"Everything, my dear Lord," wrote Nelson, the day after he hoisted his flag at Sheerness, "must have a beginning, and we are literally at the foundation of our fabric of defence;" but, he continues, reverting to his own and St.
Vincent's clear and accurate military intuitions, "I agree perfectly with you, that we must keep the enemy as far from our own coasts as possible, and be able to attack them the moment they come out of their ports." "Our first defence," he writes a fortnight later, showing the gradual maturing of the views which he, in common with St.Vincent, held with such illustrious firmness in the succeeding years, "is close to the enemy's ports.

When that is broke, others will come forth on our own coasts." It was in the latter that the unexpected anxieties of 1801 found the Government deficient, and these it was to be Nelson's first care to organize and dispose.

By the time his duties were completed, and the problems connected with them had been two months under his consideration, he had reached the conclusion which Napoleon also held, and upon which he acted.

"This boat business may be a part of a great plan of Invasion, but can never be the only one." From the first he had contemplated the possibility of the French fleets in Brest and elsewhere attempting diversions, such as Napoleon planned in support of his later great projects.

"Although I feel confident that the fleets of the enemy will meet the same fate which has always attended them, yet their sailing will facilitate the coming over of their flotilla, as they will naturally suppose our attention will be called only to the fleets." What was feared in 1801 was not a grand military operation, in the nature of an attempt at conquest, or, at the least, at injury so serious as to be disabling, but rather something in the nature of a great raid, of which the most probable object was the city of London, the chief commercial centre.