In the next war Howe was still in the ascendant and in command of the Channel fleet.  He retained his system.  Leaving Brest open he forced the French by operating against their trade to put to sea, and he was rewarded with the battle of the First of June.  No attempt was made to maintain a close blockade during the following winter.  The French were allowed to sail, and their disastrous cruise of January 1795 fully justified Kempenfelt’s anticipations.  So great was the damage done that they abandoned all idea of using their fleet as a whole.  Howe’s system was continued, but no longer with entirely successful results.  In 1796 the French were able to make descents upon Ireland, and Howe in consequence has come in for the severest castigations.  His method is contemptuously contrasted with that which St. Vincent adopted four years later, without any regard to the situation each admiral had to meet, and again on the assumption that the closing of Brest would have solved the one problem as well as it did the other.

In 1796 we were not on the defensive as we were in 1800.  The French fleet had been practically destroyed.  No invasion threatened.  With a view to forcing peace our policy was directed to offensive action against French trade and territory in order by general pressure to back our overtures for a settlement.  The policy may have been mistaken, but that is not the question.  The question is, whether or not the strategy fitted the policy.  We were also, it must be remembered, at war with Holland and expecting war with Spain, an eventuality which forced us to keep an eye on the defence of Portugal.  In these circumstances nothing was further from our desire than to keep what was left of the Brest fleet in port.  Our hope was by our offensive action against French maritime interests to force it to expose itself for their defence.  To devote the fleet to the closing of Brest was to cripple it for offensive action and to play the enemy’s game.  The actual disposition of the home fleet was designed so as to preserve its offensive activity, and at the same time to ensure superiority in any part of the home waters in which the enemy might attempt a counterstroke.  It was distributed in three active squadrons, one in the North Sea, one before Brest, and one cruising to the westward, with a strong reserve at Portsmouth.  It is the location of the reserve that has been most lightly ridiculed, on the hasty assumption that it was merely the reserve of the squadron before Brest; whereas in truth it was a general reserve designed to act in the North Sea or wherever else it might be needed.  At the same time it served as a training and depot squadron for increasing our power at sea in view of the probable addition of the Spanish fleet to Napoleon’s naval force.  To have exhausted our fleet merely to prevent raids leaving Brest which might equally well leave the Texel or Dunkirk was just what the enemy would have desired.  The disposition was in fact a good example of concentration—­that is, disposal about a strategical centre to preserve flexibility for offence without risking defensive needs, and yet it is by the most ardent advocates of concentration and the offensive that Howe’s dispositions at this time have been most roundly condemned.