On the 7th, in the morning, Admiral Hotham was much surprised to learn that the above squadron was seen in the offing, pursued into port by the enemy's fleet. Immediately on their appearance, he made every preparation to put to sea after them; having the mortification, in the mean time, to behold Captain Nelson, with his little squadron, for nearly seven hours, almost wholly in their possession. The shore, and his knowledge of it, proved his greatest friends on this occasion.
Though most of the British ships were in the midst of watering and refitting, by very great exertions, the whole fleet got under weigh that night; but a calm, and swell, prevented their going out till the morning.
It was not till day-break, on the 13th of July 1795, that they were discovered by the fleet. At eight o'clock, Admiral Hotham, finding that they had no other view than that of endeavouring to get off, made the signal for a general chace. The baffling winds, and vexatious calms, which render every naval operation in this country doubtful, soon afterwards taking place, a few only of our van ships could come up with the enemy's rear about noon. These they so warmly attacked, that one of the sternmost ships, the Alcide of seventy-four guns, had struck in the course of an hour. The rest of their fleet, favoured by a shift of wind, that placed them to windward, had got so far into Frejus Bay, while the greater part of our's was becalmed in the offing, that it became impossible for anything farther to be effected.
Had the wind lasted twenty minutes longer, the six flyers, as they were called, would have been alongside as many of the enemy. Captain Nelson had every hope of getting the Agamemnon, one of these flyers, alongside an eighty-gun ship, with a flag or broad pendant flying; but the west wind dying away, and the east coming, gave them the advantage, and enabled them to reach their own shore, from which they were not three leagues distant.
Rear-Admiral Mann, who had shifted his flag to the Victory on this occasion, commanded the six ships thus distinguished by their superiority of sailing: he proved himself, Captain Nelson observed, a good man, in every sense of the word.
The disappointment of our brave countrymen, on this day, must have been prodigiously great. In the morning, there had been a hope of taking the whole of the French fleet; and, even latterly, no bad prospect of securing six sail of the line. Instead of which, they had only taken a single ship, the Alcide; and that, such was the fortune of this luckless day, took fire about half an hour after it had struck, and before being taken into possession—said to be occasioned by a box of combustibles in the fore-top—and the whole ship was soon in a blaze. Several boats, from our fleet, were instantly dispatched to rescue as many as possible of the unhappy crew from the devouring flames; and, by great exertion, three hundred were saved: the remainder, consisting of about four hundred, had the melancholy fate of being blown up with the ship.
The Agamemnon, with it's usual good fortune, had none killed in this action, and only one wounded. It received, however, several shot under water, which kept the hands pretty well employed at the pumps: but this, Captain Nelson insisted, must have happened by accident, as he was very certain they only fired high.
The six ships engaged were the Victory, Admiral Mann, and Captain
Reeve; Agamemnon, Nelson; Defence, Wells; Culloden, Troubridge;
Cumberland, Rowley; and Blenheim, Bazeley.
After anchoring for a few hours at St. Fiorenzo, with the fleet, Captain Nelson was again dispatched, in the Agamemnon, with orders to sail as before directed, when he had been chased back. Accordingly, with a light squadron under his command, consisting of the Inconstant, Meleager, Southampton, Tartar, Ariadne, and Speedy, he proceeded to co-operate with the Austrian General De Vins: and, being informed by the general, that a convoy of provisions and ammunition was arrived at Alassio, a place in the possession of the French army, he proceeded thither on the 25th of August; where, within an hour, he took nine vessels, burnt a tenth, and drove another on shore. Some of the enemy's cavalry fired on the boats when boarding the vessels near shore, but not a single man was killed or wounded. The French had two thousand horse and foot soldiers in the town, which prevented his landing and destroying their magazines of provisions and ammunition.
Captain Freemantle of the Inconstant, was sent, in the mean time, with the Tartar, to Languelia, a town on the west side of the Bay of Alassio; where, Captain Nelson observes, in his dispatches to Admiral Hotham, published October 3,1795, in the London Gazette, that commander executed his orders in a most officer-like manner. "I am indebted," he concludes, "to every officer in the squadron, for their activity: but, most particularly so, to Lieutenant George Andrews, first-lieutenant of the Agamemnon; who, by his spirited and officer-like conduct, saved the French corvette from going on shore."