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Updated: May 18, 2025
As it was, no efficient blockade of Brest was established, and twenty-eight French sail-of-the-line went out unopposed June 3, 1779, under D'Orvilliers, Keppel's opponent of the year before. The fleet steered for the coasts of Spain, where it was to find the Spanish ships; but it was not till the 22d of July that the full contingent joined.
It had not an ally in the world, and could count on no Rhine campaigns to exhaust French resources. For the first time England engaged France in a purely naval war; and for the only time France was sufficiently strong in sail-of-the-line to meet England on equal terms.
To a friend he wrote: "Mann is ordered to come up; we shall then be twenty-two sail-of-the-line such as England hardly ever produced, commanded by an admiral who will not fail to look the enemy in the face, be their force what it may. I suppose it will not be more than thirty-four of-the-line." "The admiral is firm as a rock," wrote at the same moment the British viceroy of Corsica.
Nelson, however, was, or feigned to be, less impressed. "I have just been reconnoitring the Danish line of defence," he wrote to Lady Hamilton. "It looks formidable to those who are children at war, but to my judgment, with ten sail-of-the-line I think I can annihilate them; at all events, I hope to be allowed to try."
The French, who "were in one end of Bastia before we quitted the other," had occupied the citadel since one in the morning, and the Spanish fleet, of over twenty sail-of-the-line, which had already arrived, was even then off Cape Corso, about sixty miles distant; but the little British squadron, sailing promptly with a fair wind, in a few hours reached Elba, where every vessel was safely at anchor before night.
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