epeated advices, even after hostilities had commenced in Europe,
when the garrison of Minorca amounted to no more than four incomplete
regiments, and one company of artillery, forty-two officers being
absent, and the place otherwise unprovided for a siege, when the
Mediterranean squadron, commanded by Mr. Edgecumbe, consisted of two
ships of the line, and five frigates; neither stores, ammunition, or
provisions, the absent officers belonging to the garrison, recruits for
the regiments, though ready raised, miners, nor any additional troops,
were sent to the island, nor the squadron augmented, till admiral Byng
sailed from Spithead on the sixth day of April, with no more ships
of the line than, by the most early and authentic intelligence, the
government were informed would sail from Toulon, even when Mr. Byng
should have been joined by commodore Edgecumbe; a junction upon which
no dependence ought to have been laid; that this squadron contained no
troops but such as belonged to the four regiments in garrison, except
one battalion to serve in the fleet as marines, unless we include the
order for another to be embarked at Gibraltar; which order was neither
obeyed nor understood: that, considering the danger to which Minorca
was exposed, and the forwardness of the enemy's preparations at Toulon,
admiral Osborne, with thirteen ships of the line and one frigate, who
returned on the sixteenth of February, after having convoyed a fleet of
merchant ships, might have been detached to Minorca, without hazarding
the coast of Great Britain; for at that time, exclusive of this
squadron, there were eight ships of the line and thirty-two frigates
ready manned, and thirty-two ships of the line and five frigates almost
equipped; that admiral Hawke was sent with fourteen ships of the
line and one frigate to cruise in the bay of Biscay, after repeated
intelligence had been received that the French fleet had sailed for the
West Indies, and the eleven ships remaining at Brest and Rochefort were
in want of hands and cannon, so that they could never serve to cover
any embarkation or descent, consequently Mr. Hawke's squadron might have
been spared for the relief of Minorca; that, instead of attending to
this important object, the admiralty, on the eighth day of March, sent
two ships of the line and three frigates to intercept a coasting convoy
off Cape Barfleur: on the eleventh of the same month they detached two
ships of the line to the West I