On his arrival in England, though then barely in existence, and almost wholly without the use of his limbs, such was the excessive ardour of his mind for employ, that nothing could prevent him from being immediately carried to the Admiralty, and applying for a ship.  “This they readily promised me,” he jocosely observed, soon after, to one of his relations, “thinking it not possible for me to live.”

He now went, directly, to Bath:  where he was, at first, under the necessity of being carried to the springs, and wherever else he wanted to go; and, for several weeks afterwards, constrained to use crutches.  These, however, he at length threw aside, much sooner than his friends at the Admiralty had expected; though it was nearly three months before he entirely recovered the use of his limbs.  In a letter which he wrote, from this place, dated February 15, 1781, to his friend Captain Locker, he observes that he is, thank God, very near perfectly restored; having the complete use of all his limbs, except his left arm, of which he can hardly tell the ailment:  from the shoulder to his fingers ends felt as if half dead, but the faculty gave him hopes that it would all go off.  He expresses his anxiety to be employed; and, as if willing to demonstrate that his spirits were more lively than his limb, he says, with considerable pleasantry and wit, speaking of three portraits—­one of the present Admiral George Montague, another of Sir Charles Pole, and the third of himself, which was then painting by Mr. Rigaud as a present for Captain Locker—­“I hope, when I come to town, to see a fine trio in your room.  When you get the pictures, I must be in the middle; for, God knows, without good supporters, I shall fall to the ground.”

After the restoration of his health, he paid a visit to his worthy and venerable father, at Burnham-Thorpe; as well as to his amiable eldest sister, then recently married to Mr. Bolton, who resided at Wells, about five miles distant, and other relatives and friends in the county of Norfolk:  few of whom, except his father, had ever once beheld him for the last eleven years.  The felicity of such a meeting is not to be described, and it can only be conceived by those who have experienced similar sensations.

At length, in August 1781, Captain Nelson was appointed to the command of the Albemarle of twenty-eight guns.  In this ship, which had been a French merchantman, captured two years before, and purchased for the king’s service, his delicate constitution underwent a new and severe trial; being employed, the whole winter, convoying and cruizing in the North Seas.  The inconvenience, too, as well as the dangers, of this service, were in no slight degree augmented, by the mast’s having been made much too long for the ship; a circumstance which had, at several times, nearly occasioned it to be overset.  These perils, too, were wholly unattended with what may be denominated any success; as the Dutch, the greater part of the time, had not a single trading vessel at sea:  and, though a privateer, said to be the noted pirate, Fall, stole into the fleet which the Albemarle was convoying, it got clear off, after an hour’s chace, owing to the necessity of Captain Nelson’s returning to the unprotected ships.