a larger Franco-Spanish fleet, secured British naval supremacy and ended the threat of a French invasion of the United Kingdom.

In a final attempt to break out, the opposing fleets met off Cape Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, where the outnumbered British inflicted a devastating defeat on the Franco-Spanish.

As he lay dying, he had asked the captain of the Victory, Thomas Hardy, not to have him thrown overboard, as it was customary in combat for the dead of whatever rank to be quickly dropped over the ship's side without ceremony.

However, the crew of Victory were aghast at the idea of surrendering their admiral to another ship and through their boatswain's mate, lobbied Collingwood to be allowed to bring Nelson home in his own flagship, which was finally agreed.

Dressed only in his long shirt, Nelson's body was lowered into the cask head first; it was then filled with brandy, in preference to naval rum because of its higher alcohol content.

The voyage between Gibraltar and Portsmouth began on 3 November, but because of further storms, Victory didn't arrive until 4 December, during which time, the cask had to be refilled twice with a mixture of brandy and spirits.

Once the Victory had set sail again on 11 December bound for the Thames Estuary, the cask was opened and Dr Beatty performed a more thorough autopsy, noting that "...all the vital parts were so perfectly healthy, and so small, that they resembled more those of a youth, than a man who had attained his forty-seventh year".

Beatty concluded that death had been due to "a wound of the left pulmonary artery", but that damage to the spine would have ultimately been fatal within "two or three days, though his existence would have been miserable to himself, and highly distressing to the feelings of all around him".

In salute, passing ships dipped their colours, riverside churches tolled their bells and the batteries at Tilbury and New Tavern Forts fired minute guns.

[10] Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger was in poor health and had just received news of the total defeat of Britain's coalition partner, the Austrian Empire, at the Battle of Ulm.

[13] Although Westminster Abbey had traditionally been the resting place of national worthies, by the start of the 19th-century there was very little space left for the sort of grand monument to Nelson envisaged by the government.

[14] Accordingly, Lord Hawkesbury, the Home Secretary, wrote to the king suggesting St Paul's as an appropriate venue for the funeral: As Westminster Abbey is at this time so very crowded with monuments, and as it was thought proper to lodge the Standards taken from your Majesty’s enemies in the different naval victories in the last war in St Paul’s, your Majesty will perhaps consider that Cathedral as the fittest place for this melancholy ceremony, as well as for the erection in future of such monuments as it may be determined to raise to the memory of those who may have rendered considerable naval and military services to their country.

[19] It was announced on 27 December that the state funeral would take place on 9 January 1806, and would be preceded by a lying-in-state for three days at the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich, which was a grand retirement home for needy naval veterans.

On Saturday 4 January, the coffin was moved to the adjacent Painted Hall where the lying-in-state was to take place, and there was a private viewing for the Prince of Wales that afternoon.

The last mourners to be allowed in was a party of 46 seamen and 14 Royal Marines from the Victory, who were loudly applauded by the crowds still hoping in vain to be admitted.

[20][21] On the morning of Wednesday, 8 January, boats and barges began to gather at Greenwich Hospital wharf for the river procession that would convey Nelson's coffin upriver to Westminster.

Life Guards and the Greenwich Volunteers were required to keep the large crowd of onlookers in order, despite the bitter southwesterly wind, which also caused difficulties for the watermen.

[36] Nelson's coffin did not enter the cathedral until about 3 o'clock, because of the time taken for the distinguished mourners at the rear of the procession to leave their carriages and take their positions inside.

It commenced with Nelson's coffin being brought on a bier with a canopy carried by six vice admirals in procession through the nave to the choir, while the first of William Croft's Funeral Sentences was sung.

As the coffin was lowered into the crypt by a hidden mechanism, the sailors from the Victory were supposed to cast the ship's ensign into the opening, but instead, tore the flag into pieces to keep as souvenirs.

[40] In the crypt of St Paul's, Nelson's body was interred below an elaborate black marble sarcophagus, which had originally been commissioned for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, then appropriated by King Henry VIII for himself, but not used.

This formed part of a series of some thirty monuments to Napoleonic-era naval and military officers at St Pauls which had been funded by Parliament in an apparent effort to emulate the Panthéon in Paris.

The completed monument by John Flaxman was unveiled in 1818 and consisted of a larger than life statue of Nelson leaning on an anchor and a coiled rope, above a figure of Britannia who is pointing out the admiral to two boy sailors.

The inscription on the pedestal mentions Nelson's "splendid and unparalleled achievements" and his "life spent in the service of his country, and terminated in the moment of victory by a glorious death".