--something different from the daily
outlook. After a very brief period, it became the rule to ride out the
storms at anchor; and I remember one of our volunteer officers, who
had commanded a merchant-ship for some years, saying that he would
have been spared a good deal of trouble, on occasions, had he had our
experience of holding on with an anchor instead of keeping under way.
It was, however, an old if forgotten expedient, where anchorage ground
was good--bottom sticky and water not too deep. In the ancient days of
the French wars, the British fleets off Brest and Toulon had to keep
under way, but that blockading Cadiz, in 1797-98, used to hold its
position at anchor, and under harder conditions than ours; for there
the worst gales blew on shore, whereas ours swept chiefly along the
coast. A standing dispute in the British navy, in those days of hemp
cables, used to be whether it was safer to ride with three anchors
down, or with one only, having to it three cables, bent together, so
as to form one of thrice the usual length. The balance of opinion
leaned to the latter; the dead weight of so much hemp held the ship
without transmitting the strain to the anchor itself. She "rode to the
bight," as the expression was; that is, to the cable, curved by its
own weight and length, lying even in part on the bottom, which
prevented its tightening and pulling at the anchor. What was true of
hemp was yet more true of iron chains. The _Pocahontas_ used to veer
to a hundred fathoms, and there lie like a duck in fifty or sixty feet
of water. I remember on one occasion, however, that when we next
weighed the anchor, it came up with parts polished bright, as in my
childhood we used sometimes to burnish a copper cent. This seemed to
show that it had been scoured hard along a sandy bottom. We had had no
suspicion of the ship's dragging during the gale, and I have since
supposed that it may have started from its bed as we began to heave,
and so been scrubbed along towards us.

The problem of maintaining the health of ships' companies condemned to
long months of salt provisions, and to equally depressing short
allowance of social salt for the intellect, which reasonable beings
crave, has to be ever present to those charged with administration.
Nelson's "cattle and onions" sums up in homely phrase the first
requirement; while, for the others, his policy during a weary two
years, in which he himself never left the flag-ship, was to keep