to the Morbihan
transports. Hawke was upon him at once, and the disastrous day of Quiberon
was the result. The Dunkirk division alone got free, but the smallness of
its size, which permitted it to evade the watch, also prevented its doing
any harm. Its escort, after landing its handful of troops in Ireland, was
entirely destroyed; and so again the attempt of the French to invade over
an uncommanded sea produced no effect but the loss of their fleet.

The project of 1779 marked these principles even more strongly, for it
demonstrated them working even when our home fleet was greatly inferior to
that of the enemy. In this case the invader's idea was to form two
expeditionary forces at Cherbourg and Havre, and under cover of an
overwhelming combination of the Spanish and French fleets, to unite them at
sea and seize Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. It was in the early summer
we got wind of the scheme, and two cruiser squadrons and flotillas were at
once formed at the Downs and Channel Islands to watch the French coasts and
prevent the concentration of transports. Spain had not yet declared war,
but she was suspected, and the main fleet, under the veteran Sir Charles
Hardy, who had been Norris's second in command in 1744, was ordered to
proceed off Brest and prevent any Spanish squadron that might appear from
entering that port. The French, however, outmanoeuvred us by putting to sea
before Hardy could reach his station and forming a junction with the
Spaniards off Finisterre. The combined fleet contained about fifty of the
line, nearly double our own. The army of invasion, with Dumouriez for its
Chief of the Staff, numbered some 50,000 men, a force we were in no
condition to meet ashore. Everything, therefore, was in favour of success,
and yet in the navy, at least, a feeling of confidence prevailed that no
invasion could take place.

The brains of the naval defence were Lord Barham (then Sir Charles
Middleton) at the Admiralty and Kempenfelt as Chief of the Staff in the
fleet; and it is to their correspondence at this time that we owe some of
the most valuable strategical appreciations we possess. The idea of the
French was to come into the Channel in their overwhelming force, and while
they destroyed or held Hardy, to detach a sufficient squadron to break the
cruiser blockade and escort the troops across. Kempenfelt was confident
that it could not be done. He was sure that the unwieldy combined mass
could be rendered p