in the Baltic could not yet be recalled. It
was, however, in purely defensive measures, in the possession of a
force similar to that by which the proposed attack was to be made, and
in dispositions analogous to coast defences, that the means were
singularly defective, both in material and men. "Everything, my dear
Lord," wrote Nelson, the day after he hoisted his flag at Sheerness,
"must have a beginning, and we are literally at the foundation of our
fabric of defence;" but, he continues, reverting to his own and St.
Vincent's clear and accurate military intuitions, "I agree perfectly
with you, that we must keep the enemy as far from our own coasts as
possible, and be able to attack them the moment they come out of their
ports."

"Our first defence," he writes a fortnight later, showing the gradual
maturing of the views which he, in common with St. Vincent, held with
such illustrious firmness in the succeeding years, "is close to the
enemy's ports. When that is broke, others will come forth on our own
coasts." It was in the latter that the unexpected anxieties of 1801
found the Government deficient, and these it was to be Nelson's first
care to organize and dispose. By the time his duties were completed,
and the problems connected with them had been two months under his
consideration, he had reached the conclusion which Napoleon also held,
and upon which he acted. "This boat business may be a part of a great
plan of Invasion, but can never be the only one." From the first he
had contemplated the possibility of the French fleets in Brest and
elsewhere attempting diversions, such as Napoleon planned in support
of his later great projects. "Although I feel confident that the
fleets of the enemy will meet the same fate which has always attended
them, yet their sailing will facilitate the coming over of their
flotilla, as they will naturally suppose our attention will be called
only to the fleets."

What was feared in 1801 was not a grand military operation, in the
nature of an attempt at conquest, or, at the least, at injury so
serious as to be disabling, but rather something in the nature of a
great raid, of which the most probable object was the city of London,
the chief commercial centre. It was upon this supposition that the
instructions of the Admiralty to Nelson were framed, and upon this
also the memorandum as to methods, submitted by him to it, on the 25th
of July, 1801. "It is certainly proper to believe that the