While contending with contrary winds between Sardinia and Minorca, M. Ganteaume passed barely out of sight of Rear-admiral Mann's squadron on its way to Gibraltar. A French writer, in the "Victoires et Conquêtes," declares that M. Ganteaume chased, and very nearly captured, the Agamemnon 64, Captain Horatio Nelson, and that subsequently he himself was chased by a squadron of five sail of the line under Vice-admiral Sir Hyde Parker, and only saved from capture by the fall of the topmasts of the two advanced ships. Although it is certain that several detachments from Admiral Hotham's fleet were at this time traversing the Mediterranean, we cannot discover, on inspecting the log-books of the British ships, that M. Ganteaume's squadron was seen by any of them.

Having, in spite of the chances against him, accomplished his passage to the Levant, M. Ganteaume there captured a great many English, Russian, and Neapolitan merchant vessels, and, by his appearance off the port of Smyrna, released the 36-gun frigate Sensible, Commodore Jacques-Mélanie Rondeau, and corvette Sardine ; which, with their prize, the late British 28-gun frigate Nemesis, Captain Samuel Hood Linzee, had, until the proximity of Commodore Ganteaume's squadron became known, been blockaded by the British 38-gun frigate Aigle, Captain Samuel Hood, and 28-gun frigate Cyclops, Captain William Hotham. We may remark, in passing, that the Nemesis had been captured on the 9th of December, while at anchor in the neutral port of Smyrna, by the Sensible and Sardine, without, as it appears, any opposition on the part of the British frigate beyond a fierce remonstrance at the illegality of the measure.

While cruising in the northern quarter of the Archipelago, the French squadron encountered a violent gale of wind, in which ; besides some inconsiderable damage done to two or three of the ships, the Justice lost all her masts. Ordering the Junon to take the latter in tow, M. Ganteaume steered for the road of the Dardanelles. In a few days after he had reached this anchorage, intelligence arrived from Constantinople, that two British sail of the line and three or four frigates had been detached to intercept him.

Leaving the Justice to follow as soon as she could be got ready, the French commodore, with the remainder of his ships, weighed and set sail, in the hope to be able to quit the Archipelago before the British squadron could enter it ; M. Ganteaume being well aware that, from the little respect which, in the case of the Nemesis, Captain Rondeau and the Turks had shown to the neutrality of a port, the British commanding officer would be justified in attacking him in any Turkish road or port in which he might be lying. That the French commodore did not take his departure a day too soon is clear from the fact, that on the 27th of December Captain Troubridge's squadron, consisting of