The command now fell to the senior captain, Edward Peyton, and its fortunes in his hands have caused the death of Barnett to be esteemed a misfortune. The arrival of reinforcements from home and arming of a prize taken from the French had raised the number of the squadron to six, one of 60, three of 50, one of 40, and one of 20 guns. It had, therefore, a total of 270 guns, and all the vessels, with the exception perhaps of the French prize, were built for war. The quality of the squadron must be taken into account in estimating what followed. While our ships were idly parading the Bay of Bengal, La Bourdonnais was straining every nerve to fit out a squadron at the Île de France, now Mauritius. In the spring of 1746 he had scraped together, by all kinds of devices and makeshifts, eight vessels, one of them being a man-of-war mounting 70 guns, and the others converted merchant ships of from 26 to 36 guns. The total was 292, and most of the pieces were small. The vessels were indeed full of men, but a large proportion of them were Lascars and Caffres. La Bourdonnais sailed on the 29th March, and after nearly suffering total shipwreck on Madagascar left it for the Coromandel coast in May, and arrived there in June. On the 25th of this month, before he had touched at any of the French settlements, he met the English squadron at sea between Fort St. Davids, at Cuddalore, and Negapatam, to the south of Pondicherry, the chief French port. Knowing his inferiority in artillery La Bourdonnais tried to come to close quarters and overpower the English by the number of his men. Peyton baffled this effort by keeping well to windward, and the encounter resolved itself into a distant cannonade, by which one of the French ships was crippled and very little harm was done to us. That little was enough to deprive Peyton of all desire to meet the French again. He held a council of war next morning, and by its advice sailed away to Trincomalee, leaving La Bourdonnais free to continue his voyage to Pondicherry. The decision was without excuse, for if Peyton had used his eyes at all during the cannonade of the day before, he must have learnt that he had to deal with ships of very inferior armament. But some of his own vessels were in no good condition, and he could think of nothing but of their defects, and of the excuse afforded him for a retreat.