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Updated: May 31, 2025
One 64 and some frigates were held as a reserve, inside the main line, to act as occasion might require. The total available force was, six 64's, three 50's, and six frigates. D'Estaing's fleet, in detail, consisted of one 90-gun ship, one 80, six 74's and one 50.
The French government, having timely notice of the expedition, undertook to frustrate it; detailing for that purpose a division of two 74's, and three 64's, under the since celebrated Suffren. These ships left Brest on the 22d of March, with the fleet of de Grasse. They also carried some battalions of troops. On April 11th the British squadron reached Porto Praya, Cape de Verde Islands.
Upon the return of the Minorca ships, Rodney put to sea again on the 13th of February, for the West Indies. The detachment from the Channel fleet accompanied him three days' sail on his way, and then parted for England with the prizes. On this return voyage it fell in with fifteen French supply vessels, convoyed by two 64's, bound for the Ile de France, in the Indian Ocean.
It will also show that there was no development of, but a relative decline in, the three-deckers and the 64's, the small additions, where there were any, being generally due to captures from the enemy. The two-deckers not 'fit to lie in a line' were at the end of the Trafalgar year about half what they were when the first period of the 'Great War' began.
"Why, there are men in the fleet who never had any schooling at all who could tell you that we had seven 74's, seven 64's, and two 50- gun ships in the action. There's a picture on the wall of the chase of the Ca Ira. Which were the ships that laid her aboard?" Again I had to confess that he had beaten me.
On the same day there left New York for Barbados a British squadron, two 64's, three 50's, and three smaller craft, under the command of Commodore William Hotham, convoying five thousand troops for service in the West Indies. Being bound for nearly the same point, the two hostile bodies steered parallel courses, each ignorant of the other's nearness.
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