Footnotes

ʻEQUIPPING TEN SAIL OF THE LINE': BRITAIN PREPARES FOR WAR WITH SPAIN. This memorandum marks a response to the crisis that had arisen over Nootka Sound, an inlet in the coast of Vancouver Island: ʻThe previous year two Spanish ships had arrived at Nootka Sound to claim this corner of the Pacific Northwest for their king. A pair of British trading ships found bartering with the local Indians were seized, their crews carried off to a Mexico jail, and the formal pretensions of the Spanish government duly presented in London. Pitt was not impressed. He demanded the release of His Britannic Majesty's subjects and countered with territorial claims of his own. Sabres rattled ominously' (John Sugden, Nelson: A Dream of Glory, 2004, p. 397). On 5 May the Commons debated the King's message delivered to the House ʻrespecting Vessels captured by Spain at Nootka Sound', with further debates following that month. William Eden, Lord Auckland (whose proposal Leeds has here forwarded to the King) was Ambassador to The Hague and had prevailed upon the Dutch to provide material assistance to Britain in the form of a naval squadron. But in the event, Spain climbed down and signed a humiliating convention that October, and the navy reverted to its peacetime state.

Although the French Revolution had broken out the previous July, at this stage Louis XVI was still on his throne and it was widely seen more as a welcome discomfiture of a traditional foe than as a threat. War with revolutionary France was not to break out until more than two years later. Nevertheless, the Nootka crisis had briefly raised hopes of young officers mouldering on half-pay such as Nelson. The crisis was such as to induce him to travel up to London from Burnham Thorpe that May to lobby for a posting; although, hopes dashed, he soon returned home, complaining that ʻMy not being appointed to a Ship is so very mortifying, that I cannot find words to express what I feel' (letter to William Duke of Clarence, 24 June 1790, in Nicolas, Dispatches and Letters, i).