There was time found for one or two drills at the guns before the cruiser was out in the Atlantic, and here, as might have been expected, half of the crew were seasick and almost incapacitated from duty. Off the New Jersey coast, as the Revenge proceeded northward, she ran into thick and stormy weather. On the third day, the 26th of April, while the wind went down the fog increased, and when it cleared away at last the captain found himself some ten miles south of Sandy Hook. Dead ahead were two small square-rigged vessels that had the look of English transports or supply ships, and Conyngham made all sail in chase.
This was the year 1779--a dreary one for the struggling colonies. New York city was in possession of the English troops under Lord Howe, and the Revenge was in dangerous waters; but the captain was in a reckless mood, and boldness having served his purpose so well at various times, he disdained his old adage about “discretion,” and pressed ahead. Once more the fog closed down, the wind died completely away, and as night came on the Revenge drifted slowly along on the round, oily seas, her prow turning first this way and then that. All night she swung about, when, early in the morning, a slight wind sprang up that Conyngham took advantage of to work off shore. But it held only for an hour or so, and fell calm again. The fog was thicker than ever at daybreak--one of those opaque white mists that the sun finds it impossible to penetrate, and seems to give up trying in despair.
The captain had been on deck all night, and, tired out, was lying on the cabin transom half asleep when suddenly he was awakened by the shrilling of a boatswain’s pipe, so close that it seemed to come from his own forecastle. Then, as if it were the signal for the lifting of the misty shroud, the fog broke and there lay the Revenge under the stern of a huge seventy-four. Under her gallery there could be read plainly the word “Galatea.”
It was all up! Even with the stiffest and most favorable wind, the little cruiser could not have escaped; she would have been blown out of the water before she had gone a cable’s length.
There was nothing to do. In two minutes two boatloads of armed sailors and marines had put off from the big vessel, and soon they clambered unmolested over the Revenge’s bulwarks.