Eleven days later came the report from Sir John Dudley of his experiences in the Channel. He stated that while on his way home he encountered a couple of Breton ships in the vicinity of St. Helen’s, Isle of Wight, where he believed they were lying in wait for two Cornish ships “that were within Porchemouthe haven, laden with tin to the value of £3000.” Portsmouth is, of course, just opposite St. Helen’s, and on more than one occasion in naval history was the latter found a convenient anchorage by hostile ships waiting for English craft to issue forth from the mainland. But when these Breton pirates espied Dudley’s ships coming along under sail, they “made in with Porchemouthe,” where Dudley’s men promptly boarded them and placed them under arrest, with the intention of bringing them presently to the Thames. Dudley had no doubt whatever that these were pirates, but at a later date the French ambassador endeavoured to show that there was no foundation for such a suspicion. These two French crafts, he sought to persuade, were genuine merchantmen who had discharged their cargo at “St. Wallerie’s” (that is to say, St. Valery-sur-Somme), but had been driven to the Isle of Wight by bad weather, adding, doubtless as a subtle hint, that they had actually rescued an Englishman chased by a Spaniard. It is possible that the Frenchmen were telling the truth, though unless the wind had come southerly and so made it impossible for these bluff-bowed craft to beat into their port, it is difficult to believe that they could not have run into one of their own havens. At any rate, it was a yarn which Dudley’s sailors found not easy to accept. This was no isolated instance of the capture of Breton craft. In the year 1532 a Breton ship named the _Mychell_, whose owner was one Hayman Gillard, her master being Nicholas Barbe of St. Malo, was encountered by a crew of English seamen who entertained no doubts whatsoever as to her being anything else than a pirate. Their suspicions were made doubly sure when they found her company to consist of nine Bretons and five Scots. They arrested her at sea, and when examined she was found well laden with wool, cloth and salt hides. Some French pirate ships even went so far as to wear the English flag of St. George, with the red cross on a white ground. This not unnaturally infuriated English seamen, especially when it was discovered that the Bretons had also carried Englishmen as their pilots and chief mariners, and were training them to become experts in piracy.