After the failure in Bertheaume Bay, Howard turned to attack "Pery John," as he calls him. The Knight of Malta, finding himself cut off from Brest, had taken refuge in Conquet Bay, which lies just round the point San Mathieu, the extreme western end of the north side to the approach to Brest. Le Conquet is a little island, one of several which stretch south-east from Ushant, and the bay is just opposite on the mainland; the channel between them is called the Passage du Four. The French commander had drawn his galleys up on the beach. It was one of the advantages of these long, narrow, and in stormy waters unseaworthy craft, that they could be beached with ease, and so escape larger and heavier vessels which dared not follow them so near the shore. If Howard could have landed men and guns, he might very soon have made an end of the galleys. And it does appear that he had a scheme of the kind in contemplation, but, whether because he feared interruption by French ships coming out of Brest, or whether only because his buoyant courage ran away with him, he took another course. The story is told by Sir Edward Echyngham in a letter to Wolsey dated the 5th of May. "The news of these parts be so dolorous," he begins, "that unneith I can write them for sorrow;" and it was indeed a sorrowful story. Sir Edward Howard, so we make out, finding that the enemy would not give him a fair meeting, and that, while he was subject to interruption from Brest, he could not safely land his soldiers to attack Pregent, had at last despatched part of his fleet into what we then called the Trade, which is now known as the Passage de l'Iroise, and had decided to make a front attack on the enemy in Conquet Bay with the others. It was, in fact, a cutting-out expedition; and once more we note that the Middle Ages were lingering on, for the admiral led himself, as Sir John Chandos might have done, on a piece of work which in later times would have been more appropriately left to a subordinate officer. The object, as Sir Edward Echyngham reported, "was to win the French galleys with the help of boats, the water being too shallow for ships," and he goes on to describe what followed in words which it would be hardly possible to better.