, and weight of fire. In size the English ships
scarcely averaged 1500 tons; the French ships exceeded 2000 tons.
Nelson had only seventy-fours, his heaviest gun being a 32-pounder.
The average French 80-gun ship in every detail of fighting strength
exceeded an English ninety-eight, and Brueys had three such ships in
his fleet; while his own flagship, the _Orient_, was fully equal to two
English seventy-fours. Its weight of ball on the lower deck alone
exceeded that from the whole broadside of the _Bellerophon_, the ship
that engaged it. The French, in brief, had an advantage in guns of
about twenty per cent., and in men of over thirty per cent. Brueys,
moreover, was lying in a carefully chosen position in a dangerous bay,
of which his enemies possessed no chart, and the head of his line was
protected by a powerful shore battery.

Nothing in this great fight is more dramatic than the swiftness and
vehemence of Nelson's attack. He simply leaped upon his enemy at
sight. Four of his ships were miles off in the offing, but Nelson did
not wait for them. In the long pursuit he had assembled his captains
repeatedly in his cabin, and discussed every possible manner of
attacking the French fleet. If he found the fleet as he guessed, drawn
up in battle-line close in-shore and anchored, his plan was to place
one of his ships on the bows, another on the quarter, of each French
ship in succession.

It has been debated who actually evolved the idea of rounding the head
of the French line and attacking on both faces. One version is that
Foley, in the _Goliath_, who led the British line, owed the suggestion
to a keen-eyed middy who pointed out that the anchor buoy of the
headmost French ship was at such a distance from the ship itself as to
prove there was room to pass. But the weight of evidence seems to
prove that Nelson himself, as he rounded Aboukir Island, and scanned
with fierce and questioning vision Brueys' formation, with that
swiftness of glance in which he almost rivalled Napoleon, saw his
chance in the gap between the leading French ship and the shore.
"Where a French ship can swing," he held, "an English ship can either
sail or anchor." And he determined to double on the French line and
attack on both faces at once. He explained his plan to Berry, his
captain, who in his delight exclaimed, "If we succeed, what will the
world say?" "There is no 'if' in the case," said Nelson; "that we
shall succeed is certain