ABSTRACT
The contrast with the navy's record was bitter. Since the start of the war eight years earlier in 1793 British seamen had won great fleet battles and innumerable single-ship actions, bagging seventy-eight enemy ships of the line and 400 frigates and smaller vessels. Josef Haydn had celebrated their glory in song, and peerages had been showered on their admirals. Not one peerage had been bestowed on a military commander. Nor did the navy conceal its contempt for the sister service. 'Our Army does not stand very high in the estimation of the Navy officers', a military officer observed during the Cadiz fiasco; and the great seaman Lord St Vincent looked forward to the day when the whole army except the King's Guards and artillery would be abolished and replaced by an enlarged corps of marines.2
