THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS' PASSAGE
1782
In the days when fleets in action relied upon the oar, all fighting was at
close quarters, and, as we have seen in our study of typical battles of
this period, naval engagements fought out at close quarters gave very
definite results, the fleet that was defeated being practically destroyed.
When battles began to be fought under sail, with the gun as the chief
weapon, a new method had to be evolved. The more the fire of broadside
batteries was relied upon, the greater was the tendency to fight at short
artillery range, without closing to hand-to-hand distance, and when the
sailors and sea-fighters of the seventeenth century adopted line ahead as
the normal formation for making the most of broadside fire, battles had a
marked tendency to degenerate into inconclusive artillery duels.
In both the English and the French navies--the two powers that after the
naval decline of Spain and Holland disputed the command of the sea--the
tactics of the battle in line ahead soon crystallized into a pedantic
system. For a hundred years the methods of English admirals were kept in
rigid uniformity by a code of "Fighting Instructions for the Navy," drawn
up under the direction of the Duke of York (afterwards James II), when he
was still Lord High Admiral of England in his brother's reign. These
instructions were a well-meant attempt to provide a "sealed pattern" for
naval engagements. They contemplated set, formal battles with both fleets
in line ahead, sailing on parallel courses, or passing and repassing
each other on opposite tacks, exchanging broadsides as the guns bore. The
French adopted similar methods. If the English had any advantage in their
tactics, it was in their ideas of gunnery. The French aimed at masts and
rigging, in the hope of crippling an adversary in her sail power and
forcing her to fall out of the moving line. The English believed in making
the hull their target, aiming "between wind and water" to start dangerous
leaks, or sending their shot into the crowded gun-decks to put the enemy's
batteries out of action.
[Illustration: GUNS AND CARRONADES IN USE IN THE BRITISH NAVY
IN THE LATTER PART OF THE 18TH CENTURY]
Under such methods battles became formal duels, in which, as often as not,
there was no great result, and both sides claimed the victory. The story of
many of the naval campaigns of the first three-quarters of the eighteenth
century is weary reading. It was in the last quarter of the century that
English admirals learned to fight again at close quarters, and to strike
crushing blows at an enemy. The new period of energetic, decisive fighting
began with a famous battle in West Indian waters in 1782, and culminated in
the world-renowned victories of Nelson, who was a young captain on the
North American station "when Rodney beat the Comte de Grasse" in the battle
of the Saints' Passage.
Born when George I was King, Rodney was a veteran of many wars when he won
his West Indian triumph. He had fought the French under Hawke, and was with
Boscawen at the taking of Louisburg. In 1759 he bombarded Havre, and burned
the transport flotilla collected at the mouth of the Seine for a raid on
England. Three years later, as commander-in-chief on the Leeward Islands
station, he captured Martinique, St. Lucia, and Grenada, and learned the
ways of the West Indian seas. Then came years of political disfavour,
half-pay and financial embarrassment, until in an hour of darkness for
England, with the American colonies in successful revolt and Frenchman and
Spaniard besieging Gibraltar by land and sea, the veteran admiral was
recalled to active service, and found and seized the great opportunities of
his life. Sailing south with a relieving fleet, he fell in with and
captured a Spanish convoy off Finisterre, and then surprised and destroyed
Lungara's Spanish squadron, taking seven ships out of eleven, and chasing
the rest into Cadiz. The appearance of his fleet before Gibraltar saved the
fortress, and then in February, 1780, he sailed across the Atlantic to try
conclusions with De Guichen, whose powerful fleet based on Martinique was
threatening all the English possessions in the West Indies. So far numbers
and opportunity had been on his side. He had now to depend more on skill
than fortune, and meet a more equal opponent.
At his head-quarters at St. Lucia in April, 1780, Rodney heard that the
French fleet under De Guichen had sailed from Martinique. On the 17th he
fought an indecisive action with the enemy, an action notable for what
Rodney attempted, not for what he accomplished. Twice again on later days
Rodney met De Guichen, but none of the three battles did more than inflict
mutual loss on the combatants, without producing any decisive result. The
campaign was, like so many others in the West Indies, a struggle for the
temporary possession of this or that port or island, De Guichen's whole
strategy being based on the idea of avoiding the risks of a close
engagement that might imperil his fleet, and trying to snatch local
advantages when he could elude his enemy.
In 1781 Rodney was compelled by ill-health temporarily to give up the West
Indian command and return to England. In the spring of 1782 he was again
sent to the West Indies, at a moment when the situation of affairs was most
menacing for British power beyond the Atlantic. Cornwallis had been forced
to surrender at Yorktown, and the success of the revolted American colonies
was now assured. The French fleet in the West Indies had been joined by
reinforcements under the Comte de Grasse, who had gone out as
commander-in-chief, taking with him a considerable military force that was
to combine with an expedition from the Spanish American colonies, not for
the capture of some small islands in the Antilles, but for the conquest of
Jamaica, the centre of British power and British trade in the West Indian
seas.
Kempenfeldt, a good sailor (now remembered chiefly as the admiral who "went
down with twice three hundred men," when the "Royal George" sank at
Spithead), dispersed and destroyed at the mouth of the Channel a large
French convoy of supplies for De Grasse, and drove the squadron that
protected it into Brest. With his task thus lightened, Rodney put to sea
with four ships of the line, and after a stormy passage reached Barbadoes
on 19 February, 1782. Sailing thence to Antigua, he formed a junction with
and took command of the West Indian fleet, which Hood had commanded during
his absence in England. From Antigua he took the fleet to St. Lucia, where
he established his head-quarters in Gros Islet Bay. St. Lucia was the
favourite base of operations of our West Indian fleets in the old wars, and
the scene of much desperate fighting by land and sea. The year before De
Grasse had failed in an attempt to seize it.
The fleet of the Comte de Grasse was only some forty miles away to the
northward. It lay at Martinique, in the bay of Fort Royal (now Fort de
France). Though it has nothing to do with the fortunes of Rodney and De
Grasse, it is interesting to note that in a convent school looking out on
the bay there was just then a little schoolgirl named Josephine de la
Pagerie, daughter of an artillery lieutenant in the garrison, who was to
live to be Empress of the French, when France was the mistress of Europe.
During the month of March both fleets were busy preparing for sea. Rodney
was reinforced from England, and a small squadron from Brest joined De
Grasse. The reinforcements received during March had given Rodney the
advantage of numbers. He had thirty-six sail of the line to oppose the
thirty that were with De Grasse at Martinique. In the English fleet there
were five great three-deckers, three of them carrying 98 and two of them 90
guns. There were twenty-one 74's, a 70-gun ship, and nine 64's. In the
French fleet there was one of the largest war vessels then afloat, De
Grasse's flagship, the "Ville de Paris," of 104 guns. There were five ships
of 80 guns, twenty of 74, one of 70, and three of 64. This enumeration
gives Rodney an advantage of six ships and more than two hundred guns. It
is quite true that the ships of the same rating in the French service were
generally larger than the English, but even apart from numbers, the latter
had advantages in armament that were more important than any trifling
difference in size. The English guns were mostly mounted on an improved
system that gave a larger arc of training fore and aft, the practical
result being that as ships passed each other the Frenchman was kept longer
under fire than the Englishman. Further, the English ships mounted, besides
the guns counted in their armament, a number of carronades, mounted on the
upper decks, short guns of large calibre, throwing a heavy shot when the
fighting was carried on at close quarters, a weapon not yet introduced in
the French navy. Thanks to these improvements in the armament of his ships,
Rodney had an advantage in gun-power beyond the mere superiority in numbers
of ships and guns. He had a further advantage in the fact that a larger
number of his ships were copper-sheathed. This meant less fouling while the
ships were waiting at their anchorage, and therefore better speed for the
English when they put to sea.
De Grasse was encumbered with a large convoy of merchantmen and storeships,
and many of his ships were overcrowded with the troops destined for the
descent on Jamaica. It was expected that when he sailed it would be to
form, in the first instance, a junction with the Spanish part of the
expedition off San Domingo. Rodney kept his fleet at St. Lucia, ready to
weigh anchor on the shortest notice, and a smart frigate, the "Andromache"
(commanded by Captain Byron, grandfather of the poet), cruised off
Martinique, watching the Frenchman.
At dawn on 8 April Byron saw that the French were coming out, and he
hastened to St. Lucia under press of sail with the news. Off the port he
flew the signal that told Rodney that De Grasse was at sea. Anchors came up
and sails were shaken out, and Rodney set off in pursuit, knowing that De
Grasse had a very few hours' start of him.
The few hours did not count for much, provided the English admiral could
once get on the Frenchman's track. The danger of missing him could only
arise from making at the outset a wrong judgment as to the course on which
the enemy would sail. It was De Grasse's business to avoid a battle until
he had safely taken his huge convoy to San Domingo and joined hands with
his Spanish allies. Rodney judged that he would most likely follow the long
curve of the chain of islands that fringe the Caribbean Sea, steering by
Puerto Rico for San Domingo. In the night of the 8th the English fleet
passed Martinique. Next morning it was off the west coast of Dominica,
making good speed, and away to the northward a far-spreading crowd of sails
showed that Rodney had guessed rightly. The French fleet and convoy were in
sight.
Dominica is a mass of volcanic ridges, falling to the seaward in
precipitous cliffs, rising landward tier above tier and shooting up into
rocky spires that culminate in the towering peak of the Morne Diablotin,
five thousand feet high. Under the shelter of this rugged island, while the
prevailing trade wind blows steadily from the eastward, there are sudden
calms, or irregular flaws of wind blowing now from one point, now from
another, diverted by the irregular ridges of the high land. This April
morning the sun had hardly risen when the wind fell, and the two fleets
drifted slowly, with loose-hanging sails. Near the north end of the island
lay the convoy. A little to the southward De Grasse's thirty battleships
straggled in a long line over some six miles of sunlit sea. Off the centre
and south of the island Rodney's larger fleet was stretched out in line
ahead. It was formed in three divisions. Hood, in the 90-gun "Barfleur,"
commanded the van. Rodney, with his flag flying in a tall three-decker, the
"Formidable," of 98 guns, was in the centre. The rear was commanded by
Rear-Admiral Samuel Drake, a namesake and descendant of that other Drake
whose name had been the terror of the West Indian seas in Elizabethan days.
Suddenly there came a flaw of wind sweeping from the south round the end of
the island, so narrow that most of the English fleet hardly felt it. It
filled the sails of Hood's ships in the van, and they steered for two
French battleships that dropped astern of their consorts. One of the
Frenchmen passed close under the tiers of guns in the leading English ship,
but not a shot was fired at her as she swept by and rejoined her consorts.
Rodney had not yet flown the signal for battle, and these were still the
days when personal enterprise and decision were not encouraged among the
captains of a fleet.
As the breeze filled the sails of the Frenchmen, Grasse signalled to the
convoy to bear away before it to the north-westward, while he with his
fighting-ships set his course for the channel between Dominica and
Guadeloupe. He rightly judged that Rodney would follow the warships, and
thus the convoy would have a good start. The channel towards which the
French fleet was heading is known as the Saints' Passage, "not on the
surmise that it leads to Heaven,"[14] but because along its northern waters
stretches a line of rocky islets known to the French as "_les Iles des
Saintes_." The nine ships of Hood forming the English van had gone far
ahead of the rest of the fleet. If De Grasse had not had his mind so
centred on the idea of avoiding a battle, there is little doubt that he
might have brought an overwhelming force to bear on them. Luckily for
Rodney, he contented himself with sending his second in command,
Vaudreuil, to skirmish with them, passing and repassing Hood's division at
long range and firing at masts and rigging in the hope of disabling them
for further pursuit. Hood returned the fire, doing as much damage as he
suffered, and towards midday the rest of the English had worked up to him
by taking advantage of every breath of wind that blew over the ridges of
Dominica. Then the wind fell again, and all through the night and the
following day (10 April) the fleets lay in sight of each other beyond even
distant cannon shot, Vaudreuil's and Hood's crews busying themselves with
repairing rigging and replacing damaged spars.
[14] Treves, "Cradle of the Deep," p. 175.
During the 11th De Grasse tried to get his fleet through the Saints'
Passage, working by short tacks to windward, and baffled and delayed by
sudden calms. In the afternoon several of his ships were still to the
westward of the strait, and Rodney, who had been getting gradually to the
northward, despite the frequent failure of the wind under the lee of
Dominica, was at last near enough seriously to threaten these laggards. In
order to save them from being overwhelmed by the whole English fleet, De
Grasse gave up the advantage of weary hours of hard work and came back
before the wind out of the strait. At sunset the two fleets lay to the
westward of the Saints' Passage, and there was no probability that De
Grasse would attempt to tack through it during the hours of darkness. In
the night Rodney manoeuvred to get to windward of the enemy, and at
daylight on the 12th the two fleets were within striking distance, De
Grasse to the leeward, his fleet in a straggling line over some nine miles
of sea. Rodney had his opportunity of forcing on a decisive battle at last.
At some distance from the French line a partly dismasted line-of-battle
ship, the "Zele," was seen in tow of a frigate. She had been in collision
with the flagship during the night, and had been so badly damaged that De
Grasse was sending her away to Guadeloupe. Rodney's ships had lost their
order of battle somewhat in the darkness, and while he was reforming his
line he detached a couple of ships to threaten the disabled "Zele." This
had the effect he intended. It removed De Grasse's last hesitation about
fighting. The French line was soon seen bearing down on the port tack, the
rearward ships crowding sail to close up. Rodney's battle line, in reversed
order, led by Drake and the rear division, was already on a course that
would bring the two fleets sweeping past each other, and the leading ship,
the "Marlborough," was steered so as to make the passage a close one.
Rodney had hoisted the signal to engage the enemy to leeward. While the
fleets were closing he sat in an arm-chair on his quarterdeck, for he was
older than his sixty-four years, broken by long illness and only sustained
by his dogged spirit. One of his captains, Savage of the "Hercules," also
went into battle seated in an arm-chair beside the bulwarks of his ship. He
was lame with gout and unable to stand or walk without help. When the
firing began, and the ships were passing each other amid a thunder of
broadsides and a hail of shot and bullets, Captain Savage gravely raised
his cocked hat to salute each enemy as she ranged up abreast of the
"Hercules." What would those old sailors have thought of the naval
commander of to-day peeping through the slits in the steel walls of a
conning tower? But it is only fair to ask also what they would have thought
of shells weighing half a ton bursting in fiery destruction.
The "Marlborough," approaching on a converging course, came to close
quarters with the "Brave," the sixth ship in De Grasse's line, and then,
shifting her helm to bring her course parallel to that of the enemy,
exchanged broadsides with the Frenchman. Ship after ship came into action
in the same way. The speed was nearer three than four knots, and the lines
some six miles long, so it was more than an hour before the leading English
battleship was abreast of and engaged with the rearmost Frenchman. As ship
passed ship there was a thunder of artillery, a rattle of small arms. Then
a brief lull till the guns of two more opponents bore on each other. But
in this cannonade the English had the advantage of the heavy blows struck
by their large-bore carronades at close range, and the fact that their
gun-mountings enabled them to keep a passing ship longer under fire than
was possible for the French gunners. In De Grasse's ships, crowded with
troops, the slaughter was terrible. As the fight went on and the French
ships came under the crushing fire of adversary after adversary, it was
seen that it was only with difficulty the officers kept the men at the
guns. In this first hour of the fight the French began to throw the dead
overboard to clear their encumbered decks, and a strange horror was added
to the scene, for shoals of sharks that had followed the fleets to pick up
anything thrown overboard now swarmed around them, lashing the water into
foam as they struggled for their human prey.
At length the leading English ship was abeam of the rearmost of De Grasse's
fleet. Over some six miles of sea the two battle lines extended, every ship
ablaze with fire-flashes from her guns and with the dense smoke-clouds
drifting around the English vessels and wrapping them in the fog of war. If
the battle was now to be fought out on the old traditional method, the
fleets would clear each other, wear and tack and repass each other in
opposite directions with a second exchange of fire. But now came the event
that made the battle of the Saints' Passage epoch-making in naval history.
What precisely happened is wrapped in a fog of controversy as dense as the
smoke-fog that enveloped Rodney's fleet at the decisive moment. One thing
is certain. The old admiral suddenly changed all his plans, and executed a
new manoeuvre with the signal he himself was disobeying--the order to
engage to leeward--still flying from his flagship. The act was the sudden
seizing of an unexpected opportunity. But some of the merit of the new
departure was due to Rodney's right-hand man, his "Captain of the Fleet,"
Sir Charles Douglas. Douglas was one of those whose minds had been
influenced by new theories on naval war, which were just then in the air.
In Britain a Scotch country gentleman, John Clerk, of Eldin, had been
arguing for some time in pamphlets and manuscripts circulated among naval
officers against the formal methods that led to indecisive results. His
paper plans for destroying an enemy were no doubt open to the criticism
that they would work out beautifully if the enemy stuck to the
old-fashioned ways and attempted no counter-stroke. But the essence of
Clerk's theories was that parallel orders of battle meant only indecisive
cannonading; that to crush an enemy one must break into his line, bring
parts of it under a close fire, not on one side, but on both, and decide
the fate of the ships thus cut off by superior numbers and superior gun
power before the rest could come to their help. His plans might not work
out with the mechanical exactitude described in his writings, but they
would tend to produce the close melee, where the best men and the steadiest
fire would win, and after such an encounter there would not be merely a few
masts and spars shot away, and a few holes to be plugged, but the beaten
side would be minus a number of ships sunk, burned, or taken, and condemned
to hopeless inferiority for the rest of the campaign. Clerk was not the
only man who put forward these ideas. A French Jesuit professor of
mathematics had worked out plans for securing local advantage of numbers in
a sea-fight at close quarters; but while French naval officers laughed at
naval battles worked out with a piece of chalk and a blackboard, British
sailors were either themselves thinking out similar schemes or were
beginning to think there might be something in the Scotch laird's diagrams.
It was at the critical moment when the two fleets lay side by side in
parallel lines on opposite courses, wrapped in the battle-smoke, that
Douglas, looking out through a gap in the war-cloud, saw that a sudden flaw
of wind blowing steadily from the south-east was flattening the French
sails against the masts and checking their speed. The same sudden change of
wind was filling the English sails, and the masters were squaring the yards
to it, while the Frenchmen to keep any way on their ships had to bring
their bows partly round towards the English line. Between the "Glorieux,"
the ship immediately opposed to Rodney's flagship, the "Formidable," and
the next Frenchman in the line, the "Diademe," a wide gap was opening up.
Douglas saw the chance offered to his admiral. Half the English fleet was
ahead of the "Formidable," engaged with the rearward French ships. If the
"Formidable" pushed through the gap, leading the rest of the line after
her, the French rear would be cut off from the van and brought under a
double fire at close quarters, and there would be a fair prospect of
destroying it before De Grasse could come back to its support. He rushed to
Rodney's side. Moments were precious. He urged his plan in the briefest
words. At first the old admiral rejected it. "No," he said, "I will not
break my line."[15] Douglas insisted, and the two officers stepped to the
opening in the bulwarks at the gangway and looked out. The "Formidable" was
opposite the tempting gap in the French line. Rodney in a moment changed
his mind, and told Douglas that he accepted his plan.
[15] Rodney in at first refusing was upholding the strict letter
of the "Fighting Instructions," which forbade breaking the line
or changing the order of battle during an action. Instruction
XVI laid it down that:--
"In all cases of fight with the enemy the commanders of His
Majesty's ships are to _keep the fleet in one line_, and (as
much as may be) to preserve that order of battle, which they
have been directed to keep before the time of fight."
In the haste to carry it out the signal to fight to leeward of the French
was forgotten and left flying. The "Formidable" turned her high bows into
the gap, and swept through it with all her hundred guns and her carronades
in action, pouring broadside after broadside right and left into the
"Glorieux" and the "Diademe." Six ships in succession swung round and
followed in the wake of the flagship, which was now engaged with the
French on the windward side. Shattered by successive blasts of
well-directed fire, the "Diademe" was drifting a helpless wreck, and the
rearward ships, with their way checked, were huddling in confusion behind
her, English ships firing into them on both sides. Through another gap in
the French line, ahead of De Grasse's giant "Ville de Paris," other English
ships made their way in the dense cloud of smoke, some of the captains
hardly aware of what they were doing. The French van had meanwhile forged
ahead, and then, as the wind suddenly fell to a dead calm, it was seen that
De Grasse's fleet was broken into three isolated fragments.
To the southward lay the van ships under De Bougainville becalmed, with no
enemy in range of them. The "Ville de Paris," with several of her consorts
of the French centre, formed another group, with the whole of the rearward
English division exchanging fire with them at long range. The rear of the
French, under Vaudreuil, and the ships of the centre cut off by Rodney's
manoeuvre were huddled together, with Hood's division and the ships that
had followed the "Formidable" through the line shepherding them. The loss
of the wind had made it difficult or impossible to keep the broadsides
bearing, and for an hour the action died down into a desultory cannonade.
When the breeze came again over the ridges of Dominica, De Bougainville's
division, now far to leeward, made no attempt to succour De Grasse. Only
one of his ships slowly beat up to the main battle. The French admiral
tried to get away to the westward, but Hood clung doggedly to him, while
Rodney and Drake completed the defeat of Vaudreuil and the French rear. The
"Diademe" soon struck her colours. A frigate tried to tow the dismasted
"Glorieux" out of the melee, but the captain of the "Glorieux," De
Kerlessi, saw that the effort would only end in the friendly frigate being
also captured, and with his own hand he cut the tow-rope and hauled down
his flag. Then the "Cesar" struck her colours, and while the rearward
ships were being thus disposed of, in the broken Centre the "Hector" and
the "Ardent" surrendered to Hood's division.
The English attack was now concentrated on the centre, and the battle raged
fiercely round the French flagship, distinguished by her huge bulk and her
towering masts. One by one these came down, trailing in a tangle of spars,
sails, and rigging over her sides. Her crowded decks were a shambles of
dead and dying, but still De Grasse fought on--for honour, not for victory.
His van held aloof, his broken rear was in flight. Five of his ships had
struck. Still he kept his guns in action till Hood in his flagship, the
"Princesse," ranged close up alongside of him and poured in a series of
destructive broadsides. Then the French flag came down at last, and De
Grasse went on board the "Princesse" and gave up his sword to the
vice-admiral.
The sun was going down when the French flagship surrendered. The captured
"Cesar," set on fire by her crew, was blazing from stem to stern. The other
prizes had been secured. Rodney attempted no pursuit of the scattered
French ships that were sailing away to the southward and the
north-westward. Enough had been done, he said. It was now his business to
refit his fleet and take it to Jamaica. He had shattered the French power
in the West Indian seas and made himself the master of the field of
operations. A younger and more vigorous man would have perhaps marked down
Vaudreuil's or Bougainville's fugitive divisions for utter destruction. But
Rodney was content with the solid success he had obtained.
The losses of the French fleet had been very heavy. In their crowded decks
the English fire had effected something like a massacre. On board the
"Ville de Paris" more men had been killed and wounded than in the whole
English fleet. Very few officers and men had escaped some kind of wound.
Many of the ships that had got away were now very shorthanded, with
leaking hulls, and spars and rigging badly cut up.
The effect of the victory was to enable England to obtain much better terms
in the treaty that was signed next year. A disastrous war was closed by a
brilliant success. But England owed to it more than this temporary
advantage. It was a new beginning, the opening event of the period of
splendid triumphs on the sea on the reputation of which we are still
living. To quote the words of Rodney's latest biographer,[16] "it marked
the beginning of that fierce and headlong yet well-calculated style of
sea-fighting which led to Trafalgar, and made England undisputed mistress
of the sea."
[16] David Hannay, "Rodney" (English Men of Action), p. 213.
[Illustration: A THREE-DECKER OF NELSON'S TIME]