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How account for the seeming reluctance of the man who three years before had made the desperate attacks of Solebay and the Texel? His reasons have not been handed down; it may be that the defensive advantages of the lee-gage had been recognized by this thoughtful seaman, especially when preparing to meet, with inferior forces, an enemy of impetuous gallantry and imperfect seamanship.
The French were under Vice-Admiral d'Estrées, the same who had commanded them at Solebay. A force of six thousand English troops at Yarmouth was ready to embark if De Ruyter was worsted. On the 7th of June the Dutch were made out, riding within the sands at Schoneveldt.
Before finally quitting this war with Holland, a short notice of the Comte d'Estrées, to whom Louis committed the charge of the French contingent of the allied fleet, and who commanded it at Solebay and the Texel, will throw some light upon the qualifications of the French naval officers of the day before experience had made seamen of many of them.
That Bonaparte, supposed to be master of his first movements, if he meant to land in person at Dover, would put half his army ashore at Solebay, is as incredible as that he would have landed one half at Leghorn, meaning to act with the other from the Riviera.
It infatuated great numbers of our young men who flocked on board our private armed ships in hopes of as great a prize. * I entered on board a new Brig called the 'Fair American. She carried sixteen guns. * We were captured on the 27th of August, by the Solebay frigate, and safely stowed away in the Old Jersey prison ship at New York, an old, unsightly, rotten hulk.
The engagement must have been very short, for from the time of his joining the Navy in 1755 to his return from Newfoundland in 1762, his leave on shore had been very limited, and, with the exception perhaps of a day or two between leaving the Eagle and joining the Solebay, and again when leaving the latter ship for the Pembroke, none of his time was spent in London.
He threw sand upon a sheet of gilt-edged paper, folded and superscribed it; then took from his breast a thicker document. "The Solebay, man-of-war, lying off Jamestown, sails at sunrise. The captain Captain Meade is my friend. Who knows the fortunes of war? If by chance I should fall to-night, take a boat at the landing, hasten upstream, and hail the Solebay.
A remarkable instance of its effective use occurred at Ipswich in 1703, when a gang from the Solebay, rowing up the Orwell from Harwich, attempted to press the men engaged in re-paying a collier. The weapon to which the sailor was most partial, however, was the familiar capstan-bar. In it, as in its fellow the handspike, he found a whole armament.
After he was gone comes by a pretence of mine yesterday old Delks the waterman, with his daughter Robins, and several times to and again, he leaving her with me, about the getting of his son Robins off, who was pressed yesterday again . . . . All the afternoon at my office mighty busy writing letters, and received a very kind and good one from my Lord Sandwich of his arrival with the fleete at Solebay, and the joy he has at my last newes he met with, of the marriage of my Lady Jemimah; and he tells me more, the good newes that all our ships, which were in such danger that nobody would insure upon them, from the Eastland,
At noon the British fleet was running along close under the high land of Nevis; so close that the Solebay, 28, one of the frigates inshore of the line, grounded and was wrecked. No signals were needed, except to correct irregularities in the order, for the captains knew what they were to do.
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