Tapping The Admiral

As with many cultures, Britain has a long tradition of immortalising its greatest victories, and the people who won them, in it’s place names. Waterloo has its station, Trafalgar its square. But beyond statues and street names, there can’t be many more befitting an honour than having a pub named after you. 

Few figures are as well represented on pub signs as Admiral Horatio Nelson, the hero of the Battle of Trafalgar. You’ll find a Lord Nelson in Bermondsey, another in the Isle of Dogs, one in Sutton, and dozens more scattered across the country. 

But one of the strangest Nelson-related pub names has to be Tapping the Admiral in Chalk Farm, North London. To understand the name, you need the full story, warts and all. 

On 21 October 1805, Nelson led the Royal Navy to victory against the combined French and Spanish fleets off Cape Trafalgar, just west of the Strait of Gibraltar. Triumph was decisive, consolidating British naval dominance for the remainder of the Napoleonic Wars and paving the way for the dawn of the empire and Pax Britannica. Victory came at a heavy price though: Nelson was mortally wounded by a musket shot during the battle

The challenge was then how to get Britain’s greatest naval hero home for a state funeral. In Nelson’s day, the sail from Trafalgar to Portsmouth could take six weeks, even longer in poor weather. Without preservation, the body would quickly deteriorate.

The solution: According to official records, the ship’s surgeon placed Nelson’s body in a large cask of rum. The cask was sealed for the long voyage north.

The return journey was long, the ship’s rum rations were running low, and the men were understandably thirsty. The legend goes that some enterprising sailors, unwilling to endure dry lips for another month, drilled a small hole in the cask containing Nelson and consumed some of its contents. The blend of rum and… other flavours… was drunk regardless and the term “Tapping the Admiral” was born.

The phrase lives on not only in naval slang but also in the Tapping the Admiral pub in Chalk Farm. Step inside there’s no stuffed old sea dogs, just a welcoming boozer with a nod to one of the Royal Navy’s greatest legends.