offing, pursued into port by the
enemy's fleet. Immediately on their appearance, he made every
preparation to put to sea after them; having the mortification, in the
mean time, to behold Captain Nelson, with his little squadron, for
nearly seven hours, almost wholly in their possession. The shore, and
his knowledge of it, proved his greatest friends on this occasion.

Though most of the British ships were in the midst of watering and
refitting, by very great exertions, the whole fleet got under weigh that
night; but a calm, and swell, prevented their going out till the
morning.

It was not till day-break, on the 13th of July 1795, that they were
discovered by the fleet. At eight o'clock, Admiral Hotham, finding that
they had no other view than that of endeavouring to get off, made the
signal for a general chace. The baffling winds, and vexatious calms,
which render every naval operation in this country doubtful, soon
afterwards taking place, a few only of our van ships could come up with
the enemy's rear about noon. These they so warmly attacked, that one of
the sternmost ships, the Alcide of seventy-four guns, had struck in the
course of an hour. The rest of their fleet, favoured by a shift of wind,
that placed them to windward, had got so far into Frejus Bay, while the
greater part of our's was becalmed in the offing, that it became
impossible for anything farther to be effected.

Had the wind lasted twenty minutes longer, the six flyers, as they were
called, would have been alongside as many of the enemy. Captain Nelson
had every hope of getting the Agamemnon, one of these flyers, alongside
an eighty-gun ship, with a flag or broad pendant flying; but the west
wind dying away, and the east coming, gave them the advantage, and
enabled them to reach their own shore, from which they were not three
leagues distant.

Rear-Admiral Mann, who had shifted his flag to the Victory on this
occasion, commanded the six ships thus distinguished by their
superiority of sailing: he proved himself, Captain Nelson observed, a
good man, in every sense of the word.

The disappointment of our brave countrymen, on this day, must have been
prodigiously great. In the morning, there had been a hope of taking the
whole of the French fleet; and, even latterly, no bad prospect of
securing six sail of the line. Instead of which, they had only taken a
single ship, the Alcide; and that, such was the fortune of this luckless
day, took fire abo