THE NAVY OF THE RESTORATION 



given, to damage Holland just as much as to help James. One would 

 have thought that France had her hands full, for she was already fight- 

 ing the Emperor, Spain and Sweden, and there is no doubt that this 

 prevented the full force of the French being directed against us at the 

 outset as it should have been. In the following year, however, Louis 

 fitted out a big expedition to convey King James and five thousand 

 troops to Kinsale, where the Jacobites had strong support. 

 The Battle of Bantry. 



Admiral Herbert was immediately dispatched with what ships 

 could be hastily collected but he failed to get into touch with the 

 French for some time, and finally when he came up with them in Bantry 

 Bay on the 30th of April his fleet had been reinforced until it amounted 

 to nineteen men-of-war and three fireships. The French Fleet con- 

 sisted of twenty-four ships of the line, five frigates and ten fireships, 

 but none of them were as big as our crack vessels. Their main purpose 

 was to land munitions and reinforcements for James's Army. In the 

 course of the action the inferior British Fleet got very badly hammered 

 and it was only the jealousies of some of the French Admirals that 

 prevented it being badly defeated. The English held the field but the 

 French had achieved what they had set out to do. There was some 

 outcry against Herbert for having failed to smash the French, but 

 William understood his difficulties better and with a spirit that unfortu- 

 nately did not last created him Earl of Torrington. Almost immediately 

 after this one of the brilliant minor actions of the Navy was the relief 

 of Londonderry and the breaking of the boom with which the Jacobites 

 had blocked the stream. 



Beachy Head. 



In the year 1690 William himself crossed to Ireland to win the 

 Battle of the Boyne, leaving the administration in the hands of Queen 

 Mary and his advisers. It cannot be said that the members of the 

 council kept their heads, and when Louis XIV brought up his Mediter- 

 ranean Fleet to reinforce the Brest Squadron they were thrown into a 

 bad panic and commenced to issue any number of hasty orders, some 

 of them contradictory and many against all naval judgment. Torring- 

 ton, who had an Anglo-Dutch Fleet, was ordered to seek the invaders 

 and destroy them, although he knew that a far better policy would be 

 to wait until he was reinforced by the fleets of Admiral Killigrew from 

 Gibraltar and Sir Cloudesley Shovel from Ireland. Without them he 

 was distinctly inferior to the French, the difference being eight ships 

 and nearly five hundred guns. Torrington's idea was to harass the 

 French without enabling them to use their opportunities to crush his 

 fleet, but unfortunately this plan was rather spoilt by the Dutch mis- 

 understanding his orders and giving the Count de Tourville, who 

 commanded the French, every opportunity. The Dutch saved them- 

 selves from annihilation by smart seamanship, for there was a big tide- 

 way and on Torrington's orders they suddenly anchored simultaneously 

 and let the attacking French ships be swept past them. Torrington 



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