On the 7th of the same month of April Captain John Campbell of the =Essex=, 64, and a fireship, the =Pluto=, Captain James Hume, fell in with and scattered a convoy of twelve French merchant ships from Bordeaux under protection of a frigate and a large privateer. The two armed ships were taken after a resistance which cost Captain Hume his life. Such pieces of service as these were not glorious, but they were typical examples of the work done by the fleet to sweep the enemy off the sea. Far beyond the waters of Europe the navy was beginning to apply itself to the task of rooting out the French settlements. The operations of 1758 were preparatory for the great undertaking of the following year; one of them makes us acquainted with the oddest figure of all this war, the Quaker Thomas Cumming. This man was a trader on the west coast of Africa, who had elaborated a scheme for expelling the French from all their stations. When asked how he reconciled his active share in hostilities with his religious principles, he answered with ingenious casuistry by saying, that if his scheme had been executed with the force he thought necessary there would have been no resistance, and therefore no fighting. Mr. Cumming had been busy from early in 1757 in urging his ideas on Ministers, but it was not till he secured a hearing from Pitt and in the following year that he saw his advice put in practice, though on a smaller scale than he wished. In the interval a French squadron, commanded by M. de Kersaint, had made an unsuccessful attack on Cape Coast Castle. This event may have served to awaken ministers to the need there was for putting our settlements on a safer footing. The fortunes of M. de Kersaint may be followed for the sake of one name with which they make us acquainted, and also because they show how wide-ranging are the movements of war at sea. Having failed at Cape Coast Castle the French officer stood across the Atlantic to the West Indies. At Cape Français, now called Cape Haytiën, in Hispaniola, he was engaged on convoy work, when he had an action with a British squadron under Commodore Forrest on the 21st October. The English and French accounts cannot be reconciled. According to our version three of our ships engaged most gallantly with a much stronger French force and got the better of them. Our story runs that M. de Kersaint, having shown a disposition to engage, Commodore Forrest consulted his two subordinate captains, and one of them answered that it would be a pity to disappoint the Frenchman. The officer to whom this spirited reply is attributed was Captain Maurice Suckling, to whom we owe the introduction into the navy of the heir of all its past labours, and the most famous of all its chiefs, his nephew, Horatio Nelson. The action need not be discussed. It was counted a gallant affair long before Nelson, with whom it was always a cherished memory and the 21st October a fateful day, was known to fame. Beyond confirming our growing sense