There is a curious anecdote related, and that from the very best authority, respecting one of the young gentlemen thus taken as a midshipman by Captain Nelson.  The father of this youth, though a friend of Captain Nelson, happened to be a very staunch whig.  The youth, therefore, he apprehended, might possibly require some little counteraction of the principles of modern whiggism, which he did not think very conducive to the loyalty and subordination of a young British sailor.  Accordingly, when this youth came on board, he called him into his cabbin, and immediately addressed him in the most impressive manner, to the following effect.

“There are three things, young gentleman,” said he, “which you are constantly to bear in mind:  first, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety; secondly, you must consider every man as your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and, thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman as you do the devil.”

The youth, who had been thus prepared, always conducted himself with great propriety; and, it is believed, ever afterwards retained a truly filial regard for his friendly patron.

Captain Nelson was perfectly indefatigable in getting his ship ready for sea.  In a letter to Captain Locker, written at the Navy Office, the beginning of February 1793, where his brother Maurice had long held a situation, after requesting him to discharge Maurice Suckling, and such men as may be on board the Sandwich, into the Agamemnon, he says—­“Pray, have you got a clerk whom you can recommend?  I want one very much, I urge nothing; I know your willingness to serve.  The Duke of Clarence desires me to say, that he requests you will discharge Joseph King into the Agamemnon; or, that I am welcome to any other man, to assist me in fitting out.  He is but poorly; but expresses the greatest satisfaction at the appointment you are likely to succeed to, and in which no one rejoices more than your affectionate Horatio Nelson.”

In another letter to this much honoured and honourable officer, written at Chatham towards the end of the same month, he congratulates him on having obtained his appointment, which was that of Lieutenant-Governor of Greenwich Hospital; from which, he hopes, his friend will derive every comfort:  and tells him, that he need not hurry himself about the charts, as he shall certainly see him before he sails.

It was not, in fact, till about the middle of May, that the Agamemnon, in company with the Robust of seventy-four guns, Captain the Honourable George Keith Elphinstone, proceeded to it’s station in the Mediterranean, under the command of Lord Hood; who followed, a few days after, with the rest of his fleet, from Plymouth, on the 22d of that month.