ken
Administration." For three years we had been making unsuccessful war with
Spain, and had been supporting Maria Theresa on the Continent against
France, with the result that our home defence was reduced to its lowest
ebb. The navy then numbered 183 sail--about equal to that of France and
Spain combined--but owing to the strain of the war in the Mediterranean and
Transatlantic stations only forty-three, including eighteen of the line,
were available for home waters. Even counting all cruising ships "within
call," as the phrase then was, the Government had barely one-fourth of the
fleet at hand to meet the crisis. With the land forces it was little
better. Considerably more than half the home army was abroad with the King,
who was assisting the Empress-Queen as Elector of Hanover. Between France
and England, however, there was no war. In the summer the King won the
battle of Dettingen; a formal alliance with Maria Theresa followed in the
autumn; France responded with a secret alliance with Spain; and to prevent
further British action on the Continent, she resolved to strike a blow at
London in combination with a Jacobite insurrection. It was to be a "bolt
from the blue" before declaration and in mid-winter, when the best ships of
the home fleet were laid up. The operation was planned on dual lines, the
army to start from Dunkirk, the covering fleet from Brest.

The surprise was admirably designed. The port of Dunkirk had been destroyed
under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and though the French had been
restoring it secretly for some time, it was still unfit to receive a fleet
of transports. In spite of the warnings of Sir John Norris, the senior
admiral in the service, the assembling of troops in its neighbourhood from
the French army in Flanders could only be taken for a movement into winter
quarters, and that no suspicion might be aroused the necessary transports
were secretly taken up in other ports under false charter-parties, and were
only to assemble off Dunkirk at the last moment. With equal skill the
purpose of the naval mobilisation at Brest was concealed. By false
information cleverly imparted to our spies and by parade of victualling for
a long voyage, the British Government was led to believe that the main
fleet was intended to join the Spaniards in the Mediterranean, while a
detachment, which was designed to escort the transports, was ostensibly
equipped for a raid in the West Indies.

So far as concealmen