In the following years the principal of such operations as took place were on the American coast. Of these, the chief was an abortive attack on Quebec, mainly remarkable for an extraordinary escape of the entire English fleet one night in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A military officer, one Captain Goddard, insisted that he saw breakers ahead. As no one would credit him he finally dragged the Admiral out of bed and up on deck, by which time the fleet was close on to the breakers. As things were, seven transports were wrecked and nearly a thousand soldiers drowned. The warships very narrowly escaped.[23] This disaster led to the abandonment of the expedition. Peace was declared in 1713. The English loss in the war was thirty-eight ships, mounting 1,596 guns; the French lost fifty-two ships, mounting 3,094 guns.[24] A very large number of English ships became unserviceable during the war, because, despite the fact that many new ships were built and that the bulk of the ships lost by the French entered the English service, the entire navy diminished by twenty-five vessels. Most of the ships were in poor condition, and in the early years of George I’s reign, large sums had to be expended on refits. Foul bilge water was the main cause of internal decay, and in 1715 organised steps were taken for the ventilation of the bilges. A certain increase in size for ships of all classes was also ordered, those of 100 guns being increased by 319 tons, and the eighty-gun ships by sixty-seven tons. This increase, however, by no means brought the tonnage to gun ratio down to the French limits, nor were the improvements in underwater form of much serious moment. The French maintained a superiority in this respect which they held till the present century. To-day, of course, the situation is completely reversed, and for any given horse-power any British ship is appreciably faster than a French one.[25] Some special attention was also devoted to the preparation of timber for immediate use in shipbuilding. This subject was first drawn attention to in 1694, and the net result of the enquiries in 1715 did not really go much further. It was not till eleven years later that the problem was seriously grappled with. In 1715, an English fleet under Norris was in the Baltic, acting against Sweden and allied with the Russians and Danes, Peter the Great himself being in chief command. Nothing of moment happened. These operations extended to 1719, when sides were changed.