Swiftsure,
There are two points here, a ships sailing ability and the comfort she might provide. With regard to Nelson the Agamemnon falls into the first category.
Although ships were built to a design and to all intents and purposes appeared structurally to be the same, it was true to say that the sailing performance of one ship of the same class as against another was often very different. I believe there was, and still is, often an indefinable something which makes one ship sail better than another which is similar in most respects. This would of course only really have been deduced by actually taking the ship to sea.
The Agamemnon appears to have been a case in point and Nelson became very attached to her for her sailing ability, calling her the finest sixty four in the service. One might think this stems either from his exuberance when he became her captain in 1793 after five years 'on the beach', or that most of the crew came from Norfolk and under him became well trained, however I think but there was more to it than that. Having found that she was a good sailer Nelson, being the man he was, would have learnt to get the best out of her. Very often, whether a ship will perform well or not depends on the individual captain and his understanding of his ship and her characteristics. Nelson had this understanding, and I wouldn't mind betting that other captains didn't sail the Agamemnon so well, even if the ship herself were willing.
Nelson, being used to frigates in his early career, sailed the Agamemnon like one when he found that she would respond. There are several instances of this, one being his well known exploit in the Mediterranean in 1795 when he poured broadsides in quick succession into stern of the crippled French Ca Ira, first on one tack then on another. He was offered a 74 by Lord Hood, but he initially refused, wanting to stay with the Agamemnon. When he finally had to give her up, when she was in bad need of repair, he was loath to do so.
When Nelson became a rear admiral he perhaps thought a little more of comfort and chose the San Josef, which was briefly his flagship in 1801 and was the ship which he had earlier captured at Cape St Vincent. Although also a good sailer I believe he thought her accomodation for an admiral and his staff superior to many ships of similar size. She actually survived into the era of the camera, there being a photograph of her being broken up in Devonport dockyard in 1849.
Kester
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