Did Codrington think he was another Nelson?

Was Codrington acting as though he were Nelson?

No; he knew Nelson personally and acted as Codrington, not as an imitator of a later cultural legend.

Living experience differs from later heroic memory. Codrington had served alongside Nelson and did not encounter him as a remote cultural legend. In this interpretation, conscious imitation becomes more plausible two or three generations after a hero's death, once memory has become mythic. Codrington acted from his own professional identity and may, if anything, have looked more toward John Jervis than toward a stylized Nelson.