Captain Horatio Nelson, 1777-1781, (19th century). A portrait of Nelson (1758-1805) in captain's full-dress uniform,with his hands resting on his sheathed sword in front of him. Although the portrait was begun in 1777, when Nelson was a lieutenant, it was not finished until 1781 when he had returned to England as a captain. One of Britain's greatest military figures, Admiral Nelson was the victor at a number of naval battles in the Napoleonic Wars, including the Battle of the Nile (1798), Copenhagen (1801) and most famously, Trafalgar (1805) where he was fatally wounded.