For the purpose of attacking the convoy, he divided our own fleet into three squadrons: the _Vanguard_, the _Minotaur_, the 50-gun ship _Leander_, the _Audacious_, the _Defence_, and the _Zealous_ under himself; the _Orion_, _Goliath_, _Majestic_, and _Bellerophon_ under Captain Saumarez; and the _Culloden_, _Alexander_, _Swiftsure_, and _Theseus_ under Captain Troubridge. Two of these squadrons were to engage the ships of war, no matter what their force, while the third was to dash among the transports and sink and destroy as many as it could. The scene, even to a man-of-war's-man, is awful to picture. Transport after transport settling down by the head or stern, the water covered with their boats and black with struggling men; Buonaparte, if he were not already on the largest warship, fleeing to it; half the British war-ships engaging every French fighting-ship till they sank themselves or had sunk, taken or driven their antagonists to desert the convoy, and the others running in among the transports and thrashing them down like apples off a tree. But it was not to be so: the Admiral's prophecy was literally fulfilled as far as that convoy, the most momentous which ever left the shores of France, was concerned--"no frigates; to which has been and may again be attributed the loss of the French fleet." You may imagine how it weighed upon such a mind, to have the _élite_ of my Lord St. Vincent's fleet under his command for some weeks, and with the enemy about to strike some vital blow--and yet no sign of him! He wrote to Troubridge--"Do not fret at anything: I wish I never had; but my return to Syracuse in 1798 broke my heart, which on any extraordinary anxiety now shows itself--be that feeling pain or pleasure"; and again, "On the 18th I had near died with the swellings of some of the vessels of the heart. More people, perhaps, die of broken hearts than we are aware of." And he wrote to his chief, Lord St. Vincent: "Every moment I have to regret the frigates having left me. Your lordship deprived yourself of frigates to make mine certainly the first squadron in the world, and I feel that I have zeal and activity to do credit to your appointment, and yet to be unsuccessful hurts me most sensibly. But if they are above water I will find them out, and if possible bring them to battle. You have done your part in giving me so fine a fleet, and I hope to do mine in making use of them." And added to this he had the mortification of seeing the Neapolitan Government, whose forces were hardly worthy a place in the line of battle, refusing supplies which was the one service they could perform for the allies without whose fleet they felt like children left in the dark to wolves. The loss of frigates by the pusillanimity of the commander, who returned to Gibraltar because he thought that Nelson must give up, being baffled as to the whereabouts of the French fleet, the ingratitude of the Neapolitans, the malignity of Admirals