I think
differently, the loss of one line-of-battle ship might be the loss of
a victory."

When Nelson joined the fleet, he found it stationed some fifteen to
twenty miles from Cadiz. He soon moved the main body to fifty miles
west of the port. "It is desirable," he admitted, "to be well up in
easterly winds, but I must guard against being caught with a westerly
wind near Cadiz, as a fleet of ships with so many three-deckers would
inevitably be forced into the Straits, and then Cadiz would be
perfectly free for the enemy to come out with a westerly wind, as they
served Lord Keith in the late war." The memory of his weary beat out
of the Mediterranean the previous April, against wind and current,
remained vividly in his mind; and he feared also that the willingness
of the enemy to come out, which was his great object, would be much
cooled by the certainty that his fleet could not be avoided, and by
seeing such additions as it might receive. "I think we are near
enough," he wrote Colling wood, "for the weather if it is fine, the
wind serves, and we are in sight, they will never move." "I rely on
you," he tells Blackwood, "that we can't miss getting hold of them,
and I will give them such a shaking as they never yet experienced; at
least I will lay down my life in the attempt." An advanced squadron of
fast-sailing seventy-fours was thrown out ten or twelve miles east of
the fleet, through which daily signals could be exchanged with
Blackwood's squadron of frigates, that cruised day and night close to
the harbor's mouth. This disposition received a farther development
after the 10th of October, when the combined fleets shifted from the
inner harbor to the Bay of Cadiz, and gave other tokens of a speedy
start. On the 14th of the month he made the following entry in his
diary: "Enemy at the harbour's mouth. Placed Defence and Agamemnon
from seven to ten leagues west of Cadiz, and Mars and Colossus five
leagues east of fleet [that is, under way between the fleet and the
former group], whose station is from fifteen to twenty leagues west of
Cadiz; and by this chain I hope to have constant communication with
the frigates off Cadiz." To the captain of the "Defence" he wrote that
it was possible the enemy might try to drive off the frigate squadron,
in order to facilitate their own evasion; in which case the inner
ships-of-the-line would be at hand to resist the attempt.

Despite these careful dispositions, his mind was still il