He pens a little grumble to Dr Moseley in March, complaining that the Mediterranean fleet seems “forgotten by the great folks at home,” but adding with pardonable pride that although the vessels have been at sea a week short of ten months, “not a ship has been refitted or recruited, excepting what has been done at sea. You will readily believe that all this must have shaken me. My sight is getting very bad, but _I_ must not be sick until after the French fleet is taken.” He includes some facts regarding his manifold interests as Commander-in-chief. He always had good mutton for invalids, gave half the allowance of grog instead of all wine in winter, changed the cruising ground so as not to allow “the sameness of prospect to satiate the mind,” obtained onions, “the best thing that can be given to seamen,” by sending a ship for them to Corsica, and always had “plenty of fresh water.” In the stirring days of the first decade of the nineteenth century a British Admiral was in very truth “shepherd of his flock.” He thought for the men and their officers, saw to their creature comforts, even provided amusement for them. Moreover, he had to be a diplomatist, something of a soldier, and a man of resource and reliance. The sailors of England alone made invasion impossible and nullified the superhuman efforts of the greatest soldier of recorded history to subjugate the Island Kingdom. Unpreparedness is peculiarly characteristic of British policy. It will not surprise students to be told at the beginning of 1804 there were ten fewer sail-of-the-line than had been available before the Peace of Amiens. Weight of brain has won more battles than weight of metal, although it is safer and wiser to have a preponderating supply of both. We shall see what a dearth of frigates, which are “the eyes of a fleet,” to use Nelson’s apt expression, meant to the Admiral in the prelude to the Trafalgar campaign. He was already complaining of their absence. La Touche Tréville was now in command at Toulon. Nelson disliked the man as sincerely as he loathed the nation whom he represented; he could “never trust a Corsican or a Frenchman.” La Touche Tréville had been commodore, it will be remembered, of the Boulogne flotilla when Nelson had made his abortive attacks on it. These were lauded all over France as “glorious contests.” Nelson was what is usually called, by a strange misnomer, “a good hater.” Thus to duty was added a personal rivalry that filled him with an ardent longing to “get even” with his antagonist.