the Raisonnable, 64,[30] from Halifax.  This ship narrowly escaped the French fleet, having passed it on the evening of the 27th, steering for Rhode Island.  The Renown, 50, which on the 26th had reached New York from the West Indies, had a similar close shave, having sailed unnoticed through the rear of the enemy the night before.  Besides these two, Howe was joined also by the Centurion, 50, from Halifax, and by the Cornwall, 74; the latter, which crossed the bar on the 30th, being the first of Byron’s fleet to reach New York.  The three others belonged to Howe’s own squadron.  For the two Halifax ships which helped to make this most welcome reinforcement, the Admiral was indebted to the diligence of the officer there commanding, who hurried them away as soon as he learned of d’Estaing’s appearance on the coast.  The opportuneness of their arrival attracted notice.  “Had they appeared a few days sooner,” says a contemporary narrative, “either they must have been prevented from forming a junction with our squadron, and forced again to sea, or we should have had the mortification to see them increase the triumph of our enemy.”

On the 1st of August, forty-eight hours after the Cornwall had come in from a stormy passage of fifty-two days, the squadron was ready for sea, and Howe attempted to sail; but the wind hauled foul immediately after the signal to weigh had been made.  It did not become fair at the hour of high water, when alone heavy ships could cross the bar, until the morning of the 6th.  “Rhode Island was of such importance,” says the narrator already quoted, “and the fate of so large a portion of the British army as formed the garrison was of such infinite consequence to the general cause, that it was imagined the Admiral would not lose a moment in making some attempt for their relief.”  He had learned of the detachments made from the French fleet, and hoped that some advantage might be taken of this division.  In short, he went, as was proper and incumbent on him in such critical circumstances, to take a great risk, in hope of a favourable chance offering.  On the 9th, as before stated, he anchored off Point Judith, and opened communications with the garrison, from which he learned the events that had so far occurred, and also that the enemy was well provided with craft of all kinds to make a descent upon any part of the Island.

As deGrasse at Yorktown, when rumour announced the approach of a British fleet, was deterred only by the most urgent appeals of Washington from abandoning his control of the Chesapeake, essential to the capture of Cornwallis, so now d’Estaing, in Narragansett Bay, was unwilling to keep his place, in face of Howe’s greatly inferior squadron.[31] The influence exerted upon these two admirals by the mere approach of a hostile fleet, when decisive advantages depended upon their holding their ground, may be cited plausibly in support of the most extreme view of the effect