s called by Sir George Rooke, it was resolved:

"That, considering the attempting and destroying these ships would be
of the greatest advantage and honor to her Majesty and her allies, and
very much tend to the reducing of the power of France, the fleet should
make the best of its way to the port of Vigo, and insult them
immediately with the whole line in case there was room enough for it,
and if not, by such detachment as might render the attack most
effective."

In naval history no swifter and more deadly "insult" was ever
administered than that which befell when Sir George Rooke, his gout
forgotten, appeared before Vigo and lost no time in coming to close
quarters. He called a council of the general land and sea officers who
concluded that "in regard the whole fleet could not without being in
danger of being in a huddle, attempt the ships and galleons where they
were, a detachment of fifteen English and ten Dutch ships of the line
of battle with all the fire ships should be sent to use their best
endeavors to take or destroy the aforesaid ships of the enemy, and the
frigates and bomb vessels should follow the rear of the fleet, and the
great ships move after them to go in if there should be occasion."

Next morning the Duke of Ormond landed two thousand British infantry to
take the forts and destroy the landward end of the boom, made of chain
cables and spars which blocked the channel. These errands were
accomplished with so much spirit and determination that the Grenadiers
fairly chased the Spanish garrisons out of their works. Rooke did not
wait for the finish of this task, but flew the signal to get under way,
Vice Admiral Hopson leading in the _Torbay_. British and Dutch
together, the wind blowing half a gale behind them, surged toward the
inner harbor, stopped not for the boom but cut a way through it, and
became engaged with the French men-of-war at close range. The hostile
fleets were so jammed together that it was not a battle of broadsides.
A Spanish chronicler related that "they fought with fires of inhuman
contrivance, hand grenades, fire-balls, and lumps of burning pitch."

Within one-half hour after the English and Dutch had gained entrance to
the bay, its surface was an inferno of blazing galleons and men-of-war.
Some of the French ships were carried with the cutlass and boarding
pike, but fire was the chief weapon used by both sides. The flaming
vessels drifted against each other, some of them