Nelson was not the first, but the fifth, great admiral to command fleets in the last French War (1793-1815). Howe, Hood, St. Vincent, Duncan, Nelson: that is the order in which the victors came. Howe, Hood, St. Vincent, and Duncan were all men who had fought in Pitt's Imperial War; and each was old enough to have been Nelson's father. Howe was the hero of the relief of Gibraltar in 1782, at the time that all the foreign navies in the world were winning American Independence by taking sides in a British civil war. Howe was also the hero of "the Glorious First of June" in 1794, when he defeated the French off the north-west coast of France. But it was under Hood, not Howe, that Nelson learnt the way fleets should be used; and it was under St. Vincent that he first sprang into fame. [Illustration: FIGHTING THE GUNS ON THE MAIN DECK, 1782.] St. Vincent, with fifteen ships of the line (that is, big battleships) was sailing south to stop a Spanish fleet from coming north to join the French, when, on the 14th of February, 1797, the look-out reported "enemy in sight." St. Vincent was walking up and down the quarter-deck with his flag-captain, Hallowell, as the reports came in. "Ten ships of the line in sight." Then "fifteen," the same number that he had himself. Then "twenty" . . . "twenty-five" . . . and at last "twenty-seven." When this total of twenty-seven was reported, the officer reporting said, in a questioning way, "Pretty long odds, Sir?" But, quick as a flash, St. Vincent answered, "Enough of that, Sir! the die is cast; and if they are fifty I will go through them!" And he did. This victory, which broke up the plans the French and Spaniards had made against Britain, was thought so important that Jervis, as he then was called, was made Lord St. Vincent, taking his title from the place near which he won the battle, Cape St. Vincent, the south-west corner of Europe. In October Admiral Duncan was made Lord Camperdown for destroying the Dutch fleet which was trying to help the French into Ireland. He caught it off Camperduin (on the coast of North Holland) and smashed it to pieces after a furious battle, in which the Dutch, with a smaller fleet, showed that they too were of the Viking breed. This victory stopped the danger from the north, just as St. Vincent's stopped it from the south. Both were fought in the only proper way to defend the British Empire on the sea when the enemy comes out, that is, by going to meet him in his own waters, instead of waiting to let him choose his own point of attack against the British coast.