“At eight o’clock,” wrote an eye-witness in the British fleet, “d’Estaing with all his squadron appeared under way.  He kept working to windward, as if to gain a proper position for crossing the bar by the time the tide should serve.  The wind could not be more favourable for such a design; it blew from the exact point from which he could attack us to the greatest advantage.  The spring tides were at the highest, and that afternoon thirty feet on the bar.  We consequently expected the hottest day that had ever been fought between the two nations.  On our side all was at stake.  Had the men-of-war been defeated, the fleet of transports and victuallers must have been destroyed, and the army, of course, have fallen with us.  D’Estaing, however, had not spirit equal to the risk; at three o’clock we saw him bear off to the southward, and in a few hours he was out of sight.”

Four days later, Howe, reporting these occurrences, wrote:  “The weather having been favourable the last three days for forcing entrance to this port, I conclude the French commander has desisted.”  It is clear that the experienced British admiral did not recognise the impossibility of success for the enemy.

After the demonstration of the 22d, d’Estaing stood to the southward, with the wind at east.  The British advice-boats brought back word that they had kept company with him as far south as the Capes of the Delaware, and there had left him ninety miles from land.  When their leaving freed him from observation, he turned, and made for Narragansett Bay, an attack on which, in support of an American land force, had been concerted between him and Washington.  On the 29th he anchored three miles south of Rhode Island, and there awaited a suitable moment for forcing the entrance.

Narragansett Bay contains several islands.  The two largest, near the sea, are Rhode Island and Conanicut, the latter being the more westerly.  Their general direction, as that of the Bay itself, is north and south; and by them the entrance is divided into three passages.  Of these, the eastern, called Seakonnet, is not navigable above Rhode Island.  The central, which is the main channel, is joined by the western above Conanicut, and thus the two lead to the upper Bay.  The town of Newport is on the west side of Rhode Island, four miles from the main entrance.

On the 30th of July, the day after the French fleet had arrived, two of its ships of the line, under command of the afterwards celebrated Suffren, went up the western channel, anchoring within it near the south end of Conanicut.  One of them, as she passed, was hulled twice by the British batteries.  At the same time, two frigates and a corvette entered Seakonnet; whereupon the British abandoned and burned a sloop of war, the Kingfisher, 16, and some galleys there stationed.  The British general, Sir Robert Pigot, now withdrew his detachments from Conanicut, after disabling the guns, and concentrated