have found no difficulty in keeping company. On the evening of the very day, the 1st of August, on the morning of which the British fleet, which had so recently arrived off the port, was driven from its station, the combined fleet entered Corunna.

Learning, while at this anchorage, that the Rochefort squadron was at sea in search of him, M. Villeneuve, on the 5th, despatched the Didon frigate to endeavour to find M. Allemand, and enable him to join. On the 9th, in the evening, the combined fleet, the French part of which consisted, besides the whole of the ships named at page 3, except the Atlas, of the 74s Argonaute, Duguay-Trouin, Fougueux, H�ros, and Redoutable, and the Spanish part, of the Principe-de-Asturias, three-decker, 80s Argonauta and Neptuno, 74s. Terrible, Monarca, Montanez, San-Augustin, San-Francisco de Asis, San-Ildefonso, and San-Juan-Nepomuceno, and 64 San-Fulgencio, making altogether 29 ships of the line, exclusive of frigates and corvettes, weighed and made sail from Ferrol and Corunna ; but, the wind being scant, M. Villeneuve, on the 10th, anchored at Zerez, a small port near Ferrol. On the following day, the 11th, the fleet again weighed, and, with a fine easterly wind, got out to sea.

With respect to M. Villeneuve's real destination after quitting Ferrol, not a word, beyond conjecture, appears in any French naval history. The course steered by the combined fleet, when, on the afternoon of the 13th, the British 12-pounder 32-gun frigate Iris, Captain Edward Brace, fell in with it abreast of Cape Ortugal, was about west-north-west ; which, with the wind at east, evinced an intention on the part of the French admiral, as soon as he had joined M. Allemand's squadron, then supposed to be (and really) hovering about the coast, to carry his 34 sail of the line straight to the British Channel. On the 14th the wind shifted to north-east ; and at 2 P.M. the advanced French ship, which had been chasing the Iris since 6 P.M. on the preceding day, quitted her and bore up for the combined fleet. At 4 h. 30 m. P.M. not a ship of that fleet was to be seen from the Iris, then in company with the 38-gun frigate Naiad, Captain Thomas Dundas. On this very day, the 14th, the Rochefort squadron was spoken by an American ship, within two degrees north-east of Cape Ortugal, namely, in latitude 46� 18' north, and longitude 9� west from Greenwich. In two days afterwards M. Allemand anchored in Vigo bay, but did not, it appears, find any instructions left there by M. Villeneuve for his future guidance.

About half an hour before the combined fleet lost sight of the British frigates Naiad and Iris to windward, the British 74-gun ship Dragon, accompanied by the 36-gun frigate Phoenix, Captain Thomas Baker, having in tow her prize the late French, frigate Didon, both much disabled, hove in sight to leeward. One of the French advanced frigates was then speaking a

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