It is in the highest degree probable, indeed it closely approaches to certainty, that a proper use of the British sea-power would have prevented independence from being conquered, as it were, at the point of the bayonet.  There can be no surprise in store for the student acquainted with the vagaries of strategists who are influenced in war by political in preference to military requirements.  Still, it is difficult to repress an emotion of astonishment on finding that a British Government intentionally permitted De Grasse’s fleet and the French army in its convoy to cross the Atlantic unmolested, for fear of postponing for a time the revictualling of the garrison beleaguered at Gibraltar.  Washington’s opinion as to the importance of the naval factor has been quoted already; and Mahan does not put the case too strongly when he declares that the success of the Americans was due to ’sea-power being in the hands of the French and its improper distribution by the English authorities.’  Our navy, misdirected as it was, made a good fight of it, never allowed itself to be decisively beaten in a considerable battle, and won at least one great victory.  At the point of contact with the enemy, however, it was not in general so conspicuously successful as it was in the Seven Years’ war, or as it was to be in the great conflict with the French republic and empire.  The truth is that its opponent, the French navy, was never so thoroughly a sea-going force as it was in the war of American Independence; and never so closely approached our own in real sea-experience as it did during that period.  We met antagonists who were very nearly, but, fortunately for us, not quite as familiar with the sea as we were ourselves; and we never found it so hard to beat them, or even to avoid being beaten by them.  An Englishman would, naturally enough, start at the conclusion confronting him, if he were to speculate as to the result of more than one battle had the great Suffren’s captains and crews been quite up to the level of those commanded by stout old Sir Edward Hughes.  Suffren, it should be said, before going to the East Indies, had ’thirty-eight years of almost uninterrupted sea-service.’[44] A glance at a chart of the world, with the scenes of the general actions of the war dotted on it, will show how notably oceanic the campaigns were.  The hostile fleets met over and over again on the far side of the Atlantic and in distant Indian seas.  The French navy had penetrated into the ocean as readily and as far as we could do ourselves.  Besides this, it should be remembered that it was not until the 12th April 1782. when Rodney in one hemisphere and Suffren in the other showed them the way, that our officers were able to escape from the fetters imposed on them by the Fighting Instructions,—­a fact worth remembering in days in which it is sometimes proposed, by establishing schools of naval tactics on shore, to revive the pedantry which made a decisive success in battle nearly impossible.