Lieutenant Pasco, Nelson’s signal officer on the Victory, looked annoyed. The fleet, 27 ships-of-the-line, had the French and Spanish fleet, 33 of the line, bottled up in Cadiz harbour. Another round, it seemed, of the long, tedious, thankless business of blockade.
It had gone on, more or less, for two years. For most of this time, the Royal Navy had been blockading the enemy in their harbours to prevent Napoleon assembling a fleet to escort his army across the Channel for the invasion of England.
The only real excitement had been a chase across the Atlantic and back, when Admiral Pierre Villeneuve had broken away for the West Indies, and Nelson had pursued him there. But even this had been forlorn: the opportunity to fight the great battle to destroy the enemy fleet for which Nelson longed had never come. And now it was back to offshore blockade.
