24 Oct 1803, Of the weak and ill-provided state of several of his ships, Lord Nelson, in his letters to the admiralty, complained very bitterly, and, as it appears, not without reason. " The Superb, " says his lordship, " is in a very weak state, but Keats is so superior to any difficulties, that I hear but little from her. The Kent is gone to Malta, fit only for a summer passage. Every bit of twice-laid stuff belonging to the Canopus is condemned, and all the running rigging in the fleet, except the Victory's. We have fitted the Excellent with new main and mizen rigging: it was shameful for the dock-yard (Portsmouth) to send a ship to sea with such rigging. ".
Cutting out an armed vessel is usually a desperate service, and the prize seldom repays the loss which is sustained in capturing her. The spirit engendered by such acts is, however, of the noblest, and, in a national point of view, of the most useful kind : its emulative influence spreads from man to man, and from ship to ship, until the ardour for engaging in services of danger, services, the repeated success of which has stamped a lasting character upon the British navy, requires more frequently to be checked than to be incited. An attack by boats upon an armed sailing vessel, as respects the first foot-hold upon her deck especially, may be likened to the "forlorn hope" of a besieging army ; great is the peril, and great ought to be the reward.
Jun 1805 And yet the two writers, from whose work this extract is taken, seldom indulge in their own remarks without making a perfect braggadocio of their hero. Mr. Southey is nearly as bad as Messieurs Clarke and M'Arthur. Much, indeed, has the memory of this great man suffered by the overweening zeal of his biographers.
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