A tremendous gale followed, scattered both fleets, and dismasted several of the French.  D’Estaing appeared again off Rhode Island only to notify Sullivan that he could no longer aid him; and the latter, deprived of an indispensable support, withdrew in confusion.  The disappointment of the Americans showed itself by mobbing some French seamen in Boston, whither their fleet retired.  “After the enterprise upon Rhode Island had been planned,” continues Washington, in the letter above quoted, “and was in the moment of execution, that Lord Howe with the British ships should interpose merely to create a diversion, and draw the French fleet from the island, was again unlucky, as the Count had not returned on the 17th to the island, though drawn from it on the 10th; by which the whole was subjected to a miscarriage.”  What Washington politicly calls bad luck was French bad management, provoked and baffled by Howe’s accurate strategy, untiring energy, consummate seamanship, and tactical proficiency.  Clinton’s army delivered, the forcing of New York frustrated, Rhode Island and its garrison saved, by a squadron never more than two thirds of that opposed to it, were achievements to illustrate any career; and the more so that they were effected by sheer scientific fencing, like some of Bonaparte’s greatest feats, with little loss of blood.  They form Howe’s highest title to fame, and his only claim as a strategist.  It will be observed, however, that the characteristic of his course throughout is untiring and adequate adaption to the exigencies of the situation, as momentarily determined by the opponent’s movements.  There is in it no single original step.  Such, indeed, is commonly the case with a strictly defensive campaign by a decisively inferior force.  It is only the rare men who solve such difficulties by unexpected exceptional action.

It is indicative of Howe’s personal feelings about the colonial quarrel, during the two years in which he thus ably discharged his official duties, that both he and his brother determined to ask relief from their commands as soon as it appeared that all hopes of conciliation were over.  The appointment of other commissioners hastened their decision, and the permission to return was already in the admiral’s hands when the news of D’Estaing’s coming was received.  Fighting a traditional foreign foe was a different thing from shedding the blood of men between whom and himself there was so much in common; nor was Howe the man to dodge responsibility by turning over an inferior force, threatened by such heavy odds, to a junior officer before the new commander-in-chief came.  His resolution to remain was as happy for his renown as it was creditable to his character.  After the brief campaign just sketched, true to his steady previous policy, he followed the French fleet to Newport when he heard of its reappearance there, and thence to Boston, coming off that port only three days after it; but finding it now sheltered under shore batteries, impregnable to his still inferior numbers, and learning that it was in need of extensive repairs, he resigned the command in New York to a rear-admiral, and departed to Newport to meet his successor, Vice-Admiral Byron.  Upon the latter’s arrival he sailed for England, towards the end of September, 1778.  General Howe had preceded him by four months.