deceive Nelson as to the whereabouts of the combined French and Spanish Fleet, have given place to conditions under which it is next door to impossible to conceal the movements of vessels in any part of the world, but content myself with affirming that, in sailing away, Nelson left behind him a fleet capable of holding the Channel against any force that might be brought against it, and in the teeth of which no transports would venture to put to sea. Wherever the bulk of Napoleon's Navy might be, he knew that its total strength was eighty men-of-war, and those eighty too scattered to be capable of rapid concentration, whereas Great Britain had sixty ships of the line and as many, or more, frigates, so disposed that, at short notice, they could be brought together in the Straits of Dover.[1] Consequently, England was not, at this juncture, any more than
- ↑ Admiral Sir Vesey Hamilton in the Nineteenth Century for March 1906.
