1808	British and French Fleets	2

And the number of seamen and marines, voted for the service of the same year, was 130,000. *

A new era was commencing in the navy of France. Such had been Napoléon's exertions since the disastrous affair of Trafalgar, that the spring of this year saw him possessed of upwards of 80 sail of the line, including 20 recently ordered to be laid down at Antwerp, Brest, Lorient, Toulon, and other ports. In Brest a squadron of eight sail of the line and four frigates was, in the course of the summer, got ready for sea, and only remained in port because unable to elude the vigilance of the Channel fleet under Admiral Lord Gambier, who, since March, had succeeded to the command of it. Early in the year, as will be presently more fully noticed, a French squadron of six sail of the line sailed from the road of Isle d'Aix, and large and powerful frigates were occasionally slipping out of other ports along the French Channel and Atlantic frontier. Of the minor parts of France, Cherbourg was fast rising into importance: the basin there constructing, and nearly finished, would, in a year or two, it was expected, be capable of holding a fleet of line-of-battle ships. It had long been a celebrated port for frigates, and several very fine and powerful ones had sailed from, and were constructing within it. The five French sail of the line and one frigate, so long shut up in the harbour of Cadiz, met a peculiar fate; a fate that was the opening scene of a most interesting era in the annals of freedom, and of which we shall presently give some account.

The French Mediterranean ports were again becoming objects of enticement to British squadrons. Toulon, Venice, and even Spezzia, were in full activity. In the former port a ship of 120 guns, the Commerce-de-Paris, and another of 80, the Robuste, had recently been launched ; and a new 74, the Genois, had arrived there from Genoa. These, with the Borée and Annibal. 74s already in the road, made five sail of the line. There were also three or four line-of-battle ships on the stocks, two of which, one a three-decker, were nearly ready for launching. At Genoa a 74, the Breslaw, was expected to be launched in the autumn, and one or two others were building at Venice ; and, in the language of the Exposé, Spezzia would soon be a second Toulon. To the five French sail of the line already at anchor in the last named port, and which were under the command of Vice-admiral Ganteaume, five others were added in the course of the spring. Whence these came we will proceed to relate ; but how it happened that they escaped the numerous British cruisers scattered over the ocean, is not so easily to be explained.

The British squadron, which, towards the end of the year 1807, was stationed off Rochefort to watch the motions of the French squadron at anchor in Aix road, was composed of seven

* See Appendix, No. 4.

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