Its position was further weakened by continued ill-success in war. The Marquis de Bouille retook St. Eustatius on October 25. Grasse returned to Martinique, and in January, 1782, the two commanders landed a force on St. Kitts and besieged the garrison. Hood followed Grasse with twenty-two ships, out-manoeuvred him brilliantly, beat him off on the 26th, and held his station against a fleet of thirty-three ships of the line until February 14, when, as he was unable to prevent the fall of the island, he sailed away. The capture of St. Kitts and Nevis reduced the British possessions in the West Indies to Jamaica, Antigua, and Barbadoes. A joint attack on Jamaica was planned by France and Spain. Rodney, however, again arrived at the Antilles with twelve ships, was joined by Hood, and, as we shall see in the next chapter, restored the British flag to its proper place at sea. Nearer home, Kempenfeldt, the admiral whose tragic end is famous in Cowper's verse, dealt the enemy a severe blow. He was sent, in December, 1781, with only twelve ships to intercept a French fleet consisting, as the admiralty knew, or ought to have known, of seventeen ships with a convoy bound for the West Indies. Kempenfeldt took at least twenty of the convoy with troops and stores, but, overmatched as he was, he was forced to let the fleet sail on. It was dispersed by a storm shortly afterwards, and many of the ships returned home. The loss of this convoy seriously crippled the French in the West Indies.[161] In the Mediterranean, the garrison of St. Philips, in Minorca, which had been besieged since August by a French and Spanish army, was forced to surrender on February 5, after being reduced by sickness and war from 2,692 to 600 men fit for duty, and eighty years after its conquest the island was lost to England.