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The naval force, consisting of five 50-gun ships and eight smaller vessels, was commanded by Sir Peter Parker; the troops, seven thousand in number, by Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Clinton. The immediate effect was to close a haven of privateers, who centred in great numbers around an anchorage which flanked the route of all vessels bound from Europe to New York.
The Serapis was one of a remarkably bad class of ships, worse even than the two-decked 50-gun ships. She measured 886 tons, and her armament consisted of 20 long 18-pounders on the lower-deck, 22 long 12-pounders on the main-deck, and 2 long 6-pounders on the forecastle, making in all 44 guns.
The successive losses of the Caton, Jason, and Zélé, with the previous detachment of the two 50-gun ships with the convoy, had reduced the French numbers from thirty-five to thirty effective vessels. The thirty-six British remained undiminished.
The Experiment, 50, which Howe had sent to reconnoitre Narragansett Bay, was chased by them into Long Island Sound, and only reached New York by the East River; being the first ship of the line or 50-gun ship that ever passed through Hell Gate.
Hearing of the occurrence, the admiral at Halifax despatched the 50-gun frigate Leopard, commanded by Captain Humphries, with orders to the captains of any of the ships should they fall in with the Chesapeake without the limits of the United States to insist on searching her for deserters.
The point was specially well marked in the blockades, where the old 50-gun ships are almost always found with the inshore cruiser squadron, preventing that squadron being forced by inquisitive frigates.
During the passage out, every ship in the fleet was exercised with the great guns, firing at a target hung from the end of the fore-topmast studdingsail-boom rigged out for the purpose, so that they became unusually expert. Lord Exmouth's fleet consisted of only five line-of-battle ships, with the 50-gun ship Leander, four frigates, and several sloops of war and bomb-vessels.
In the next two rates we have the rank and file of the battle-line, two-deckers of increased size-namely, seventy-fours in the third rate, and sixty-fours in the fourth. Here, however, is a slight break in the perfection of the system, for the fourth rate also included 50-gun ships of two decks, which, during the progress of the Seven Years' War, ceased to be regarded as ships-of-the-line.
On the 31st five sail of the line and a 50-gun ship, all that could be got ready in time, crossed the bar, and the entire body of nineteen ships of the line started at once for the Chesapeake, whither it was understood now that both the French fleet and the united armies of Washington and Rochambeau were hurrying.
Just before the close of the war, Captain William Jumper, commanding the Weymouth, engaged and sank the Fougueux, a French 48-gun ship, and shortly afterwards he fell in with another French 50-gun ship, but in the heat of the engagement, some powder on board the Weymouth blew up the poop, and disabled her for further immediate action.
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