Nelson: A Debt of Honour

Surging from the blood-soaked decks of HMS Victory at the battle of Trafalgar to the dank dungeons and prison hulks of Britain and the untracked wilderness of colonial New South Wales, this is the true, inspiring story of an ordinary small boy serendipitously thrust into extraordinary circumstances. William Cooke is a fatherless waif raised at the parsonage of the Rev. Edmund Nelson, father of Britain’s greatest hero – Admiral Horatio Nelson. In a recently uncovered letter written shortly before his death, the ailing Rev Nelson pleads with his son to help 11 year old Will, the son of a faithful servant. Admiral Nelson accepts he has A Debt of Honour to fulfil his beloved father’s death-bed plea and becomes the boy’s patron – triggering the first half of Will’s epic journey. Years after Nelson’s death Will is convicted of stealing a pound of lead, triggering another journey – this time in chains – to the remote prison colony that will become Australia. Will’s story, as told to an Australian journalist just before his death in 1881, inspired this book – the first to reveal every facet of a convict’s life from cradle to grave. Ground-breaking research made possible by recently uncovered personal letters and newly digitised official records reveal not only the dramatic life of the boy who became cabin boy to Britain’s most heroic warrior and their heart-warming relationship in the lead up to the battle of Trafalgar, but also Will’s degradation and despair as a lowly convict struggling to survive in a harsh new land and later to keeping his past a secret Unlike much history which rehashes in dull, dry tones the lives of the powerful and famous, Will’s story is told in the modern, easy-to-read narrative non-fiction style, — ISBN13: 9780994296238