The outbreak of the French Revolutionary War in 1792 would bring changes to all the countries of Europe – directly or indirectly. It would also change individual lives. Among the many lives it changed were those of Horatio Nelson and Emma Hamilton.

The French declaration of war on Britain on 1 February 1793 had an immediate effect on Nelson's life: he was being employed again after five years on half-pay. Since December 1787 he had been on half-pay ashore. Most of that time he had spent with his wife Fanny in his father’s parsonage at Burnham Thorpe, his birthplace. He looked after the education of Josiah, Mrs Nelson's son from her first marriage, but did not succeed in getting him an apprenticeship. On being re-employed he therefore decided to take Josiah with him to sea. On 30 January 1793 he received his commission as captain of His Majesty's ship Agamemnon, a third-rate ship of the line of 64 guns.

His orders were to join the fleet in the Mediterranean under the command of Lord Hood. As revolutionary upheaval was still going on in France itself, the British Mediterranean fleet was expected to play an active role in supporting royalist forces in France. These forces had assembled in the naval port of Toulon. The British Mediterranean fleet under Admiral Hood's command was supporting these French royalist forces from the sea. Hood, however, realised that he would need support – both in goods and men. In order to ask this support from the king of Naples, he sent Nelson to Naples. Ferdinand IV of the kingdom of Naples and III of Sicily resided in his capital, at the time the third largest city in Europe. There Nelson would have to report to Sir William Hamilton, KB, who had been living in Naples with few interruptions since 1764, and, since 1789, as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary.

Nelson arrived in Naples on 11 September 1793 and stayed for the following four days. While he was arranging to be presented at court, he had an opportunity to meet the ambassador's wife, Emma Lady Hamilton. On 14 September he wrote to his wife: ‘Lady Hamilton has been wonderfully kind and good to Josiah. She is a young woman of amiable manners and who does honour to the station to which she is raised.’