Note 407 — 351.

Papers captured on a French frigate showed Keppel that a fleet superior to his own lay in Brest harbour. He therefore retired to Portsmouth. "And now," writes Walpole, July 4, 1778, "Mr. Keppel is returned, we learn that the East and West Indian fleets, worth four millions, are at stake, and the French frigates are abroad in pursuit of them."