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Updated: June 3, 2025
By the 29th of August she had got six months' provisions on board and also many tons of shot. The ship had her top gallant-yards up, the blue flag of Admiral Kempenfeldt was flying at the mizen, and the ensign was hoisted on the ensign-staff, and she was to have sailed in about two days, to join the grand fleet in the Mediterranean.
The most glaring instances of failure on the part of England to do this were when De Grasse was permitted to get out unopposed in March, 1781; for an English fleet of superior force had sailed from Portsmouth nine days before him, but was delayed by the admiralty on the Irish coast; and again at the end of that year, when Kempenfeldt was sent to intercept De Guichen with an inferior force, while ships enough to change the odds were kept at home.
This is owing to the swampy nature of the land, and to the circumstance that a belt of hard sand lines the edge of the bay; so Paddy drove smack into the water of Kempenfeldt, and, as he said, sure we were travelling by water every way, for we had a deluge of rain above, and Lake Simcoe under us.
The fleet was pursued by twelve English ships under Admiral Kempenfeldt, an officer whose high professional abilities have not earned the immortality with which poetry has graced his tragical death. Falling in with the French one hundred and fifty miles west of Ushant, he cut off a part of the convoy, despite his inferior numbers. A few days later a tempest dispersed the French fleet.
MR. WILTON. "They were not all washed ashore, Dora, for the good old Admiral Kempenfeldt was never found. Vast portions of the wreck have been recovered, and many of her stores; but they are comparatively worthless when we think of the widows and orphans left to pine in poverty and wretchedness."
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