Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson was now removed to the Theseus, and was employed in the blockade of Cadiz, where he went through the most perilous action in which he was ever engaged.  Making a night attack upon the Spanish gunboats, his barge, carrying twelve men, was attacked by an armed launch carrying twenty-six men; the admiral was only saved by the heroic devotion of his coxswain; but eighteen of the enemy were killed, the rest wounded, and their launch taken.

Twelve days later Nelson sailed at the head of an expedition against Teneriffe, and on the night of July 24, 1797, made a boat attack on the port of Santa Cruz.  On this occasion he was wounded in the right elbow, and the arm had to be amputated.  The small force, which had made its way into the town, capitulated on honourable terms, and the Spanish governor distinguished himself by the most humane and generous conduct to his enemies.  There is no doubt that Nelson’s life was saved by the careful attentions of his stepson, Nisbet, who was with him in the boat.

Nisbet was immediately promoted, and honours awaited Nelson in England.  The freedom of the cities of Bristol and London were conferred on him, and he received a pension of L1,000 a year.  He had performed an extraordinary series of services during the war; including four actions with the fleets of the enemy, three actions with boats employed in cutting out of harbour, and in taking three towns; he had commanded the batteries at the sieges of Bastia and Calvi, he had assisted at the capture of twenty-eight ships of war, and had taken and destroyed nearly fifty merchant vessels; and had been engaged against the enemy upwards of a hundred and twenty times, in which service he had lost his right eye and right arm.

Early in 1789, Sir Horatio Nelson hoisted his flag in the Vanguard, and left England to rejoin Earl St. Vincent.  He was dispatched to the Mediterranean, to ascertain the object of Bonaparte’s great expedition, then fitting out at Toulon; and sailed from Gibraltar on May 9 with three ships of the line, four frigates, and a sloop.  The Vanguard was dismantled in a storm, but was refitted in the Sardinian harbour of St. Pietro, and was joined by a reinforcement of eleven ships from Earl St. Vincent.

The first news of the enemy’s armament was that it had surprised Malta, but Nelson soon heard that they had left that island on June 16, and judged that Egypt was their destination.  He arrived off Alexandria on the 28th, but did not find them; returned by a circuitous course to Sicily, then sailed to the Morea, where he gained news of the French, and on August I came in sight of Alexandria and the French fleet.  “Before this time to-morrow,” he said to his officers, “I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey.”

Bonaparte’s ships of war, under Admiral Brueys, were moored in Aboukir Bay in a strong line of battle; and the advantage of numbers, both in ships, guns, and men, was in favour of the French.  Yet only four French ships out of seventeen escaped, and the victory was the most complete and glorious in the annals of naval history.