rried
his ships between Scilly and Land's End by night, disappearing before
morning from the enemy's view. He thus succeeded in meeting to the
westward a valuable Jamaica convoy, homeward bound, and taking it under
his protection. The allies being afterwards driven south by a heavy
gale, the vessels of war and trade slipped by and reached England
safely. Thus does good luck often give its blessing to good management.

To relieve Gibraltar, however, was the one really great task,
commensurate to his abilities, that devolved upon Howe during this
short command. In the summer of 1782, the Spaniards were completing ten
heavy floating batteries, expected to be impervious to shot and to
combustion, and from an attack by which upon the sea front of the works
decisive results were anticipated. At the same time prolonged blockade
by land and sea, supported by forty-nine allied ships-of-the-line
anchored at Algeciras, the Spanish port on the opposite side of the Bay,
was producing its inevitable results, and the place was now in the last
extremity for provisions and munitions of war. To oppose the hostile
fleets and introduce the essential succors, to carry which required
thirty-one sail of supply ships, Great Britain could muster only
thirty-four of-the-line, but to them were adjoined the superb
professional abilities of Lord Howe, never fully evoked except when in
sight of an enemy, as he here must act, with Barrington and Kempenfelt
as seconds; the one the pattern of the practical, experienced, division
commander, tested on many occasions, the other an officer much of Howe's
own stamp, and like him a diligent student and promoter of naval
manoeuvres and naval signals, to the development of which both had
greatly contributed. To the train of supply ships were added for convoy
a number of merchant vessels destined to different parts of the world,
so that the grand total which finally sailed on September 11th was 183.
While this great body was gathering at Spithead, there occurred the
celebrated incident of the oversetting of the _Royal George_ at her
anchors, on August 29th,

"When Kempenfelt went down
With twice four hundred men."

Howe thus lost the man upon whom principally he must have relied for the
more purely tactical development of the fleet, opportunity for which he
anticipated in the necessarily slow and graduated progress of so large
an assemblage.

The occasion was indeed one that called for deliberati