Lady Hamilton is credited with planning (with heroic skill) means by which the Royal Family could be taken to the shore, where Nelson was to receive and convoy them in barges to the Vanguard.  Lady Hamilton had explored a subterranean passage which led from the palace to the beach, and pronounced it a fairly safe and possible means of exit.  The plan apparently succeeded, and the royal party, after a few days’ precautionary stay in the Bay of Naples, were conveyed in safety to Palermo, notwithstanding the hurricane that was encountered and only weathered by a perfection of seamanship that was unequalled in our naval and merchant services at that period of our trying history.  The voyage was not made without tragedy, for the youngest of the princes became ill, and as it is always inevitable to attach a heroine to circumstances that are sensational (when there is one at hand), their Majesties in their grief fixed on her who had braved the perils of investigating the possibilities of the subterranean tunnel which had proved a safe though hazardous passage for the conveyance of themselves and their vast treasure.  Nor do they appear to have been unmindful of her devotion to themselves during the storm, which was the severest that Nelson said he had ever experienced—­though this is a platitude, as sailors are always prone to regard the last storm as the most terrific of all!  But that it was severe there can be no doubt.  We may be assured that the royal parents were not in a condition to give succour to their stricken son, so he was vouchsafed to pass beyond the veil in the arms of Lady Hamilton, who had bravely defied the tempest and behaved with a compassion that must always stand to her credit.

They arrived at Palermo the day after the young Prince’s death, and soon settled down to their gambling and other pleasures in which Nelson, as already stated, was involved.  Troubridge, with touching fidelity, pleads with him to shun the temptations by which he is beset.  “I dread, my Lord,” he says, “all the feasting, etc., at Palermo.  I am sure your health will be hurt.  If so, all their saints will be damned by the Navy”; and then he goes on to say, “The King would be better employed digesting a good Government; everything gives way to their pleasures.  The money spent at Palermo gives discontent here; fifty thousand people are unemployed, trade discouraged, manufactures at a stand.  It is the interest of many here to keep the King away; they all dread reform."[13] Troubridge was wellnigh driven to distraction by the terrible straits he was put to at Naples.  The people were faced with the ravages of famine.  Already there were scenes of unspeakable misery.  His appeals to the Sicilian Court to send immediate relief was ignored.  Nelson, to whom he had appealed, was absorbed in his attentions to Lady Hamilton, and refused to see the vicious indifference of the Court, who were hemmed round with a set of knaves and vagabonds, if that be not too moderate a term to use of them.  Troubridge beseeches him to come to the rescue in the following terms:—­