In such cases of sailing close, men generally slip over the line into grievous wrong.
Keppel was cleared of all the charges preferred against him; the accuser had not thought best to embody among them the delay to recall the ships which his own example was detaining.

Against Palliser no specific charge was preferred, but the Admiralty directed a general inquiry into his course on the 27th of July.

The court found his conduct "in many instances highly exemplary and meritorious,"-- he had fought well,--"but reprehensible in not having acquainted the Commander-in-Chief of his distress, which he might have done either by the _Fox_, or other means which he had in his power." Public opinion running strongly for Keppel, his acquittal was celebrated with bonfires and illuminations in London; the mob got drunk, smashed the windows of Palliser's friends, wrecked Palliser's own house, and came near to killing Palliser himself.

The Admiralty, in 1780, made him Governor of Greenwich Hospital.
On the 28th of July, the British and French being no longer in sight of each other, Keppel, considering his fleet too injured aloft to cruise near the French coast, kept away for Plymouth, where he arrived on the 31st.

Before putting to sea again, he provided against a recurrence of the misdemeanor of the 27th by a general order, that "in future the Line is always to be taken from the Centre." Had this been in force before, Palliser's captains would have taken station by the Commander-in-Chief, and the _Formidable_ would have been left to windward by herself.