“The great thing in all military service is health,” he wrote to his old friend, Dr. Moseley, who had been with him in the far-back Central American expedition in 1780; “and you will agree with me, that it is easier for an officer to keep men healthy, than for a physician to cure them.  Situated as this fleet has been, without a friendly port, where we could get all the things so necessary for us, yet I have, by changing the cruizing ground, not allowed the sameness of prospect to satiate the mind—­sometimes by looking at Toulon, Ville Franche, Barcelona, and Rosas; then running round Minorca, Majorca; Sardinia and Corsica; and two or three times anchoring for a few days, and sending a ship to the last place for onions, which I find the best thing that can be given to seamen; having always good mutton for the sick, cattle when we can get them, and plenty of fresh water.  In the winter it is the best plan to give half the allowance of grog, instead of all wine.  These things are for the commander-in-chief to look to; but shut very nearly out from Spain, and only getting refreshments by stealth from other places, my command has been an arduous one.”  “Our men’s minds,” he added, “are always kept up with the daily hopes of meeting the enemy.”  An order indicating one of the squadron movements, of which he here speaks, may be worth quoting.  “Whereas it is my intention,” he writes at Number 97 to the captain there stationed, “to proceed with the squadron, the first westerly wind, off Toulon, for the purpose of reconnoitring the enemy at that port, and from thence pass through Rendezvous No. 102, to secure any information the ships there may have obtained of them, you are hereby required and directed to keep on your station and inform any of his Majesty’s ships arriving on said rendezvous,” etc.

The health of the crews, thus carefully watched, remained excellent throughout, and is mentioned by him continually with evident pride as well as satisfaction.  Occasional slight outbursts of scurvy are noted, despite his efforts for fresh food, and he mentions hectic complaints—­“of the few men we have lost, nine in ten are dead of consumption “—­but upon the whole, the general condition is unparalleled in his experience.  “We are healthy beyond example, and in great good humour with ourselves,” he writes in October, 1803, “and so sharp-set, that I would not be a French Admiral in the way of any of our ships for something.”  It would be tedious to quote the numerous assertions to the same effect scattered up and down his correspondence at this time; but in December, 1804, when near the end of this long period of suspense, and after eighteen months at sea, he writes to the Admiralty:  “The Fleet is in perfect good health and good humour, unequalled by anything which has ever come within my knowledge, and equal to the most active service which the times may call for.”  Dr. Gillespie, who joined the “Victory” as physician to the fleet in January, 1805, wrote immediately afterwards that out of her eight hundred and forty men, but one was confined to his bed by sickness, and that the other ships, though upwards of twenty months off Toulon, were in a like condition of health.