Chapter VII: The American War Till 1780 (2)

I would prefer to say nothing of the shameful service and national quarrel which arose out of this poor battle, but it is too full of warning, and had too much influence on the history of the coming years to be passed over. We know from a letter of Samuel Hood, who was then Commissioner of Portsmouth dockyard, that as early as the 4th of August it was common knowledge that the chiefs of the fleet were on bad terms. Keppel, in his public letter, had praised both Harland and Palliser, but in truth he was fiercely angry with the second, whom he accused in his heart of having deliberately prevented the action of the 27th from becoming a real victory. It is obvious from his recorded words and his whole tone, that he believed Sir Hugh Palliser had acted as the agent of Sandwich in the execution of a conspiracy for his ruin. The solitary dignity of his quarterdeck left him unchecked to brood over this imagination till he was in the state of mind of some unhappy victim of the mania of persecution. I fear we must add that there were sycophants under his command who fed his delusions. We still possess a toadying acrid letter from no less a man than John Jervis, then captain of the =Foudroyant=, and at all times a strong Whig, which shows him busy in the mean work of making bate. Being answered according to his folly, Keppel grew so wise in his conceit that he reached the point where he became convinced that there was a plot to cause the overthrow of the British fleet, in order to discredit such an eminent Whig as himself, that Sandwich was the author, and Palliser the agent thereof. It was not sane, and it was the kind of insanity to which only a dull intelligence would have been liable when exasperated by soured vanity. But “the spirit of faction” was so rampant in England at the time, and had so thoroughly aroused one of the worst faults of our character, a tendency to loud-mouthed and contentious hectoring, that he did not want kindred spirits to fool him to the top of his bent.

The press, animated as it was by the malignant spirit of Junius, whose voice had only just fallen silent, took up the tale. Whigs bragged that their admiral had saved the state from the ministerial treason of Sandwich. Ministerial papers replied that their vice-admiral had baffled the Whig traitor. Charge and counter-charge came thick and grew more specific. On the 15th October the _Morning Intelligencer_ made a poisonous attack on Palliser, fortified by details which must have come from Keppel’s partisans, and would not have been given without his approval. Sir Hugh, being hot-headed, by no means a clever man, and probably ill advised, called upon Keppel for a contradiction. He ought to have been silent or to have sued the paper for libel, and to have produced his admiral in the witness box. Keppel, who shirked taking responsibility all through, would not write an answer. In an interview he took a high and mighty tone, and spoke of the dignity of despising the press. Sir Hugh, again most foolishly, made a public answer to _The Intelligencer_, and allowed himself to be entangled in a controversy with “the bronzed and naked gentlemen of the press.” Both men were members of Parliament, and they met in the debate of the 2nd December. Palliser spoke to vindicate himself, Keppel to injure his subordinate. He got over the question why he praised Sir Hugh in his public letter, by saying that he meant only to refer to his personal courage, which was undoubted, and that this was the most important quality of an officer. If we could suppose that he meant what he said, these words might again be quoted as giving the measure of his intelligence. But his excuse was a subterfuge. For the rest he would say nothing definite. He would sneer. He would insinuate. He would give to be understood. He would do anything except show candour. He wished Sir Hugh to be condemned for gross misconduct, and while forwarding the condemnation with cunning, he wished to maintain a fine attitude of magnanimity and of regard for the king’s service, thus escaping the inconvenience of having to prove his charges at a court martial.

To suppose that Sandwich wished to produce his own utter ruin by causing the defeat of the Western Squadron, would be to put ourselves on the moral and intellectual level of Keppel, his sycophants in the fleet, and his friends of the opposition. But the First Lord was as pure an intriguer as many of them. There can be little doubt that he encouraged, and none that he allowed, Palliser to bring his chief to a court martial on charges of mismanagement of the fleet in the battle. Keppel had shown the poorest commonplace of the dull tactics of the time, but he had been orthodox in a brainless way. The hope, no doubt, was that public opinion would be turned against the Whig. The exact contrary result followed. First a body of admirals headed by the veteran Lord Hawke, now nearly at the end of his honourable life, protested against the decision of the Admiralty to allow an inferior to accuse a superior. It is a necessary consequence of the respect which all disciplined men have for authority, that the higher ranks must always be protected from being proved to be in the wrong by the lower, lest the indispensable spirit of subordination should suffer. That the chief is in error is to be deplored, but not demonstrated. Then the far from ignoble sympathy of the mass of Englishmen for a supposed victim was aroused on behalf of Keppel. His court martial, which lasted from the 7th January to the 11th February 1779, ended inevitably in his acquittal. His friends made much of his sufferings from persecution, but they were allowed to make his poor health the excuse for a private bill to exempt him from the necessity of being tried on the flagship in Portsmouth. His triumph took place in the more comfortable surroundings of the governor’s house. The London mob, always ready for riot in the 18th century, celebrated the finding of the Court by rabbling the houses of Palliser and Lord North, and burning the gates of the Admiralty in Whitehall, under the leadership of the Duke of Ancaster and, as it is said, of the youthful William Pitt.

Palliser resigned and demanded a court martial. Though Keppel still refused to appear as accuser, the trial was held on the flagship between the 12th April and 3rd May. It ended in an acquittal with the qualification that Palliser ought to have made the admiral acquainted with the condition of the =Formidable=. Sir Hugh retired to the Governorship of Greenwich Hospital. Keppel was so popular that the Admiralty did not dare to remove him. But he was now in love with his parts of martyr and factious politician. He began to wrangle over orders, and to find offence where none was. At last he was allowed to haul down his flag at his own request. In his place in Parliament he was not ashamed to sneer at a brother officer, who, in the course of 1779, had to retire up Channel in face of an enemy twice his strength, and to insinuate that he himself would have been bolder in such a pass than he was with the equal fleet of D’Orvilliers, and the coast of Brest under his lee in July 1778. For a time he, with the help unhappily of Howe, an incomparably better man, set the disgraceful example of refusing to serve because what they were pleased to call their honour was not safe with Sandwich. His tar barrel popularity was clamorous for a space, and he succeeded Vernon on many tavern signboards, but by 1783 Rodney and Hood had arisen, and the patriot hero of 1779 had become the “Cautious Leeshore.”

While the battle of Ushant was being half fought, and the subsequent quarrel was dragging its slow length along, a brilliant campaign was being conducted on the coasts of America. D’Estaign, it will be remembered, had cleared the Straits of Gibraltar on the 16th May. His squadron consisted of the _Languedoc_, 80 (Flagship), _Tonnant_, 80, _César_, 74, _Zélé_, 74, _Hector_, 74, _Marseilles_, 74, _Protecteur_, 74, _Guerrier_, 74, _Vaillant_, 64, _Provence_, 64, _Fantasque_, 64, and _Sagittaire_, 64, with the frigates _Chimère_, _Engageante_, _Alcmène_ and _Aimable_. Some of them were bad sailers, and as the crews had been completed by drafting soldiers, they were awkward. The neglect of the past weighed on the French fleet, and the nerve of the Admiral. D’Estaign spent much time in practising his raw crews, a wise precaution no doubt, but one which was fatal to rapidity of movement. He added gratuitously to the causes of delay by turning aside to chase prizes. On the 8th July he reached the Delaware, and landed M. Gérard de Rayneval, the French Minister to Congress, whom he had brought with him. Even then he would not make haste to begin his attack on the British squadron. On his way north to New York, and on the 10th July, he actually lost sight of his fleet because he employed his mighty flagship, the _Languedoc_, in chasing a trumpery British vessel named the =York=, of 10 guns and 60 men. These were not the methods to employ against the wary, resolute, and thorough antagonist he was about to encounter.

Howe had been informed early in May of the coming intervention of France. Her entry on the scene made it absolutely necessary to withdraw our troops from Philadelphia and concentrate at New York. Of the total force of eleven ships of the line and sixty-eight smaller craft under the admiral’s command, some were at our naval port Halifax, others were at New York, and others in Rhode Island, then held by a body of British troops under General Pigott. Howe called all the ships which could be spared from local duties to his flag, and set about covering the retreat of the army now led by Sir Henry Clinton. Transport to convey the troops by sea were wanting, and it was also thought to be the more dignified course to march through the Jerseys. On the 18th June the army had crossed the Delaware under cover of the squadron, and made its way to Navesink, harassed, but not seriously impeded by Washington. Howe reached Sandy Hook on the 29th June, and waited to cover the entry of Clinton into New York. Here he was informed of the sailing of D’Estaign, and of the reinforcements destined for himself, which had left Plymouth under Byron so late as the 9th June. On the 30th June Clinton’s army appeared on the heights and was passed over to New York by the 5th July. Barely was the passage concluded when Captain Gardner, of the =Maidstone= frigate, sent a lieutenant with the news that D’Estaign had been seen to enter the Delaware. On the 11th July the =Zebra= sloop ran in with the news that the Frenchman was close at hand. If D’Estaign had taken less than nearly two months to make the run from Toulon, the concentration of our forces at New York would have been defeated, for Howe was far too weak to give battle, and must have been shut up in the Delaware.

The force actually with Howe consisted of six 64-gun ships, three of 50, two of 40, frigates, and small vessels. The 40-gun ships being wholly unfit to lie in a line of battle, Howe was practically outnumbered in the proportion of two to one by the fine squadron of D’Estaign. Outnumbered as he was, he had no resource but to stand on the defensive, and the anchorage at Sandy Hook happily afforded him an admirable position. Sandy Hook had once been a peninsula, but the sea having broken through the narrow isthmus connecting it with Navesink, it was already an island running due north and south, and so forming a natural mole to the anchorage. Outside it is the Middle Bank, and to the north is the East Bank. There are two entries from the sea to the roadstead—one between the Middle Bank and Sandy Hook, which is too shallow for big ships at the northern end, and the other between the Middle Bank and East Bank, which is rendered uncertain by a bar. Batteries were thrown up at the north end of Sandy Hook. The squadron was then anchored in a line from the extremity of Sandy Hook to the west, in this order. The =Leviathan=, a store ship turned into a floating battery, =Ardent=, =Nonsuch=, =Trident=, =Somerset=, =Eagle= (Flagship), and =Isis=. Frigates were brought inside to the south, while the =Vigilant=, =Phœnix=, and =Preston= were posted behind the bar between the Middle and East Banks. Fireships and gunboats were placed where they could threaten the flank of the French fleet if it crossed the bar. The ships in the line were anchored with a spring on the cable—that is, with a cable carried out from the stern and fastened to the cable of the anchor so that their broadsides could be worked round to bear on an approaching enemy. If then D’Estaign attacked, every means possible had been provided to crush his ships in detail as they cleared the Middle Bank, and came under the fire of the batteries at the extremity of Sandy Hook and of Howe’s line. Our squadron was short-handed, but the deficiency was promptly made good by the eager zeal of the sailors in the merchant ships and transports. Though they habitually avoided the press when they could, there was no hanging back at this crisis, and the volunteers outnumbered the call made by the admiral. As many of them must have served at one time or another, and all were “sailormen” able to set up rigging and splice ropes, they were not mere raw recruits. The officers and men of Clinton’s army came forward readily to serve as marines.

The hazard before D’Estaign was not trifling. Yet had he attacked at once when he appeared off Sandy Hook on the 12th July, he would have found Howe’s dispositions still incomplete. Even later he ought beyond all question to have stood in. The total destruction of Howe’s squadron would have given so severe a blow to the material strength and the prestige of England that it would have been cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of half D’Estaign’s ships. So would have reasoned his subordinate the captain of the _Fantasque_, Suffren. But again the past weighed on the unstable mind of D’Estaign. He anchored four miles from Sandy Hook, off Shrewsbury, and remained till the 21st examining the bar, and communicating with the Americans. The risk of grounding on the bar seemed too great to him to be run, and in all probability he asked himself, what would happen if the British reinforcements arrived and found him amid the wreck of Howe’s ships with a crippled squadron? On the 22nd he made a show of falling on, and then sailed away to the south. A small convoy fell into his hands, and he had the satisfaction of blockading a British port for ten days.

Howe at once dispatched frigates to watch the enemy. Observation and rumour led him to believe, rightly, that D’Estaign meant to proceed to co-operate with an American force in an attack on Sir R. Pigott on Rhode Island. But for some days he was too weak to move. On the 26th July the =Renown=, 50, joined him from the West Indies. She had passed through the French squadron on her way, unmolested and perhaps unobserved. Misled by bad information from home, Howe had been under the impression that Byron was bound for Halifax. He had sent thither for news, and on the 26th his messenger returned with the report that nothing was known there of the reinforcements, but that the Commissioner, Captain Fielding, was sending on the =Raisonable=, 64, and =Centurion=, 50, which had refitted. They joined the flag at Sandy Hook safely. On the 30th July the =Cornwall=, 74, came in from Byron’s squadron with a depressing story.

The admiral had met his accustomed fortune in weather when he was least able to contend with his implacable enemy. He had left Plymouth on the 9th June with one 90-gun ship, eleven 74, one of 64, and a single frigate. If numbers were all in war, while speed and efficiency were little, his squadron had been more than enough to sweep D’Estaign from the coast of America. But Byron sailed late, and his ships were ill provided in all ways. The crews had been made up by drafts of prisoners who brought the jail fever with them. So bad was the condition of the fleet that it was unable to contend with a summer storm which broke on it in the middle of the North Atlantic on the 3rd July. Some of the ships returned home, and all were scattered. Byron himself struggled on alone toward Sandy Hook till the 18th August, when he sighted the French fleet, and turned back to Halifax, where he found one only of his command. Except the =Cornwall=, none reached Howe’s flag in time to be of service. Those which limped in later, and by degrees, were crippled in rigging, and foul with putrid fevers.

On the 29th July, the day before the =Cornwall= joined his flag, Howe heard that D’Estaign had been sighted off Rhode Island, to the east of New York. The object of the Frenchman was manifestly to co-operate with the insurgents in attacking the British force then occupying the island, under the command of General Pigott. Howe was the last man in the world to be deterred by mere inferiority of numbers from exerting himself in the king’s service, and outmatched as he still was, he prepared to support General Pigott. Contrary winds detained him at New York till the 6th August. On the 9th he was off the southern end of Rhode Island. Rhode Island is one of several which nearly block up a great oblong bay opening to the south in the coast, which here runs nearly due east and west. It is separated from the mainland on the east by the Sakonnet Channel, and from the island of Conanicut on the west, by the Eastern Passage. The Western Passage divides Conanicut from the mainland, and leads to the land-locked waters of Narragansett Bay. The town of Newport stands nearly at the south-western end of Rhode Island, and here General Pigott had concentrated his troops when the American general, Sullivan, passed over from the mainland to attack him. D’Estaign had anchored within Brenton’s Ledge, at the south-western point of Rhode Island, on the 29th July. He sent two frigates up the Sakonnet Channel and two liners up the Western Passage to Narragansett Bay, and then entered the Eastern Passage on the 8th August, anchoring above the town of Newport, at Goat Island, between Conanicut and Rhode Island. His appearance in overwhelming strength sufficed to gain him a naval success without fighting. A small British flotilla, consisting of the frigates and sloops =Orpheus=, =Lark=, =Juno=, =Flora=, and =Falcon=, was caught at hopeless disadvantage, and was burnt by the commanding officer, Captain Brisbane, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the French. The crews were added to the garrison of Newport.

Howe was off Brenton Point on the 9th. He had a difficult game to play, for he was still inferior to his opponent by a third, and he had to take the offensive. Everything depended on precision of movement, and the British admiral transferred his flag to a frigate in order that he might keep his whole squadron always under his eye. The question whether the proper place for an admiral was in the midst of a battle or outside of it was argued in the eighteenth century, and has been debated since. It really resolves itself into the other question, whether the admiral is best employed in setting an example or in directing the operations of which he must needs lose sight from the moment that his flagship is involved in the fire and smoke of battle. Tradition and the point of honour dictated the first course. Sound judgment agrees with them—whenever the example is of more moment than the direction. But there are times when it is not, and the early days of August 1778 off Rhode Island was one of them. Yet only an officer of Howe’s established reputation for cool intrepidity could have afforded to break away from old usage, and it is said that he was so far impressed by the fear of being thought shy that he intended to return to his flagship if a battle had to be fought.

D’Estaign credited his opponent with more energy than he had himself shown at Long Island. He was seriously afraid of being attacked by fireships at anchor—and indeed they had been prepared, and would have been used. When, therefore, the wind shifted from south to north-east on the morning of the 10th, he came at once to sea, cannonading Pigott’s batteries at Newport as he passed, and calling in the two liners sent to Narragansett Bay. Though he had numbers and the wind in his favour, he made no attempt to force on a battle, and manœuvred to keep the weather-gage. Howe strove to win it, intending to fall on the Frenchman and to use his fireships. He succeeded, but a furious gale scattered both fleets on the 11th, and they were not rallied till the 17th. In the interval, the French had suffered more from the storm than our ships. Three of them, the _Languedoc_, _Marseilles_, and _César_, were attacked while crippled by the =Renown=, =Preston=, and =Isis=, smaller vessels, but under complete command. None of them were taken, thanks to the timely arrival of help. Howe reunited his squadron at Sandy Hook, and then returned to Rhode Island on hearing that the Frenchman had reappeared. But D’Estaign had lost all confidence, and was oppressed by a sense of the need for stores and repairs. He sailed away to Boston. Sullivan withdrew from Rhode Island, exploding against his ally in terms of rude and taunting reproach. Howe found the French too strongly posted in Boston to be assailed, and after reconnoitring their position on the 30th, returned to New York. Byron’s scattered ships now began to drop in, but Howe’s service was over for the time being. On the 25th September he handed over his command to Gambier, and sailed for home. On his return he refused to serve under Sandwich, who had supported him so ill. The reason was a bad one, and was not excused by the fact that the minister’s hacks endeavoured to throw blame on the admiral. An officer who pleads a personal offence as an excuse for not fighting his country’s enemies sets an example which is only just short of mutinous.

Gambier was soon superseded by the arrival of his superior Byron. “Foul Weather Jack” made haste to refit his ships at New York, and on the 18th October went to look into Boston. Storms blew him about, he lost vessels, and was forced to take refuge in Newport, Rhode Island. D’Estaign in the meantime had been striving with the ill-will of the Bostonians, a people described by the English historian Beatson as of “a sour, morose, and sullen temper.” They were very angry with the French for not giving more support to Sullivan at Rhode Island, and showed their ill-will by making riotous attacks on the sailors of their allies. One of D’Estaign’s officers, M. de Saint Sauveur, was actually killed in a savage conflict between the townsmen and the French boats’ crews. The admiral was nevertheless able to refit his squadron mainly with our own naval stores, captured and brought into port by the active American privateers. The approach of winter made campaigning hazardous on the stormy Northern coast, and on the 4th November D’Estaign sailed for the West Indies, where the French wished to recover their losses in the previous war. All through this war the main fleets will be found leaving the Antilles when the hurricane months begin in July, and the summer favours them in the North. Then, as winter approaches, and the hurricane season is over in October, they will be found streaming back to take part in the defence or conquest of the islands round the Caribbean Sea. The change in the scene of conflict had been foreseen by us. On the 4th November, the very day that D’Estaign left Boston, Hotham sailed from New York with two 64-gun ships, three of 50, and three frigates, carrying 5000 men of the army in North America, which was already too weak for its work. They were destined for Barbadoes first, and then for the general protection of the Sugar Islands. So close did Hotham and D’Estaign come to one another on the passage that a Newfoundland dog belonging to an English officer, which fell overboard, is said to have been picked up swimming by the French flagship the _Languedoc_, but there was no meeting.

Though to follow the cruise of D’Estaign and Byron to its close will compel us to overlap contemporary operations elsewhere, an even greater degree of confusion would be created by making an arbitrary break in the narrative of one continuous series of movements. Yet it is necessary to go back for a brief space to explain what the rival admirals found waiting for them, when they came escaping from the snowstorms and icy cold of the North to the unfailing easterly trade winds, the baffling land breezes, the sun, and the purple seas of the West Indies.

The French possessions in those waters consisted of part of San Domingo, of Guadaloupe, Martinique, and Marie Galante. Dominica, between Martinique and Guadaloupe, was in our hands. Next to the South came Santa Lucia, a French island, and beyond it St. Vincent and Grenada, English possessions. The whole of the Lesser Antilles constituted the Leeward Station, so called because they lie to leeward of Barbadoes. The reader may be reminded that as the easterly trade wind is permanent in the West Indies, and is therefore called “the true breeze,” to leeward always means to westward, and to windward is to eastward for the Creole and the seafaring man. During the early months of 1778 there had been the usual examples of breaches of the law of nations on both sides, and the consequent mutual accusations, very loud and very futile. The French had no naval force at hand except a few frigates and sloops. Our own squadron consisted of one 74-gun ship, one 70, with frigates and sloops to the number of fourteen. From the month of June onwards they were under the command of Samuel Barrington, a member of the well-known Irish family. Barrington remained at Barbadoes waiting to see what the French would do. In September he discovered. The Marquis de Bouillé, Governor of Martinique, collected a flotilla of frigates, sloops, and trading-craft, embarked troops and Creole volunteers, and soused down on Dominica. It fell at once, and the history of its fall is highly characteristic of our management in those days. Forts had been built and guns landed for the defence of the island. Nothing was wanting except a garrison. There was no force in Dominica save parts of two companies of the 48th and a handful of artillerymen—not enough to hold a small fort. Having nothing else to do, they surrendered. Barrington complained that he was misinformed as to the strength of the enemy. If he had not kept his line-of-battle ships idle at Barbadoes, he could have found out for himself, and one of them cruising round Martinique would have stopped Bouillé. It was quite in keeping with this sloth and this dependence on information supplied by governors that Barrington joined the noble band of officers who refused to serve in responsible places under Sandwich because their honour was not safe with him. Having allowed Dominica to go for want of support, he left Barbadoes in order to see after the safety of Antigua, to the north of Guadaloupe. It was our naval dockyard in the Leeward Islands. Antigua having a competent garrison was in no danger. Then he returned to Barbadoes, and waited till he was joined on the 10th December by Hotham with the ships and soldiers from New York.

The combined squadrons at once proceeded to give the French a Roland for their Oliver by seizing Santa Lucia. The French island was not much better prepared for defence than Dominica, and when it was attacked on the 13th and 14th of December the Governor retired to one of the hills in the interior, while the coast fell into our hands. Barrington anchored in the Cul de Sac, a bay on the western side of the island opening on to the Caribbean Sea, while the troops besieged the French Governor. Next day D’Estaign appeared with his more powerful squadron. He had anchored at Fort Royal, in Martinique, on the 9th December, and it had been his intention to assail Barbadoes. The danger of Santa Lucia compelled him to change his plans. He shipped Bouillé and his troops, and on the 15th made his effort to rescue the island. It proved but feeble. Barrington had placed his seven ships across the mouth of the Cul de Sac, throwing up shore batteries to cover his flanks. If he was wanting in foresight and enterprise, he was stout. D’Estaign behaved as he had done at Sandy Hook, making mere shows of attack, and excusing himself by pleading that the treacherous breezes under the land hampered his movements. They presented real difficulties, but in the opinion of D’Estaign’s best officers he was too easily disconcerted by such obstacles. Bouillé landed with his troops, but failed to shake the hold of the British troops on their positions. Then D’Estaign heard by a privateer that Byron was on his way from North America. Instead of judging as his countryman Mahé de la Bourdonnais had done at Madras, that the approach of relief for his enemy was a reason for making an instant and strenuous effort, he re-embarked the troops on the 28th, and next day anchored at Fort Royal in one of the fits of depression and self-pity which alternated with his outbursts of energy. M. Micoud, the French Governor of Santa Lucia, surrendered on the 30th, he having also nothing else to do, and the island remained with us, to serve as Rodney’s headquarters in the great crisis of the war.

Byron had indeed left Newport in Rhode Island, on the 14th December, after a desperate struggle with his old enemy the storms, which very nearly drove one of his liners on shore, and did considerable damage to the spars of others. With twelve sail of the line he struggled through the winter weather, and reached Barbadoes on the 7th January 1779. Then he pushed on to Santa Lucia, which he made his headquarters for the watch on D’Estaign at Fort Royal. The French admiral now outnumbered, was cautious, and would risk nothing. He only came out to go in again. In February Byron was reinforced by Rear-Admiral Rowley. Though this officer was stationed to windward of Martinique, to intercept any reinforcements coming to D’Estaign, he failed. The French admiral was successively joined by the Comte de Grasse, Rodney’s opponent on a future date, from Brest, by Vaudreuil from the coast of Africa, and by La Motte Picquet from Toulon. They brought his strength up to twenty-five sail of the line and twelve frigates, which gave him a distinct superiority of numbers over Byron.

The next passage in the naval campaign illustrated at once some of the burdens laid on our admirals, Byron’s poorness of judgment in the greater operations of war, and the miserable character of the principles on which the French were content to act. In June the West India convoys were collected for their return to Europe. The meeting-place of the ships was St. Christopher, to the north-west of Guadaloupe. Commerce was so essential to England that no admiral could have neglected to give it protection. Nor could the country, which was suffering severely from the strain of the war, have endured the entire stoppage of the West Indian trade for the year in order to leave the fleet free—a measure occasionally taken by the military and autocratic Government of France. But Byron could have secured the convoy from danger by blockading the French at Fort Royal. He did not know of the arrival of La Motte Picquet, and had every reason to believe himself still superior to D’Estaign. Even if he were not, and the Frenchman came out to give battle, this was precisely what an English admiral ought to have desired. But Byron sailed away to Saint Christopher to mother the convoy, leaving the road open to his enemy. If D’Estaign had been a truly bold man, and not only a gentleman of showy daring in “the imminent deadly breach,” which indeed he was, he would have sought out Byron at once after the junction of La Motte Picquet’s squadron. But he was content to dwell in the traditional French policy of avoiding battle and grabbing at ports. Freed from Byron’s watch, he swooped on small game. St. Vincent was carried by an expedition of irregulars under a bold partisan of the name of Trolong de Rumain, a lieutenant in the French Navy. Trolong was helped by the Caribs, and even more by a quarrel then raging between the English Governor and his Council. St. Vincent having been secured, D’Estaign on the 2nd July fell on Grenada with his great fleet and Bouillé’s troops.

Byron having seen the convoy on its way home, returned to Santa Lucia on the 1st July—to learn that St. Vincent was gone, that D’Estaign was at sea, and that some other of our possessions was menaced. He was ill informed as to the strength of his opponent, and remained in doubt for two or three days as to what the Frenchman was doing. While preparing to attempt the recapture of St. Vincent, he heard of the danger of Grenada, and came down to its assistance—too late. On the 6th July a battle was fought off the island which marks the very nadir of the pompous futile tactics developed under the old Instructions. Byron had with him twenty-one ships to his opponent’s twenty-five, and was to windward. D’Estaign, at anchor when the Englishman appeared, stood out, keeping to leeward, and waiting to be attacked. We came down in a slanting line, the leading English ship steering for the leading Frenchman. Of course our van came into action unsupported, and was cut to pieces. Then D’Estaign made no attempt to push his advantage, but whisked round, and returned to his anchorage. Byron picked up the fragments, and seeing that Grenada was gone, sailed away to St. Christopher again. A few weeks of mere parade followed. D’Estaign made motions as if to force on a battle, but did nothing effectual. Byron was ready to fight again, if his opponent would provide him with a battle. In August he left for home, handing over the command to Admiral Parker. D’Estaign, after touching at San Domingo, sailed for the coast of America to join General Lincoln, in the unsuccessful attempt to retake Savannah, occupied by us during the previous autumn. The siege was raised in October, and the French admiral left for home followed by the growls of the discontented Americans.

While these operations were running their course on the American coast and in the West Indies with various fortunes and no striking display of ability, in the later months, an amazing example of the essential weakness of England’s enemies was being given at home. Spain joined France in the summer of 1779, bringing to the aid of her allies the unwieldy bulk of her nerveless fleet. The Courts of Paris and Madrid came to the decision to attempt an invasion under the protection of their united squadrons. French troops and transports were collected at Havre and St. Malo. On the 3rd June, D’Orvilliers sailed south to meet the Spaniards with twenty-eight of the line, nine frigates, and eight small vessels, and by direction of his Government stationed himself at the Sisargas, twenty miles west of Corunna. Slothful and unready as ever, the Spaniards had not fully joined till the 26th July, and four days more were spent in settling signals and other details of business. D’Orvilliers had no confidence in the success of the lumbering armament he was called upon to direct. He thought that the sixty-six liners of which it was composed made too large a force to be manœuvred. The Spaniards might be brave and willing, but were in his opinion neither officers nor seamen. Don Luis de Córdoba, their commander-in-chief, a man of seventy-five, is described as having “no personal existence,” and as having seen no service except against the Moors. His individuality was displayed only in senile obstinacy and vanity. Provisions were ill supplied, the health of the fleet was bad and grew worse. D’Orvilliers’ heart was broken by the death of his only son, an officer in the flagship, who fell a victim to the pest. In these miserable conditions, material, moral, and mental, the new Armada sailed from the coast of Galicia.

On one side reinforcements had been sent to North America under Arbuthnot in the early months of the year, and an attack on the Channel Islands had been beaten off. Sir Charles Hardy, an old officer, was drawn from retirement and appointed to succeed Keppel, when he and other admirals refused to serve. Hardy sailed with the grand fleet of thirty-five sail to the West on the 16th June, and remained at sea covering the trade and watching for the enemy. With bolder management he might easily have delivered a crushing stroke at D’Orvilliers at the Sisargas during the fifty mortal days while the French were waiting for the lagging Spaniards. D’Orvilliers and Córdoba reached as high as Plymouth on the 14th August, and their presence caused a lively panic in the country. But nothing came of it all, except the capture of the =Ardent=, 64, which fell into their hands by the bad management of her captain. First the allies were paralysed by calms, then the wind turned easterly on the 17th, and blew them out westward. They sighted Hardy, but failed to bring him to action or to prevent him reaching Spithead, and by the 14th September had broken up and had turned back to their respective homes. The four days’ command of the Channel for which Napoleon was to sigh had been theirs, but they did nothing with the opportunity.