unfortunate signal was run up in latitude 28° 35' north, and longitude 19° 10' west, after a chase, reckoning until 1 h. 15 m. P.M., of 30 hours and a half, during which the leading ships had run about 149 miles in a south-south-east direction.

In July, 1801, without waiting for friends, the Superb dashed alone among the rearmost ships (two of them three-deckers) of an enemy's fleet ; * but Captain Keats was then the first, not the second, officer in command of her. The alleged motive for Sir John's discontinuing the chase was the divided state of the British ships ; owing to which the Superb might have got herself surrounded and captured before any assistance could reach her. It appears, however, that the French squadron itself, during the latter part of the chase, was by no means concentrated ; and that, had the Superb brought to action, as in the course of a few hours she might, the sternmost French ship, the Spencer and Agamemnon were sufficiently advanced to keep in check any other French ships that might have shortened sail to cover their rear. As it is not likely that the French admiral would have abandoned his rearmost ship, a general action would in all probability have ensued ; and, as the ships of the two squadrons were equal in number, and all of them two-deckers (there being but one French frigate, the second British frigate would have compensated for the Agamemnon's inferiority), the issue, in all reasonable calculation, would have been favourable to the British.

Having by standing for a short time to the north-north-west, collected his scattered ships, Sir John despatched the Amethyst to England with intelligence of the strength of the French squadron and of its supposed destination to the East Indies ; and then, at about 6 h. 10 m. P.M., bore away west-south-west, to get a supply of water at the Leeward islands, the stock on board not being likely to last until the squadron could work back to its station. On the 2d of January, 1806, the island of St.-Antonio, bearing north-west half-west distant 10 or 12 miles, Sir John detached the Powerful, first to victual herself among the Cape de Verds, and then to proceed on to the East Indies, to reinforce the squadron under Rear-admiral Sir Edward Pellew.

On the 12th of January, with his remaining five sail of the line and one frigate, Sir John anchored in Carlisle bay, Barbadoes, and immediately sent the Acasta to the island of St.-Christopher, or St.-Kitts, to expedite the preparations for watering the squadron. On the 14th the squadron weighed from Carlisle bay ; and steering to the westward across Fort-Royal bay, Martinique, the vice-admiral anchored, on the evening of the 19th, in Basse-Terre road, St. Christopher's. On the 21st the 74-gun ship Northumberland, Captain John Morrison, bearing the flag of Rear-admiral the Honourable Alexander Cochrane

*  See vol. iii, p. 127.

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