in its convoy to cross the Atlantic unmolested, for fear of
postponing for a time the revictualling of the garrison beleaguered
at Gibraltar. Washington's opinion as to the importance of the
naval factor has been quoted already; and Mahan does not put
the case too strongly when he declares that the success of the
Americans was due to 'sea-power being in the hands of the French
and its improper distribution by the English authorities.' Our
navy, misdirected as it was, made a good fight of it, never allowed
itself to be decisively beaten in a considerable battle, and won
at least one great victory. At the point of contact with the
enemy, however, it was not in general so conspicuously successful
as it was in the Seven Years' war, or as it was to be in the
great conflict with the French republic and empire. The truth
is that its opponent, the French navy, was never so thoroughly
a sea-going force as it was in the war of American Independence;
and never so closely approached our own in real sea-experience
as it did during that period. We met antagonists who were very
nearly, but, fortunately for us, not quite as familiar with the
sea as we were ourselves; and we never found it so hard to beat
them, or even to avoid being beaten by them. An Englishman would,
naturally enough, start at the conclusion confronting him, if he
were to speculate as to the result of more than one battle had
the great Suffren's captains and crews been quite up to the level
of those commanded by stout old Sir Edward Hughes. Suffren, it
should be said, before going to the East Indies, had 'thirty-eight
years of almost uninterrupted sea-service.'[44] A glance at a
chart of the world, with the scenes of the general actions of
the war dotted on it, will show how notably oceanic the campaigns
were. The hostile fleets met over and over again on the far side
of the Atlantic and in distant Indian seas. The French navy had