alised that a
successful action was out of the question. Early in the morning of July
12th, "being fifteen leagues S.S.E. from Scilly," Langara with thirty-six
of the line was seen to the westward. "As soon," wrote Howe, "as their
force had been ascertained, I thought proper to avoid coming to battle with
them as then circumstanced, and therefore steered to the north to pass
between Scilly and the Land's End. My purpose therein was to get to the
westward of the enemy, both for protecting the Jamaica convoy and to gain
the advantage of situation for bringing them to action which the difference
in our numbers renders desirable."

By a most brilliant effort of seamanship the dangerous movement was
effected safely that night, and it proved an entire success. Till Howe was
met with and defeated, the allies would not venture into the Channel, and
his unprecedented feat had effectually thrown them off. Assuming apparently
that he must have passed round their rear to seaward, they sought him to
the southward, and there for a month beat up and down in ineffective
search. Meanwhile Howe, sending his cruisers ahead to the convoy's
rendezvous off the south-west coast of Iceland, had taken his whole fleet
about two hundred miles west of the Skelligs to meet it. Northerly winds
prevented his reaching the right latitude in time, but it mattered little.
The convoy passed in between him and the south of Ireland, and as the enemy
had taken a cast down to Ushant, it was able to enter the Channel in safety
without sighting an enemy's sail. Ignorant of what had happened, Howe
cruised for a week practising the ships "in connected movements so
particularly necessary on the present occasion." Then with his fleet in
fine condition to carry out preventive tactics in accordance with
Kempenfelt's well-known exposition,[14] he returned to seek the enemy to
the eastward, in order to try to draw them from their station at Scilly and
open the Channel. On his way he learnt the convoy had passed in, and with
this anxiety off his mind he bore up for the Lizard, where his
reinforcements were awaiting him. There he found the Channel was free. From
lack of supplies the enemy had been forced to retire to port, and he
returned to Spithead to make preparations for the relief of Gibraltar.
While this work was going on, the North Sea squadron was again strengthened
that it might resume the blockade of the Texel and cover the arrival of the
autumn convoys from the