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 seniority, but of fitness, and that as the responsibility was his, so must the selection be. Accordingly, on 19 May 1798, he detached Troubridge, with ten ships of the line and the Leander of 50 guns, to join Nelson and deliver his altered instructions. When these vessels met Nelson near Cape Corse on 7 June, they raised his force to fourteen ships, including the Leander; but the frigates, by some misunderstanding, had gone back to the fleet, and never rejoined him. Still, there was no news of the French, and it was not till 14 June that Nelson learnt that they had been seen on the 4th off Trapani, steering to the east. He decided at once to stand to the southward, and to send to Naples for further intelligence, as well as for assurance that he could victual and water in the Neapolitan ports, to which, by the recent treaty with France, no more than four ships at one time were to be admitted. Accordingly, on the morning of 17 June, Troubridge went in the Mutine, saw Sir William Hamilton and Sir John Francis Edward Acton [q. v.], who, on understanding the position, gave him a letter addressed to the governors of the several ports of Sicily, enjoining them to welcome and to assist the English squadron (United Service Magazine, May 1889, p. 18). With this message, and the report that the French had gone to Malta, Troubridge returned to the fleet, which immediately made sail for Messian. On the 22nd, near Cape Passaro, Nelson learnt that the French had taken Malta on the 15th, and had sailed the next day for the eastward. Till then he had believed that the expedition was aimed at Sicily; it now, apparently for the first time, occurred to him that their object was Egypt—‘to possess themselves of some port there, and to fix themselves at the head of the Red Sea, in order to get a formidable army into India, and, in concert with Tippoo Sahib, to drive us, if possible, from India.’ But on 26 June, as the squadron was nearing Alexandria, he wrote: ‘I have reason to believe, from not seeing a vessel, that they have heard of my coming up the Mediterranean, and are got safe into Corfu.’ This marks the extreme uncertainty under which he was labouring; so that when, on arriving off Alexandria on the 28th, and finding there neither French nor news of the French, he at once turned back, on the supposition that his guess—for it was nothing more—had been wrong, and that the enemy must have gone up the Adriatic or the Archipelago. All that he really knew was that they had five or six days' start of him from off Cape Passaro; he believed that if they were bound for Egypt, he must have sighted them on the way, and therefore, concluding that they had gone somewhere else, he stretched to the north, and skirting the coast of Karamania, in case they might be making for Ayas Bay, returned westward, and went into Syracuse for water and fresh provisions. These Acton's letter procured for him without difficulty, though the governor felt bound to keep up the appearance of yielding to constraint (ib.)

On 25 July 1798 he sailed again, intending to search the Archipelago, to Constantinople; but on the 28th he learned, from two different sources, that the French had been seen about four weeks before, steering towards the south-east from Candia. Nelson immediately bore up under all sail for Alexandria, which was sighted on 1 Aug., and running along the coast to the eastward, as the squadron opened Aboukir Bay the Zealous made the signal for seeing the French fleet—sixteen sail of the line. In reality it consisted of thirteen, with four large frigates, lying at anchor close in shore. The French were surprised by the appearance of the English fleet. Their boats were on shore watering, and, though hastily recalled, the men were tired with a long day's work under a summer sun. Some were no doubt left on shore, but the want was supplied by the frigates, which sent a large proportion of their men to the ships of the line. It is said that Brueys, the French commander-in-chief, supposing that the attack would be postponed till the next day, intended during the night to form his line in closer order and nearer to the shore; but, even as it was, many of the French officers believed that the attack must be made on the seaward—that is, on the starboard—side, and in the hurry and confusion not only did not cast the larboard guns loose, but even piled up the mess furniture and bags between the guns on the larboard side. In the English ships, on the other hand, everything was in order. During the anxious weeks which had preceded, Nelson had had many opportunities of explaining to the several captains what he proposed to do if he found the enemy at anchor. He had probably told them, what some of them knew already, that the enemy would be apt to lumber up the guns on the inshore side; for he must have learned from Hood that they had done something of the kind at Dominica on 12 April 1782 [see ]. He had also learned from Hood the particulars of his engagement with De Grasse at St. Christopher's, rendered clearer by his personal knowledge of the locality; and he had seen and known the way in which Hood had proposed to attack Martin in Golfe Jouan.