At two o'clock on the following day Admiral Byng made a signal to bear away two points from the wind and engage. Rear-admiral West was then at too great a distance to comply with both these orders; he therefore bore away seven points from the wind, and with his whole division attacked the enemy with such impetuosity that several of their ships were soon obliged to quit the line. Had Admiral Byng been equally alert, it is most probable that the French fleet would have been defeated and Minorca saved; but the enemy's centre keeping their station, and Byng's division not advancing, Admiral West was prevented from pursuing his advantage by the danger of being separated from the rest of the fleet. After engaging about a quarter of an hour, the _Intrepid_, the sternmost ship of the van, lost her foretop mast, which, according to Byng's account of the action, obliged his whole division to back their sails to prevent their falling foul of each other. But when this matter came to be examined by the court martial, it appeared that immediately after the signal for engaging, while the van were bearing down upon the enemy, Admiral Byng, in the _Ramillies_, edged away some points, by which means the _Trident_ and _Louisa_ got to windward of him, and that, in order to bring them again into their stations, he backed his mizen-top sail, and endeavoured to back his main-top sail. This manoeuvre necessarily retarded all the ships in his division and gave the enemy time to escape. M. Galissoniere seized the opportunity, and, his ships being clean, he was soon out of danger. The English had in this engagement forty-two men killed and one hundred and sixty-eight wounded; the French one hundred and forty-five wounded and twenty-six killed. The next morning the admiral, finding that three of his squadron were damaged in their masts, called a council of war, which decided to proceed to Gibraltar. Admiral Byng wrote an account of this engagement, which he sent to the Admiralty who, after some delay, published it with excisions which materially affected the impression it was likely to produce. Not only were parts of Admiral Byng's letter withheld from the public, but the letter itself, though said to have been received on June 16th, was not inserted in the _Gazette_ till the 26th of that month. The hired writers in the pay of the ministry were instantly set to work to censure his conduct in the most violent and inflammatory language. One fact was particularly pointed out and most strenuously insisted upon as a proof of personal cowardice; from the returns of the killed and wounded on board of the different ships it appeared that on board the _Ramillies_, Admiral Byng's own ship, there was not one man either killed or wounded.