I hope they will not
venture up till Lord Hood can get off Toulon, or wherever the French
fleet are got to." When a particular opinion has received the extreme
expression now given to that concerning the "fleet in being," and
apparently has undergone equally extreme misconception, it is
instructive to recur to the actual effect of such a force, upon the
practice of a man with whom moral effect was never in excess of the
facts of the case, whose imagination produced to him no paralyzing
picture of remote contingencies. Is it probable that, with the great
issues of 1690 at stake, Nelson, had he been in Tourville's place,
would have deemed the crossing of the Channel by French troops
impossible, because of Torrington's "fleet in being"?

Sailing again on June 16, the expedition arrived next day off Calvi.
Although it was now summer, the difficulties of the new undertaking
were, from the maritime point of view, very great. The town of Calvi,
which was walled and had a citadel, lies upon a promontory on the west
side of an open gulf of the same name, a semicircular recess, three
miles wide by two deep, on the northwest coast of Corsica. The western
point of its shore line is Cape Revellata; the eastern, Point Espano.
The port being fortified and garrisoned, it was not practicable to
take the shipping inside, nor to establish on the inner beach a safe
base for disembarking. The "Agamemnon" therefore anchored outside,
nearly two miles south of Cape Revellata, and a mile from shore, in
the excessive depth of fifty-three fathoms; the transports coming-to
off the cape, but farther to seaward. The water being so deep, and the
bottom rocky, the position was perilous for sailing-ships, for the
prevailing summer wind blows directly on the shore, which is steep-to
and affords no shelter. Abreast the "Agamemnon" was a small inlet,
Porto Agro, about three miles from Calvi by difficult approaches.
Here Nelson landed on the 18th with General Stuart; and, after
reconnoitring both the beach and the town, the two officers decided
that, though a very bad landing, it was the best available. On the
19th, at 7 A.M., the troops disembarked. That afternoon Nelson himself
went ashore to stay, taking with him two hundred and fifty seamen. The
next day it came on to blow so hard that most of the ships put to sea,
and no intercourse was had from the land with those which remained.
The "Agamemnon" did not return till the 24th. Lord Hood was by this
ti