The most remarkable instance, however, of this promptness to assert the dignity and rights of his official position, allowing no man to despise his youth, occurred very soon after his arrival upon the station, and brought him to a direct issue with his commander-in-chief,—­if not, indeed, with an authoritative precedent set by so great a man as Lord Rodney.  Young though he still was in years,—­only twenty-six,—­Nelson was by date of commission the senior captain in the small squadron, of some half-dozen vessels, to which the economies of the administration had reduced the Leeward Islands station.  Being thus next in rank to the admiral, the latter, who made his headquarters at Barbadoes in the southern part of the station, sent him to the northern division, centring about the island of Antigua.  Having remained in harbor, as was usual, during the hurricane months, Nelson cruised during the winter and until February, 1785, when some damage received compelled the “Boreas” to put into Antigua for repairs.  Here he found a vessel of the squadron, whose own captain was of course junior to him, flying a Commodore’s broad pendant, which asserted the official presence of a captain superior to himself in rank and command, and duly qualified to give him orders.  He at once asked the meaning of this from the ship’s proper commander, and was informed by him that Captain Moutray, an old officer, twenty years his senior on the post list, and then acting as Commissioner of the Navy, a civil office connected with the dockyard at Antigua, had directed it to be hoisted, and claimed to exercise control over all men-of-war in the harbor, during the admiral’s absence.

Nelson was not wholly unprepared for this, for Hughes had notified him and the other captains that Moutray was authorized by himself to take this step.  Being then away from the island, he had replied guardedly that if Commissioner Moutray was put into commission, he would have great pleasure in serving under him,—­thus reserving his decision to the moment for action.  He now took the ground that an officer not commissioned afloat, but holding only a civil appointment, could not exercise naval command,—­that an order authorizing him to do so was invalid,—­that to entitle him to such command he must be put into military commission by being attached to a ship in commission.  He therefore flatly declined to obey Moutray’s orders, refusing to admit his claim to be considered a commodore, or entitled to military obedience, unless he produced a commission.  This he held to when Moutray gave him a written order to put himself under his command.