t. At last, with starvation staring him in the face if delaying
longer, he sailed for Gibraltar, three men living on the rations of one
during the passage down.

Mann's defection had reduced the fleet from twenty-two vessels to
fifteen. A series of single accidents still further diminished it. In a
violent gale at Gibraltar three ships-of-the-line drove from their
anchors. One, the _Courageux_, stretching over toward the Barbary coast,
ran ashore there and was totally wrecked, nearly all her crew perishing.
Her captain, a singularly capable seaman named Hallowell, was out of her
upon a courtmartial, and it was thought she would not have been lost had
he been on board. Another, the _Gibraltar_, struck so heavily on a reef
that she had to be sent to England. Upon being docked, a large piece of
rock was found to have penetrated the bottom and stuck fast in the hole.
Had it worked out, the ship would have foundered. The third vessel, the
_Zealous_, was less badly hurt, but she had to be left behind in
Gibraltar when Jervis, by orders from home, took his fleet to Lisbon.
There, in entering the Tagus, a fourth ship was lost on a shoal, so
that but eleven remained out of twenty-two. Despite these trials of his
constancy, the old man's temper still continued "steady as a rock."
"Whether you send me a reinforcement or not," he wrote to the Admiralty,
"I shall sleep perfectly sound,--not in the Tagus, but at sea; for as
soon as the _St. George_ has shifted her topmast, the _Captain_ her
bowsprit, and the _Blenheim_ repaired her mainmast, I will go out."
"Inactivity in the Tagus," he wrote again, "will make cowards of us
all." This last expression summed up much of his naval philosophy. Keep
men at sea, he used to say, and they cannot help being seamen, though
attention will be needed to assure exercise at the guns. And it may be
believed he would thus contemn the arguments which supported Howe's idea
of preserving the ships by retaining them in port. Keep them at sea, he
would doubtless have replied, and they will learn to take care of
themselves.

In quitting the river another vessel took the ground, and had to be left
behind. This, however, was the last of the admiral's trials for that
time. A few days later, on the 6th of February, 1797, there joined him a
body of five ships-of-the line, detached from England as soon as the
government had been freed from the fear of the invasion of Ireland,
which the French had attempted on a