Smith's parties had been much more successful than their Spanish counterparts, the burning "Vulcan" contributing to the total destruction of six ships of the line in the New Arsenal and damaging five more. His boarding parties also seized and destroyed the prison ships "Héros" and "Thémistocle" without unnecessary loss of life and caused considerable damage to shore installations. Among the material destroyed on shore was the fleet's timber stores, a blow which historian N.A.M. Rodger described as "the single most crippling blow suffered by the French Navy since [the Battle of] Quiberon Bay" in 1759. Smith was entrusted with Hood's dispatches and on his return to Britain given command of his own frigate, but despite his actions an opportunity to permanently cripple French power in the Mediterranean had been lost, a fact for which some contemporaries blamed Smith. Smith's Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry notes however that "The British had indeed missed an unprecedented opportunity to weaken French naval power. However, Smith was only partly to blame: more advance planning and preparation might have avoided last-minute delegation to one who was regarded as a maverick volunteer." Among the 15 French ships of the line which survived the last days of the siege were eight ships that would fight at the Battle of the Nile in 1798.