The Albemarle was finally paid on 3 July 1783, and Nelson requested permission to go on leave to France. It was the beginning of a particularly difficult time in his life, when his naval career faltered and almost ended, and when he had to endure the frustration of a long spell of unemployment. The material gathered here from various sources throws interesting new light on this stage in his career. In particular, it illuminates the time he spent on half pay, farming at Burnham Thorpe – a period that most biographies pass over in a few pages, mainly because of a dearth hitherto of interesting material.

To begin with, all seemed to be going well. Thanks to the influence of his new patron, Lord Hood, he obtained a rare peacetime appointment, in command of the frigate HMS Boreas in the West Indies between 1784 and 1787. But the commission proved unhappy. First, he quickly clashed with his old antagonist, Sir Richard Hughes. The letter printed here (178), in which he refuses to accept one of Hughes's protégés as a lieutenant, and argues instead for the appointment of one of his own junior officers, Joseph Bromwich, is couched in such exaggeratedly courteous terms that it is clearly intended to be insolent. He hints at these difficulties in the letter printed here to his close friend, William Cornwallis, (179) ‘the Admiral I shall say nothing about’, and also mentions in passing ‘my only female friend’. He was referring to Mrs Mary Moutray, the attractive young wife of the Commissioner of English Harbour in Antigua, with whom he had fallen in love, calling her openly, ‘my sweet amiable friend’.

In professional matters, his natural impulsiveness, and occasionally over-rigid sense of duty, led him to two clashes with authority. One was with Commissioner Moutray over whether the land-based Moutray was entitled to fly the distinguishing broad pendant of a naval commodore in a frigate stationed in English Harbour. The opening shot in the dispute, Nelson's letter to the frigate's captain, Charles Sandys, is printed here for the first time (181). The other, more serious, was his handling of a dispute over illicit trading between the colonies and the newly independent American states. His behaviour created some powerful enemies among the rich British traders and senior officials in the area.