An Edwardian Admiral Lord Nelson Trafalgar Centenary Bust, 1905

The present bust was one of a small number created from copper and oak taken with the permission of the Lords of the Admiralty from HMS Victory and presented to a select group of international VIPs to mark the 100th anniversary of death of Nelson. The presentations highlighted the work of The British & Foreign Sailors' Society but also spoke of the dominance of the British mercantile fleet in global trade and Royal Navy supremacy. The B&FSS was formed by a group of clergymen in 1818 at a City tavern in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars to minister to the religious needs of seamen. As such it acknowledged both Nelson as ‘a child of the rectory’ and his influence in raising an often overlooked ‘class of men to the the pinnacle of greatness’. In 1905 the B&FSS was a beneficiary of the Nelson Centenary Fund of which Sir Joseph and Lady Dimsdale were key supporters. Dimsdale, who was a banker and Member of Parliament for the City of London, was the Fund’s Treasurer. He had been Lord Mayor of London in 1902 and as such had carried the Crystal Sceptre of the City before Edward VII at his Coronation. His wife, Beatrice, Lady Dimsdale was treasurer of the Ladies’ Guild of the B&FSS.

The Nelson Centenary Fund’s commemoration began with events commencing with 100th anniversary of Nelson’s last birthday spent at sea off Cadiz on 29 September 1805. Celebrations to mark the centenary of the eve of battle included a formal dinner at Fishmongers’ Hall in the City of London on 20 October 1905. Next day, Trafalgar Day, a deputation of master mariners and seafarers called at the Mansion House to present a copper bust on Victory oak socle to the Lord Mayor of London. Three more were then successively presented at Lloyd’s of London, The Bank of England and The Stock Exchange. Later that day Lady Dimsdale presented a fourth bust at a ceremony in the Royal Albert Hall. This being described in Lloyd’s List of 29 September 1905, as ‘Admiral Lord Nelson’s bust standing on Victory oak pedestal’ which she handed to Captain Kabusaki of the Japanese Navy as a representative of Admiral Togo. Togo, who had been recently dubbed ‘the Nelson of the East’ by western journalists, was then enjoying worldwide acclaim for his destruction of the Imperial Russian Navy’s Fleet at the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905. 

In May 1906 at a meeting at the Mansion House, Lady Dimsdale was part of the deputation that presented another Nelson bust to the Arctic explorer Dr Fridtjof Nansen, in his capacity as Norwegian ambassador to the Britain. In reply the famous future Nobel Peace Prize laureate paid tribute to the seamen who made possible the achievements of ‘the explorers, discoverers and pioneers’. Nansen’s bust was reportedly similarly mounted on a turned socle of Victory oak bearing the words ‘Given by the Lords of The Admiralty.’ Other distinguished recipients of the B&FSS Nelson Centenary bust included the New Zealand Parliament in 1906, Megan wife of David LLoyd-George, and the U.S. President as reported in the press in November 1905: ‘President Roosevelt has accepted from the British & Foreign Sailors’ Society a small bust of Nelson for the White House’  (Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser).