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Updated: May 12, 2025
The French were allowed to sail, and their disastrous cruise of January 1795 fully justified Kempenfelt's anticipations. So great was the damage done that they abandoned all idea of using their fleet as a whole. Howe's system was continued, but no longer with entirely successful results.
Then with his fleet in fine condition to carry out preventive tactics in accordance with Kempenfelt's well-known exposition, he returned to seek the enemy to the eastward, in order to try to draw them from their station at Scilly and open the Channel.
Nelson certainly shared Kempenfelt's views as to the possibilities of an inferior fleet kept actively in being. "As to our fleet," he wrote from the Mediterranean in 1796, "under such a commander-in-chief as Sir John Jervis nobody has any fear ... We are now twenty-two sail of the line. The combined fleet will not be above thirty-five.... I will venture my life Sir John Jervis defeats them.
It was essential, therefore, to apprise the British commander in the West Indies of the approach of the French reinforcements as well as of Kempenfelt's successes, and the Tisiphone was the same day despatched on this errand. Although he knew it not, Saumarez was now being borne by the tide which leads on to fortune.
It was, in fact, another example of the working of Kempenfelt's rule concerning winter weather. So far as naval defence can go, the disposition was all that was required. The Irish expedition was seen leaving Brest by our inshore cruiser squadron. It was reported to Colpoys, who had the battle-squadron outside, and it was only a dense fog that enabled it to escape.
An important condition to their success was the arrival of a great convoy, known to be on its way from Brest to repair the losses which Kempenfelt's raid and subsequent bad weather had inflicted in December.
His correct course, on Kempenfelt's principle, would have been to hang on De Ruyter so as to prevent his doing anything, and to have slowly fallen back, drawing the Dutch after him till his loosened concentration was closed up again. If De Ruyter had refused to follow him through the Straits, there would have been plenty of time to mass the fleet.
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