the _Marlborough_ up; an exceptionally ugly customer for an
enemy to tackle, for her guns were fitted with all the newest
improvements,--locks, tubes, and sweep-pieces,--and her men knew how
to make the best of them. Captain Douglas, watching the _Arrogant_
from the _Formidable_, noted that he saw her firing three broadsides
to the enemy's one--one broadside meeting the enemy as they came up;
the second right into their ports as they passed; the third a slashing
good-bye salute, training three-quarters aft into the Frenchmen's
stern. Some of the enemy struck back savagely as the _Arrogant_ went
by, but the tough Suffolk oak of the old ship's timbers could take hard
knocks, and the Harwich dockyard-men's work came through the hammering
little the worse. The _Alcide_, Captain Charles Thomson, followed next,
a British-built model of one of old 'Dreadnought' Boscawen's prizes,
whose French name she had also taken; then the _Nonsuch_, Captain
Truscott; and the _Conqueror_, Captain George Balfour, a gallant Scot
who had won post-rank for an act of exceptional daring in battle
five-and-twenty years before.
These five 74's headed the British fleet and 'broke the bowling.'
They ranged forward alongside the French within pistol-shot, 'sliding
down slowly,' as Captain Douglas, looking on from the _Formidable's_
quarter-deck, described it. They passed parallel to the French and to
leeward, on the opposite tack, from the ninth ship of the enemy to
their rear ship, exchanging fire with every ship of the enemy, one
after the other as each came by, until they had passed and overlapped
the end of the French line. Forward they went, ship following ship,
keeping exact station and each lashing out, broadside after broadside,
into the enemy as they swept along, as fast as the powder could be
brought to the guns.
Admiral Drake followed in the wake of the _Conqueror_, with the
_Princessa_, an ex-Spanish two-decker, a 70-gun ship, but bigger
than Hood's _Barfleur_, one of the prizes that Rodney had made in
his moonlight battle with Langara off Cape St. Vincent that wild
January midnight two years before when he was on his way to relieve
Gibraltar. The big _Prince George_ (Captain Williams), a giant 98-gun
three-decker, the hardest hitter of the van squadron in weight of
metal, seconded Drake.
Keppel's pet ship, the ever-ready old _Torbay_, came next in the
line, with, astern of her, the Anson, a small 64, Captain William
Blair--to-day, poor fellow, in his last fight. In the heat of the
action a round-shot, sweeping some three feet above the deck, struck
Captain Blair at the waist, smashing his body right in two and carrying
half of it across the deck and up against the bulwarks on the farther
side. The van squadron was completed by the _Fame_, 74, and the
_Russell_, Captain James Saumarez, the famous admiral of later days,
then a young post-captain twenty-five years old, whom a stroke of
unexpected good luck a few weeks before had transferred from a small
fireship to the quarter-deck of one of the best line-of-battle ships in
Rodney's fleet.
Each ship as she reached the spot at which her immediate leader had
turned put her helm up sharply and ranged along in the wake of the
ship next ahead, firing into every Frenchman that she passed, keeping
meanwhile her leader's three masts in one and checking her distance
with the sextant. That was at the outset, as they came round and
steadied into line alongside the enemy. As the firing became general
the smoke, rolling heavily down from windward, smothered the British
ships in a dense fog and blanketed them in, shutting out the view
all round, except now and again as a glimpse ahead was caught in an
occasional rift here and there.
Rodney's squadron followed Drake's without a break. The _America_,
Captain Thompson, led them, a cable's length astern of the _Russell_.
Her name is out of the Navy List now, but it had a meaning of its own
in those days, commemorating as it did a former gift of a man-of-war to
Great Britain by those colonists of North America who had become since
then her deadliest foes.
The _Hercules_, 74, commanded by a 'character' of the day, Captain
Henry Savage, came next. Her captain's doings that morning were of
peculiar interest. Savage took his ship into action with two ensigns
up, one nailed to the staff, the other at the peak, with the halyards
so belayed that the flag could not easily be hauled down. Beyond a
casual gun, he would not let a shot be fired until he had come right
abreast of the French admiral. Then he opened with a full broadside
into the _Ville de Paris_, every gun double-shotted, at less than
50 yards. Not thirty seconds elapsed between the first gun and the
last, said the _Hercules'_ first lieutenant. As the men reloaded,
Captain Savage, who, a martyr to gout, had been sitting in an arm-chair
on deck waving his hat and calling out uncomplimentary epithets to
the Frenchmen as he passed each ship, forgetting his pain in his
excitement, jumped on an arm chest and struck up a line of a song of
the day--
Oh! what a charming thing's a battle!
Once she had passed the _Ville de Paris_ there was no more holding back
on board the _Hercules_. They fired as fast as the guns could be loaded
and run out, using rammers that Captain Savage himself had invented
for quick loading. 'Her side,' said the officers of the ship astern
of the _Hercules_, 'was in a constant blaze.' Captain Savage, who had
resumed his arm-chair, soon afterwards received a bad wound, and had
to be taken to the cockpit. As he went below he told his officers 'to
point between wind and water and sink the d----d rascals!' He returned
on deck in a few minutes and sat the battle out bandaged up, fixed in
his arm-chair, which was set by the ship's side in the gangway, and
shouting out expletives as before. As the _Hercules_ cleared the rear
of the French fleet, Captain Savage luffed up directly into the wake of
the enemy, at right angles to their line, and by way of a parting kick
sent a raking last broadside crash into the rearmost French ship's
cabin windows as she disappeared in the smoke.
Captain Buckner's _Prothée_, a 64, taken from the French two years
before, followed the _Hercules_ in the line, and after her came the
smart _Resolution_, 74. The captain of the _Resolution_, Lord Robert
Manners, was the first on board her to fall. A round-shot struck him
down, smashing his left leg and injuring the right badly, and at the
same moment a heavy splinter fractured his right arm. Lord Robert was
carried down to the cockpit, where it was found necessary to amputate
his left leg, the heroic young officer--he was only twenty-four and
chloroform or anæsthetics of any kind were as yet unknown--'making
jocular remarks on the operation with a smiling countenance during
its most painful steps.'[34] Captain Manners' injuries unfortunately
proved mortal. He seemed to be getting better, and was on his way home
in the frigate that carried Rodney's despatches, when mortification
suddenly set in, and he was dead within twenty-four hours. 'I would
rather have lost two seventy-fours than Lord Robert Manners,' King
George is reported to have said when His Majesty received the news of
the death. A monument to him, conjointly with Captains Bayne of the
_Alfred_ (killed on the 9th) and Blair of the _Anson_, was erected by
order of Parliament in Westminster Abbey. Another brave fellow on board
the _Resolution_, as the ship's surgeon related, was a seaman whose
name history has not preserved. He was standing by his gun as the ship
sheered abreast of De Grasse's flagship. The gun was all ready and just
going to fire when a shot came in at the port and took his leg off at
the knee. As quick as thought the man pulled off his neckcloth and tied
his leg above the stump. The next instant he seized his shot-off limb
and thrust it into the muzzle of the gun, which went off two seconds
later. '_My_ foot,' shouted the man exultantly, 'is the first to board
the _Ville de Paris_!' Such was the spirit in which Rodney's tars went
into the fight that day.
[Illustration: MONUMENT OF THE THREE CAPTAINS--BLAIR, BAYNE, AND LORD
ROBERT MANNERS--IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY]
The big _Duke_, of 98 guns, 'a splendidly efficient three-decker,'
with a large effigy of 'Butcher' Cumberland of Culloden fame, in the
war-paint of a British general, at her bows for the ship's figure-head,
came on in the wake of the _Resolution_.[35] Her captain was Alan
Gardner, the Lord Gardner of later days, an officer and seaman worthy
of such a ship. There was no more efficient man-of-war in Rodney's
line than the _Duke_, nor one more perfectly equipped, not excepting
the _Formidable_ herself. And her men were worthy of their captain and
their ship. Captain Gardner had the honour of leading Rodney himself
into the battle as the flagship's 'second ahead.' The _Formidable_ came
into action next immediately astern of the _Duke_.
The _Formidable_ fired her first gun, by the ship's log, exactly at
eight minutes after eight o'clock: it was just as she was opposite the
fifth ship from the French van. The enemy had already opened fire on
the British flagship, 'in stemming towards them,' but without drawing
Rodney's fire until he got closer, when the admiral returned it 'by
giving some little elevation to his guns to good effect.' Rodney
stood on in his place in line until he had come almost abreast of the
ninth French ship. At that point, within pistol-shot of the enemy,
the _Formidable_ put up her helm and swung over to port to follow her
consorts ahead. A smashing broadside of round-shot into the nearest of
the Frenchmen announced that the British flagship had begun, and with
that the _Formidable's_ men settled to their morning's work, 'keeping
up,' as Captain Douglas bore witness, 'a most unsupportable, quick, and
well-directed fire.'
As they rounded-to alongside the French fleet, coming bows on towards
them, they plunged abruptly into the dense fog-bank of smoke that hung
heavily along the firing lines, clinging thickly over all, sluggish and
inert and almost opaque, blurring everything out except quite close
at hand. For those on board the _Formidable_ it was like passing at a
step from a sunny street into a cellar, a transition in the blinking
of an eye from a radiant April morning to the gloom and darkness of
November midnight. On deck, in the open, the dark haze that shrouded
everything in was at times impenetrable. The ship had to grope her way
forward blindfold, steering, actually, by the flashes of the _Duke's_
guns, which kept up 'a most dreadful fire.' When now and then the smoke
lifted or thinned a little, it became possible to catch a glimpse of
the upper canvas of some approaching enemy in the act of nearing them,
and fire at her as she came up, but for great part of the time they had
to fire blindly or by guess work, unable to make out anything at all
until an enemy suddenly loomed up close at hand, right abreast. Then a
blaze of fire and the enemy had gone, disappeared, swallowed up in the
smoke.
Below, between decks, for most of the time they were worse off. Not
the faintest gleam of light came in through the ports--only smoke,
pouring back into the ship with every discharge of the guns, thick
and suffocating, blotting out everything from sight and filling every
corner of the ship with hot sulphurous fumes. Except close underneath
the horn battle-lanterns, that swung overhead above the guns and threw
a weak glimmer on the white glistening shoulders of the seamen--as they
fought their pieces, stripped to the buff and dripping with sweat,
naked except for their breeches, tugging and swaying with bent backs
at the training tackle, barefooted, for the decks, though sanded down,
soon got slippery--all was impenetrable darkness, ink black. The din
below was fearful, incessant, deafening, with the reverberating crashes
from the firing; the continuous trundling roll and thumping to and fro
of the heavy gun-carriages, flung about by main force backwards and
forwards as the guns were run in and out; the rattle and clatter of
gear; the hoarse shoutings of orders. Now and again a sudden terrific
crash, mingled with the harsh rending noise of splintering timber,
would shake the ship's frame from end to end and overpower every other
sound for the moment, as an enemy's broadside beat furiously against
the stout oak planking of the ship's sides, followed by yells of agony
from somewhere in the dark within the ship, and the gruff abrupt 'Close
up there! Close up!' from the captains of the guns, signifying that
some poor fellows had gone down.
[Illustration: FIGHTING THE GUNS ON THE MAIN DECK. 1782.
After Rowlandson.
[This would seem to have been drawn in 1782, when Rowlandson paid his
flying visit to see the remains of the _Royal George_, and was probably
worked up from a sketch on board one of the obsolete guardships in
harbour with certain fancy touches of the artist's own.]]
Rodney was on the quarter-deck, seated for most of the time in an
arm-chair. He was badly crippled after his last attack of gout, from
which he had hardly recovered. Every now and again the admiral would
rise and pass aft through his cabin under the poop to the stern gallery
to look out astern and see what might be made out of the battle from
there, or go forward to the gangway at the side, clear of the piled-up
hammocks on the quarter-deck bulwarks, to look out ahead. His gout,
it would seem, would not let him mount the ladder to the poop. It was
during one of the admiral's intervals of rest probably, while he was
sitting down for a few minutes in the middle of the men as they worked
the quarter-deck guns, that Rodney, as we are told, made the discovery
that one of the gunners there was a woman. Brought up on the spot
before the admiral and taxed with disobedience of orders in not staying
to help in the cockpit, the delinquent threw herself on Rodney's mercy.
She was, she said, a sailor's wife. Her husband had been wounded and
carried below, whereupon she had come up to take his place at his gun.
It was of course a breach of discipline, and Rodney reprimanded the
woman sharply. Then he softened, gave her ten guineas, and sent her
down to nurse her husband.
Here is another incidental personal detail about Rodney on that
morning. In one of his passings to and fro, between the quarter-deck
and the stern walk, as Rodney went through his cabin he saw some
lemons lying on a side table. The old gentleman was hot and his throat
parched with the sulphurous fumes of the all-pervading powder smoke. He
called to a midshipman near by to make him a glass of lemonade. The boy
did so, and having nothing to stir the glass with, picked up a knife on
the table that had been used by some one for cutting up a lemon. Quite
happy, he stirred the admiral's drink with the black and sticky blade.
Rodney turned and caught sight of the performance. 'Child, child!' he
exclaimed, with a grimace, as the boy was about to present the glass to
him, 'that may do for the midshipmen's mess. Drink the stuff yourself
and go and send my steward here!' The midshipman obeyed both orders.
It was about twenty minutes to nine, as the _Formidable_ was nearing
the centre of the French line, that the vast bulk of the _Ville de
Paris_ began to loom up ahead of them. There was no mistaking De
Grasse's flagship. Her towering canvas, her tall sides and lofty
bulwarks, her triple tier of ports, all these marked out the pride of
the French fleet among the other ships, even without the identifying
feature of the figure-head, the great shield at the bows with the arms
of Paris heraldically emblazoned in gold and crimson and blue. Just
before this, as Captain Fanshawe of the _Namur_, next astern of Rodney,
noted, our ships had slackened fire to let the smoke drift off. Each
flagship could thus distinguish the other easily as they closed. Each,
of course, bore at her mast-head her Commander-in-Chief's personal
standard; the _Ville de Paris_ De Grasse's plain white Bourbon flag,
the 'Cornette Blanche'; the _Formidable_, Rodney's flag as Admiral of
the White, the red cross flag of St. George.
It was a dramatic moment as the two leaders drew together to cross
swords. The _Formidable's_ men felt it. They redoubled their
efforts and blazed away with every gun that would train into the
imposing-looking French three-decker's bows as she came on, leading
off with a tremendous cannonade of round-shot and grape that made
terrible havoc along the crowded decks of the _Ville de Paris_. To the
utter surprise of all there was next to no reply. A loose, irregular
discharge came back, fired hurriedly and badly aimed. That was all.
With a weak, half-hearted fire from about half her guns, the _Ville de
Paris_ surged past the _Formidable_ and vanished in the smoke astern.
It was indeed a pitiful exhibition. The fierce broadsides of Rodney's
ships ahead had done their work. Every British captain had reserved
at least one of his broadsides for the _Ville de Paris_, 'sickening'
her, in the expressive Old Navy phrase, and after that the startling
rapidity of the outburst with which the _Formidable_ greeted her
approach had completed the demoralisation on board. It flurried and
staggered the French flagship's crew, and before they could recover
themselves they had gone astern. As De Grasse went by some of the
_Formidable's_ batteries got off four double-shotted rounds into the
_Ville de Paris_, none less than three, with such magnificent smartness
did Rodney's gunners handle their guns.
What did De Grasse himself think of his men's poor show? What did he
think now--he could hardly have forgotten it--of his polite challenge
to Rodney from Fort Royal by Captain Vashon a few weeks ago 'that
nothing would give him greater pleasure than to meet 'le Chevalier
Rodney,' and that he 'looked forward to personally welcoming the
British Admiral on board the _Ville de Paris_'? It was the second
opportunity for a personal encounter with his antagonist that De Grasse
had lost that week.[36] He was to have no more. As to his welcome of
'le Chevalier Rodney,' he would have the opportunity of making the
acquaintance of the British Admiral face to face and within twenty-four
hours--though not on board the _Ville de Paris_. The French flagship
took her hammering from the _Formidable_ and passed on to run the
gauntlet of the other British ships astern.
It was apparently just as the _Ville de Paris_ was passing that a
French cannon-ball struck a fowl-coop on deck where a number of pullets
for the admiral's table were kept. The coop was smashed to splinters
and the fowls flew out. One of them, the story goes, a little bantam
cock, fluttered up and perched on a spar above the quarter-deck, where
it set-to crowing lustily and clapping its wings at every broadside
from the guns. Rodney passed at the moment and pointed the bird out to
Dr. Blane. 'Look at that fellow,' said Rodney, 'look at him; I declare
he is a credit to his country.' The Admiral gave orders that the little
cock should not be killed, but be taken care of and made a special pet
for the reminder of its days.
Following in the wake of the _Ville de Paris_ came the big _Couronne_,
a powerful eighty-four, whose efficiency in war Rodney had personally
tested on a former day; the _Eveillé_, Le Gardeur de Tilly's little
sixty-four, showing signs of what she had gone through; and then the
_Sceptre_, the Comte de Vaudreuil's ship, a seventy-four.
As the _Sceptre_ went astern, Rodney, with Blane at his elbow, walked
out from the quarter-deck on to the starboard gangway at the side
of the ship to get a better view. As he got there he saw another
French ship nearing them. It was the _Glorieux_, reeling under the
terrific punishment she had just undergone from the _Duke's_ guns. Her
captain, D'Escars, had been struck down, and the ship wrecked from
end to end; left lying a log on the water, 'shorn,' in Blane's words,
'of all her masts, bowsprit, and ensign staff, but with the white
flag nailed to the stump of one of the masts, breathing defiance as
it were in her last moments.' According to the French accounts they
nailed their colours to the mast as the _Glorieux_ was approaching the
_Formidable_, the operation affording opportunity for a fine little bit
of heroic by-play. While they were nailing up the flag a sergeant of
the Auxerrois regiment (a company of which was on board), Choissat by
name, fastened a white cloth to his halberd and sprang on the bulwark
rail and held it up, waving it defiantly. A bullet from either the
_Formidable_ or the _Duke_ broke Choissat's right arm, whereupon the
brave fellow caught the halberd with his left hand and held it up until
the ship's flag had been secured. He lived through the fight and was
given a commission for his heroism.
Rodney marked the oncoming of the _Glorieux_ as the stricken vessel
dropped slowly down on them. Then, a second later, seeing that the
French seventy-four was drifting in such a way that she would brush
close past them and almost collide, he turned abruptly to Dr. Blane.
Both the Admiral's aides-de-camp were out of the way. 'Run down,' he
told the doctor, 'and tell them to elevate their metal.' Blane went.
He guessed the Admiral's meaning, thanks to _Hudibras_, a couplet from
which came opportunely into his mind.
Thus cannon shoot the higher pitches,
The lower you let down their breeches.
'If this holds true,' says Dr. Blane, telling the story for himself,
'so must the converse of it, that is the muzzles must be lower by the
elevation of the breeches. The Admiral's meaning could be no other than
that of taking the enemy between wind and water.'[37] Blane hurried
down and gave the order. In the interests of historic truth, in view of
what immediately followed, it would have been well if he had not left
the deck.
At the very moment that Rodney was sending Blane below, the wind
suddenly shifted. It veered to the southward and headed the French
fleet off, taking them all aback and throwing them out of order all
along their line. It checked their way, and cast every ship round
with her head to starboard, half-right as it were, setting the whole
line _en échelon_. For the British, on the other hand, the shift of
wind made things more favourable than before. It sent Rodney's ships
briskly forward. Its effect was instantly apparent in the immediate
neighbourhood of the _Formidable_. The mastless hull of the _Glorieux_
drove down steadily on the _Formidable_. The ship next astern of her
in the French line, the _Diadème_, a seventy-four, hung back and then
swung round sharply at right angles, paying off on the wrong tack. A
wide gap was made at once in the enemy's line, and just opposite the
_Formidable_. What was to be done?
Ink enough to float the _Formidable_ herself has been spilled over the
incidents of the next three minutes on board the British flagship, and
we cannot even now say that we know the true story. According to one
officer, who, as a quarter-deck midshipman, was an eye-witness of what
took place, but did not put pen to paper about it until half a century
after the event, a highly dramatic--and in the interests of discipline
not very edifying--scene followed, between Rodney personally and Sir
Charles Douglas his flag-captain.
[Illustration:
HOW THE FRENCH LINE WAS BROKEN
From 'Military Drawings of Battles and Sieges ... from Original Surveys
by Lieut.-Colonel C. Hamilton Smith,' now in the Department of MSS.,
British Museum.
[No. 19 C is the _Formidable_. The centre one of the three French
flagships is the _Ville de Paris_. No. 13 is the _Bedford_. No. 6 D is
the _Barfleur_.]]
Here is Midshipman Dashwood's narrative as he wrote it down from memory
some forty years or so after both Rodney and Sir Charles Douglas
had been laid in the grave. Dashwood was then an admiral, Sir Charles
Dashwood, K.C.B. The account was written for Sir Howard Douglas, son of
Rodney's flag-captain.[38]