Howe had quitted New York the instant he heard of d’Estaing’s reappearance off Rhode Island.  He took with him the same number of vessels as before,—­thirteen of the line,—­the Monmouth, 64, of Byron’s squadron, having arrived and taken the place of the Isis, crippled in her late action.  Before reaching Newport, he learned that the French had started for Boston.  He hoped that they would find it necessary to go outside George’s Bank, and that he might intercept them by following the shorter road inside.  In this he was disappointed, as has been seen, and the enemy’s position was now too strong for attack.  The French retreat to Boston closed the naval campaign of 1778 in North American waters.

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The inability or unwillingness of d’Estaing to renew the enterprise against Rhode Island accords the indisputable triumph in this campaign to Howe,—­an honour he must share, and doubtless would have shared gladly, with his supporters in general.  That his fleet, for the most part two years from home, in a country without dockyards, should have been able to take the sea within ten days after the gale, while their opponents, just from France, yet with three months’ sea practice, were so damaged that they had to abandon the field and all the splendid prospects of Rhode Island,—­as they already had allowed to slip the chance at New York,—­shows a decisive superiority in the British officers and crews.  The incontestable merits of the rank and file, however, must not be permitted to divert attention from the great qualities of the leader, but for which the best material would have been unavailing.  The conditions were such as to elicit to the utmost Howe’s strongest qualities,—­firmness, endurance, uninterrupted persistence rather than celerity, great professional skill, ripened by constant reflection and ready at an instant’s call.  Not brilliant in intellect, perhaps, but absolutely clear, and replete with expedients to meet every probable contingency, Howe exhibited an equable, unflagging energy, which was his greatest characteristic, and which eminently fitted him for the task of checkmating an enemy’s every move—­for a purely defensive campaign.  He was always on hand and always ready; for he never wearied, and he knew his business.  To great combinations he was perhaps unequal.  At all events, such are not associated with his name.  The distant scene he did not see; but step by step he saw his way with absolute precision, and followed it with unhesitating resolution.  With a force inferior throughout, to have saved, in one campaign, the British fleet, New York, and Rhode Island, with the entire British army, which was divided between those two stations and dependent upon the sea, is an achievement unsurpassed in the annals of naval defensive warfare.  It may be added that his accomplishment is the measure of his adversary’s deficiencies.