Preoccupied, however, with numerous and more pressing cares in many quarters of the world, and overweighted in a universal struggle with outnumbering foes, Great Britain could spare but scanty forces to her West India Islands, and from them Governor Dalling could muster but five hundred men for his Nicaraguan undertaking.  Nelson was directed to convoy these with the “Hinchinbrook” to the mouth of the San Juan del Norte, where was the port now commonly called Greytown, in those days a fine and spacious harbor.  There his charge ended; but his mental constitution never allowed him to look upon a military task as well done while anything remained to do.  In the spirit of his famous saying, fifteen years later, “Were ten ships out of eleven taken, I would never call it well done if the eleventh escaped, if able to get at her,” he determined to go with the troops.  With his temperament it was impossible to turn his back upon the little body of soldiers, whose toilsome advance up the tropical stream might be aided and hastened by his ready seamen.

The first objective of the expedition was Fort San Juan, a powerful work controlling the river of the same name, and thereby the only natural water transit between the sea and Lake Nicaragua.  Upon the possession of this, as a position of vantage and a safe depot for supplies and reinforcements, Dalling based his hopes of future advance, both west and south.  Nelson took with him forty-seven seamen and marines from his ship’s company; the former, aided by some Indians, doing most of the labor of forcing the boats against the current, through shoal and tortuous channels, under his own constant supervision and encouragement.  A small outpost that withstood their progress was by him intrepidly stormed, sword in hand, by sudden assault; and upon reaching Fort San Juan he urgently recommended the same summary method to the officer commanding the troops.  The latter, however, was not one of the men who recognize the necessity for exceptional action.  Regular approaches, though the slower, were the surer way of reducing a fortified place, and entailed less bloodshed.  Professional rule commonly demanded them, and to professional rule he submitted.  Nelson argued that through delays, which, however incurred, were now past discussion, the expedition had reached its destination in April, at the end of the healthy, dry season, instead of shortly after its beginning, in January.  Consequently, owing to the fall of the water, much additional trouble had been experienced in the advance, the men were proportionately weakened by toil and exposure, and the wet months, with their dire train of tropical diseases, were at hand.  Therefore, though more might fall by the enemy’s weapons in a direct attack, the ultimate loss would be less than by the protracted and sickly labors of the spade; while with San Juan subdued, the force could receive all the care possible in such a climate, and under the best conditions await the return of good weather for further progress.