For some months Napoleon had been intent on the building of a flotilla for the invasion of England. All manner of wild rumours had spread throughout the country as to the imminent peril of the United Kingdom, but we now know that the First Consul’s scheme was comparatively insignificant when compared to his enormous ship-building programme of 1803-5 for the same purpose.[60] Indeed, a month before Lord St Vincent, then First Lord of the Admiralty, communicated to Admiral Lutwidge, the Commander-in-chief in the Downs, that his command would be impinged upon to some extent by Nelson’s new post, and that the enemy’s preparations were “beginning to wear a very serious appearance,” Napoleon had already postponed his plan. This is made abundantly clear by the First Consul’s order of the 23rd June to Augereau, in command of the Army of Batavia: “You will receive instructions for the formation at Flushing of five divisions of gunboats, which, added to the sixteen divisions in Channel ports, will impose on England.” Napoleon perfectly understood that the moment for “leaping the ditch” had not yet arrived. Of the Navy proper at the beginning of 1801 Great Britain had no fewer than 127 sail-of-the-line in commission; France had forty-nine, many in an almost unseaworthy condition. The Admiralty was not to know of the letter to Augereau or of the exact state of the French marine. Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk, the ports of concentration, sheltered some 150 boats of various descriptions for the purpose of the projected expedition, and England could afford to run no risks.