Cederstrom's replacement in command of the Swedish fleet was Admiral Nauckhoff who had written Saumarez ‘a very handsome letter, expressing his great desire to serve with me against l’Ennemi Commun – but if this last has kept in his lurking Den, he will scarce venture out in the presence of the two Squadrons’. Nauckhoff was to write again seven days later from off Oro, at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, with the amazing news that 20 ships of the Russian fleet had indeed come out of Cronstadt on 5 August to chase away the three Swedish ships of the line and two frigates keeping watch at Hango Udd – the point where the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland could be said to join – and were now themselves cruising off there. This was where shipping, both merchant ships and the skärgård (inshore) fleet of shallow-draught galleys, had to leave the protection of the screen of islands and narrow passages in order to round the headland and were vulnerable to attack from ships of the line too deep-draught to enter the shallower waters on either side. It was where naval battles in the Baltic had usually taken place. Nauckhoff urgently sought British help.

Had he known this in time, Saumarez would probably have changed his decision to return to the Belt to rescue the Spanish troops, for this would have given him the chance of the fleet action which he craved but which he had feared the Russians would be too timid to offer him. Indeed, he wrote to Martha on 14 August:

He could have brought Hood's four ships – Centaur, Implacable, Mars and Dictator – together with Victory and Superb, and possibly Goliath also, who was on her way back from Danzig.These, with the nine Swedish ships of the line, however uncertain their quality, would have been more than enough to challenge the Russian fleet of eleven ships of the line.