THE SAN JUAN EXPEDITION

Otago Witness, Issue 2692, 18 October 1905, Page 17 (Supplement)

THE SAN JUAN EXPEDITION

In 1780, Spain having declared war, the Governor of Jamaica, recognising the commercial and strategical value of the San Juan region, sent forces convoyed by Nelson to occupy it. Nelson pressed tinavailingly for an immediate attack, even at cost of extra lives. "In military circles," says Mahan, " there will frequently arise the question, Is life or time in this case of the greater value?" and then discusses the regularly ordered, careful procedure as opposed to an instinctive judgment which places quick resolve before deliberate consultation. He then says : " The same intuition that in his prime dictated his instant, unhesitating onslaught at the Nile, depriving the French of all opportunity for further preparation — that caused him in the maturity of his renown, before Copenhagen, to write, ' every hour's delay makes the enemy stronger; we shall never be so good a match for them as at this moment,' — that induced him at Trafalgar to modify his deliberately prepared plan in favoui of one vastly more hazardous, but which seized and held th 3 otherwise fleeting chance,— led him here also at San

Juan, unknown, and scarcely more than a boy, to press the policy of immediate attack." The deadliness of the climate caused the abandonment of the conquests. Of 200 oxl the Hinchin brook, 145 were buried during the captaincy oi Nelson and Colling wood. On the eve of the siege of San Juan, Nelson, worn out with dystentry and fatigue, returned to Jamaica, and, at the end of the year (1780), was invalided Home, where he suffered a tedious recovery at Bath.