Nelson Part 1

Nelson Part 1

dictation exercise

notebook

Arthur P. Stone

Charles Dickens

deciphered shorthand

Nelson

The first part of a story about the death of Admiral Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar

Stone, Arthur P.

Dickens, Charles

Free Library of Philadelphia [cdc5890009_04]

1859-1860

Courtesy of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Please seek further permission from the Free Library to reuse this image.

image/jpg

English

Brachygraphy shorthand

cdc5890009_04

Working transcription: There are some circumstances connected with the death of Nelson which are always interesting as having in them a kind of alternative picture of the events of the day. Thus when the Admiral persists in his usual courtly custom of dressing himself in full uniform with gold lace, silk stockings and God knows what orders and decorations, he is warned by his officer(s) most emphatically that his life is particularly sought by the French and that he exposes himself to very great danger. It is represented to him that the enemy has a new custom of carrying riflemen in the tops of his ships and that by making himself conspicuous to the meanest observation as the Admiral of the Fleet, he hazards his safety and, necessarily with it, the fortune of the day. Apart from these representations no man can better know the real extent of the danger of such a practice than the great man to whom they were made because it is a fact in his history that he had always opposed himself to this use of the rifle as cowardly and cruel. Nevertheless he persists, is shot in the back and is […]. After he has been taken below in a dying state the old quarter master on board the Victory who is standing on the poop by the wheel says to a midshipman that there is a man in a