In France the proposed military expedition had roused much enthusiasm. Young men flocked to enlist, as eager to fight for liberty in America as our boys of 1918 were eager to reach France on a similar errand. Every available spot on the transports was crowded. The commanding general regretfully left behind his two favorite war-horses because he knew that twenty men could go in the space they would occupy. Even after the ships had left the harbor recruits came to him on the cutter that brought the last despatches, begging to be taken aboard, but had to be sent back because there was literally not room for another man. Yet the numbers that came to America were, after all, disappointingly [Pg 133]small: far less than originally planned. That was because the English managed to blockade all except the first division in the harbor of Brest. This first division sailed on the 2d of May with Admiral Ternay in command of the ships, and the gallant, cool-headed Rochambeau, who was already fighting at the time Lafayette was born, in command of the soldiers. He had five thousand effective men crowded into the transports that left Brest with their convoy on a sunny day, the many white sails filling to a breeze described as _"joli frais."_ But in spite of this auspicious beginning it was a tedious crossing, longer in point of time than the first voyage of Columbus. The weary soldiers soon came to call their transports "sabots" (wooden shoes), and indeed some of them were scarcely larger. As our coast was neared they crawled along at three knots an hour, with drums beating every fifteen minutes to keep the ships in touch and prevent their drifting away from each other in the heavy, persistent fog. Washington had hoped that before the arrival of the French he could gather sufficient force to justify him in attacking New York with their help, for he was convinced that one success here would end the war. His army was indeed "augmented more than one-half," as Lafayette wrote his wife, but before the ships made their slow way across the Atlantic the British had captured Charleston, and Clinton, who assisted Cornwallis in that undertaking, had returned to New York with a force that raised his strength there to twelve thousand regulars, in addition to Admiral [Pg 134]Arbuthnot's fleet and several thousand militia and refugees. Not all the earnestness of Washington, the efforts of Congress, nor the enthusiasm of Lafayette had been able to raise men enough to attack under these circumstances; and the signals displayed on Point Judith and "the island of Block House" to guide the French directed them to go to Newport as a convenient place from which the attack might yet be made if events favored the allies.