ordinary delay makes me more
fractious than can be imagined, and I begin to lose the character for
patience which I had given myself, by so tiresome a situation." It was
still the season of westerly winds, and the voyage from Alexandria to
Gibraltar occupied sixty-nine days.

The _Orion_ was now completely worn out, having been continuously in
commission since the war began in 1793. Besides the three general
actions in which Saumarez commanded her, she had borne a valiant part in
Howe's great battle of the 1st of June. "This last business has so
shattered the poor _Orion_" wrote Saumarez, "that she will not, without
considerable repairs, be in a state for more service." On reaching
England she was paid off; and in February, 1799, he was appointed to the
_Caesar_, of eighty-four guns, one of the finest ships in the navy, which
was to bear his flag in the last and most brilliant episode of his
hard-fighting career.

A year later, Lord St. Vincent, having returned from the Mediterranean,
took command of the Channel Fleet, and at once instituted in its
methods, and particularly in the blockade of Brest, changes which
gradually revolutionized the character of the general naval war;
baffling beyond any other single cause the aims of Napoleon, and
insuring the fall of his empire. One of the new requirements was the
maintenance of a powerful advanced division of six or eight
ships-of-the-line, within ten miles of the harbor's mouth. It was a duty
singularly arduous, demanding neither dash nor genius, but calmness,
steadiness, method, and seamanship of a high order, for all which
Saumarez was conspicuous. From either side of the Bay of Brest a long
line of reefs projects for fifteen miles to the westward. Far inside
their outer limits, and therefore embayed by the westerly winds which
blow at times with hurricane violence, was the station of the advanced
squadron, off some well-marked rocks of the northern reef, known as the
Black Rocks. On this spot, called Siberia by the seamen, during fifteen
weeks, from August to December, Sir James Saumarez kept so close a watch
that not a vessel of any force entered or left Brest. "With you there,"
wrote Earl St. Vincent, "I sleep as sound as if I had the key of Brest
in my pocket." No work ever done by him was more meritorious or more
useful. Near its expiration St. Vincent wrote to him, "The employment
you have conducted is the most important of this war." He there
demonstrated that wh