Raisonnable and Nelson's first Ardent-class link

HMS Raisonnable gave Nelson his first connection to the Ardent class before his later association with Agamemnon. The ship was commanded by his uncle Maurice Suckling, who entered the young Nelson on her books. Although regulations barred entering a boy before he joined the ship, the Royal Navy could overlook the practice when it served the institution and use the same breach as grounds for action when it did not. The episode places the class within eighteenth-century patronage and officer recruitment.