Of the British, one ship went on a shoal during the action, and on the following day another coming to her assistance also grounded.  Both were lost, but most of their people were saved.  Beyond this Hawke’s fleet suffered little.  “As to the loss we have sustained,” wrote he, “let it be placed to the account of the necessity I was under of running all risks to break this strong force of the enemy.”

A contemporary witness assigns to Hawke’s own ship a large individual share in the fighting.  Of this he does not himself speak, nor is it of much matter.  That all was done with her that could be done, to aid in achieving success, is sufficiently assured by his previous record.  Hawke’s transcendent merit in this affair was that of the general officer, not of the private captain.  The utmost courage shown by the commander of a single ship before the enemy’s fire cannot equal the heroism which assumes the immense responsibility of a doubtful issue, on which may hang a nation’s fate; nor would the admiral’s glory be shorn of a ray, if neither then nor at any other time had a hostile shot traversed his decks.

The night of the 20th passed in anxieties inseparable from a situation dangerous at best, but still more trying to an admiral upon whom, after such a day, night had closed without enabling him to see in what case most of his ships were.  “In the night,” he reports, “we heard many guns of distress fired, but, blowing hard, want of knowledge of the coast, and whether they were fired by a friend or an enemy, prevented all means of relief.”  In the morning he resumed his activity.  Little, however, could be done.  The continuing violence of the wind, and ignorance of the ground, prevented approach within gun-shot to the ships at the mouth of the Vilaine, while they, by lightening and favor of the next flood tide, warped their way inside through the mud flats.

Hawke remained nearly two months longer, returning to England January 17, 1760.  He had then been thirty-five weeks on board, without setting foot on shore.  At the age of fifty-four, and amid such manifold cares, it is not to be wondered at that he should need relief.  Rather must he be considered fortunate that his health, never robust in middle life, held firm till his great triumph was achieved.  Boscawen succeeded him temporarily in the command.

He was received in England with acclamations and with honors; yet the most conspicuous mark of approval conferred on admirals before and after, the grant of the peerage, was not given to him, who had wrought one of the very greatest services ever done for the country.  Recent precedent—­that of Anson—­demanded such recognition; and popular enthusiasm would have applauded, although the full military merit of the man could scarcely be appreciated by the standards of his generation.  That no such reward was bestowed is most probably attributable to Hawke’s own indifference to self-advancement.  If demanded by him, it could scarcely have been refused;