When on the morning of October 3rd, the Union was broken at the main of the ‘Resolution’, 16 sail of fighting ships and 6 fireships lay round about the Buoy of the Nore under Dartmouth's command. Besides the ‘Resolution’ at least one third rate had got to sea. The Strickland fleet had come in, in obedience to the orders Dartmouth had transmitted. Scouts were abroad. Before the Admiral, already much in the confidence of the King, lay his formal Instructions, speaking, at their outset, of the menace as one of invasion, referring to the ordered concentration for reinforcement at the Buoy of the Nore as to an enjoined task already begun, and commending into the Admiral's hands, in wide discretion, the thwarting of the enemy's purpose.

Opposite, in equal strength, off the Brill, some forty or more leagues across the North Sea, lay the enemy, Lieutenant-Admiral Cornelius Evertsen commanding. Reinforcements were going out to the fleet; preparing transports and store ships crowded the Dutch harbours; the wharves and inland camps were all bustle. The final charge of the expedition had still not been assigned to any admiral; but some definite appointment could not much longer be delayed.

On both sides hostility had become quite overt; and, with the season of the year so far spent, none, on either side, could think of delay as indefinite.