rum over 37 per cent.  The words “starvation” and “famine” were freely used in these representations, which were repeated in 1778.  Insurance rose to 23 per cent; and this, with actual losses by capture,[21] and by cessation of American trade, with consequent fall of prices, was estimated to give a total loss of L66 upon every L100 earned before the war.  Yet, with all this, the outward West India fleet in 1778 waited six weeks, April 10th-May 26th, for convoy.  Immediately after it got away, a rigorous embargo was laid upon all shipping in British ports, that their crews might be impressed to man the Channel fleet.  Market-boats, even, were not allowed to pass between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.

Three days after Byron had sailed, Admiral Augustus Keppel also put to sea with twenty-one ships of the line, to cruise off Brest.  His instructions were to prevent the junction of the Toulon and Brest divisions, attacking either that he might meet.  On the 17th of June, two French frigates were sighted.  In order that they might not report his force or his movements, the British Admiral sent two of his own frigates, with the request that they would speak him.  One, the Belle Poule, 36, refused; and an engagement followed between her and the British ship, the Arethusa, 32.  The King of France subsequently declared that this occurrence fixed the date of the war’s beginning.  Although both Keppel’s and d’Estaing’s orders prescribed acts of hostility, no formal war yet existed.

Byron had a very tempestuous passage, with adverse winds, by which his vessels were scattered and damaged.  On the 18th of August, sixty-seven days from Plymouth, the flagship arrived off the south coast of Long Island, ninety miles east of New York, without one of the fleet in company.  There twelve ships were seen at anchor to leeward (north), nine or ten miles distant, having jury masts, and showing other signs of disability.  The British vessel approached near enough to recognise them as French.  They were d’Estaing’s squadron, crippled by a very heavy gale, in which Howe’s force had also suffered, though to a less extent.  Being alone, and ignorant of existing conditions, Byron thought it inexpedient to continue on for either New York or Narragansett Bay.  The wind being southerly, he steered for Halifax, which he reached August 26th.  Some of his ships also entered there.  A very few had already succeeded in joining Howe in New York, being fortunate enough to escape the enemy.

So far as help from England went, Lord Howe would have been crushed long before this.  He owed his safety partly to his own celerity, partly to the delays of his opponent.  Early in May he received advices from home, which convinced him that a sudden and rapid abandonment of Philadelphia and of Delaware Bay might become necessary.  He therefore withdrew his ships of the line from New York and Narragansett, concentrating them at the mouth of Delaware Bay, while the transports