24 OCTOBER 1941, Page 4

Reading, as it happened, Southey's Life of Nelson last Monday,

the eve of the anniversary of Trafalgar, I came on a passage which drove home rather vividly the realities of a sailor's life at the turn of the eighteenth century. Three months before the Battle of Trafalgar—on July 20th, 1805—Nelson wrote in his diary: " I went on shore for the first time since June 16th, 1803, and from having my foot out of the ' Victory,' two years, wanting ten days." The ' Victory,' from which the Admiral never moved for two years, less ten days, was (and is) a vessel of 2,152 tons burden, 186 feet long over all. For fourteen months of that time Nelson was doing nothing more exhilarating than pitching up and down off Toulon, hoping for the French fleet to emerge.