"Plym that claims by right The christening of that Bay, which bears her noble name." In spite of historic antecedents, English Plymouth was distasteful to Lord Nelson, who says, in one of his letters to Lady Hamilton, "I hate Plymouth." American Plymouth should owe no grudge to his memory, for he did a very noble act to one of her townsmen. While cruising on our coast in the _Albemarle_, in 1782, Nelson captured a fishing schooner belonging to Plymouth. The cargo of the vessel constituted nearly the whole property of Captain Carver, the master, who had a large family at home anxiously awaiting his return. There being no officer on board the _Albemarle_ acquainted with Boston Bay, Nelson ordered the master of the prize to act as pilot. He performed the service to the satisfaction of his captor, who requited him by giving him his vessel and cargo back again, with a certificate to prevent recapture by other British cruisers. Sir N. Harris Nicolas relates that Nelson accompanied this generous act with words equally generous: "You have rendered me, sir, a very essential service, and it is not the custom of English seamen to be ungrateful. In the name, therefore, and with the approbation of the officers of this ship, I return your schooner, and with it this certificate of your good conduct.[179] Farewell! and may God bless you." The choice of the site of Plymouth by the Pilgrims was due rather to the pressing necessities of their situation than to a well-considered determination. Arriving on our coast in the beginning of winter, after nearly six weeks passed in explorations that enfeebled the hardiest among them, they found their provisions failing, while the increasing rigor of the season called for a speedy decision. As it was not their destination, so it may readily be conceived they were not prepared beforehand with such knowledge of the coast as might now be most serviceable to them. Cheated by their captain, they had thrown away the valuable time spent in searching the barren cape for a harbor fit for settlement. Smith, in his egotism, administers a rebuke to them in this wise: "Yet at the first landing at _Cape Cod_, being an hundred passengers, besides twenty they had left behind at _Plimouth_ for want of good take heed, thinking to find all things better than I advised them, spent six or seven weeks in wandering up and downe in frost and snow, wind and raine, among the woods, cricks, and swamps, forty of them died, and three-score were left in a most miserable estate at New Plimouth, where their ship left them, and but nine leagues by sea from where they landed, whose misery and variable opinions, for want of experience, occasioned much faction, till necessity agreed them."