The prevailing opinion in the English fleet certainly was that these ships of the enemy were suffered to escape, when they might have been captured with ease. That they were not captured was the fault of having a Flag Officer at sea who was too old to command, and who had a Fleet Captain who was not enterprising. But the victory was sufficient, and settled the fate of the war, as far as the naval part was concerned. The general reader may be interested in some remarks and anecdotes concerning the battle. During the hottest part of the engagement between the Marlborough and the Vengeur, the former ran the latter aboard to windward, her anchor hooking the French ship’s fore shrouds and channels. The master of the English ship wanted to cut her adrift, but Captain Harvey exclaimed, “No! we have got her, and we will keep her.” “The ships then swung broadside to broadside, and both paid off before the wind, locked together, dropped out of line, and engaged furiously. So close were these ships locked that the Marlborough was unable to open her midship lower-deck ports, which were consequently blown off by her eager crew, etc.” The flag-ship, the Queen Charlotte, as in duty bound, set a brilliant example to the rest of the fleet. On the 29th of May, when she broke through the French line, she was followed, gallantly, by the Leviathan and Bellerophon, commanded by Captains Lord Seymour, Conway and Hope, and both these ships were most conspicuous in the whole engagement. The foremast of the Leviathan was crippled, and in danger of falling, and Lord Howe, observing this, stood to her rescue. Lord Seymour, in his own journal, says, “quarter before four; being very near, and pointing into the body of the French fleet, which had then appeared, to succor their rear, the Queen Charlotte wearing, we did the same, but not without exposing ourselves for a long time to be raked by the French Admiral and three other ships, which had stood back to the relief of two of their ships that were in danger of being cut off by our fleet. “On this occasion the gallant conduct of the Queen Charlotte, in coming down to draw the enemy’s fire from the Leviathan, has made too strong an impression upon my mind, and is too much the subject of general applause on board of her, for me to resist expressing my sense of it, and offering, in the name of all the officers, as well as my own, this feeble though grateful tribute of our admiration of our noble chief, Lord Howe.” But the day most glorious for Howe was the 1st of June, when he broke through the French line again, brushing the ensign of Admiral Villaret Joyeuse’s flag-ship on the one side, and grazing, on the other, the Jacobin’s mizzen shrouds with her jib-boom. Collingwood, eleven years after, in the battle of Trafalgar, did much the same thing, in the Sovereign, when he cut the line, and grazed the stern of the Santa Anna.