“From the previous fatigue of this day, and of the two preceding, Lord Nelson was so much exhausted while dictating his instructions, that it was recommended to him by us all, and, indeed, insisted upon by his old servant, Allen, who assumed much command on these occasions, that he should go to his cot.  It was placed on the floor, but from it he still continued to dictate.  Captain Hardy returned about eleven.  He had rowed as far as the leading ship of the enemy; sounding round her, and using a pole when he was apprehensive of being heard.  He reported the practicability of the Channel, and the depth of water up to the ships of the enemy’s line.  Had we abided by this report, in lieu of confiding in our Masters and Pilots, we should have acted better.  The Orders were completed about one o’clock, when half a dozen clerks in the foremost cabin proceeded to transcribe them.  Lord Nelson’s impatience again showed itself; for instead of sleeping undisturbedly, as he might have done, he was every half hour calling from his cot to these clerks to hasten their work, for that the wind was becoming fair:  he was constantly receiving a report of this during the night.”  It was characteristic of the fortune of the “heaven-born” admiral, that the wind which had been fair the day before to take him south, changed by the hour of battle to fair to take him north; but it is only just to notice also that he himself never trifled with a fair wind, nor with time.

The Orders for Battle, the process of framing which Stewart narrates, have been preserved in full;[30] but they require a little study and analysis to detect Nelson’s thought, and their tactical merit, which in matters of detail is unique among his works.  At the Nile and Trafalgar he contented himself with general plans, to meet cases which he could only foresee in broad outlines; the method of application he reserved to the moment of battle, when again he signified the general direction of the attack, and left the details to his subordinates.  Here at Copenhagen he had been able to study the hostile dispositions.  Consequently, although he could not mark with precision the situations of the smaller floating batteries, those of the principal blockships were known, and upon that knowledge lie based very particular instructions for the position each ship-of-the-line was to occupy.  The smaller British vessels also had specific orders.

Taking the Trekroner as a point of reference for the Danish order, there were north of it, on the Danish left flank, two blockships.  South of it were seven blockships, with a number of miscellaneous floating batteries, which raised that wing of the defence to eighteen—­the grand total being therefore twenty.  This was also Nelson’s count, except that he put one small vessel on the north wing, reducing the southern to seventeen—­an immaterial difference.  South of the Trekroner, the Danes had disposed their seven blockships—­which were mastless ships-of-the-line—­as follows.