“The night of their landing, Admiral Holmes with the ships and troops was about three leagues above the intended landing-place.  General Wolfe with about half his troops set off in the boats, and dropped down with the tide, and were by that means less liable to be discovered by the sentinels posted all along the coast.  The ships followed them about three-quarters of an hour afterwards, and got to the landing-place just at the time that had been concerted to cover the landing, and considering the darkness of the night, and the rapidity of the current, this was a very critical operation, and very properly and successfully conducted.”

In the meantime the ships in the Basin, some fifteen in number, distracted the attention of the French by a heavy cannonade on the Beauport lines, and the boats made a feint as if an attack were contemplated; buoys had been laid in such a way as to lead to the idea that the ships were going to moor as close in as possible as if to support an assault, and every effort was made to draw attention away from the movement up above.

The plains of Abraham.

Lieutenant Norman, of the Pembroke, shortly describes the battle in his log: 

“At 4 A.M.  General Wolfe landed just below Cape Diamond with the whole army.  At 8 the signal of Boats man’d and arm’d to go to Point Levi, weighed and dropped hier up.  About 10 the enemy march’d up and attacked General Wolfe, the action lasted not 10 minutes before the Enemy gave way and run in the Greatest Confusion and left us a compleat Victuary.  Our Army encamped on the plain a back of the Town and made the necessary disposition for carrying on ye siege.  Admiral Holmes hoisted his flag on board the Lowestaff, just off the Landing place.  In this action fell General Wolfe, of the enemy General Montcalm and his two seconds.”

Cook does not mention the death of Wolfe, but says “the troops continued the pursuit to the very gates of the city, afterward they begun to form the necessary dispositions for carrying on the siege.”

Cook is said by some writers to have piloted the troops to the landing-place, and has even been set within hearing of the legendary recitation by Wolfe of Gray’s Elegy, but as he was out with the Pembroke’s boats in the Basin at the time Holmes started up the river, and was probably on his ship, with his hands full driving the bombardment, and the recital of the Elegy at such a time was probably a myth, the traditions may be put down to imagination.  The boats were piloted to the landing by Captain Chads of H.M.S.  Vesuvius.

The town having surrendered five days after the battle, the movements made by Saunders in the Basin no doubt aiding M. de Ramesay, the Governor, in coming to a decision, General Murray was left with a garrison, and the fleet sailed for England, sending a detachment of the Northumberland and six others to Halifax with orders that Captain Lord Colville was to hoist the Broad Pennant as Commander-in-Chief of the North American Station, and as soon as the season opened he was to return to the St. Lawrence to render support to any further movements made in Canada.