The beginning of the great naval war with France in the spring of 1778 was preceded by three years of warlike operations. They were mainly of an ancillary character, and the scope of this book does not allow them to be told in detail. It must suffice to say that they may be divided into two classes. On the Atlantic seaboard and the American lakes our officers and men were engaged in supporting the military forces employed to subdue the insurgents, or to repel inroads on Canada. Captains Douglas and Pringle did good and gallant service both in aiding Sir Guy Carleton to repel the invasion of Montgomery and Arnold, and in clearing the way for Burgoyne’s advance into the valley of the Hudson during the autumn of 1777. Here it was possible to force the enemy to action with the advantage of better discipline and larger resources in our favour. Less success was achieved along the far-stretched seacoast of the plantations. The fault lay to a very great extent with the Ministry, which would not recognise the magnitude of its task. It estimated the case so ill that in 1775, the year of Lexington and Bunker Hill, and of the publication, on the 23rd August, of the proclamation for “Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition in North America,” it reduced the establishment of the navy. The vote for men was cut down by 2000, and the total estimate was lowered from £2,104,917 to £1,674,059. From this figure it rose to £5,001,895 in 1778. In October 1776 the General Press warrant was issued. The bounty, though raised to twelve guineas, failed to draw volunteers. At that date there were on the muster books at home 8933 men. By the December of 1778, and under the strain of stern compulsion, the complements of our ships had been collected, at least on paper, on an adequate scale. The return for the 1st January 1778 is 62,719, and from that level the navy advanced to the 107,446 men borne on its books on 1st January 1783. During the three years from 1775 to 1778 the admirals successively commanding on the American station, Samuel Graves, Shuldham, and Howe, were endeavouring to overawe hundreds of miles of seacoast swarming with active seamen who were thrown out of work by the interruption of trade. In the summer of 1775 Graves had at his disposal four line-of-battle ships and twenty-one smaller vessels. If he had been able to make free use of all of them, they still would have been inadequate to the work to be done, but he was compelled to keep the bulk of them together at Boston to support General Gage. Reinforcements gradually brought the station up to the nine liners, 64- and 50-gun ships, and eighty or so small craft of all kinds which were under the flag of Howe, who assumed command in July 1776. But he was bound to attend mainly to the duty of helping his brother, Sir William Howe, during the advance to, and occupation of, Philadelphia.