The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Volume 2Harrison, James
History
The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Volume 2
Harrison, James
Admirals -- Great Britain -- Biography; Great Britain. Royal Navy -- Biography; Nelson, Horatio Nelson, Viscount, 1758-1805
accepted by our hero, he was entertained with the greatest respect and
attention by the governor, admiral, and all the Russian officers, at
Revel. It appears, however, that the suspicions of some less honourable
minds had been excited, on the occasion, to a height of considerable
alarm; and, a letter having been received, on the 16th, from the Comte
de Pahlen, censuring his lordship for thus visiting the Gulph of
Finland, he was resolved immediately to prevent the effect of all
malevolent misrepresentations, by returning to join the squadron off
Bornholm, where he had left Captain Murray with seven sail of the line.
In a letter to his Excellency Earl Carysfort, dated on board the St.
George, off Gothland, May 19th, 1801, in which his lordship incloses a
copy of his correspondence with the Comte de Pahlen, he says--"You will
have your opinion, as I have mine, that he never would have wrote such a
letter, if the fleet had been at Revel in April. Mine was a desire to
mark a particular civility; which, as it was not treated in the way I
think handsome, I left Revel on Sunday the 17th, and here I am. From all
the Russian officers at Revel, I received the most attentive behaviour;
and, I believe, they are as much surprised at the answer as I was. Sir
Hyde Parker's letter on the release of the British merchant ships has
not been answered. I hope, all is right: but seamen are but bad
negociators; for, we put to issue in five minutes, what diplomatic forms
would be five months doing." He observes that, though he feels sensible
all which he sends in this letter is of no consequence; still he knows,
from experience, that to be informed there is nothing particular
passing, is comfortable. "Our fleet," he adds, "is twenty-two sail of
the line, and forty-six frigates, bombs, fire-ships, and gun-vessels;
and, in the fleet, not one man in the hospital-ship. A finer fleet," his
lordship exultingly concludes, "never graced the ocean!" Such, however,
was his lordship's ill state of health, that he had, on the day of
quitting Revel, written home for permission to relinquish the command,
that he might try and re-establish it, by immediately returning to
England; being unable, at present, as his lordship stated, to execute
the high trust reposed in him, with either comfort to himself, or
benefit to the state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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