This is generally recounted as a tale of patriotic heroism of a man doing his duty to protect the nation from a Napoleonic menace. He went on to explain: I was bred, as you know, in the good old school, and taught to appreciate the value of our West India possessions and neither in the field or in the senate House of Lords shall their interest be infringed whilst I have an arm to fight in their defence, or a tongue to launch my voice against the damnable and cursed doctrine of Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies. Nelson chased Villeneuve across the Atlantic without orders but calculated, reasonably, that the government at home could have few complaints, because defending lucrative British colonies like Jamaica was a strategic priority surpassed only by the defence of Britain itself. Writing from his flagship, HMS Victory, on 11 June, he confessed that he had been in a thousand cares for Jamaica, Britains most productive and valuable colony, knowing that a successful attack on the island was a blow which Bonaparte would be happy to give us. He had been lured there as part of the complex naval cat-and-mouse game that would culminate, some four months later, at the battle of Trafalgar.
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