.

For five days pursuer and pursued drifted in calms. On the 19th
a stiff westerly gale enabled Hawke to overtake Conflans, who was
obliged to shorten sail for fear of arriving at his destination in
the darkness. The morning of the 20th found the fleets in sight
of each other but scattered. All the forenoon the rival admirals
made efforts to gather their units for battle. A frigate leading
the British pursuit fired signal guns to warn Duff of the enemy's
presence, and the latter, cutting his cables, was barely able to
get out in time to escape the French fleet and join Hawke. Conflans
then decided that the English were too strong for him, and abandoning
his idea of offering battle, signaled a general retreat and led
the way into Quiberon Bay.

Hawke instantly ordered pursuit. The importance of this signal
can be realized only by taking into account the tremendous gale
blowing and the exceedingly dangerous character of the approach to
Quiberon Bay, lined as it was with sunken rocks. Hawke had little
knowledge of the channels but he reasoned that where a French ship
could go an English one could follow, and the perils of the entry
could not outweigh in his mind the importance of crushing the navy
of France then and there. The small British superiority of numbers
which Conflans feared was greatly aggravated by the conditions
of his flight. The slower ships in his rear were crushed by the
British in superior force and the English coming alongside the
French on their lee side were able to use their heaviest batteries
while the French, heeled over by the gale, had to keep their lowest
tier of ports closed for fear of being sunk. One of their ships tried
the experiment of opening this broadside and promptly foundered.

Darkness fell on a scene of wild confusion. Two of the British
vessels were lost on a reef, but daylight revealed the fact that
the French had scattered in all directions. Only five of their
ships had been destroyed and one taken, but the organization and
the morale were completely shattered. The idea of invasion thus
came to a sudden end in Quiberon Bay. The daring and initiative
of Hawke in defying weather and rocks in his pursuit of Conflans
is the admirable and significant fact of this story, for the actual
fighting amounted to little. It is the sort of thing that marked
the spirit of the Dutch Wars and of Blake at Santa Cruz, and is
strikingly different from the tame and stupid work of other admirals,