In broad conception, Hawke’s method was simple and can be easily stated; the difficulty lay in carrying it out.  The main body of his force had a rendezvous, so chosen that in violent weather from the westward it could at worst drift up Channel, but usually would have a fair wind for Torbay, a roadstead on the British coast about a hundred miles distant.  To the rendezvous the fleet was not tied under ordinary circumstances; it was merely a headquarters which admitted of cruising, but where despatches from home would always find the admiral in person, or news of his whereabouts.  Near Brest itself was kept an inshore squadron of three or four ships, which under ordinary circumstances could see the enemy inside, noting his forwardness; for the cannon of the day could not molest a vessel more than a mile from the entrance, while the conditions within of spars and sails indicated to a seaman the readiness or intention to move, to a degree not ascertainable with ships dependent on steam only.

With these dispositions, if a westerly gale came on, the fleet held its ground while it could, but when expedient to go put into Torbay.  Owing to the nearness of the two places, the weather, when of a pronounced character, was the same at both.  While the wind held to the westward of south, or even at south-southeast, a ship-of-the-line could not beat out from Brest; much less a fleet.  The instant the wind went east, fair for exit, the British left Torbay, with certainty of not being too late; for, though the enemy might get out before their return, the east wind would not suffer them to close with the French coast at another point soon enough to avoid a meeting.  While in Torbay the time was improved by taking on board stores and provisions; nor was the night’s rest at anchor a small consideration for seamen worn with continual cruising.

The practical merits displayed by Hawke in maintaining this simple but arduous service were, first and supremely, the recognition of its possibility, contrary to a tradition heretofore as commonly and as blindly accepted as those of the line-of-battle, and of the proper methods for fleet attack before described.  It must be remembered also that in these wars, 1739-1763, for the first time the British Navy found the scene of action, in European waters, to be the Biscay coast of France.  In the former great wars of the seventeenth century, French fleets entered the Channel, and pitched battles were fought there and in the North Sea.  Thence the contest shifted to the Mediterranean, where the great fleets operated in the later days of William III., and the reign of Anne.  Then, too, the heavy ships, like land armies, went into winter quarters.  It was by distinguished admirals considered professionally criminal to expose those huge yet cumbrous engines of the nation’s power to the buffetings of winter gales, which might unfit them next year to meet the enemy, snugly nursed and restored to vigor in home ports during the same time.  The need of periodical refitting and cleaning the bottoms clinched the argument in favor of this seasonable withdrawal from the sea.