The latter he rightly considered his principal mission, success in which would solve most other maritime difficulties.

"My first object must ever be to keep the French fleet in check; and, if they put to sea, to have force enough with me to _annihilate_ them.

That would keep the Two Sicilies free from any attack from sea." On the 8th of July the "Amphion" joined the fleet off Toulon.

It numbered then nine ships-of-the-line, with three smaller cruisers.

"As far as outside show goes," he reported to St.Vincent, "the ships look very well; but they complain of their bottoms, and are very short of men." The fact was, as he afterwards explained, that before the war came they had been expecting every day to go to England, and consequently had been allowed to run down gradually, a result which doubtless had been hastened by St.Vincent's stringent economies.
Gibraltar and Malta were both bare, Nelson wrote six months later, and it was not the fault of the naval storekeepers.