sed sailors to man large
fighting-fleets--it is not possible to conceive that he can want
sailors for such sort of purposes as I have stated. He is at present
the despotic monarch of above twenty thousand miles of sea-coast, and
yet you suppose he cannot procure sailors for the invasion of Ireland.
Believe, if you please, that such a fleet met at sea by any number of
our ships at all comparable to them in point of force, would be
immediately taken, let it be so; I count nothing upon their power of
resistance, only upon their power of escaping unobserved. If
experience has taught us anything, it is the impossibility of
perpetual blockades. The instances are innumerable, during the course
of this war, where whole fleets have sailed in and out of harbour, in
spite of every vigilance used to prevent it. I shall only mention
those cases where Ireland is concerned. In December, 1796, seven ships
of the line, and ten transports, reached Bantry Bay from Brest,
without having seen an English ship in their passage. It blew a storm
when they were off shore, and therefore England still continues to be
an independent kingdom. You will observe that at the very time the
French fleet sailed out of Brest Harbour, Admiral Colpoys was cruising
off there with a powerful squadron, and still, from the particular
circumstances of the weather, found it impossible to prevent the
French from coming out. During the time that Admiral Colpoys was
cruising off Brest, Admiral Richery, with six ships of the line,
passed him, and got safe into the harbour. At the very moment when the
French squadron was lying in Bantry Bay, Lord Bridport with his fleet
was locked up by a foul wind in the Channel, and for several days
could not stir to the assistance of Ireland. Admiral Colpoys, totally
unable to find the French fleet, came home. Lord Bridport, at the
change of the wind, cruised for them in vain, and they got safe back
to Brest, without having seen a single one of those floating bulwarks,
the possession of which we believe will enable us with impunity to set
justice and common sense at defiance. Such is the miserable and
precarious state of an anemocracy, of a people who put their trust in
hurricanes, and are governed by wind. In August, 1798, three forty-gun
frigates landed 1100 men under Humbert, making the passage from
Rochelle to Killala without seeing any English ship. In October of the
same year, four French frigates anchored in Killala Bay with 20