The hazard before D’Estaign was not trifling. Yet had he attacked at once when he appeared off Sandy Hook on the 12th July, he would have found Howe’s dispositions still incomplete. Even later he ought beyond all question to have stood in. The total destruction of Howe’s squadron would have given so severe a blow to the material strength and the prestige of England that it would have been cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of half D’Estaign’s ships. So would have reasoned his subordinate the captain of the _Fantasque_, Suffren. But again the past weighed on the unstable mind of D’Estaign. He anchored four miles from Sandy Hook, off Shrewsbury, and remained till the 21st examining the bar, and communicating with the Americans. The risk of grounding on the bar seemed too great to him to be run, and in all probability he asked himself, what would happen if the British reinforcements arrived and found him amid the wreck of Howe’s ships with a crippled squadron? On the 22nd he made a show of falling on, and then sailed away to the south. A small convoy fell into his hands, and he had the satisfaction of blockading a British port for ten days. Howe at once dispatched frigates to watch the enemy. Observation and rumour led him to believe, rightly, that D’Estaign meant to proceed to co-operate with an American force in an attack on Sir R. Pigott on Rhode Island. But for some days he was too weak to move. On the 26th July the =Renown=, 50, joined him from the West Indies. She had passed through the French squadron on her way, unmolested and perhaps unobserved. Misled by bad information from home, Howe had been under the impression that Byron was bound for Halifax. He had sent thither for news, and on the 26th his messenger returned with the report that nothing was known there of the reinforcements, but that the Commissioner, Captain Fielding, was sending on the =Raisonable=, 64, and =Centurion=, 50, which had refitted. They joined the flag at Sandy Hook safely. On the 30th July the =Cornwall=, 74, came in from Byron’s squadron with a depressing story.