can vouch for their truth. Being one of the aides-de-camp to the
Commander-in-Chief on that memorable day, it was my duty to attend
both on him and the Captain of the Fleet, as occasion might require.
It so happened, that some time after the battle had commenced, and
whilst we were warmly engaged, I was standing near Sir Charles
Douglas, who was leaning on the hammocks (which in those days were
stowed across the fore part of the quarter-deck), his head resting on
one hand and his eye occasionally glancing on the enemy's line, and
apparently in deep meditation, as if some great event were crossing
his mind. Suddenly raising his head and turning quickly round he said,
'Dash! where's Sir George?' 'In the after-cabin, sir,' I replied. He
immediately went aft; I followed; and on meeting Sir George coming
from the cabin close to the wheel, he took off his cocked hat with his
right hand, holding his long spy-glass in his left, and making a low
and profound bow, said, 'Sir George, I give you joy of the victory!'
'Pooh!' said the Chief, as if half angry; 'the day is not half won
yet.' 'Break the line. Sir George, ... the day is your own, and I
will insure you the victory.' 'No,' said the admiral, 'I will not
break my line.' After another request and another refusal Sir Charles
desired the helm to be put a-port, Sir George ordered it to starboard.
On your father ordering it again to port, the admiral sternly said,
'Remember, Sir Charles, that I am Commander-in-Chief--starboard, sir,'
addressing the Master, who, during this controversy, had placed the
helm amidships. Both the Admiral and the Captain then separated, the
former going aft, and the latter forward. In the course of a couple
of minutes or so each turned, and again met nearly on the same spot,
when Sir Charles quietly and coolly again addressed the Chief, 'Only
break the line, Sir George, and the day is your own.' The Admiral then
said, in a quick and hurried way, 'Well, well, do as you like,' and
immediately turned round and walked into the after cabin. The words
'Port the helm!' were scarcely uttered when Sir Charles ordered me
down with directions to commence firing on the larboard side.
How far an admiral's recollection of something that happened when he
was a midshipman seventeen years of age is likely to be trustworthy
is the point. Sir Charles Dashwood's account was called forth by the
great magazine controversy of 1830 over the question as to who was the
actual originator of the manoeuvre of 'Breaking the Line,' on the 12th
of April 1782. A claim to the credit of it for his father, made by Sir
Howard Douglas, as set forth by him in the preface of a book that he
wrote on _Naval Gunnery_, raised the storm, and half England took sides
in the discussion.
Against Admiral Dashwood's memory for fifty-year-old details have to
be set the disciplinary improbabilities of the story for one thing,
particularly in the case of an officer so notoriously strict and
punctilious as was Rodney. It is incredible, not only that he would
have taken part in an altercation before the men on the quarter-deck,
but also that the most brilliant naval tactician of the time could
have missed seeing so obvious an opportunity. It is also significant
that not a word that anything unusual had happened on board Rodney's
flagship, in the most famous battle of the whole war, ever found
its way into print from any one of those on the _Formidable's_
quarter-deck, and near by at the moment, during the lifetime of either
Rodney or Sir Charles Douglas, or until the flag-captain's son burst
his bombshell. And it is possible to pick other holes in the case set
up against Rodney. It is easily probable that Captain Douglas called
Rodney's attention to the gap in the enemy's line, but without any
theatricals. It would have been his duty to do so. He had then to stand
back and take his orders. The admiral, by nature, and as his whole
career proved, 'a man quick to see an opportunity, prompt to seize
it,'[39] would hardly require teaching his business, least of all a man
with Rodney's fighting record.
Blane returned on deck at the moment that Midshipman Dashwood was
flying down the ladder to the batteries below with the order to open
fire on the port side. It was just as the _Formidable_ was swinging her
bows slowly round to pass through between the wreck of the _Glorieux_
and the _Diadème_. He apparently saw no trace of excitement about the
admiral, no sign of loss of temper, nothing to suggest that anything
unusual had just been happening. On the contrary, Rodney was in quite
a jocular mood. 'Now comes the struggle,' was Rodney's greeting to the
doctor, with one of those classical allusions that came so naturally
to the gentlemen of that day, pointing to the hulk of the dismasted
_Glorieux_ as it drifted close alongside them,--'Now comes the struggle
for the body of Patroclus!' Blane looked down on to the _Glorieux'_
deck and right into her port-holes. 'The _Formidable_,' he tells us,
'was so near that I could see the cannoniers throwing away their
sponges and handspikes in order to save themselves by running below!'
The British flagship swept through the gap, pouring a broadside
into the _Glorieux_ to the right and the _Diadème_ to the left. The
_Glorieux_ was at that moment 'close to our starboard side and almost
in contact therewith, about a ship's breadth from us.' On the larboard
side, eye-witnesses related, the _Formidable's_ three tiers of guns
went off with 'one platoon report.' After it the _Diadème_ had
vanished. She was seen no more from the _Formidable_, nor apparently
by any other ship of the British fleet. Rodney himself believed--and
reported to the Admiralty in his official despatch--that she had been
sent to the bottom, with all hands there and then.[40]
[Illustration:
THE _FORMIDABLE_ BREAKING THE LINE. April 12, 1782
After J.C. Schetky.
[The original water-colour was painted for the Duke of Rutland (elder
brother of Captain Lord Robert Manners, mortally wounded in the
battle), and is at Belvoir Castle.]]
Immediately after that, as the smoke cleared off, a group of three or
four French ships were made out near at hand, all huddled together in
a mass. They were the ships that had been following the _Diadème_.
Thrown aback by the shift of wind, and further disordered by the sudden
turning round of the _Diadème_ herself right across their bows, they
had got jammed together in confusion, 'almost, if not quite, in contact
with each other.' They were full in the path of the _Formidable_ as
she went through the line. She had to pass quite close to them. At
the same instant the _Duke_ was about to pass on the farther side of
the group. Captain Gardner had seen the admiral, astern of him, swing
round suddenly to break through the enemy's line, and guessing what was
intended, had of his own accord followed suit, forcing his way through
between the two Frenchmen nearest himself at the moment. Thus the
hapless group of French ships found itself all at once placed under
fire on two sides from the most powerful three-deckers in the British
fleet, they themselves also at that moment being hardly able to fire
a shot in reply. It was a shattering and an overwhelming stroke. It
practically crushed the French centre out of existence as a fighting
entity. Rodney's men had only to fire 'into the brown.' Dr. Blane, who
was watching it all from the _Formidable's_ gangway, by Rodney's side,
describes what he saw. 'The unfortunate group, composing now only one
large single object to fire at, was attacked ... all at once, receiving
several broadsides from each ship, not a single shot missing, and
dreadful must have been the slaughter.'
Captain Fanshawe's hard-hitting _Namur_, a 90-gun ship, followed the
_Formidable_; then came Inglis's _St. Albans_, a 64; Cornwallis's
_Canada_, one of the deadliest fighting 74's in Rodney's fleet;
Dumaresq's _Repulse_, another 64, manned by a smart set of Guernsey
lads; and Nicholas Charrington's 74, the _Ajax_. One after the other
these all filed close past the helpless crowd of panic-stricken
Frenchmen, firing into them fast and furiously. Each one, at the same
time, passed close and fired into the luckless _Glorieux_ on the
farther side,--still quivering after the last tremendous salvo from, to
use Captain Douglas's own expression, 'the _Formidable's_ thundering
starboard side,' racked through and through by that awful tornado of 8
cwts. of solid shot, lying like a log on the water, a bare hulk under
a mass of splintered spars, torn canvas and tangled rigging. Captain
Inglis of the _St. Albans_ was watching her and made note of what he
saw. The _Glorieux_, said Inglis, did not return a single shot to the
_St. Albans'_ broadside, although the rags of her colours could be seen
still fluttering defiantly from where they had been nailed to the stump
of the mizen mast. Only one man was to be seen on deck, on the poop,
and he, poor fellow, dropped to the _St. Albans'_ marines. After his
ship had passed the _Glorieux_ Inglis looked back at her and watched
the _Canada_ give her a staggering broadside. 'From the dust, the
pieces of timber, and the smoke which flew to a great distance from the
side opposite of that where she had received the blow, it seemed as if
the ship (literally speaking) had been blown out of the water, and as
if the whole of the mass had been driven to windward'!
With the smashing of the French centre the fate of the day was settled.
The end might be some hours off--as it was in fact,--but from now
onwards it was plainly in sight. 'From this moment,' says Blane,
'victory declared itself. All was disorder and confusion throughout the
enemy's fleet from end to end.'
As a fact, to make things worse still for the enemy, De Grasse's line
had been broken through in yet another place. At the same moment
that Rodney's ships were crossing the French line at the centre,
Hood's division was breaking through it in the rear. It was quite
unintentional with Hood and his captains, a blunder in the smoke
fog; but it had a most telling effect on the fortunes of the day. It
completed the ruin of De Grasse's array. The same southerly shift of
the wind which had caused the gap in the centre was the cause primarily
of Hood's going through farther along the line. The _Bedford_,
Commodore Affleck, the rear ship of Rodney's centre squadron, was
following in her place, astern of the _Ajax_, when she suddenly lost
her leader in the smoke. At that instant the shift of wind broke up the
French. Unaware of what she was doing, the _Bedford_, keeping her helm
steady and holding straight ahead, pushed through the nearest gap in
the enemy's line. So little, in fact, was the _Bedford's_ captain aware
of what was happening, that the first intimation he had of what he had
done was the sudden discovery that he had no enemy to starboard to fire
at. As the best thing to be done he ported helm and stood on along the
larboard side of the enemy's ships ahead, which belonged to De Grasse's
_corps de bataille_, the French centre squadron. Hood's leading ships,
the _Prince William_ and the _Magnificent_, followed the _Bedford_,
and in the wake of them, through the widening gap, poured the rest of
Hood's ships, ten in number. They pressed in, sweeping across the stern
of the _Hector_, the rear ship of the French van, and between her and
the _César_, the leader of De Grasse's squadron. Thus at one stroke
were the ships of the French van cut off _en bloc_ from the centre and
the rear. One after the other, as they passed, Hood's twelve ships (or
thirteen counting in the _Bedford_ as one) cannonaded the _César_ and
the _Hector_, crippling both hopelessly, and reducing them to a state
little better than that in which Rodney's five followers had left the
_Glorieux_.
To give an idea of the wide expanse over which the battle was at this
moment raging, it should be said that Hood's _Barfleur_, when she broke
the line, was 2-1/4 miles from the _Formidable_. The _Marlborough_,
away in the van, was 3-1/2 miles off, and had already come out of
action, having ceased firing after passing the French rearmost ships.
Hood's rear ship, the _Royal Oak_, fired her parting broadside into the
stern of the ill-starred _César_ a few minutes after eleven, with which
the first stage of the battle came to an end. The _Formidable_ had
ceased firing more than an hour before.
The two fleets, after passing through each other, drifted slowly apart,
the breeze falling gradually away to light airs and mere catspaws,
after which it dropped altogether and left both sides becalmed, to
look at each other from a distance and repair damages. They lay like
this, out of range for most of the ships, for upwards of an hour.
Each was left by the events of the morning in a straggling and
broken-up array, but, as the clearing off of the smoke disclosed,
in widely different circumstances. The British, though the three
squadrons were all separated, were yet more or less within touch, and
with each of their groups fairly well together. They were about four
miles from the nearest of the French ships, and having regard to the
quarter whence the breeze would in ordinary course spring up during
the afternoon, to windward of them. The French, on the other hand,
were in hopeless disorder at all points and all dead to leeward. They
were lying anyhow, in three irregular groups or clusters of ships, and
widely separated. The centre group comprised the _Ville de Paris_,
herself, with five or six ships, all more or less crippled. Two miles
from De Grasse and to leeward of him lay twelve ships of Bougainville's
van squadron. Three or four miles away to westward was De Vaudreuil
with the rear squadron. Such was the position on both sides when,
between noon and one o'clock, the anticipated breeze suddenly sprang
up, coming very light and fitful at first, then steadily and from the
expected quarter.
One grim detail must be noted. As the two fleets drifted apart and men
had time to look round, they saw, we are told, an awful sight, which
struck horror into Briton and Frenchman alike. On all sides the water
was alive with ravening sharks, that had swarmed up from the bottom,
attracted to the spot, summoned to their banquet, by the splashes in
the water and the noise of the cannonade. Right and left the surface of
the sea was furrowed by the fins of the greedy monsters as they swam
about, snapping savagely all round. Under the murderous fire of the
British gunners most of the French ships had been turned into veritable
slaughter-houses. Each ship had been packed with troops for the Jamaica
expedition. Every seventy-four that morning, including the hundred and
fifty or two hundred soldiers on board, had carried not fewer than
nine hundred men at least. Some ships had had still more on board.
The _Ville de Paris_, for one, carried thirteen hundred. Awful indeed
had been the slaughter as the English broadsides, aimed at the French
port-holes at point-blank range, swept the decks and tore lanes through
the closely-packed masses of men as they stood helplessly at quarters.
It was the dreadful sequel that interested the sharks. In order to
get the dead out of the way at once in the turmoil of the fighting,
and give room to work the guns, most of the bodies of the fallen had
been pitched overboard then and there--the dead, and, as some said,
the not quite dead as well. Many a poor fellow had gone overboard
with the spars and rigging as they crashed over the side, shot away in
action. _Requin_ is, of course, the French for shark. As a fact, it is
a popular corruption of the word 'requiem,' which was the old French
name for the monster down to the seventeenth century. Littré explains
why:--'à cause,' he says, 'qu'il n'y a plus à dire qu'un requiem pour
celui qu'un requin saisit.'
The British were the first to feel the breeze as it came again after
mid-day, and every captain began to cast his ship's head round to
follow in the direction of the enemy. Hood, who at the outset remained
becalmed after Rodney and Drake had begun to move again, was seen
getting out his boats to tow the _Barfleur_ round into the breeze.
To over-take the French as soon as possible was the business of the
afternoon for Rodney's captains.
De Grasse's business, on the other hand, was to get away without
further fighting if he could, or at least to try and re-form. It was
not an easy task, in the scattered state of his fleet and in the
presence of an enemy who had the weather-gage. The _Ville de Paris_
signalled for all to re-form line on the ships farthest to leeward,
at the point farthest off from the British, and she headed in that
direction herself. It was 'playing for safety,' so to speak, at the
cost of abandoning some of his ships. What the rally so far to leeward
would inevitably mean for certain of De Grasse's worst-damaged
ships was soon seen. The more manageable of the French ships were
able to make their way to leeward; but it was another matter for
the cripples--in especial for the shattered trio--for the dismasted
_Glorieux_ and the partially wrecked _César_ and _Hector_. For them
it meant that they were to be left to their fate, left lying, between
the two fleets, hardly able to move at all, full in the way of the
advancing British. And so it proved in the result. On the hapless
three, in due course, on each in her turn, fell the first blows of the
reopening battle.
The _Glorieux_ was the first of the French to yield, in spite of
an extremely gallant effort to save her. About one o'clock, as the
breeze began to freshen, the French frigate _Richmond_ was ordered
to close the _Glorieux_ and pass a towing cable on board. The effort
was made under fire, for Rodney's nearest ships were already within
range of the _Glorieux_. Midshipman Denis Decrès, _aspirant de marine_
of the _Richmond_, had charge of the boat, round which the English
cannon-balls splashed on all sides. He did his work, despite its
difficulties, and won widespread fame and promotion for his gallantry.
He lived to become an admiral, Napoleon's favourite Minister of Marine
and a Peer of France, Duc Decrès. On his grand monument in Père la
Chaise is a sculptured panel in relief, to commemorate this particular
incident in Admiral Decrès' career. It is elaborately carved, and
represents a naval battle in grey marble, smoke-clouds, cannon firing,
and so forth, with, in the centre, a small boat with a rope, a boy
standing up at the stern, and near by a big dismasted man-of-war.
Over the panel is the legend--'Remorque portèe au _Glorieux_: 1782.'
The attempt, however, was palpably a hopeless one. The stricken
seventy-four was water-logged and could hardly stir. The officers of
the _Glorieux_ recognised the state of things at once. They hailed
across to the frigate to cast off the tow and shift for herself. De
Mortemart, the captain of the _Richmond_, however, was not inclined
to abandon a consort in distress. Although some of the British ships
were already threatening to cut him off, as well as the _Glorieux_,
he flatly refused to leave her. After that, as the only thing to be
done, the hopeless ship's company of the _Glorieux_ cut the rope. So
the two ships parted. The _Richmond_ had to move away, and in the end
she only saved herself with difficulty. Another French ship that tried
at the last moment to create a forlorn-hope diversion in favour of the
_Glorieux_, was De Glandevé's _Souverain_, but she in turn had to give
up the attempt, and, hunted like a hare among hounds, was hard put to
it in the end to get clear. Now, without further respite, the British
dogs of war ran in and closed on the doomed _Glorieux_. Trogoff de
Kerlessi, her first lieutenant, and the senior surviving officer on
board, could do no more. As the first British ship came up, he with his
own hand stripped away the tattered shreds of the _Glorieux_' ensign,
that still remained nailed to the stump of the mizen mast, and called
across to the British to take possession. There was no other course
left. The decks of the _Glorieux_ were shambles from end to end--'a
scene of complete horror,' in the words of Dr. Blane. 'The numbers
killed were so great, that the surviving, either from want of leisure
or through dismay, had not thrown the bodies of the killed overboard,
so that the decks were covered with blood and mangled limbs of the
dead, as well as wounded and dying.' Baron d'Escars, the captain, had
fallen some time previously, about nine o'clock,--one of the victims
of the _Formidable's_ awful first broadside. 'On boarding her,' adds
Blane, 'our officers ... were shown the stains of blood on the gunnel
where his body was thrown overboard.'
The _Royal Oak_, one of Hood's squadron, was ordered to take the
_Glorieux_ in tow. Captain Burnett had almost exhausted his ammunition,
and he utilised the opportunity to ransack the prize's magazines and
transfer on board his own ship all the powder barrels the _Glorieux_
had left, to fight any further Frenchmen he might encounter with
their own powder. Several others of Rodney's ships, indeed, were
equally short of powder after their morning's work, and another of
Hood's squadron, the _Monarch_, was at that very moment alongside
the _Andromache_, lifting forty barrels out of the frigate to enable
herself to continue in action.
The _César_ was the second French ship to meet her fate. She was the
next to drop astern, and the _Centaur_ and the _Bedford_ went at her
together as they came up. Though little better than a wreck, the
_César_ made a heroic defence for nearly half-an-hour. Hailed by the
_Centaur_ to surrender, the Comte de Marigny, the _César's_ captain,
replied by nailing his colours to the mast with his own hand and
opening fire. De Marigny fell dangerously wounded within the first
five minutes, but Captain Paul, his commander, took charge and made a
desperate defence. He held out until, one after the other, his masts
had gone overboard, the mizen carrying the ensign staff with it. After
that, no rescue being possible, with six feet of water in the hold,
and with only thirty-six rounds for her guns left in the magazine, the
_César_ surrendered to the _Centaur_.
Elsewhere at this time, towards four o'clock, there was a good deal
of 'partial and desultory' firing, to use Dr. Blane's term, going
on here and there, principally in the direction of De Grasse's
squadron. The French admiral's attempt to rally and re-form line had
failed. Bougainville's ships kept away in a body, apparently too much
occupied in repairing their own damages to pay attention to their
commander-in-chief. Many of De Vaudreuil's seemed equally shy, although
De Vaudreuil himself, with two or three of his command, gallantly beat
to windward and joined the _Ville de Paris_, making up a forlorn-hope
band round De Grasse that comprised the rearmost formed group of the
French fleet. They moved away at the best speed they were capable of,
but owing to the state of the _Ville de Paris's_ masts and spars, the
rate of sailing was dangerously slow.
De Grasse's group, numbering, with De Vaudreuil's accession and others,
nine ships in all, formed, as it were, a lodestone to the British
captains. It drew towards it all who could possibly make for the spot.
The great French flagship in the centre, with the commander-in-chief's
flag at the mast-head, was for all eyes the supreme attraction. Each
followed as well as the wind, which was variable and at times very
light, and the state of his own masts and spars, would let him.