By the time Torrington sent this reply he had been pressed back as far as Beachy Head; it was no longer possible to get to the westward; and the following day, finding himself to windward, he attacked.  But still confirmed in his idea of defence, and carrying it on to his tactics, he refused to give the French the chance of a real decision, and disengaged as soon as a drop in the wind permitted.  So far he felt justified in interpreting orders which he knew were founded on false information.  He was sure, as he said in justification of the way he fought the action, “that the Queen could not have been prevailed with to sign an order for it, had not both our weakness and the strength of the enemy been disguised to her.”

So severely was his fleet crippled that he believed his plan could no longer act.  “What the consequences of this unfortunate battle may be,” he wrote in his Journal, “God Almighty only knows, but this I dare be positive in, had I been left to my liberty I had prevented any attempt upon the land, and secured the western ships, Killigrew, and the merchantmen.”  Actually in all this he was successful.  Slowly retiring eastward he drew the French after him as far as Dover before he ran to the Nore; and Tourville was unable to get back to the westward, till all the endangered ships were safe in Plymouth.  In spite of Torrington’s being forced to fight an action at the wrong time and place, his design had so far succeeded.  Not only had he prevented the French doing anything that could affect the issue of the war, but he had completely foiled Tourville’s plan of destroying the British fleet in detail.  That he had done, but retribution by passing to the offensive was no longer in his power.

That Tourville or his Government was impressed with the efficacy of the method was demonstrated the following year, when he in his turn found himself in an inferiority that denied him hope of a successful battle decision.  During the summer he kept his fleet hovering off the mouth of the Channel without giving the British admiral a chance of contact.  His method, however, differed from that of Torrington, and he only achieved his negative object by keeping out of sight of his enemy altogether.  In his opinion, if a fleet remained at sea in close observation of an active enemy an action could not be avoided.  “If (the admiral),” he wrote in his memorandum on the subject, “be ordered to keep the sea to try to amuse the enemy and to let them know we are in a position to attack in case they attempt a descent, I think it my duty to say that in that case we must make up our mind to have to fight them in the end; for if they have really sought an action, they will have been able to fight, seeing that it is impossible to pirouette so long near a fleet without coming to grips."[20] This is as much as to say that a sure point of temporary retreat is necessary to “a fleet in being,” and this was an essential part of Torrington’s idea.