p was to be put
about. Lord Nelson would give the orders, and caused her to miss stays.
Upon this he said, rather peevishly, to the officer of the watch, 'Well,
now see what we have done. Well, sir, what mean you to do now?' The
officer saying, with hesitation, 'I don't exactly know, my lord. I fear
she won't do,' Lord Nelson turned sharply to the cabin, and replied,
'Well, I am sure if you do not know what to do with her, no more do I,
either.' He went in, leaving the officer to work the ship as he liked."
Yet Nelson understood perfectly what ships could do, and what they could
not; no one could better handle or take care of a fleet, or estimate the
possibility of performing a given manoeuvre; and long before he was
called to high command he was distinguished for a knowledge of naval
tactics to which few, if any other, of his time attained. He was a great
general officer; and whether he had the knack of himself making a ship
go through all her paces without a fault mattered as little as whether
he was a crack shot with a gun.

A ship is certainly the most beautiful and most graceful of machines; a
machine, too, so varied in its movements and so instinct with life that
the seaman affectionately transfers to her credit his own virtues in
handling her. Pellew's capacity in this part of his profession was so
remarkable that it is somewhat singular to find him, in his first
frigate action, compelled to discard manoeuvring, and to rely for
victory upon sheer pluck and luck. When war with the French republic
began in 1793, his high reputation immediately insured him command of a
frigate, the _Nymphe_. The strength of England as a naval power lay
largely in the great reserve of able seamen manning her merchant ships;
but as these were scattered in all quarters of the world, great
embarrassment was commonly felt at the outbreak of a war, and especially
when it came with the unexpected rapidity of the revolutionary fury. As
the object of first importance was to get the fleets of
ships-of-the-line to sea, Pellew had to depend chiefly upon his own
indefatigable exertions to procure a crew for his vessel. Seamen being
hard to find, he had on board a disproportionate number of landsmen when
the _Nymphe_, on the 19th of June, 1793, encountered the French vessel
_Cleopatre_, of force slightly inferior, except in men, but not
sufficiently so to deny the victor the claim of an even fight.

A peculiar incident preceding the action has i