The first great operation of the war was conducted under a fatal combination of administrative stupidity in London and of the old leaven in the fleet. Reports that the French were preparing a powerful squadron at Toulon began to reach England before the end of 1755. The orders to prepare had been given in August, but in the destitution of the French dockyards eight months passed before it was ready. The boasted _classes_ failed to produce men, and the French were driven to offers of bounty, and to attempts to recruit Italian sailors at Genoa. It was long before the urgent representations of our Consul at Genoa, and of General Blakeney at Minorca, could make the Ministry see that the island was in danger. Blakeney was a gallant old Anglo-Irishman born in 1672, who had fought against the Rapparees in 1690, and served under King William and Marlborough, had been at Carthagena with Vernon, and had defended Stirling Castle against the Jacobites in the ’45. He commanded the place, though bedridden with gout, in the absence of Lord Tyrawley the Governor, who according to the easy practice of the day drew his salary at home. It was not less characteristic of the time that many officers of this threatened garrison were absent on leave when the French invaded the island.
Richelieu landed with 14,000 men at Ciudadela on the 19th April. After many delays and much confusion, the Ministry had at last been brought to see that Minorca was in danger, and a squadron of ten ships had sailed to relieve it on the 6th April. The command of the squadron was given to an officer whose name has a tragic interest unique in the long list of British admirals. John Byng was the fourth son of that George Byng, Viscount Torrington, whose active subordinate share in the Revolution of 1688, and command in the Mediterranean in 1718, have been already mentioned. The son was born in 1704, and had gone to sea at the age of thirteen. He served under his father at the battle of Cape Passaro, and became post-captain at the age of twenty-three. He had gained no distinction, nor had he sought any, on those remote unhealthy stations where the most arduous work of the navy was being done. His portrait is that of a handsome, refined, but plump and easy-going young man, and compares ill with his father’s. George Byng has the lean, eager face of one who though of gentle birth had to climb by his own efforts. John Byng has the air of one whose father was born before him, and who did not rise, but was carried up with no effort of his own by the fortune another had made. He had sat in Parliament, and had not escaped the corrupting influence of the factious, selfish, jobbing spirit of the political world of his generation.