Above all it brought a large friendly fleet to American waters, which might aid the land forces and must always be an object of anxiety to the British.
Such a fleet was that under Count d'Estaing, who reached the mouth of Delaware Bay on July 8, 1778, with twelve ships of the line and four frigates.

He then went to New York, but the pilots thought his heavy draught ships could not cross the bar above Sandy Hook; and so he sailed off to Newport where a British fleet worsted him and he was obliged to put into Boston for repairs.

Late in the autumn he took up his station in the West Indies for the winter.

This first experiment of French naval cooeperation had not been crowned by victory as the Americans had hoped, but many of the other advantages which they expected from the French Alliance did ensue.

The opening of the American ports to the trade of the world, and incidentally the promotion of American privateering, proved of capital assistance to the cause itself.
The summer and autumn of 1778 passed uneventfully for Washington and his army.