How are the mighty fallen. The Royal Navy and the British army had swept all before them in the Seven Years’ War, in North America, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, even to some degree in European warfare, and along the coasts of Europe. In 1763 the British seemed to be all-powerful at sea, and had captured all the key colonial battlefields. Yet this had only been done by a careful choice of where to fight – in the colonies and at sea rather than wholeheartedly in Europe. The essential bases of the victory had been to block up the enemy navies in their home ports, so that the French navy was virtually abandoned as a fighting force for the latter part of the war, while the French concentrated on the fighting on the European continent, which the British largely avoided; there, Britain's ally Prussia sustained the main burden of the fighting, at great cost.

Nobody in Europe wanted to repeat those experiences, certainly not so as to benefit the British. France rebuilt its navy. It had just seventeen line-of-battle ships in commission in June 1761, none with more than 74 guns; in July 1778 it had fifty-two, seven with 80 guns or more. By that latter date Britain had sixty-six such ships, while a year later when it entered the war, Spain had fifty-eight, of which eight had 80 guns or more. The number of ships is not decisive, of course, and British shipyards were able to outbuild both of its enemies, while the two continental kingdoms had diverging priorities during the American War: nevertheless, by joining their home fleets together, France and Spain were able, in the American War, to mount serious threats of the invasion of Britain more than once.

They were taking advantage of Britain's colonial problem in North America, of course, in a sensible move to gain revenge and to reduce the British predom¬inance. For the Royal Navy there were essentially two conflicting priorities to attend to. In Europe the main fleet, most of the line-of-battle ships, had to remain available for two particular duties: first, to guard the home waters, particularly to retain control of the English Channel and the Strait of Dover, and, second, to blockade the main enemy naval bases, which, of course, was a part of the intention to maintain control of local English waters.