In the end the disposition did fail to prevent the landing of part of the force intended for Ireland, but it made the venture so difficult that it had to be deferred till mid-winter, and then the weather which rendered evasion possible broke up the expedition and denied it all chance of serious success.  It was, in fact, another example of the working of Kempenfelt’s rule concerning winter weather.  So far as naval defence can go, the disposition was all that was required.  The Irish expedition was seen leaving Brest by our inshore cruiser squadron.  It was reported to Colpoys, who had the battle-squadron outside, and it was only a dense fog that enabled it to escape.  It was, in fact, nothing more than the evasion of a small raiding force—­an eventuality against which no naval defence can provide certain guarantee, especially in winter.

It was under wholly different conditions that at the end of 1800 Hawke’s system was revived.  St. Vincent’s succession to the control of the fleet coincided with Napoleon’s definite assumption of the control of the destinies of France.  Our great duel with him had begun.  The measures he was taking made it obvious we were once more facing the old life and death struggle for naval supremacy; we were openly threatened with invasion, and we had a distinct preponderance at sea.  In short, we have to recognize the fact that the methods of the Seven Years’ War were revived when the problems and factors of that war were renewed.  As those problems grew more intense, as they did after the Peace of Amiens, and the threat of invasion became really formidable, so did the rigour of the close blockade increase.  Under Cornwallis and Gardner it was maintained in such a way as to deny, so far as human effort could go, all possibility of exit without fighting.  In spite of the importance of dealing with the enemy’s squadrons in detail no risks were taken to bring Ganteaume to decisive action.  Our first necessity was absolute local command.  The acuteness of the invasion crisis demanded that the Brest fleet should be kept in port, and every time Ganteaume showed a foot the British admiral flew at him and drove him back.  Once only during the continuation of the crisis was the rigour of this attitude relaxed, and that was to deal with what for the moment was the higher object.  It was to meet Villeneuve on his return from the West Indies, but even then so nicely was the relaxation calculated, that Ganteaume was given no time to take advantage of it.

The analogy between the conditions of the blockade which St. Vincent inaugurated and those of the Seven Years’ War becomes all the more significant when we note that while Cornwallis and Gardner in home waters were pressing close blockade to its utmost limit of rigour, Nelson in the Mediterranean was not using it at all.  Yet with him also the chief concern was to prevent an invasion.  His main function, as he and his Government saw it, was to prevent a descent from Southern France upon Neapolitan or Levantine