"I never could have spared the ships to go to Gibraltar for them," he wrote to St.Vincent, to whom he expressed his satisfaction with the way the plan worked.

He soon abandoned, in fact, the method of sending individual ships for water, because of the long absence thus entailed.

When water could not be brought in transports, or rather could not easily be transhipped owing to the badness of the season, he thought it better to take the whole fleet to the nearest watering-place than to divide its strength.

Fresh provisions, absolutely indispensable to the health of the ships' companies, constituted the greatest of difficulties.

Opposition to furnishing them must be expected wherever French influence could be felt.