certain that all attempts upon the Channel would be made with
an unwieldy and ill-knit force composed of Spanish and French units.

In Howe's opinion this particular situation was not to be solved by
attempting to close Brest, and nothing can be more misleading than to
stretch such an opinion beyond the circumstances it was intended to meet.
He did not consider it was in his power to close the port. The enemy, he
held, could always be in readiness to escape after a gale of wind by which
the blockading squadron would be drawn off or dispersed, the ships much
damaged, and the enemy enheartened. "An enemy," he said, "is not to be
restrained from putting to sea by a station taken off their port with a
barely superior squadron." The experience of 1805 appears to contradict
him. Then a barely superior squadron did succeed in preventing Ganteaume's
exit, but though the squadron actually employed was barely superior, it had
ample fleet reserves to sustain its numbers in efficiency. It was,
moreover, only for a short time that it had to deal with any real effort to
escape. After May 20th, Ganteaume was forbidden to put to sea. There were
certainly several occasions during that famous blockade when he could have
escaped to the southward had Napoleon wished it.

This case, then, cannot be taken to condemn Howe's judgment. His special
function in the war plan was, with a force reduced to defensive strength,
to prevent the enemy obtaining command of our home waters. It was certainly
not his duty to undertake operations to which his force was not equal. His
first duty was to keep it in being for its paramount purpose. To this end
he decided on open blockade based on a general reserve at Spithead or St.
Helen's, where he could husband the ships and train his recruits, while at
the same time he protected our trade and communications and harassed those
of the enemy. Kempenfelt, than whom there was no warmer advocate of
activity, entirely approved the policy at least for the winter months, and
in his case no one will be found to suggest that the idea was prompted by
lack of spirit or love of ease. So far as the summer was concerned there
was really little difference of opinion as to whether the fleet should be
kept at sea or not, for sea-training during summer more than compensated
for the exhaustion of material likely to be caused by intermittent spells
of bad weather. Even for the winter the two policies came to much the same
thing. Th