The various papers and documents which fill this volume, and those which are to be embodied in its successor, are an essential complement to the ' Letters and Dispatches ' of Nelson of the same period included in the volumes edited by Sir N. Harris Nicolas. Hitherto our understanding of the conditions of the great blockade of 1 803-5 has necessarily been partial and imperfect. The character of the operations within the Mediterranean is, indeed, well known, but no sort of justice has been done to the achievement of Cornwallis and his captains. Their work as blockaders was more important and more successful than that of Nelson at the same period. The tenacity of Cornwallis prepared the way for Trafalgar ; it had already forced upon Napoleon the consciousness of his impotence, and was to drive him to those continental complications which led to the catastrophe of Waterloo. As Captain Mahan finely says, in a sentence often quoted, ' Those storm-beaten ships, upon which the soldiers of the grande armed never looked, stood between them and the dominion of the world.'
A letter conveying to Keith the ideas of the Admiralty as to the dispositions he should make and the tactics he should pursue, to resist any attempted descent upon the coast in the winter of 1803-4, is an instance.