when a ship of war approached. Nelson at once
demanded an explanation and received ample amends; the offending party
being placed under arrest. To the governor of some of the British West
India islands, he wrote making suggestions for the better discharge of
certain duties, in which both of them were interested. He received, it
is said, a testy message that "old generals were not in the habit of
taking advice from young gentlemen." "I have the honour, Sir," replied
Nelson, "of being as old as the prime minister of England, and think
myself as capable of commanding one of his majesty's ships as that
minister is of governing the state;" and throughout he held to the
stand he had taken.

The most remarkable instance, however, of this promptness to assert
the dignity and rights of his official position, allowing no man to
despise his youth, occurred very soon after his arrival upon the
station, and brought him to a direct issue with his
commander-in-chief,--if not, indeed, with an authoritative precedent
set by so great a man as Lord Rodney. Young though he still was in
years,--only twenty-six,--Nelson was by date of commission the senior
captain in the small squadron, of some half-dozen vessels, to which
the economies of the administration had reduced the Leeward Islands
station. Being thus next in rank to the admiral, the latter, who made
his headquarters at Barbadoes in the southern part of the station,
sent him to the northern division, centring about the island of
Antigua. Having remained in harbor, as was usual, during the hurricane
months, Nelson cruised during the winter and until February, 1785,
when some damage received compelled the "Boreas" to put into Antigua
for repairs. Here he found a vessel of the squadron, whose own captain
was of course junior to him, flying a Commodore's broad pendant, which
asserted the official presence of a captain superior to himself in
rank and command, and duly qualified to give him orders. He at once
asked the meaning of this from the ship's proper commander, and was
informed by him that Captain Moutray, an old officer, twenty years his
senior on the post list, and then acting as Commissioner of the Navy,
a civil office connected with the dockyard at Antigua, had directed it
to be hoisted, and claimed to exercise control over all men-of-war in
the harbor, during the admiral's absence.

Nelson was not wholly unprepared for this, for Hughes had notified him
and the other captains