Page:Royalnavyhistory01clow.djvu/513

 already weighed, and most of the day was spent in manœuvring for the weather gauge which the English eventually lost; whereupon the galleys under Polain attacked, but were not properly supported by their consorts; and, the wind increasing considerably towards night, the galleys knocked about so much and shipped so many seas that they were in danger not less of foundering than of being taken. The skill of Polain, the best galley commander of his age, saved them; and although firing continued until dark, little damage was done on either side. This does not prevent Du Bellay from declaring that in the morning the French saw a number of dead bodies and much wreckage floating on the water. Night separated the combatants. The English returned to Portsmouth, and the French, who had undoubtedly gained the honours of the affray, went to Le Hâvre.

The indignities thus put upon England were in part revenged by Lisle, who, crossing to the coast of Normandy, landed 6000 men near Tréport on September 2nd, defeated the French forces opposed to him, burnt the town, the abbey, and thirty ships in harbour, losing only fourteen men, and went back unmolested to Spithead.

All this time the plague was raging to a terrible extent in Lisle's fleet. The number of men who returned from Tréport was 12,000. This was about the 4th or 5th of September. Some were subsequently discharged, but it is clear from the tone of a letter written on September 11th by Lisle, Seymour, and Lord St. John (who reported that thirteen out of thirty-four ships were then infected) that the disease was very virulent; and musters taken on the 12th showed that only 8488 men remained fit for duty. This number was on that day further reduced by discharges to 6445, a number far too small for the exigencies of the service, even on the brink of winter, for as Lisle and St. John lamented, "the men fall daylie sick."

The discharges, however, were very necessary. Russell, writing to the Council from Exeter on August 22nd, when the fleet was still fully manned, said, alluding to the Devon and Dorset fishermen, "Many of them, or the most part, are taken from hence as mariners to serve the king, and all the coast here (is) so barren of them that