At another time, some pears were wanted from the schoolmaster's garden. Without debating the question of the sin of stealing, nobody dared venture for fear of the consequences. Horatio volunteered to get them, was lowered at night by a sheet from his window, gathered the pears, and gave them to his mates, keeping none for himself. "I only took them," he said, "because every other boy was afraid."
His father was poor, always in frail health, and apparently unable to do much for his numerous progeny. Horatio determined to do something for himself. Seeing in the newspaper that his uncle on his mother's side, Captain Maurice Suckling, had been appointed in the navy to the ship Raisonnable, of sixty-four guns, Horatio said to his brother, a year and a half older than himself, "Do, William, write to my father, and tell him that I should like to go to sea with Uncle Maurice."
Mr. Nelson was at Bath for his health. He at once wrote to the captain about his twelve-year-old son, who was as sickly in body as himself. The uncle wrote back, "What has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he, above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea? But let him come, and the first time we go into action, a cannon-ball may knock off his head, and provide for him at once."
His father took him to London, from whence he found his way to Chatham, where the ship was lying. His uncle was absent at the time, and the first few days were lonely in the extreme. The sailors were rough, their treatment by officers often harsh, not to say cruel, and the lad who had so yearned for the sea soon came to despise the Royal Navy.
He soon went on a West Indian voyage, in a small merchant ship commanded by Mr. John Rathbone, who had served as master's mate under Captain Suckling. Here, with keen observation, and a constant desire to rise in his profession, he learned rapidly.
Later, young Nelson went as coxswain under Captain Lutwidge in the Carcass on a Polar voyage. They were beset by the ice; left their ships, expecting they would be crushed, and dragged their boats by hand; had the usual fights with walruses and bears, Nelson exposing himself in an encounter with the latter, that he might carry a skin home to his father.
Nelson's next voyage, at fifteen, was in the Seahorse, of twenty guns, to the East Indies in a squadron under Sir Edward Hughes. He was stationed at the foretop at watch and watch, where his attention to duty soon made him a midshipman.
After eighteen months in this debilitating climate, he became dangerously ill, and was sent home in the Dolphin in 1776. The youth of sixteen became very despondent. "I felt impressed," he says, "with an idea that I should never rise in my profession. My mind was staggered with a view of the difficulties I had to surmount, and the little interest I possessed. I could discover no means of reaching the object of my ambition. After a long and gloomy revery, in which I almost wished myself overboard, a sudden flow of patriotism was kindled within me and presented my king and country as my patrons. My mind exulted in the idea. 'Well, then,' I exclaimed, 'I will be a hero, and, confiding in Providence, I will brave every danger.'"
From that time he often told his friend Hardy, "a radiant orb was suspended in his mind's eye, which urged him onward to renown."