the “Aigle.”  For a while, indeed, he placed there an eighty-gun ship, but the gradual deterioration of his squadron and the increase of Latouche Treville’s obliged him to recall her, and at times his anxiety was great; not the less because Gore, like other frigate captains, entertained the fancy that his three frigates might contend with a ship-of-the-line.  “Your intentions of attacking that ship with the small squadron under your command are certainly very laudable; but I do not consider your force by any means equal to it.”  The question of two or three small ships against one large involves more considerations than number and weight of guns.  Unity of direction and thickness of sides—­defensive strength, that is—­enter into the problem.  As Hawke said, “Big ships take a good deal of drubbing.”  Howe’s opinion was the same as Nelson’s; and Hardy, Nelson’s captain, said, “After what I have seen at Trafalgar, I am satisfied it would be mere folly, and ought never to succeed."[74] What Hardy saw at Trafalgar, however, was not frigates against ships-of-the-line, but vessels of the latter class opposed, smaller against greater.

It seems singular, with such a weak link in the chain of communication from the Mediterranean to England, that the Admiralty, on the outbreak of the war with Spain, in the latter part of 1804, should have divided Nelson’s command at this very point, leaving as a somewhat debatable ground, for mutual jealousy, that through which valuable interests must pass, and where they must be transferred.  The reason and manner of this division, impolitic and inopportune as it was, and bitterly as Nelson resented it, seem to have been misunderstood.  Convinced that he could not endure another winter such as the last, he made a formal application, about the middle of August, 1804, for permission to go home for a while.  “I consider the state of my health to be such as to make it absolutely necessary that I should return to England to re-establish it.  Another winter such as the last, I feel myself unable to stand against.  A few months of quiet may enable me to serve again next spring; and I believe that no officer is more anxious to serve than myself.”  In accordance with this last intimation, which speaks his whole heart, he wrote privately to the First Lord that he would like to come back in the spring, if his health were restored, as he believed it would be; and he assured him that his second, Bickerton, whose rank did not entitle him to the chief command under ordinary conditions, was perfectly fitted to hold it during his absence—­in short, to keep the place warm for his return.