or his friendly patron.

Captain Nelson was perfectly indefatigable in getting his ship ready for
sea. In a letter to Captain Locker, written at the Navy Office, the
beginning of February 1793, where his brother Maurice had long held a
situation, after requesting him to discharge Maurice Suckling, and such
men as may be on board the Sandwich, into the Agamemnon, he says--"Pray,
have you got a clerk whom you can recommend? I want one very much, I
urge nothing; I know your willingness to serve. The Duke of Clarence
desires me to say, that he requests you will discharge Joseph King into
the Agamemnon; or, that I am welcome to any other man, to assist me in
fitting out. He is but poorly; but expresses the greatest satisfaction
at the appointment you are likely to succeed to, and in which no one
rejoices more than your affectionate Horatio Nelson."

In another letter to this much honoured and honourable officer, written
at Chatham towards the end of the same month, he congratulates him on
having obtained his appointment, which was that of Lieutenant-Governor
of Greenwich Hospital; from which, he hopes, his friend will derive
every comfort: and tells him, that he need not hurry himself about the
charts, as he shall certainly see him before he sails.

It was not, in fact, till about the middle of May, that the Agamemnon,
in company with the Robust of seventy-four guns, Captain the Honourable
George Keith Elphinstone, proceeded to it's station in the
Mediterranean, under the command of Lord Hood; who followed, a few days
after, with the rest of his fleet, from Plymouth, on the 22d of that
month.

About the beginning of June, he went with six sail of the line to Cadiz,
where they took in water. They also took in some wine: for he tells his
worthy old friend, Captain Locker, that he has got him a cask of, he
hopes, good sherry; which he shall take an early opportunity of sending
home, and begs him to accept as a proof of his remembrance. He observes,
that they have done nothing; and, that the same prospect appears before
them: for, the French would not come out, and they had no means of
getting at them in Toulon. Lord Hood was to be joined, off Barcelona, by
twenty-one Spanish ships of the line: "but," adds he, "if they are no
better manned than those at Cadiz, much service cannot be expected of
them; though, as to ships, I never saw finer men of war."

It was on the occasion above alluded to, when Captain Nelson put into
Ca