Certainly he achieved success.
It was in the midst of this legal warfare, and of the preoccupations arising from it, that Nelson first met the lady who became his wife.
She was by birth a Miss Frances Woolward, her mother being a sister of the Mr.Herbert already mentioned as President of the Council in Nevis.

She was born in the first half of 1758,[12] and was therefore a few months older than Nelson.

In 1779 she had married Dr.Josiah Nisbet, of Nevis, and the next year was left a widow with one son, who bore his father's full name.

After her husband's death, being apparently portionless, she came to live with Herbert, who looked upon and treated her as his own child, although he also had an only daughter.

When Nelson first arrived at Nevis, in January, 1785,[13] she was absent, visiting friends in a neighboring island, so that they did not then meet,--a circumstance somewhat fortunate for us, because it led to a description of him being sent to her in a letter from a lady of Herbert's family, not improbably her cousin, Miss Herbert.
Nelson had then become a somewhat conspicuous factor in the contracted interests of the island society, owing to the stand he had already publicly assumed with reference to the contraband trade.