put them also in the enemy’s power, stood on, passed to windward of the latter, receiving several broadsides, and so escaped to the northward.  The Monmouth was equally maltreated; in fact, she had not been able to tack to the southward with the fleet.  Continuing north (a’), she became now much separated.  D’Estaing afterwards reestablished his order of battle on the port tack, forming upon the then leewardmost ship, on the line BC.

Byron’s action off Grenada, viewed as an isolated event, was the most disastrous in results that the British Navy had fought since Beachy Head, in 1690.  That the Cornwall, Grafton, and Lion were not captured was due simply to the strained and inept caution of the French admiral.  This Byron virtually admitted.  “To my great surprise no ship of the enemy was detached after the Lion.  The Grafton and Cornwall might have been weathered by the French, if they had kept their wind,... but they persevered so strictly in declining every chance of close action that they contented themselves with firing upon these ships when passing barely within gunshot, and suffered them to rejoin the squadron, without one effort to cut them off.”  Suffren,[65] who led the French on the starboard tack, and whose ship, the Fantasque, 64, lost 22 killed and 43 wounded, wrote:  “Had our admiral’s seamanship equalled his courage, we would not have allowed four dismasted ships to escape.”  That the Monmouth and Fame could also have been secured is extremely probable; and if Byron, in order to save them, had borne down to renew the action, the disaster might have become a catastrophe.

That nothing resulted to the French from their great advantage is therefore to be ascribed to the incapacity of their Commander-in-Chief.  It is instructive to note also the causes of the grave calamity which befell the British, when twenty-one ships met twenty-four,[66]—­a sensible but not overwhelming superiority.  These facts have been shown sufficiently.  Byron’s disaster was due to attacking with needless precipitation, and in needless disorder.  He had the weather-gage, it was early morning, and the northeast trade-wind, already a working breeze, must freshen as the day advanced.  The French were tied to their new conquest, which they could not abandon without humiliation; not to speak of their troops ashore.  Even had they wished to retreat, they could not have done so before a general chase, unless prepared to sacrifice their slower ships.  If twenty-four ships could reconcile themselves to running from twenty-one, it was scarcely possible but that the fastest of these would overtake the slowest of those.  There was time for fighting, an opportunity for forcing action which could not be evaded, and time also for the British to form in reasonably good order.