Noblesse_, the Debrett of Versailles, was represented at Fort
Royal. Among the senior officers alone there were four Marquises,
two Viscounts, five Counts, six Chevaliers, two Barons, nineteen
'de's,' only two plain Messieurs. There was a second De Vaudreuil,
the Vicomte's younger brother, the Comte de Vaudreuil, a man of
another kind--a smart, hard-fighting officer, but better known for his
feats of gallantry than for his feats of arms, in particular as the
favoured first lover of that haughty young beauty Gabrielle Yolande
de Polignac, daintiest of Court ladies of the hour, '_avec le visage
d'un ange et_'--perhaps it will be kinder to say no more. The Comte de
Vaugiraud was Captain of the Fleet. Baron d'Escars, of the house of
Fitz-James, notorious for his fanatical hatred of Great Britain, was
captain of the _Glorieux_. The Sieur de la Clochetterie, an impetuous
and brilliant officer--whose name as captain of the _Belle Poule_ in
her duel with the 'Saucy' _Arethusa_ at the outset of the war, the
French navy still remembers--commanded the _Hercule_. Comte d'Albert de
Rions, by reputation the ablest tactician in the French navy, after De
Suffren, was the senior captain. A De la Charette commanded the black
_Bourgogne_;[20] a De Castellan, the _Auguste_; De la Vicomté, the
_Hector_; and so on. There is, indeed, as one runs down the list of
the French captains at Fort Royal, quite a ring of mediæval chivalry,
of old-time romance, about their names. De Mortemart, De Monteclerc,
De Saint Césaire, De Champmartin, De Castellane-Majastre, Le Gardeur
de Tilly, to take half-a-dozen other names at random--one might almost
be checking off one of Bayard's _compagnies d'élite_, or calling over
a muster-roll of the Lances of Du Guesclin. In the junior ranks were a
De Tourville, the Vicomte de Betisy, two scions of the historic house
of St. Simon, a Grimaldi, a Lascaris, a De Lauzun, a De Sevigné, a
MacMahon, a Talleyrand, a De Ségur, a De Rochefoucauld, a Montesquieu.
Brueys d'Aigalliers, of a noble family of Languedoc, who later on took
service under the Revolution, and perished fighting Nelson at the Nile,
was one of the lieutenants. La Pérouse, the explorer, was a _capitaine
de frégate_. Bruix and Denis Decrès, Napoleon's Ministers of Marine in
later days, were two of the midshipmen. Magon, who fell a rear-admiral
at Trafalgar, was an _enseigne de vaisseau_. L'Hermitte, Troude,
Willaumez, Emeriau, Bourayne, others of Napoleon's admirals, were among
the boy _volontiers d'honneur_ (naval cadets) in various ships of the
Fort Royal fleet. De Grasse's personal staff comprised the Vicomte de
Grasse, the admiral's nephew, the Comte de Cibon, and the Marquis de
Beaulieu.
It was a glittering and gallant crowd that walked the quarter-deck
with all the gay _abandon_ of their race those balmy, fragrant West
Indian evenings of April 1782, while the band played 'Vive Henri
Quatre!' and 'Charmante Gabrielle,' high spirited, and heedless of the
coming days. What were they not going to do, '_pour en finir avec ces
Anglais--bêtes_!' Jamaica first, _cela s'entend_! Then the sack of
Barbados,--the spoil of the goldsmiths and silversmiths of Bridgetown
and the mansions of the planters, whose sideboards, groaning under the
weight of gold and silver plate, 'astonished and stirred the envy of
every passing visitor,' as travellers had told ever since the time of
old Père Labat, 'gold and silver plate so abundant that the plunder
of it would pay the cost of an expedition for the reduction of the
island!' _Vive la France! Vive la Gloire!_ Light-hearted and gay, how
many of them gave a thought to something else? What of those who would
not live to see the coming battle through? How many of them all would
kneel next Sunday three weeks to receive the _aumônier's_ blessing at
early mass? Ah well!--what mattered it!--_Fortune de guerre!_ Perhaps
so. Perhaps, indeed, better so--at any rate, for some of them. Those
who were to fall in the coming fight were to be envied, rather, in
their ending. It was better, surely, to go down there and then, to be
dropped overboard in the clear, deep water alongside, eight hundred
and fifty fathoms down, to sleep the last sleep beneath the lapping
wavelets of the blue Caribbean, dead on the field of honour, than to
survive for what was yet to come for France, to experience the fate
that was to befall so many a gallant French officer who outlived the
cannon thunders of Rodney's day. To be laid to rest there in those
soft summer seas was at least a better fortune than to have to undergo
the cruel doom that a few years later overtook so many of their
messmates who outlasted the fight. Better be smashed in two by an
English cannon-ball on the quarter-deck, than perish hideously in the
dungeons of Draguignan, or go in the tumbrils to a death of ignominy
and cold-blooded horror, clattering over the cobble-stones to the
Place de Grève, while all round the mob of Paris howled and danced and
cursed--the hapless lot of so many a gallant naval officer among the
rest of the gentlemen of old-time France,
... those gallant fellows who died by guillotine,
For honour and the fleur-de-lis and Antoinette the Queen.
It was better too, surely, than what befell so many others of those who
escaped the Terror; better than to have to drag out year after year
a pitiful existence as an _émigré_ in London, in squalid lodgings in
Somers Town, driven, poor fellows, to earn a wretched and precarious
livelihood by teaching French for a few pence a lesson, or as
dancing-masters, and then after it all be put away in a cheap grave in
the grimy soil of St. Pancras old churchyard. It was better than that.
_Vive la Gloire! Vixerunt._ Each one has had his day--
And somewhere, 'mid the distant stars,
He knows, mayhap, what glory is.
[Illustration: CLOCK-FACE FROM THE _VILLE DE PARIS_
Now in the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution, Whitehall.
The clock-face was set up at the break of the poop, above the
quarter-deck. It was the duty of a sentry to move the hands on every
hour.]
The ships were worthy of the men. The pick of the French fleet was with
De Grasse--one ship of a hundred and four guns, five of eighty-four,
three eighties, nineteen seventy-fours, six sixty-fours--thirty-four
sail of the line altogether, besides sixteen frigates. A fine show they
made with their yellow sides, belted with black at the water-line,
and dark blue bulwarks, with red ports, gilded figure-heads and
balustraded galleries, and gleaming brass Gribeauval guns, the newest
type of ordnance from the foundries of Indret and La Ruelle. The
magnificent _Ville de Paris_, 'leviathan of ships,' was De Grasse's
flagship, the finest and largest first-rate in the world, the splendid
present offered by the citizens of Paris to the King at the close of
the Seven Years' War, as their contribution towards making good the
losses that France had suffered in the war. Four and a half million
livres she was said to have cost, nearly four times the price of the
British _Royal George_ or the _Victory_. Seven others of the fifteen
powerful men-of-war that the provinces and corporations of France,
following the example of the capital, then offered to the State, were
at Fort Royal, on which no money nor pains had been spared to make them
equal in efficiency to the finest ships afloat.
[Illustration: BELL OF THE _VILLE DE PARIS_
Now in the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution, Whitehall.]
A small army of soldiers was at Fort Royal, as well as De Grasse's
fleet. There were between five and six thousand troops there, waiting
under canvas for the order to embark on board the men-of-war. Bouillé
commanded them,--the Marquis de Bouillé, the conqueror of St. Kitts
and Nevis and Montserrat and Dominica and St. Eustatius, 'tiger-spring
Bouillé,'[21] though better known to fame, perhaps, for his share in
the events of a later day, as Commandant-General of Metz and the 'last
refuge of royalty.' Varennes, however, was a name that De Bouillé,
possibly, had as yet not heard of. Postmaster Drouet still rode in the
ranks of the Condé dragoons. Some of the smartest corps in the French
service were there: Regiment de Foix, dashing d'Armagnac, Artillerie
de Metz, Regiments de Béarn, de Touraine, and de Monsieur, red-coated
Irishmen of the Walsh and Dillon corps, half a battalion of Royal
Contois, two battalions of Auxerrois, brought from York Town with De
Grasse, after having witnessed the march out of the surrendered British
army. One of the most striking of the great paintings on the walls
of the _Galerie des Batailles_ at Versailles shows an aide-de-camp,
a cocked-hatted, high-gaitered young dandy, garbed in Bourbon white
with the mauve facings and silver lace of Auxerrois receiving orders
from Washington just before the last attack. De Bouillé's division
had already its place on paper as one of the wings of the 'Army of
Jamaica.'
Now we turn to Gros Islet Bay and the British fleet. Rodney's ships
lay at anchor to the south of Pigeon Island, off the north-west of St.
Lucia, in the roadstead in front of Gros Islet Bay, about half-a-mile
off shore, a stretch of deep water extending a mile and a half. The
Gros Islet, from which the bay takes its name, was the old French name
for Pigeon Island. There was also a village of the name on the shore
opposite the island. Seven miles along the coast to the south was the
_carénage_, where ships could be hove down and repaired; now called
Castries, and an important port and naval station, destined, with the
opening of the Panama Canal, to become the Valetta of the West Indies.
The watering place for the fleet was at Trou Gascon in the bay.
Rodney's thirty-six sail of the line in Gros Islet Bay were thus made
up: five three-deckers (four of 98 guns, _Formidable_, _Barfleur_,
_Prince George_, and _Duke_, and one of 90, the _Namur_), and
thirty-one two-deckers (twenty of them 74's, one a 70-gun ship, and ten
64's). They were as a rule older and slower vessels than the French
ships: nearly a third of them, in fact, had seen service in the Seven
Years' War. In guns the British fleet mounted 2620 pieces all told,
against 2526 on the French side, but the enemy's metal was considerably
the heavier. Most of De Grasse's ships carried 36-pounders (French
weight, equivalent to 42-pounders by British reckoning), as against the
32-pounders that were Rodney's heaviest guns. According to the British
Flag Captain, Sir Charles Douglas, the difference between the fleets in
weight of metal worked out at 4396 lbs. (nearly two tons) in favour of
the enemy. It made the French stronger, Douglas held, by 'the weight
of metal of four 84's.' That was the difference on paper. In point of
fact, certain details of equipment reversed the disparity. Most of
Rodney's ships had their guns fitted with locks and priming-tubes, in
place of the old port-fires and powder-horns which the French still
used. Also, they had been supplied with certain devices for quickening
the service of the guns, increasing their rate of fire, and giving
them a wider arc of training on the broadside. All that gave Rodney
a very real advantage in hard-hitting power, without counting the
carronades[22] or 'smashers' that most of the British ships mounted as
extra to their regulation armaments.
In all respects Rodney's fleet was in the very highest order, and its
discipline and general smartness left little to be desired. Thanks to
the energy and skill of Dr. Blane, Rodney's Physician of the Fleet,
no previous British fleet in time of war perhaps had ever been so
free from sickness. In some ships there was not a man unfit to go
to quarters. The _Ajax_, to name one ship, had no sick list. In the
_Formidable_, out of 900 men on board, only two were unfit for duty.
Before leaving Plymouth, Dr. Blane had had Teneriffe wine supplied
to the flagship instead of rum, together with molasses and pickled
cabbages, and the dietary had had a marvellous effect on the health of
the men. For the first four months of the commission there was not a
single death from sickness.[23]
As we glanced at De Grasse's captains, so we may glance at the gallant
fellows in whose hands rested the fate of the British Empire. They were
of another class than the captains of the enemy. There were no counts
or viscounts with long pedigrees and high-sounding romantic names among
Rodney's captains. Few of them were of 'the offspring of the sons and
daughters of fashion,' though of course some were men of birth and
breeding. Rodney himself, a baronet and K.B. (distinctions won on his
own account), was a man of family. Sir Samuel Hood, also a self-made
baronet, was a Somersetshire parson's son. Rear-Admiral Francis Samuel
Drake, the third in command, a descendant of the great Sir Francis of
Elizabethan days, belonged to the ordinary country gentleman class--man
for man, no doubt, as good as any nobleman of France, but as denizens
of another world to a Lord Chamberlain or a master of the ceremonies.
Among the captains, Lord Robert Manners, of the _Resolution_, was the
Marquis of Granby's second son; the Hon. William Cornwallis, of the
_Canada_, was a younger son of Earl Cornwallis; Captain Reynolds, of
the _Monarch_, was heir-presumptive to the Ducie peerage; Captain Lord
Cranstoun, a volunteer on board the _Formidable_, was a baron of the
Scottish peerage. These four, with Sir Charles Douglas, the Captain of
the Fleet, another self-made baronet (for war service), and Sir James
Wallace, a knight, constituted, with the admiral and Hood, the social
_élite_ of Rodney's fleet--a list that hardly comes into comparison
with De Grasse's little Versailles. The bulk of the British captains
were the sons of ordinary folk, sons of squires and country parsons,
and old naval officers to some extent, drawn from all over the three
kingdoms--the sort of men that had officered the Royal Navy for the
past hundred years, the men to whom Great Britain to-day owes her place
among the nations. That, indeed, is literally the case. Also, not a few
of those who to-day serve His Majesty King Edward on the quarter-deck
are lineal representatives of Rodney's officers who in that April
week of the year 1782 were in Gros Islet Bay, watching hour by hour
for the _Formidable_ to hoist the sailing-flags. It is an interesting
instance of hereditary inclination--of how the naval spirit runs in
families. Two-thirds of Rodney's captains, practically, are represented
at the present hour in the Royal Navy by direct descendants. One has
only to turn over the pages of the current Navy List to find Hoods
and Inglefields and Parrys, and Graveses and Gardners, Fanshawes and
Dumaresqs, a Buckner, a Blur, a Burnett, a Balfour, a Savage, a Symons,
a Charrington, an Inglis, a Wallace, a Byron, a Cornish, a Truscott,
a Saumarez, Knights and Wilsons, and Williamses and Wilkinsons and
Thomsons, besides others, who either trace their descent directly from
Rodney's captains or come of the same stock.
All in Gros Islet Bay were burning with anxiety to meet the enemy,
absolutely confident of the result. About that, from the highest to
the lowest, there were no two opinions. 'Their fate,' wrote Rodney
himself in a letter on the 4th of April, 'is only delayed a short time,
for have it they must and shall.' That was the common sentiment with
all. The fleet was prepared to sail at an hour's notice. All leave was
stopped. Not an officer or man was allowed out of his ship except on
duty. Rodney meant that the blow, when it fell, should come, in the
language of the prize-ring, as a 'knock-out' blow. It should be, to use
Rodney's own words, 'the great event that must restore the empire of
the seas to Great Britain.'
De Grasse was closely watched from hour to hour. Every movement at Fort
Royal was signalled to the _Formidable_ practically as it was made. A
chain of Rodney's frigates reported everything that De Grasse did--a
line of ships that stretched across the thirty miles of sea between
Gros Islet Bay and the fleet in Fort Royal. To and fro they tacked
day and night, patrolling ceaselessly, observing all that passed and
sending word of it along the chain. Two line-of-battle ships, the
_Magnificent_ and the fast-sailing _Agamemnon_, stiffened the frigate
line at the end nearest the enemy. Captain George Anson Byron, of the
_Andromache_, was in command of the look-out squadron--'an active,
brisk, and intelligent officer,' Rodney calls him, the second son of
old John Byron, 'Foul Weather Jack.' A signal-station on Pigeon Island,
set up near the edge of a steep cliff 340 feet high (nearly the height
of Beachy Head), kept touch with the frigates and linked them with the
battle fleet. From the look-out post the men on duty could see not
only the nearer frigates of the chain, but also right across to the
mountains of Martinique, and in clear weather catch the white glint
of the topgallant sails of the more distant vessels in front of Fort
Royal, on the far horizon and hull down. The admiral himself, we are
told, used to land on Pigeon Island nearly every day, and go up to the
signal station, where, under an awning made from a sail, he would sit
in an arm-chair with his telescope at his eye, scanning the frigate
line. On the site of Rodney's signal-station there now stands a small
fort, called 'Fort Rodney,' and visitors are shown what is said to be
the actual slab of rock on which the admiral's chair was placed.
On the 3rd of April Captain Byron sent in the message that the enemy's
preparations for sea appeared complete. On the 5th he signalled across
that he could see the French soldiers being embarked on board the
men-of-war. The fateful hour was on the point of striking. Then the
news that Rodney wanted came. Just before eight on the morning of
Sunday, the 8th of April, the signal was seen flying at the mast-head
of the nearest of the frigates: 'THE ENEMY ARE COMING OUT OF PORT.'
The whole fleet was at sea, says Dr. Blane, 'in a little more than two
hours.' In rapid succession the _Formidable_ signalled, first to recall
all boats and watering parties on board their ships at once, then for
the fleet to 'Prepare to sail.' Following on that, at nine o'clock,
according to the _Formidable's_ log, the signal was made--'Prepare
for battle!' Before half-past ten all was ready. The _Formidable_
now loosed her main-topsail and fired a gun; to prepare to weigh
anchor. That done, down dropped the foretopsail, and off went a second
gun--'Weigh!' A quarter of an hour later--
With boats on board, with anchors weighed,
The fleet rides ready in the bay.
The whole fleet was under sail and moving out to sea by a little before
eleven. Rodney had started on his chase.
Before noon the rear ships were clearing Pigeon Island and Point
du Cap, the northernmost headland of St. Lucia, was on the beam.
The _Magnificent_ and _Agamemnon_, falling back from their advanced
positions while the frigates held on ahead, now came into the fleet.
De Grasse, they reported, had come out and gone off to the north-west,
with thirty-five sail of the line, ten frigates, and an immense convoy
of merchantmen and store-ships, numbering upwards of a hundred and
fifty sail. The convoy had left Fort Royal at daybreak, some time in
advance of the men-of-war, working up along the coast towards St.
Pierre under a small escort.
As the British fleet gained the open sea it formed up in order of
sailing, Hood's squadron leading.
Nothing could be seen of the enemy from the fleet. Not even from
the mast-head was a glimpse of the French to be got. Touch, though,
was well maintained by the frigates, who kept Rodney continuously
informed of the course the enemy were taking. Diamond Rock, a solitary
haystack-shaped mass off the Morne du Diamant, the south-western point
of Martinique, began to rise on the sea-line ahead towards three
o'clock. Half-an-hour later they could make out the bluff shoulder of
Cape Solomon, on the southern side of Fort Royal Bay. Nothing of the
enemy, though, was visible even from the mast-head of the battle-fleet,
until, at eight minutes after four. Hood's ship, the _Barfleur_,
flagship of the van squadron, suddenly made a signal that she saw
them. Enthusiastic cheers burst out in response from ship to ship all
down the line. From the _Formidable_, farther astern, they did not get
their first sight of the enemy until nearly two hours later, not long
before sunset. Then they sighted five strange sail on the horizon to
the north-west, 'which we suppose,' says the _Formidable's_ log, 'to be
part of the French fleet.' Darkness came on soon after that. 'During
the night,' says Sir Charles Douglas, 'we followed them, under as much
canvas as we could in prudence carry, the wind blowing very fresh at
N.E. by E.'
[Illustration:
Emery Walker sc.
CHART SHOWING RODNEY'S PURSUIT OF DE GRASSE, AND THE ENGAGEMENTS OF
APRIL 9 AND 12]
At nine o'clock one of the headmost of the frigates, dropping back
from the van, hailed the _Formidable_ to the effect that they had De
Grasse's lights well in view. By midnight the enemy's signal-flares
were distinctly visible from the British flagship, and an occasional
signal-gun was heard. At two in the morning (the 9th of April) the
_St. Albans_ dropped back alongside the _Formidable_ and hailed across
that she and the _Valiant_, sailing to windward, had seen the enemy's
lights. The _Formidable_ had sighted them for herself just before.
Satisfied with the progress made, Rodney now brought the fleet to.
Daylight was wanted for the next move.
Clear daylight came about half-past five. It disclosed the entire force
of the enemy, both men-of-war and convoy. They were full in sight to
the north-east, an irregular array of ships stretching along under the
high land of Dominica, and from six to twelve miles off. The leading
French ships were trying to weather the northernmost point of the
island and work round into the stretch of open water between Dominica
and the next island to northward, Guadeloupe, but their progress was
slow. Since midnight the wind had fallen away until it was now nearly a
dead calm. The bulk of De Grasse's ships were lying off Prince Rupert's
Bay with barely steerage way. Rodney, farther to seaward, was in like
case. Until nearly seven o'clock it was impossible to move on either
side. Then there came a change. Towards seven o'clock the sea-breeze
from the north-east, blowing through the channel between Dominica and
Guadeloupe, began to reach Hood's ships at the head of the British
line. The breeze carried Hood forward and out into the channel; but at
the same time it caused him to break away and separate from his own
fleet. Rodney himself with the whole of the British centre, and Drake
with the rear squadron, were left at some distance astern, beyond the
reach of the breeze. They remained unable to get clear of the belt of
calm under the lee of Dominica.[24] A gap was formed in the British
line as Hood was swept more and more ahead, and it widened rapidly.
The opportunity was too good for De Grasse to miss. He had the windward
berth, and fourteen or fifteen of his ships, helped by the same breeze
that carried Hood forward, were simultaneously getting clear of the
island and into the channel. Only eight ships were with Hood. De Grasse
saw a chance of dealing his opponent a telling blow by crippling Hood
before the British centre and rear squadrons could move to his support.
He signalled to De Vaudreuil, who led the French line, to bring Hood's
isolated squadron to action at once.