In forming a true conception of what Nelson was, the publications of the Navy Records Society will help us greatly.  There is something very remarkable in the way in which Mr. Gutteridge’s volume[82] not only confirms Captain Mahan’s refutation of the aspersions on Nelson’s honour and humanity, but also establishes Professor Laughton’s conclusions, reached many years ago, that it was the orders given to him, and not his amour, which detained him at Naples at a well-known epoch.  The last volume issued by the Society, that of Mr. Julian Corbett,[83] is, I venture to affirm, the most useful to naval officers that has yet appeared among the Society’s publications.  It will provide them with an admirable historical introduction to the study of tactics, and greatly help them in ascertaining the importance of Nelson’s achievements as a tactician.  For my own part, I may say with gratitude that but for Mr. Corbett’s valuable work I could not have completed this appreciation.

[Footnote 82:  Nelsonand_the_Neapolitan_Jacobins_.]

[Footnote 83:  FightingInstructions_, 1530-1816.]

The most renowned of Nelson’s achievements was that performed in his final battle and victory.  Strange as it may seem, that celebrated performance has been the subject of much controversy, and, brilliant as it was, the tactics adopted in it have been freely, and indeed unfavourably, criticised.  There is still much difference of opinion as to the preliminary movements, and as to the exact method by which Nelson’s attack was made.  It has been often asserted that the method really followed was not that which Nelson had expressly declared his intention of adopting.  The question raised concerning this is a difficult one, and, until the appearance of Mr. Julian Corbett’s recent work and the interesting volume on Trafalgar lately published by Mr. H. Newbolt, had not been fully discussed.  The late Vice-Admiral P. H. Colomb contributed to the UnitedService_Magazine_ of September 1899 a very striking article on the subject of Nelson’s tactics in his last battle, and those who propose to study the case should certainly peruse what he wrote.

The criticism of Nelson’s procedure at Trafalgar in its strongest form may be summarised as follows.  It is affirmed that he drew up and communicated to the officers under his orders a certain plan of attack; that just before the battle he changed his plan without warning; that he hurried on his attack unnecessarily; that he exposed his fleet to excessive peril; and, because of all this, that the British loss was much heavier and much less evenly distributed among the ships of the fleet than it need have been.  The most formidable arraignment of the mode of Nelson’s last attack is, undoubtedly, to be found in the paper published by Sir Charles Ekins in his book on ‘Naval Battles,’ and vouched for by him as the work of an eye-witness—­almost certainly, as Mr. Julian Corbett holds, an officer on board the Conqueror