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According to the system employed squadrons were formed, organized, equipped, and a certain amount of preliminary training carried out, at Farnborough, when on completion the squadron moved to one of the stations which I had established or was forming at Netheravon, Montrose, Gosport, Dover, and Orfordness, Netheravon being the largest.
No sooner had Nelson returned from the Baltic than he was, on July 24, placed in command of a "squadron on a particular service," charged with the defence of the coast from Beachy Head to Orfordness. With this he not only blockaded the northern French ports, but assumed the aggressive, and bombarded the vessels therein collected.
We got abreast of Orfordness, and went through the gate of the North Channel upon a wide grey plain. We were fairly at sea. We were out. The Windhover, being free, I suppose, began to dance. The sun came up. The seas were on the march.
3d, Thursday. The wind east-southeast, and we therefore sailed along the shore past Orfordness into the sea. The course thence to the Maes is east by south, but we sailed for the most part east, and sometimes east by north.
They follow each other, going very close by the Essex shore. Such as the beads of a rosary told by business-like shipowners for the greater profit of the world they slip one by one into the open: while in the offing the inward-bound ships come up singly and in bunches from under the sea horizon closing the mouth of the river between Orfordness and North Foreland.
At this town in particular, and so at all the towns on this coast, from Orfordness to Yarmouth, is the ordinary place where our summer friends the swallows first land when they come to visit us; and here they may be said to embark for their return, when they go back into warmer climates; and as I think the following remark, though of so trifling a circumstance, may be both instructing as well as diverting, it may be very proper in this place.
To be the head-man of any other village, and the captain of its fishing fleet, might prove no lofty eminence; but to be the leader of Springhaven was true and arduous greatness. From Selsey Bill to Orfordness, taking in all the Cinque Ports and all the port of London, there was not a place that insisted on, and therefore possessed, all its own rights so firmly as this village did.
Besides the stationed Ships at the different posts between the North Foreland and Orfordness, as many Gun-vessels as can be spared from the very necessary protection of the Coast of Sussex and of Kent to the westward of Dover, should be collected, for this part of the Coast must be seriously attended to; for supposing London the object of surprise, I am of opinion that the Enemy's object ought to be the getting on shore as speedily as possible, for the dangers of a navigation of forty-eight hours, appear to me to be an insurmountable objection to the rowing from Boulogne to the Coast of Essex.
The naval preparations were very great, and what gave yet more confidence than the number of vessels and guns, Nelson was put into command of the sea, from Orfordness to Beachy-head. Under his management, it soon became the question, not whether the French flotilla was to invade the British shores, but whether it was to remain in safety in the French harbours.
At half-past four hauled in for Fern Island; at five anchored under the lee in three fathoms, mud; bearings, the highest part of Fern Island South by East, the entrance to Escape River, North-West by West 1/2 West, hoisted the recall for the boat, on the return of which the officer reported as follows: I ran along close to the shore all day. I landed a little to the southward of Orfordness.
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