Free Nelson: The Essential Hero by Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford Page B

recalled that first meeting. Even allowing in some respects for the benefit of hindsight, his recollection of young Captain Nelson is signed with a visual authenticity:
    I was then a midshipman aboard the Barfleur , lying in the narrows off Staten Island, and had the watch on deck, when Captain Nelson of the Albemarle , came in his barge alongside, who appeared to be the merest boy of a captain I ever beheld; and his dress was worthy of attention. He had on a full-laced uniform; his lank unpowdered hair was tied in a stiff Hessian tail, of an extraordinary length; the old-fashioned flaps of his waistcoat added to the general quaintness of his figure, and produced an appearance which particularly attracted my notice; for I had never seen anything like it before, nor could I imagine who he was, nor what he came about. My doubts were, however, removed when Lord Hood introduced me to him. There was something irresistibly pleasing in his address and conversation; and an enthusiasm, when speaking on professional subjects, that showed he was no common being.
    Nelson, for his part, was careful to express his warm attachment to his king and to the honour of the Navy. This was far from being the natural lip-service that might be expected from an ambitious officer. Throughout his life Nelson time and again showed that his devotion was wholeheartedly given to his monarch as well as to the naval service and his country. The key that unlocks him is his genuine simplicity. Now, aboard the Barfleur , he saw in the Prince a fine youngster and - as did many at the time - one who might well prove a useful, as well as powerful, addition to the Navy. He was to comment approvingly that the Prince would prove to be a ‘disciplinarian and a strong one’, little knowing that authority and the exercise of discipline would go to his head and that he would become a singularly unattractive officer, whose later career was marked by a niggling attention to detail and a punctilious regard for his own importance. But that was in the future and, while Nelson approved the midshipman, the latter saw in the young, unfashionably dressed captain something of that strange combination of fire and charm which was always to surround Nelson with a halo of friends and admirers. Prince William’s regard for him remained unaltered over the years and he was to keep all the letters that Nelson wrote to him. But the Prince’s friendship was not always the happiest thing to have bestowed on one, once his true character had been revealed by that infallible assessor of men and ships - the sea.

CHAPTER SIX - Captain with Problems
    Transferred from Admiral Digby’s fleet, the Albemarle under her young captain (whose appearance certainly suggested that he needed the prize money which he had spurned by asking to serve under Hood’s flag) sailed for the West Indies on 22 November. But Nelson’s hopes of participating in some striking action - and it must be remembered that up to date he had had no experience of a real naval engagement - were thwarted. While Hood and his squadron cruised back and forth off Cape Francois at the western end of Haiti, hoping to catch the French fleet which was bound from Boston for the Caribbean, the latter escaped them by sliding through the Mona Passage to the east of the island and making for Curasao. It was an uneventful and frustrating period in Nelson’s life, and even an attempt to recapture Turk’s Island from the French proved abortive. Peace was on the horizon, and in 1783 the treaty was signed which stripped Great Britain of the United States as well as of far-off Minorca, a Balearic Island that was to figure later in Nelson’s Mediterranean years.
    Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, writing at the turn of the century, in the full flower of the British Empire, commented on the events of 1783 : ‘The nation had lost no honour. It had fought with stubborn tenacity a hopeless fight. The Navy, though mismanaged and without great leaders,