continued the chase throughout the day ; but, towards evening Rear-admiral Leissegues tacked, and again stood to the south-west. Since morning Captain Brisbane had detached the Wasp to Rochefort, Ferrol, Cadiz, and Gibraltar, to inform the admirals commanding upon those stations, of the situation of the French when last seen ; and at 2 P.M. the Boadicea had been sent to Admiral Cornwallis off Ushant with similar intelligence.

At midnight, with the six vessels of the convoy then in her company, the Arethusa made sail to the westward. With daylight on the 16th, again appeared M. Leissegues and his squadron, in full pursuit, but at a very great distance. In a few hours the French admiral gave over the chase, and left the Arethusa and her small charge to pursue their course unmolested. On the 23d, at 4 h. 30 m. P.M., when about midway between Madeira and the Canary isles, the Arethusa fell in with the following squadron under Vice-admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth

On the 15th of November Rear-admiral Louis, with five ships of this squadron, by the orders of Vice-admiral Lord Collingwood, the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet, was blockading the few French and Spanish ships which the Battle of Trafalgar had left in the port of Cadiz, when Sir John Duckworth, in the Superb, joined from Plymouth and assumed the command. On the 26th, in the evening, the 18-gun ship-sloop Lark, Captain Frederick Langford, informed the Agamemnon, that on the 20th, off the Salvages, a cluster of rocks between Madeira and Teneriffe, a French squadron of five sail of the line, a ras�e, three frigates, and two brig-corvettes, had dispersed a convoy of six sail, which she was conducting to Gor�e.

Raising the blockade, Sir John, with his six ships of the line, made all sail towards Madeira, in quest of the above five French ships of the line, which were, as conjectured at the time, the Rochefort squadron under M. Allemand, with the captured Calcutta in company. * On the 5th Sir John made and communicated with Madeira, and on the 15th arrived off Tenerife,

* See p. 150.

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