remain covering this uneventful period, little is known of his movements, except that he made an abortive attempt to recapture Turk’s Island from the French with a small force of ships he was able to gather at short notice.  An interesting indication of the spirit which animated him transpires in the first of the three letters mentioned.  He had received unexpected orders to wait in New York after Hood’s leaving.  “I was to have sailed with the fleet this day, but for some private reasons, when my ship was under sail from New York to join Lord Hood, at Sandy Hook, I was sent for on shore, and told I was to be kept forty-eight hours after the sailing of the fleet.  It is much to my private advantage,” allowing more latitude for picking up prizes, without having to share with the other ships, “but I had much rather have sailed with the fleet.”  “Money,” he continues, “is the great object here,” on the North American Station, “nothing else is attended to,”—­a motive of action which he always rejected with disdain, although by no means insensible to the value of money, nor ever thoroughly at his ease in the matter of income, owing largely to the lavish liberality with which he responded to the calls upon his generosity or benevolence.  A year later he wrote in the same strain:  “I have closed the war without a fortune; but I trust, and, from the attention that has been paid to me, believe, that there is not a speck in my character.  True honour, I hope, predominates in my mind far above riches.”

When news of the peace reached the West Indies, Hood was ordered to return with his fleet to England.  Nelson went home at the same time, being directed first to accompany Prince William Henry in a visit to Havana.  The “Albemarle” reached Spithead on the 25th of June, 1783, and was paid off a week later, her captain going on half-pay until the following April.  The cruise of nearly two years’ duration closed with this characteristic comment:  “Not an officer has been changed, except the second lieutenant, since the Albemarle was commissioned; therefore, it is needless to say, I am happy in my ship’s company.”  And again he writes:  “My ship was paid off last week, and in such a manner that must flatter any officer, in particular in these turbulent times.  The whole ship’s company offered, if I could get a ship, to enter for her immediately.”  Nelson was keenly alive to the impolicy and injury to the service involved in the frequent changes of officers and men from ship to ship.  “The disgust of the seamen to the Navy,” he wrote immediately after leaving the Albemarle, “is all owing to the infernal plan of turning them over from ship to ship, so that men cannot be attached to their officers, or the officers care twopence about them.”  This element of personal attachment is never left out of calculation safely.