There her duty was to board passing vessels, and take from them as many of their crew as were above the number barely necessary for the safety of the ship.

She herself, besides acting as receiving ship for the men thus pressed, was to be kept in readiness to sail at a moment's warning.
Mrs.Nelson had therefore to leave her and go to London.

"Here we are," wrote Nelson on the 23d of September, "laying seven miles from the land on the Impress service, and I am as much separated from my wife as if I were in the East Indies;" and he closes the letter with the words, "I am this moment getting under sail after some ships." His early biographers say that Nelson keenly felt and resented the kind of service in which he was then engaged; so much so that, moved also by other causes of irritation, he decided at one time to quit the Navy.

No indication of such feeling, however, appears in his letters.
On the contrary, one of the surest signs with him of pleasurable, or at least of interested, excitement, was now manifested in his improving health.

As he himself said, many years later, "To say the truth, when I am actively employed I am not so bad."[17] A month after reaching England, though then midsummer, he wrote: "It is not kind in one's native air to treat a poor wanderer as it has me since my arrival.