To these powerful elements of his nature, Jervis added a capacity for comprehensive and minute attention to the details of discipline, order and economy, without which mere severity would become aimless and productive of none but bad results. He was fortunate in finding among the Mediterranean captains an unusual number of men of consummate seamanship, energy and resources, in all the vigor of a prime still youthful, who were only waiting for a master-hand to combine and give direction to their abilities. With such a head and with such subordinates, the British Mediterranean fleet soon became a model of efficiency and spirit, which was probably never equalled in the days of sailing ships. Nelson so considered it; and the old admiral himself bewailed its memory several years later, when commanding the Channel fleet, and complained testily of the "old women in the guise of young men," whom he found in charge of ships off Brest. As an administrator, when First Lord, the economy of Jervis became exaggerated into parsimony, and his experience of the frauds connected with the dockyards of the day led him into a crusade against them, which was both well meant and necessary, but particularly ill-timed. It has consequently left a stigma of failure upon his administration, which is due, however, not to his executive inefficiency, but to a misapprehension of the political signs of the times. Absorbed in reform, and for it desiring quiet, he saw only peace while the dark clouds of war were gathering thick on the horizon. Therefore the British navy, well-worn by the first war, was not ready for that which followed it in 1803.
Jervis's arrival in the Mediterranean was too late to remedy the impending evils. It was a singular misfortune for Great Britain, that the interregnum between two such able men as Hood and Jervis should have coincided with the determination of the French to try the chance of battle with their Mediterranean fleet, and that the opportunities they lost should have fallen to so sluggish and cautious an admiral as Hotham. "To say how much we wanted Lord Hood on the 13th of July," wrote Nelson, "is to say, Will you have all the French fleet, or no action?"[123] Accepting this opinion in the light of Nelson's subsequent achievements, it may be permitted to think that, if not all the fleet, so many ships would have fallen as to have prevented the sailing of Richery's squadron and the consequent necessary detachment of Admiral Mann; while the loss of seamen captured would have seriously crippled the operations of the flotilla, which from Toulon supplied the Army of Italy with ammunition, artillery and stores. Light guns on mountain carriages could be carried along the Corniche; but at the opening of Bonaparte's operations all heavy guns, and artillery outfits of all kinds, had to be taken by sea from Nice to Savona.[124] The demands of this flotilla necessitated the laying up of the fleet,[125]—a matter of less consequence as the determination to resort to commerce-destroying had then been reached. The French navy therefore became, through the flotilla, a very important part of Bonaparte's communications; and it has already been pointed out that sailing ships could not break up, though they might much disturb, the voyages of the smaller vessels employed on a difficult coast, with batteries under which to take refuge.