Part 2

The navy owes the name to Charles the Second, who introduced it on the roll of the fleet as a mark of special favour and a paternal compliment to Lucy Walters' ill-starred son, the vanquished of Sedgemoor, whose headless body now lies beneath the altar of the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower.

That was in the year of the Dutch attack on Chatham, and the same year saw our first _Monmouth's_ first fight. Mr. Pepys's 'complaints' notwithstanding, the _Monmouth_ made a good show on the occasion.[1] Her allotted duty was to bar the approach to the iron chain stretched across the Medway below Upnor Castle, and Captain Clarke, the _Monmouth's_ captain, kept his ship at her post until the position was no longer tenable. The _Monmouth_ later on was in the thick of the fight in the tremendous battle off Solebay, where James, Duke of York, defeated the Dutch fleet under Admiral Ruyter after nearly sixteen hours at close quarters; in Prince Rupert's three battles with the Dutch in 1673; and at La Hogue.

Our second _Monmouth_ was with Rooke when he made his swoop on the Vigo galleons--which dashing affair is commemorated to this day in the name of Vigo Street, off Regent Street;--took a distinguished part in the capture of Gibraltar; fought the French off Malaga; and helped Byng--Sir George Byng, Viscount Torrington, the father of the other Byng known to English history, the Byng who beat the enemy and was not shot--to settle the Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro in the year 1718.

The next _Monmouth_ had a hand in defeating two French fleets within six months--first with Anson and then with Hawke, in May and October 1747. This was the _Monmouth_ whose brilliant capture of the great French flagship the _Foudroyant_ in a desperate ship-to-ship duel at night forms our main story here.

The fourth _Monmouth_, at the close of a hot and bloody day, after a drawn battle with the French in the West Indies, in July 1779, received the unique compliment of being toasted that same night at dinner by the officers of the enemy's flagship--'To the brave little black English ship!' Nor is it easy to match another story of how this same _Monmouth_, in battle in the East Indies in 1782, resisted the fiercest onsets of the mighty De Suffren and his best captains, holding her own at bay, and stubbornly standing up to five French seventy-fours at once. Her main and mizen masts were shot down; the wheel was cleared of the men at it three times; the colours were shot away twice. Still, though, the _Monmouth_ fought on--until help came. Only three men were left alive on the _Monmouth's_ quarter-deck when the fight was over; one being her captain, James Alms, a sturdy son of Sussex, who stood at his post dauntlessly to the end, though twice wounded by splinters, with his coat ripped half off by a shot, with two bullet-holes through his hat, and his wig set on fire.

Yet another _Monmouth_ proved herself the bravest of the brave at Camperdown.

The brief summary of the _Monmouths'_ deeds of valour here given is, of course, not nearly all. It would take a big book to do adequate justice to the _Monmouths'_ war record--and there need not be a dull page in the volume.

So we pass on to what is by common consent accounted the brightest gem in the _Monmouth's_ coronet of fame, her fight with the _Foudroyant_, a French ship powerful enough to have sent the _Monmouth_ to the bottom at the first broadside, a set-to that lasted half through a February night, and ended the right way.

Now clear the ring, for hand to hand The manly wrestlers take their stand.

It was in February 1758, in the middle of the Seven Years' War. The British Mediterranean fleet in that month was blockading a French squadron that had sought shelter in the Spanish naval harbour of Carthagena. The squadron, numbering seven ships of the line and two frigates, had set sail from Toulon in January to reinforce the French fleet on the coast of Canada, and assist in the defence of Louisbourg, Cape Breton, which, as was known at Versailles, was to be attacked in force in the following summer. They counted on being able to evade the British Mediterranean fleet and give it the slip by running through the Straits of Gibraltar under cover of a dark winter's night. But _ils se faisaient un tableau_, that fault against which Napoleon in later days was always cautioning his generals. It all depended on the chance of their getting past Gibraltar unseen.

Unfortunately for the French plans, the British Admiralty were well aware of what was to be attempted. The fitting-out of the squadron at Toulon had been carried on with the greatest secrecy, but not so secretly that the British admiral at the head of the Mediterranean fleet had not learnt all about it. Admiral Osborn had also been warned from home of the probable destination of the French ships. The result was that when the French came they found him cruising with twelve line-of-battle ships a little to eastward of the Rock, and with a chain of look-out frigates stretching right across from Ceuta to Cape de Gata. M. de la Clue, the French admiral, found his way out of the Mediterranean barred, and having only seven ships of the line with him to the British commander's twelve, he turned aside and ran into the 'neutral' harbour of Carthagena.[2] He only got inside the port in the nick of time. Just as M. de la Clue's ships let go anchor within the Spanish batteries. Admiral Osborn's ships, duly warned by signals from their look-out frigates of every movement of the French squadron, came hastening up.

De la Clue sent off an urgent appeal for reinforcements, and in response five fresh ships of the line and a frigate were despatched from Toulon, in charge of the Marquis du Quesne, _Chef d'Escadre_, or, as we call the rank, Commodore. With these additional ships De la Clue would have the same numbers exactly as his adversary, and should, the French considered, be able to fight his way out. The Toulon ships sailed for Carthagena on the 25th of February with the idea of running the gauntlet of the blockading fleet and joining M. de la Clue at night. Again, however, Admiral Osborn was forewarned of the enemy's approach, and his look-out frigates did their work. Two of the French ships, pushing ahead of the others, managed, during the night of the 27th of February, to get past the British scouting frigates off Cape Palos and turn into Carthagena unseen, but the main French force, three ships of the line and the frigate, were caught in the act.

Soon after daybreak on the 28th of February--a bright, clear morning--the British frigate _Gibraltar_, cruising some twenty leagues north-east of Cape Palos, spied four strange sail away on the horizon to the north-east of her. The _Gibraltar's_ signals were repeated by the _St. George_ and the _Culloden_ and then Admiral Osborn ordered part of his fleet off Carthagena to head towards the strangers and chase. He had at the same time, of course, to keep his grip on M. de la Clue inside Carthagena and prevent him from making use of the opportunity to break out.

The strangers showed no colours and were too far off to be identified, but it was certain they could only be French ships. Indeed, too, as the English turned towards them, they began to edge away. A little later they divided and went off on different courses. One ship, a two-decker, stood in directly for the land. The smallest, the frigate, stood seaward, to the south-west. To cut off the two-decker and stop her from getting into Spanish waters the _Monarch_ and _Montague_ were detached and went off chasing to the north-west. The frigate was already practically out of reach. A little later the remaining two French ships, both two-deckers, were seen to draw apart. One of them headed as if to work round into Carthagena. The other, the biggest ship of the whole squadron, held on down the coast, as though to draw the British after her. In pursuit of the first of these two two-deckers went the _Revenge_ and the _Berwick_. The _Monmouth_ and the _Swiftsure_, with the _Hampton Court_ following them, went after the big ship. Of what force the French ships were, or their identity, nobody of course could tell as yet. They were too far off for the ports on their broadsides to be counted.

It is with the _Monmouth_ and her chase that we are particularly concerned.

From off the _Monmouth's_ deck all that at first could be seen of the chase was that she 'loomed large,' as the old sea phrase went--looked likely to be a tough customer. That, though, was so much the better. Going ahead before the wind with every reef shaken out, on her best point of sailing, the _Monmouth_ soon outstripped the _Swiftsure_ and the _Hampton Court_. By early in the afternoon she had left them both some leagues astern--mere dots on the far horizon. At the same time she was overhauling the big Frenchman fast. The _Monmouth_ had the reputation of being the fastest line-of-battle ship in the Royal Navy. 'She never gave chase to any ship that she did not come up with,' said the newspapers of her, when, in 1767, the _Monmouth_, unfit for further service and worn out after twenty-five years on the effective list of the fleet, was brought in to be broken up. To-day the ship displayed a speed in keeping with her reputation. Hand over hand the _Monmouth_ drew up nearer and nearer to her prospective foe, which loomed ever larger and larger. From the stranger's vast bulk and what gun-ports of her double tier could be counted end-on, from nearly dead astern, the chase was either an eighty-gun ship or an eighty-four.

If that was really so, it made all the difference in the world. French eighty-fours were at that day the most powerfully armed ships afloat. A French eighty-four carried 42-pounders as her main armament, and threw a broadside of 1136 lbs. at every discharge. That, in point of fact, was heavier metal than the _Royal George_ herself, the biggest first-rate in the British fleet, could throw. The _Monmouth_ was a small third-rate, one of the very smallest ships of the line in the Royal Navy, a sixty-four. Her heaviest guns were 24-pounders. Her total broadside amounted only to some 540 lbs. There would also be on board the eighty-four from 800 to 900 men, as against 470 in the _Monmouth_.

Who and what was the stranger? One man on board the _Monmouth_ knew, and apparently one man only.

The captain of the _Monmouth_ knew. He had already identified the ship ahead of him as the great _Foudroyant_ of 84 guns, until recently the flagship of the French Mediterranean fleet. Arthur Gardiner had good reason to know the _Foudroyant_.

Gardiner had been Byng's flag-captain, and the _Foudroyant_ had been the flagship of the French fleet off Minorca. The evidence at Byng's trial had absolutely exonerated Captain Gardiner.[3] It showed that Admiral Byng himself had practically taken the charge of the flagship out of his captain's hands, and had rejected his advice to go straight for the enemy without waiting for ships that were out of station, but in spite of that Gardiner had refused to be satisfied. He felt his connection with the affair bitterly, as a personal disgrace, he said. Indeed, as he told one of his friends, he only lived to find an opportunity of wiping out what was a slur on his good name, a stain on his honour. Apparently the idea became fixed in Captain Gardiner's mind that he was a marked man, that people said things of him; especially, that it was thought he had been 'shy' about laying his ship alongside the French flagship. That was intolerable, and out of it grew a feeling of peculiar antipathy towards this particular ship, the _Foudroyant_, that had become a sort of monomania with Captain Gardiner. It must, in these circumstances, have seemed to Captain Gardiner like the hand of Providence, when, some four months after the Byng court-martial, he was appointed to the _Monmouth_ and ordered out to the Mediterranean. And now his day had actually come. There was the very _Foudroyant_ right ahead of him, by herself, and with his own ship overtaking her fast.

At a quarter-past one in the afternoon the _Foudroyant_ ran a red flag up to the foretopgallant mast-head.[4] Apparently it was meant as a signal to her nearest consort, the ship that the _Revenge_ and _Berwick_ were in pursuit of, _L'Orphee_, to hoist her colours and commence firing. As the _Monmouth_ as yet was out of gunshot, three or four miles distant, the _Foudroyant_ had no need for the moment to hoist her own colours--nor did she show any until towards four o'clock, when the _Monmouth_ had at length begun to come within range. Then, exactly at six minutes to the hour, as an eye-witness notes, the French flag was displayed on the _Foudroyant's_ ensign staff, and a commodore's broad pennant at the main.

The _Monmouth's_ men had not long to wait.

On the stroke of four o'clock a spurt of flame leapt from one of the stern-chase ports of the _Foudroyant_, and as the smoke blew away to leeward the boom of a heavy gun came over the waters towards the _Monmouth_. It was the first shot. The ball splashed in the water not far off, and then the _Foudroyant_ fired a second shot--followed quickly by a third. The enemy had got the range. That, too, was enough for Captain Gardiner. His heavier guns could at least carry as far as the _Foudroyant's_ guns, and without waiting longer the _Monmouth's_ bow-chasers took up the game. 'Soon after being in gunshot of our chase,' says Lieutenant Carkett, the first lieutenant of the _Monmouth_, in his journal, 'she, having up French colours, began to fire her stern-chase at us, which we soon after returned with our bow-chase, and continued for about an hour, then ceased firing as she did, except a single gun now and then.'[5]

By this time, about five o'clock, the wind had fallen very light, but the _Monmouth_ still continued to gain steadily on her opponent. She was single-handed. The _Swiftsure_ and the _Hampton Court_ were hull down on the horizon, though they were still following with all sail set. The rest of the fleet was quite out of sight.

Just before the _Foudroyant_ began firing, Captain Gardiner, as we are told, called all hands aft. His address to them was brief, but what he said was to the point. 'That ship has to be taken, my lads, above our match though she looks. I shall fight her until the _Monmouth_ sinks.' Then they piped down and returned to quarters.

A little before this, while pacing up and down the quarter-deck with Lieutenant Campbell, a young army officer from Gibraltar who was on board in charge of a small detachment of soldiers (600 men from the Gibraltar garrison had been lent to Admiral Osborn to assist on deck in ships that were short-handed), he had said to the young officer, pointing to the _Foudroyant_ ahead of them: 'Whatever happens to you and me, that ship must go into Gibraltar.'

In that spirit Captain Gardiner took the _Monmouth_ into action as the evening began to close in--

Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit, And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap.

Captain Gardiner had a worthy antagonist. The Marquis du Quesne-Menneville, whose broad pennant flew at the _Foudroyant's_ mast-head that day, had the reputation of being as able an officer as any in the French service. No braver man ever wore the _bleu du Roi_. And he commanded a man-of-war that was, by common consent, considered the finest ship in all King Louis's navy. Only a short time before this a French officer, a prisoner of war, in conversation with one of his captors, had said of the _Foudroyant_: 'No single ship in the world can take her, not even your new _Royal George_! She can fight all to-day, and to-morrow, and the next day, and still go on fighting!' The _Foudroyant's_ weight of metal, indeed, was heavy enough to have sent the _Monmouth_ to the bottom at a single discharge. M. du Quesne, however, did not think fit to let the _Monmouth_ come up alongside. He would not venture to bring-to and accept the _Monmouth's_ challenge because of the _Swiftsure_ and the _Hampton Court_. They were a long way off, several hours distant, but they were to him, as far as the _Foudroyant_ was concerned, an enemy 'in being,' and he kept on before the wind.

'At half-past seven,' says Lieutenant Carkett, 'we came very nigh her, gave our ship a yaw, and discharged what guns we could bring to bear on her.' This meant checking the ship's way and hauling up at an angle to her course, turning off as it were to let fly a broadside right ahead. Apparently the _Monmouth_ lost ground in so doing. According to the first lieutenant's log, Captain Gardiner did not repeat the manoeuvre, and it took the _Monmouth_ nearly an hour to regain the distance that she dropped back.

'At half-past eight,' says Lieutenant Carkett, 'we came to a close engagement.'

The _Monmouth_ now ranged up on the _Foudroyant's_ larboard quarter and hurled into her a crashing broadside of round-shot and grape, at half musket range. It was the first heavy blow, and it got home. Then fastening with a bulldog's grip on her big opponent, the _Monmouth_ set to and blazed away fiercely into the French ship as fast as the guns could be loaded and run out.

Nothing could be more masterly than the way the British captain handled his ship. Captain Gardiner knew his business. He meant to settle his personal score with the _Foudroyant_ once for all; but he had no idea of sacrificing needlessly the life of a single man. There was to be no reckless clapping of the little _Monmouth_ side by side with the _Foudroyant_. Gardiner was well aware of the weight of his opponent's metal. He laid the _Monmouth_ on the _Foudroyant's_ quarter and kept her there, skilfully placing her in a way that allowed every gun on the _Monmouth's_ broadside to train on the enemy, while, at the same time, the French were unable to bring a number of their guns in the fore-part of the ship to bear.

It was of course quite dark when the battle at close quarters began--half-past eight on a February evening. The moon, within two days of the last quarter, would not rise till between eleven and midnight. Each ship, however, had her distinguishing lights hoisted, and the gleam of the battle-lanterns through the _Foudroyant's_ ports gave the _Monmouth's_ men sufficient mark to lay their guns by. More they did not want.

The _Swiftsure_ at this time was about nine miles off, as her log notes, steering for the spot by the flash of the guns.

The _Hampton Court_ was a couple of miles or so astern of the _Swiftsure_.

The enemy, for their part, with their heavier guns, smote the _Monmouth_ hard and answered back her fire with equal spirit. Even now though, the French commodore would not risk bringing-to for a space and making an effort to get the _Monmouth_ fairly under his broadside, where his crushing superiority in gun-power might well have been decisive. He held on instead, drifting slowly before the light wind, fighting as he went. So far there was little to disquiet M. du Quesne in the way that things were going. As a fact, during the first hour, the terrific punishment that the _Foudroyant's_ 42-pounders were able to inflict told heavily on the _Monmouth_, and it looked as though the _Foudroyant_ could well hold her own to the end. Captain Gardiner, however, stuck to his task unflinchingly. All the time an incessant fire of musketry was kept up from the _Foudroyant's_ tops, and from her towering bulwarks, which were lined with soldiers all along the length of the ship.

They did considerable execution among the men at the upper-deck guns, and, among their other victims, wounded Captain Gardiner himself with a musket bullet through the arm. It was an ugly wound, but the gallant captain of the _Monmouth_ refused to quit the deck, and had the wound bound up as he stood. This was about a quarter to nine.

Fate, however, unhappily had more in store for Arthur Gardiner that night. At half-past nine, the captain received a second and a mortal wound. 'Captain Gardiner received a mortal wound which obliged him to be conveyed off the deck,' Lieutenant Carkett briefly records. A grape-shot struck Gardiner on the forehead, according to the journal of Lieutenant Baron,[6] the third lieutenant, and he was carried below insensible, to linger in the cockpit until four next morning, when he died, 'having been speechless since he received his wound.'

Neither account exactly tallies with the story of Gardiner's fall that reached England. According to that, poor Gardiner was conscious for some moments after he was struck down, and was able to recognise Carkett, as the first lieutenant bent over him. He bade Carkett, it was said, as his last orders, 'to fight the _Foudroyant_ to the last, and sink alongside rather than quit her.' In reply, the account proceeds, Carkett swore to the captain to fight the battle out to the very last, and sent on the spot for the carpenter and had the _Monmouth's_ ensign nailed to the staff, after which he declared with an oath that he would shoot dead on the spot any man who should even whisper a thought of lowering it. So, indeed, it well may have been. Robert Carkett could be trusted to die hard. He was just the man to make such a threat and to keep it. Lieutenant Carkett was a rough sea-dog.

As senior officer after Captain Gardiner's fall, Carkett took charge on the quarter-deck, and the battle went on with even more desperate fury than before:--

Spars were splinter'd, decks were shatter'd, Bullets fell like rain; Over mast and deck were scatter'd Blood and brains of men.

Hour after hour, from half-past nine to twelve o'clock, the _Monmouth_ hung doggedly on the quarter of the great _Foudroyant_ and refused to be shaken off. She kept pace with the Frenchman steadily, not losing a foot, and not drawing nearer; mercilessly pounding away into the _Foudroyant's_ hull at a short seventy-yards range, as fast as the shot could be brought to the guns. Nor did the _Foudroyant's_ fire in reply slacken appreciably until midnight was past. Then, at length, the enemy seemed to tire, and the _Foudroyant's_ fire began to grow irregular and gradually to weaken.

It was the beginning of the end. Aided by the clear moonlight,--by half-an-hour after midnight the moon was well up,--the _Monmouth's_ gunners made better practice than before. They redoubled their efforts, as gun after gun in the _Foudroyant's_ ports stopped firing, until, a few minutes after one o'clock, the big vessel ceased resisting altogether, and not a shot came from her. The _Foudroyant_ lay helpless, like a log on the water, dismasted, hammered to a standstill, a silenced and beaten ship.

Lieutenant Carkett in his log thus summarises what passed in the last hour. 'Half-past 12: Our mizen was shot away. At 1 A.M. the enemy's was shot away. Also at half-past her main-mast was shot away. She then ceased firing, having slackened her fire for some time before.'

Still, though, the _Foudroyant_ made no sign of giving in. _Lassata, nondum satiata_--all was not quite over yet. So the _Monmouth_ continued her cannonade. Until the enemy made the customary sign of surrender, Lieutenant Carkett had no option but to go on firing. Commodore du Quesne was holding out _pour l'honneur du pavillon_: and also for his own personal credit. He had not long to wait. Within a few minutes of the _Foudroyant's_ fire giving over the _Swiftsure_ arrived on the scene. Ranging up under the _Monmouth's_ stern, she hailed across requesting her to stop her fire.