ar. By the active
co-operation of the navy it was carried up to New York by the 5th of
July; and Howe then went back to bar the entrance to the port against
the French fleet. As no battle followed, the details of his
arrangements will not be given; but a very full and interesting
account by an officer of the fleet can be found in Ekins's "Naval
Battles." Attention, however, may well be called to the combination of
energy, thought, skill, and determination shown by the admiral. The
problem before him was to defend a practicable pass with six
sixty-four-gun ships and three of fifty, against eight of seventy-four
guns or over, three sixty-fours, and one fifty,--it may be said
against nearly double his own force.

D'Estaing anchored outside, south of the Hook, on the 11th of July,
and there remained until the 22d, engaged in sounding the bar, and
with every apparent determination to enter. On the 22d a high
northeast wind, coinciding with a spring tide, raised the water on the
bar to thirty feet. The French fleet got under way, and worked up to
windward to a point fair for crossing the bar. Then D'Estaing's heart
failed him under the discouragement of the pilots; he gave up the
attack and stood away to the southward.

Naval officers cannot but sympathize with the hesitation of a seaman
to disregard the advice of pilots, especially on a coast foreign to
him; but such sympathy should not close their eyes to the highest type
of character. Let any one compare the action of D'Estaing at New York
with that of Nelson at Copenhagen and the Nile, or that of Farragut at
Mobile and Port Hudson, and the inferiority of the Frenchman as a
military leader, guided only by military considerations, is painfully
apparent. New York was the very centre of the British power; its fall
could not but have shortened the war. In fairness to D'Estaing,
however, it must be remembered that other than military considerations
had to weigh with him. The French admiral doubtless had instructions
similar to those of the French minister, and he probably reasoned that
France had nothing to gain by the fall of New York, which might have
led to peace between America and England, and left the latter free to
turn all her power against his own country. Less than that would have
been enough to decide his wavering mind as to risking his fleet over
the bar.

Howe was more fortunate than D'Estaing, in having no divided purposes.
Having escaped from Philadelphia and