command to stop short of the opponent.  After being placed, speed was regulated by backing or filling the mizzen-topsail, thus maintaining the relative positions, and directing fire upon the enemy’s rudder.  In this situation the fore-topsail yard and foretopmast of the Crescent were shot away in quick succession, and the ship flew up head to wind, bringing all her sails aback.  For a moment she was in an awkward plight, but the Reunion, drawing away, could not rake; and Saumarez, by adroit management of the rudder and sails, backed his ship round,—­always a nice operation and especially when near an enemy,—­till the wind came again abaft, restoring the normal conditions of moving ahead under control of the helm.  The contest was then renewed, and ended in the surrender of the French vessel.  The disparity of loss—­1 British to 118 French—­proved the discipline of the Crescent and the consummate seamanship of her commander.  For this exploit Saumarez was knighted.  Faithful to his constant preference, he as soon as possible exchanged into a ship-of-the-line, the Orion, of seventy-four guns.  In her he again bore a foremost part, in 1795, in a fleet-battle off the Biscay coast of France, where three enemy’s ships were taken; and two years later he was in the action with the Spaniards off Cape St. Vincent, of which an account has been given in the sketch of Earl St. Vincent.  After this Saumarez remained on the same station, blockading Cadiz.

In the following year, 1798, it became necessary to send a small detachment into the Mediterranean, and off the chief arsenal of the enemy, Toulon, to ascertain the facts concerning a great armament, since known as Bonaparte’s Egyptian expedition, which rumor said was there in preparation.  The hazardous nature of the duty, which advanced three ships of medium size, unsupported, in the very teeth of over a dozen enemies, many of superior strength, demanded the utmost efficiency in each member of the little body so exposed; a consideration which doubtless led Lord St. Vincent to choose Saumarez, though one of the senior captains, for this service, of which Nelson, the junior flag officer of the fleet, was given charge.

It seems scarcely credible that, when it was afterwards decided to raise this detachment to fourteen ships-of-the-line, sufficient to cope with the enemy, both St. Vincent and Nelson wished to remove Saumarez, with his antecedents of brilliant service, so as to allow Troubridge, his junior, to be second in command.  The fact, however, is certain.  Nelson had orders which would have allowed him to send the Orion back, when thus proceeding on a service pregnant with danger and distinction, to the immeasurable humiliation of her brave commander.  After making every deduction for the known partiality for Troubridge of both St. Vincent and Nelson, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Saumarez, with all his undoubted merit, was in their eyes inferior