she received on board six hundred troops, under the command of Colonel William Stewart, to whom we owe the fullest and most interesting account of the expedition in general, and of the Battle of Copenhagen in particular, that has been transmitted by an eye-witness.  The ship sailed again on the 2d of March for Yarmouth, where she arrived on the 6th.  The next day Nelson went to call on the commander-in-chief, who was living on shore, his flag flying on board a vessel in the roads.  “I remember,” says Colonel Stewart, “that Lord Nelson regretted Sir Hyde being on shore.  We breakfasted that morning as usual, soon after six o’clock, for we were always up before daylight.  We went on shore, so as to be at Sir Hyde’s door at eight o’clock, Lord Nelson choosing to be amusingly exact to that hour, which he considered as a very late one for business.”

At this, his first official visit, the commander-in-chief, it is said, scarcely noticed him, and Nelson, as will be seen, complained freely of the treatment he at the beginning received.  Parker was now verging on old age, but he had recently married a young wife, who was in Yarmouth with him, and the two had arranged to give a great ball on the 13th of March; altogether a bad combination for a military undertaking.  Nelson, who was in haste to get away,—­chiefly because of his sound martial instinct that this was peculiarly a case for celerity, but partly, also, because of anxiety to get the thing over and done, and to return to his home comforts,—­appears to have represented matters unofficially to the Admiralty, a step for which his personal intimacy with St. Vincent and Troubridge afforded easy opportunity; and an express quickly arrived, ordering the fleet to sea at once.[22] “The signal is made to prepare to unmoor at twelve o’clock,” wrote Nelson to Troubridge on the 11th.  “Now we can have no desire for staying, for her ladyship is gone, and the Ball for Friday knocked up by yours and the Earl’s unpoliteness, to send gentlemen to sea instead of dancing with white gloves.  I will only say,” he continues, “as yet I know not that we are even going to the Baltic, except from the newspapers, and at sea I cannot go out of my ship but with serious inconvenience,”—­owing to the loss of his arm.  What was not told him before starting, therefore, could not be told by mouth till after arrival.

It will be remembered that Sir Hyde Parker had succeeded Hotham in the chief command of the Mediterranean, for a brief but critical month in 1795,[23] and that Nelson had then complained of his action as regards the general conduct of the campaign, and specifically for having reduced to the point of inefficiency the small squadron under Nelson’s own direction, upon which the most important issues hinged.  Possibly Parker had heard this, possibly the notorious disregard of Keith’s orders a few months before influenced him to keep his renowned, but independent, subordinate at a distance in official matters.  It was not