On the 7th, in the morning, Admiral Hotham was much surprised to learn that the above squadron was seen in the offing, pursued into port by the enemy’s fleet.  Immediately on their appearance, he made every preparation to put to sea after them; having the mortification, in the mean time, to behold Captain Nelson, with his little squadron, for nearly seven hours, almost wholly in their possession.  The shore, and his knowledge of it, proved his greatest friends on this occasion.

Though most of the British ships were in the midst of watering and refitting, by very great exertions, the whole fleet got under weigh that night; but a calm, and swell, prevented their going out till the morning.

It was not till day-break, on the 13th of July 1795, that they were discovered by the fleet.  At eight o’clock, Admiral Hotham, finding that they had no other view than that of endeavouring to get off, made the signal for a general chace.  The baffling winds, and vexatious calms, which render every naval operation in this country doubtful, soon afterwards taking place, a few only of our van ships could come up with the enemy’s rear about noon.  These they so warmly attacked, that one of the sternmost ships, the Alcide of seventy-four guns, had struck in the course of an hour.  The rest of their fleet, favoured by a shift of wind, that placed them to windward, had got so far into Frejus Bay, while the greater part of our’s was becalmed in the offing, that it became impossible for anything farther to be effected.

Had the wind lasted twenty minutes longer, the six flyers, as they were called, would have been alongside as many of the enemy.  Captain Nelson had every hope of getting the Agamemnon, one of these flyers, alongside an eighty-gun ship, with a flag or broad pendant flying; but the west wind dying away, and the east coming, gave them the advantage, and enabled them to reach their own shore, from which they were not three leagues distant.

Rear-Admiral Mann, who had shifted his flag to the Victory on this occasion, commanded the six ships thus distinguished by their superiority of sailing:  he proved himself, Captain Nelson observed, a good man, in every sense of the word.

The disappointment of our brave countrymen, on this day, must have been prodigiously great.  In the morning, there had been a hope of taking the whole of the French fleet; and, even latterly, no bad prospect of securing six sail of the line.  Instead of which, they had only taken a single ship, the Alcide; and that, such was the fortune of this luckless day, took fire about half an hour after it had struck, and before being taken into possession—­said to be occasioned by a box of combustibles in the fore-top—­and the whole ship was soon in a blaze.  Several boats, from our fleet, were instantly dispatched to rescue as many as possible of the unhappy crew from the devouring flames; and, by great exertion, three hundred were saved:  the remainder, consisting of about four hundred, had the melancholy fate of being blown up with the ship.