some fifty vessels of
one hundred and fifty to two hundred tons had by this time assembled.
These might at a pinch and for a short transit be estimated to be
capable of transporting some ten thousand troops. But an embargo,
although clear proof of hostile intent, was not necessarily a sign of
impending invasion. It was a common expedient, preliminary to war,
whereby you deprived your enemy of ships and men very necessary to his
purposes and secured ships and men equally necessary to your own. Hence
no strategic connexion could with any certainty be held to exist between
the embargo at Dunkirk and the sailing of the French fleet from Brest.
On the other hand it was clearly dangerous to uncover the Channel so
long as the destination of the Brest fleet was unknown, and, although
Newcastle had suggested to Norris that he should divide his fleet and
send the major part of it to reinforce Mathews in the Mediterranean, yet
Norris strongly demurred to the suggestion, and before the time came to
act on it the situation had so far developed as to disallow it
altogether. On February 11, Norris received information that a French
fleet of at least sixteen sail of the line had been seen the day before
off the Start. This convinced him that the French had some scheme to the
eastward in hand; and as he had frigates watching the Channel between
the Isle of Wight and Cape Barfleur he was equally convinced that the
French had so far no appreciable armed force to the eastward of him.
Newcastle, however, did not share this conviction. He had received
numerous reports of movements of French ships in the Channel to the
eastward of the Isle of Wight and other information which pointed to a
concentration at Dunkirk. As a matter of fact no French men-of-war were
at this time east of the Isle of Wight, and the vessels reported to
Newcastle must have been transports making for Dunkirk and magnified
into ships of the line by the fog of war. Newcastle, accordingly,
ordered Norris to go forthwith to the Downs. Foul winds prevented Norris
from sailing at once from St Helen's, and on the 13th, the day before he
did sail, he received further information which confirmed his conviction
that the French were still to the westward. But Newcastle's orders
remained peremptory, and on the 14th he sailed with eighteen ships, and
anchored in the Downs on the 17th. There he found two more ships
awaiting him, while two others were on their way to join him from
Plym