Usually, questions of the type "Why didn't people do X" are very hard to answer, because it would require speculating about motivations, capacities, etc.

In this case though it's pretty simple. They didn't because they couldn't. u/jonewer explains in detail here

At the end it lists the British naval strength of the home fleet and briefly discusses the scenario you describe.

Here is a longer discussion about this problem with contributions by u/thefourthmaninaboat and u/DBHT14 among others.

Hey there,

Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.

If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!