Frigates, Romaine 44, Créole 40, Bravoure, Cocarde, and Fraternité 36.
Flûte, Fidelle ; Corvettes, Berceau and Tactique; Avisos, Biche and Découverte.

It being the custom among the French for their admirals to embark on board frigates, we are unable to particularize all the flag-ships in this fleet. We believe, however, that the Océan, Républicain, and Terrible, carried the flags of the three senior admirals ; and find, by the French accounts, that the names of all the flag-officers attached to this formidable fleet were as follow:

Of all the fleets that ever sailed from France, this appears to have been, as far, as relates to the fighting complement of each ship, the most numerously manned. The four three-deckers alone had 4645 men. The two 80s averaged 874 men each ; and the nineteen 74s, although one of them had as few as 660 men, averaged 780 each : making the total of men in the fleet 23,761. Of this number, about 1000 appear to have been soldiers ; but even, with these deducted, the crews were immoderately large. Nor were the men, as was too commonly the case with the French crews, raw and inexperienced. They had, for the most part, been serving in the gun-boats all the preceding summer. What a fleet of 25 sail of the line, thus manned, might accomplish, may readily be conceived: what it did accomplish we shall presently proceed to show.

It was about 9 a.m. on the 26th, just as the last 10 or 11 ships of this immense fleet were rounding the Saintes, that the British 36-gun frigate, Nymphe, Captain Percy Fraser, discovered them. Making all sail to rejoin her fleet with the intelligence, the Nymphe, at noon, Ushant bearing east-north-east, distant five leagues, lost sight of the French ships; and at 1 p.m., with the signal for an enemy flying, fell in with the

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