On 16 April Blakeney received his first information of the enemy fleet's approach from a fast sloop he had sent out to reconnoitre, and on the following day from an outlook tower on Monte Toro part of the great armada had been seen off Fornells. Byng's relief expedition had sailed from England only ten days before, and was still somewhere in the Bay of Biscay. Captain the Honourable George Edgcumbe's tiny squadron at Port Mahon constituted the entire British Naval force then in the Mediterranean.
Edgcumbe placed a boom across the entrance to Port Mahon by sinking the Proserpine athwart it - a practice adopted at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands in later times. This done, he was ordered to take his little squadron off to Gibraltar to avoid inevitable capture. Edgcumbe was unhappy about this apparent desertion of his comrades, but left behind his marines, and hoped to return with Byng. Sadly the garrison watched them sail out.
Just as they sailed, another ship entered Port Mahon carrying a British officer, and a moving story emerges. He was Captain William Cunningham, formerly second engineer at Minorca, who had been wrongly passed over for promotion to chief engineer, in which capacity he had also acted. He was on his way home with his wife and children by sea. His wife was pregnant and they had put into Nice for her confinement. Here he learnt of the pending French attack, and remembered the rotten wooden gun platforms at Fort St Philip. Putting personal and family considerations aside, he decided he must return to Minorca at once, and spent all his money (£1,600) on buying timber and chartering a ship to transport it to Port Mahon, where he arrived just in time and greatly cheered the garrison.
These were not the days of total war, and he wrote soon after the attack to the enemy commander – Richelieu - about the predicament of his wife and family in an enemy country. The Duc reassured him as to their safety. Cunningham got his post as chief engineer, and was wounded in the final assault on the fort. The final capitulation terms specifically mentioned him by name, for safe conduct and repatriation for himself and family.
Blakeney at length made his final dispositions. He sunk a second sloop across the narrow entrance to the port, and outlying garrisons at Ciudadela, Fornells and Alayor were withdrawn and gathered within the fort. Belated demolition of houses abutting on the fort were carried out, and portions of Kane's road were hastily destroyed to delay the enemy's advance. Twenty-eight Minorcan bakers were recruited to bake biscuits and bread, but either from apathy or mistrust an appeal six weeks earlier for other help had produced only twenty-two volunteers - a sad reflection on almost half a century of British colonialism.
Of Blakeney's small garrison of  2,800, forty-one officers were on leave in England, including the governor, Lord Tyrawley, the Governor of Fort St Philip, all the colonels of the four regiments, and twenty-eight other officers. In addition, he had within the fort 440 British women and 291 children.
Since his officers were all comparatively junior, he decided not to hazard his own life by daily inspections and peregrinations, but have each of them report to him daily. This was the reason why it has been said that he conducted the defence from his bed.
Richelieu disembarked 15,000 men at Ciudadela on 18 April without incident. He was received well by the inhabitants, and pushed inland, but was held up at Ferrerias where the road entered a defile, and had been broken up at Blakeney's orders. The heavy siege train had to go back, and be taken by sea to Cala Mesquida on the eastern seaboard. His main force, however, reached the central village of Mercadal, where a small detachment turned north to take Fornells. The remainder arrived on the outskirts of Mahon three days later.
Here the Duc's progress lost momentum as he surveyed the vast St Philip's Fort. His maps were out of date, and it looked more formidable than he had expected.
The castle or fort which he now faced had first been built in the sixteenth century after the sacking of Mahon by Barbarossa, at the instigation of Emperor Charles V. Kane and Pettit had spent vast sums on its improvement according to the master fortress-builder Sebastien de Vauban, until it was now one of the most formidable fortresses in Europe. It was founded on mathematical principles, its general plan being a hexagonal star, enabling cross-fire to defend every point. Its redoubts, ravelins and other outworks were impressive, and many of its underground galleries, hewn out of the rock with incredible labour, had been mined against possible attack.

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