Hi All,

I saw this in the KidsPost section of the Washington Post this morning. I hope some of you are as amused as I am.

"British Adm. Horatio Nelson's undershirt will be auctioned off next month. It's expected to sell for as much as $900,000."

There's also a nice picture of the one-armed undershirt.

More info and the picture: http://go.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?typ...ID=9744746

Hey Pamela,
Leave it to you to find something so quirky. Just kidding! Thanks for posting the
article. I got a really good laugh at the end.


Helen

I thought the shirts I bought were expensive.

The article mentioned the shirt being the only piece of the Admiral's clothing left in private hands. How much of his wardrobe is still around? :wtf: I wonder if a museum is going to end up with this one too.

Pax
Ryan

That's disturbing...

Alex

Ouch. That beats Saville Row prices and then some.

On how much of his wardrobe still exists - I don't know statistics on Nelson's underwear - but it wouldn't surprise me if quite a lot of his effects were around and catalogued. The thing with Nelson was he was a bit of a superstar in his own age. You know there are people who become famous after their death but Nelson was the talk of the town in his own lifetime. This year was the anniversary of Trafalgar and so they had a few programmes on TV about it - one was saying the crowds at his funeral were (maybe proportionate to population of London at the time) the largest ever seen for a state event. So it wouldn't surprise me if there was a lot of his stuff about because it would have been prized at the time, let alone now.

I suppose that's one definition of success, to be told that in 200 years time people will be bidding a million dollars for your underwear!

Always wonder about these auctions for effects of famous people. I suppose people like it because it creates an association in the imagination with the person - when was this person wearing this etc - but in the end it's just a piece of clothing and one Nelson would probably have discarded without a second thought.

Just my ruminations

Daniel

Well, ok. The shirt has only one full-length arm, and it has an embroidered "N". But, I wonder, how does one establish the provenance of a piece of underwear? For $500,000 to $900,000, I would think that is an important issue.