Since there was no hope from this source, nothing remained but to wait for the arrival of Badiley, in the hope that when all the six English warships were together, they might prove more capable of dealing with the enemy. It was a desperate chance, since all the probabilities were that Badiley would sail into the middle of the Dutch blockading ships. In order to reduce this danger as far as possible, Appleton despatched Captain Owen Cox with the =Constant Warwick= to meet the ships coming from the Levant, and warn them of the danger. The usual course for an officer bringing a convoy from the Levant would be to touch at Zante, picking up other merchant ships, then to go on to Messina and Naples for the same purpose, to range the coast of Italy as high as Leghorn, and then sail for the Straits, where he would pick up the Spanish trade. The =Constant Warwick= found Badiley at Zante, the most southerly of the Ionian Islands, where he was waiting for ships still on their way from Smyrna and Cyprus. On receipt of the news of war and the danger of Appleton, he came straight on, without making the usual stoppages at Messina and Naples. His energy did not avert disaster. The Dutch blockading squadron had in the meantime passed from the command of Catz to that of Jan Van Galen, who came overland to supersede his predecessor. Galen was sufficiently alert to make himself aware of the approach of Badiley while the English ships were between the islands of Elba and Corsica. His own squadron had been so far reinforced that he was able to leave six ships to keep a watch on Appleton, while he sailed with eleven for the purpose of attacking Badiley. On the afternoon of the 27th of August, Galen attacked the English convoy. It consisted of eight vessels in all, but of these only three were warships; the other five were merchant vessels, sufficiently well armed to be able to beat off a small privateer or Algerine pirate, but hardly able to encounter a man-of-war of any size. Yet the Dutch were generally small; and as Badiley's own ship, the =Paragon=, was heavier than any of them, it may well be that if the Turkey Company's ships had shown a manlier spirit, they might have given a fairly good account of the enemy. As a matter of fact, not only the traders, but the two warships with Badiley supported him either not at all, or very little. The encounter on the afternoon of the 27th was confined to distant cannonading, but next morning the Dutch attacked with energy, and the =Paragon= had to make a desperate fight for the protection of her convoy. The whole weight of the action fell upon her. She was greatly shattered in her rigging, and the loss in killed and wounded amounted to no less than eighty-one, a very large proportion of a crew of about three hundred men. In the meantime the merchant ships did very little, and the =Paragon's= two consorts not very much. One of them did worse, for she fell into the hands of the enemy. This was