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The Admiralty seemed to have had ideas of its own about the wisdom of entirely denuding the British coasts, and with many ships a certain unpreparedness necessitated delays. The Admiralty has long been a power within a power in the Empire, and the Lord Paramount realized this as a thing he had known and forgotten. It was three days before the Grand Fleet was fairly under way across the Atlantic. It included the Rodney, the Royal Sovereign, and four other ships of that class, the Barham, Warspite, Malaya, and two other battleships, the Hood and Renown and another battle cruiser and the aircraft carriers, Heroic, Courageous, and Glorious. A screen of destroyers and scouting light cruisers had preceded it and covered its left wing. The first division of the minor flotilla coming up from Plymouth had started twelve hours ahead of the capital ships. These latter converged from north and south of the British Isles to a chosen rendezvous south of Cape Farewell. The American navy, he learnt in the course of another day, was already in movement; it was unexpectedly prompt and in unexpected strength. The Lord Paramount was presently informed that a force of unknown composition, but which was stated to include the Colorado, the West Virginia, and at least ten other battleships, was assembling between the Azores and the Gulf of Mexico and steaming northward as if to intercept the British fleet before it reached the Canadian coast. This was a much more powerful assembly of ships than he had supposed possible when first he decided on his queen’s move. But that move was now past recall.