A staff officer delivered the fleet's casualty report to Hotham.
The groans of wounded sailors could still be faintly heard outside the officers' quarters, despite the officers having sternly ordered them several times to remain quiet.
Irritably, Hotham tossed the loss report aside.
He did not need to read it. He had personally taken part in the entire day's battle and knew the losses inside out.
The French Fleet had launched a total of five attacks, damaging one Third-rate Ship and two Fourth-rate Ships.
The damaged Third-rate Ship was, of course, the Theseus he was aboard.
Although two holes the size of wine barrels had been blasted into the forward deck, with almost no effect on its combat capability, the French shells had caused sixteen sailor casualties.
The two Fourth-rate Ships were in similar condition. Neither had suffered severe damage—the Roughfin Shark losing its stern sail was the worst of it—but many sailors had been killed or wounded, which would greatly affect morale.
Naturally, he had automatically ignored the losses of the Cruiser formation that had initially taken the initiative to harass the French Fleet, only to be beaten back.
Those little ships meant nothing to him.
Hotham and the senior officers held a meeting until two in the morning, yet still failed to come up with any effective countermeasure. They only sent out two ships to contact Lord Hood's main fleet.
The next day.
A scene much like yesterday's played out once again.
The nimble French Steam Warships kept rushing in to "bite" at the massive English Battleships, then swiftly turned away. Once they had re-formed their formation, they charged in again...
They harassed them over and over until the setting sun slanted westward, then sailed off with their whistles blaring.
However, after yesterday's practice, the French sailors had