That Bompart was coming proved to be true.  On November 10th Hawke anchored with the fleet in Torbay, after three days of struggle against a very heavy westerly storm.  “Bompart, if near, may get in,” he wrote the Admiralty, “but no ship can get out from any port in the Bay.”  The weather had then moderated, but was still too rough for boating, even in the sheltered roadstead; hence he could get no reports of the state of the ships, which shows incidentally the then defective system of signalling.  On the 12th he sailed, on the 13th was again forced into Torbay by a south-wester, but on the 14th got away finally.  On the afternoon of the 16th the fleet was twenty-five miles from the Island of Ushant, near Brest, and there learned from transports, returning from the light division off Quiberon, that the French fleet had been seen the day before, seventy-five miles northwest of Belleisle; therefore some fifty or sixty miles southeast of the point where this news was received.  Conflans had sailed the same day that the British last left Torbay, but before his departure Bompart had opportunely arrived, as Hawke had feared.  His ships were not able to go at once to sea on so important a mission, but their seasoned crews were a welcome reinforcement and were distributed through the main fleet, which numbered twenty-one ships-of-the-line.  Hawke had twenty-three.

Concluding that the enemy were bound for Quiberon, Hawke carried a press of sail for that place.  He knew they must be within a hundred miles of him and aimed to cut them off from their port.  During the 17th the wind, hanging to the south and east, was adverse to both fleets, but on the 18th and 19th it became more favorable.  At half-past eight on the morning of the 20th, one of the lookout frigates ahead of the British made the signal for sighting a fleet.  It was then blowing strong from the west-northwest, and Belleisle, which is ten miles west of Quiberon Bay, and south of which the fleets must pass, was by the English reckoning forty miles distant.  A course of some fifty or sixty miles was therefore to be run before the enemy could close the land, and there remained about eight hours of sun.

Hawke’s day had come.  Towards ten o’clock he had the enemy sufficiently in view to see that they were intent upon securing their arrival, rather than fighting.  He therefore made signal for the seven ships nearest them “to chase and draw into a line-of-battle ahead of me, and endeavour to stop them till the rest of the squadron should come up, who also were to form as they chased that no time might be lost in the pursuit.”  The French “kept going off under such sail as all their squadron could carry and yet keep together, while we crowded after him with every sail our ships could bear.”  The words italicized sum up the whole philosophy of a general chase.  The pursued are limited to the speed of the slowest, otherwise he who cannot but lag is separated and lost; the pursuer need slacken no whit, for his friends are ever coming up to his aid.  Overtaking is inevitable, unless the distance is too short.