Part 4

To support the 'main armament' and provide for all comers, down to hostile torpedo boats, there are on board the _Formidable_, as 'secondary armament,' twelve 6-inch Vickers guns of the latest pattern (mounted six a side), sixteen 12-pounders and six 3-pounders (mounted in the fighting-tops--three in each top), with Maxims and light boat and field guns. In battle, fighting an enemy end-on, this embodiment of a 'blustering adjective' would, within the first five minutes, have sent at the enemy upwards of 7 tons of bursting shells; fighting broadside-on, over 16 tons.

The _Formidable_ is no less efficiently fitted for standing up to the enemy and taking her share of hard knocks. On her sides amidships, shielding from injury the engines and boilers, the 'vitals' of the ship as they are called, a wide belt of Harveyed steel armour extends. It is 9 inches thick, and 217 feet long by 15 feet deep, and is built up of some seventy odd plates or slabs of solid steel fitted together, each one of just the surface area of a billiard-table with an extra yard added to its length, and weighing each upwards of 12 tons. Each plate separately takes from a fortnight to three weeks to make. Where the 9-inch armour leaves off, towards the ends of the ship, a thinner steel belt, 3 inches thick, with an armoured deck, also of 3-inch steel, carries forward the protection. At the bows it joins on to the ship's enormous ram--a ponderous forging of 35 tons of steel.

Such, roughly indicated, are some of the main features in regard to offence and defence of this Titanic 'bruiser of the sea,' His Majesty's battleship the _Formidable_. Below, the ship has twenty Belleville boilers, capable of raising steam at a pressure of 300 lbs. to the square inch; engines of 15,000 horse-power, capable of driving the ship's immense hull, a length of 430 feet over all from stem to rudder, through the water, full speed ahead, at 18 knots an hour (nearly twenty land miles), each of the great 17-foot twin-screws thrashing round at the rate of 108 revolutions a minute. She can stow coal enough to carry her without re-coaling, at an average cruising speed of 10 knots, from Spithead to Buenos Ayres or through the Suez Canal as far as the Bay of Bengal.

A million sterling of the nation's money, with a trifle of forty odd thousand pounds added, is what the _Formidable_ represents--L1,040,000 literally cast on the waters. Of that sum the guns by themselves cost L74,500--more, in fact, than it cost to build and rig and fit the _Victory_ for sea. And her upkeep in commission--interest on first cost, wear and tear, crew, victualling, coal, stores, and ordnance stores--costs L163,000 a year. In action every shot from the _Formidable's_ big guns would cost L80--a sum equivalent to the annual pay of two midshipmen _plus_ a naval cadet.

These features of the _Formidable_ are enough to show that in the case of this particular modern battleship, at any rate, the name is not misapplied, not unsuitable, nor without justification: that it is something more than a 'futility,' something more than a 'merely blustering adjective.' We may trust the honour of the flag to the _Formidable's_ keeping, assured that should the hour of trial come in her time she has the means of taking her own part with power and advantage. Grant her, when that time comes, 'good sea-room and a willing enemy,' as the war toast of the Old Navy used to go, and the British Empire may rest assured that, as far as this particular ship is concerned,

... in the battle's dance of death, She'll dance the strongest down.

There is, though, another justification, and of the amplest kind, for the presence on the roll of the British fleet of the name _Formidable_. This 'merely blustering adjective' has a meaning there that is all its own--a _raison d'etre_ not only for the Royal Navy but for all the world in that connection that is _sui generis_. The British fleet does not owe the name to any whim or fancy of a modern Admiralty First Lord. _Vixere fortes ante Agamemnon_--there have been famous _Formidables_ before the present ship. _Formidable_, indeed, is one of our best 'trophy names'--a name that came into the British service as spoil of war, won from the enemy in very exceptional circumstances. It stands in a special sense as a memento of one of the most brilliant exploits in our annals--of that tremendous November afternoon battle of 1759, fought in a wild Atlantic storm amid the reefs of Quiberon Bay, on that historic occasion, so happily described in Mr. Henry Newbolt's stirring verse,[13] 'when Hawke came swooping from the west.'

'Twas long past noon of a wild November day When Hawke came swooping from the west; He heard the breakers thundering in Quiberon Bay, But he flew the flag for battle, line abreast. Down upon the quicksands roaring out of sight Fiercely beat the storm-wind, darkly fell the night, But they took the foe for pilot and the cannon's glare for light When Hawke came swooping from the west.

One result of Hawke's swoop was, of course, the stopping of all French invasion schemes for the rest of the Seven Years' War. Henceforward there was no need to watch the southward beacons night after night; no need of more shore batteries at Brighton and elsewhere along the Sussex coast; no further need to cover the South of England with standing camps for Pitt's new militiamen to learn their drill in; no more need to shock the good ladies of Hampshire with the sight of bare-legged Highlanders marching to and fro.

The guns that should have conquered us, they rusted on the shore, The men that would have mastered us, they drummed and marched no more; For England was England, and a mighty brood she bore When Hawke came swooping from the west.

The other result of Hawke's swoop was the _Formidable_--the French flagship _Formidable_--the sole trophy that the stormy weather allowed Hawke to bring off from the fight. The Royal Navy took over the fine prize, a magnificent two-decker of eighty guns, enrolled her name as it stood on the list of the British fleet, and in due course handed the name on from one successor to another, until we come in the end to our own fine steel-clad battleship, the _Formidable_ that to-day graces

The proud Armado of King Edward's ships,

in the words of poor Kit Marlowe's 'mighty'--and prophetic--line.[14]

Then we have another justification, the most notable of all. The _Formidable's_ name has acquired a new significance since the days of Hawke. To-day it has to the Royal Navy a more recent meaning. It stands on the roll of the fleet as the special memorial of another achievement, as a memento of another admiral's 'stricken field,' in special honour of Rodney's most famous feat of arms, of the great victory that has given Rodney his place in the history of the British Empire. On that day a _Formidable_ was Rodney's flagship; the second ship of the name, the immediate successor of Hawke's great prize, our first British-built man-of-war _Formidable_.[15] 'If ever,' wrote Froude, 'the naval exploits of this country are done into an epic poem--and since the _Iliad_ there has been no subject better fitted for such treatment or better deserving it--the West Indies will be the scene of the most brilliant cantos.' In at least one of those cantos Rodney's _Formidable_ would be a central figure.

We now come directly to the place, time, and circumstances of the event, taking up the tale a little before the fighting actually opens.

It begins, first of all, in Gros Islet Bay, St. Lucia, a locality that one wants a fairly large map to find. The name is hardly a familiar one, yet it has a place of its own, of special interest in our naval annals. Gros Islet Bay was Rodney's headquarters in the West Indies during March 1782 and the first week of April, at the time that the _Formidable_ was Rodney's flagship. Rodney was in Gros Islet Bay with his fleet of 36 sail of the line, and the French admiral De Grasse, at the head of 34 of the line, was facing him in Fort Royal Bay, Martinique, distant some thirty miles--about as far off as Boulogne is from Folkestone. So the lists were set.

Rodney had come out from England specially to save the British West Indies from De Grasse. And even more than the fate of the 'sugar islands' depended on his efforts. 'The fate of this Empire,' were the last words of the First Lord of the Admiralty (Lord Sandwich) to Rodney before he sailed, 'the fate of this Empire is in your hands!' He forced his way across the ocean in mid-winter, battling through a series of fierce storms that day after day threatened to tear the masts out of his ship. 'Ushant,' wrote Rodney to his wife, 'we have weathered in a storm but two leagues, the sea mountains high, which made a fair breach over the _Formidable_ and the _Namur_, but it was necessary for the public service that every risk should be run. Persist and conquer is a maxim that I hold good in war, even against the elements, and it has answered.' It did answer. Rodney arrived to find that there were still four islands left to Great Britain. All our West Indian possessions had fallen except Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, and St. Lucia. St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, and Demerara had been taken, actually, while Rodney was on his way out. De Grasse when Rodney arrived was refitting for a yet more audacious project at Fort Royal, Martinique, the Portsmouth of the French navy in the West Indies; and to be on the spot to intercept him and bring him to decisive battle at the first chance, Rodney anchored his fleet in the nearest available harbour, within touch and almost within sight of the French fleet, in the roadstead of Gros Islet Bay, St. Lucia.

Both fleets during March and the first week of April were hard at work refitting. Twelve of Rodney's ships had come out from England with him and wanted little; the others of the thirty-six, however, belonged to the fleet originally on the station, and after the trying time of it they had had during the past six months, including two sharp fights with the French, were badly in need of a refit. De Grasse's fleet was in like case. The arrival of convoys from home, however, with war stores and supplies of all kinds for both fleets, towards the end of March, made it all but certain that the month of April would not go by without a battle in the open sea.

Those days in Gros Islet Bay proved to Rodney of vital importance. Secret intelligence came to hand which disclosed to him the enemy's entire plan of campaign. A gigantic and startling project was on foot. An elaborate and wide-reaching combination had been designed in which a Franco-Spanish army and a Franco-Spanish fleet were both to take part, the operations being projected on a scale far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the war on either side. It aimed at nothing less than the sweeping of the British flag out of the West Indies by one tremendous and overmastering _coup_.

De Grasse's fleet was to be the chief factor in the situation, the mainspring of the movement. The preliminary dispositions had already been made. Thirteen Spanish ships of the line were at that moment waiting off Cape Haitien in San Domingo, accompanied by transports with 24,000 troops on board. They were expecting to be joined by a force of 10,000 French soldiers from Brest, escorted by five or six men-of-war which were already overdue. According to the grand plan, De Grasse with his fleet, thirty-four of the line, with store-ships and the convoy that had arrived in March, was to move out from Fort Royal, with some five or six thousand more troops on board the men-of-war, and cross over and join hands with the assemblage off San Domingo. The united armada, making up some sixty ships of the line, against which Rodney's thirty-six and the handful of ships at Port Royal could not hope to stand, were then to swoop down on Jamaica and capture it out of hand. There were only 3500 British regulars in Jamaica, and the planter militia and armed negroes were of little account. Jamaica taken, said the enemy, Barbados would fall at the first summons, and Antigua and St. Lucia would follow, making an end of the British West Indies. So confident were the enemy of success that, as it was reported, Don Bernardo Galvez, the Spanish Commander-in-Chief, had already been publicly addressed at Havana as 'Governor of Jamaica,' which island, according to the secret arrangement between the allies (already drafted), was to be Spain's share of the spoil.

Rodney's fleet--the _Formidable_ and her thirty-five consorts off St. Lucia--were all that stood between the scheme and its fulfilment. Realising to the utmost what depended on him, Rodney pressed on his preparations for sea with intensified vigour, so as to be ready to fall on De Grasse immediately he left Fort Royal.

During March and the early part of April--except for ten days lost in a futile attempt to cut off De Grasse's convoy from France on its way to Fort Royal--Rodney was busy refitting: a task that taxed all his energies owing to the state to which some of the ships had been reduced, short of powder, shot, sea stores of all kinds, bread, even anchors. All the fleet, too, had to be watered, which proved a slow and difficult business owing to the bad weather. 'I think,' wrote Rodney in March, 'the winter season has followed us: nothing but violent hard gales, and such a sea that half the boats of the fleet have been stove in watering, which has delayed us much in refitting.'

Incidentally the admiral had other matters to attend to. One--it will be interesting to make a small point of it here--was to correspond personally with his opponent. The subject was the interchange of prisoners taken at St. Kitts and earlier in the campaign. The British sloop-of-war _Alert_ was the intermediary, going and coming under a flag of truce. Nothing could exceed the courteous tone of Rodney's correspondence with the French admiral; and, on the other hand, De Grasse was civility itself. He treated Captain Vashon of the _Alert_, while that officer was at Fort Royal, with every consideration, made him his guest for the time, and expressed in conversation with the British captain the highest esteem and consideration for 'le Chevalier Rodney.'

Rodney wrote to De Grasse, for instance, in one letter, after dealing in the pleasantest way with the business in hand:--

It will make me happy if at any time this island produces anything worthy your acceptance, or that may be the least useful to your table. As the merchant ships which have lately arrived from Europe may have brought different species of necessaries that may be agreeable to your Excellency, it will make me happy, Sir, to obey your commands.

The bearing of the two admirals to one another in their personal dealings affords a pleasing instance of the high-bred, chivalrous courtesy that was so characteristic of the old-time fighting days. It was the way with the men of the _ancien regime_ on both sides the Channel when they met in war never to forget that, first and foremost, they were gentlemen. In this spirit, almost at that very moment, indeed, De Crillon at Gibraltar was exchanging similar compliments with the 'old Cock of the Rock,' General Eliott--'Eliott the Brave': the same spirit that at Fontenoy, as all the world knows, moved one side to challenge the other to fire first. It was the same chivalrous spirit that prompted the captains of the British fleet in the East Indies to pay their unique compliment to the great De Suffren at the close of this war. Hostilities were over, peace had been proclaimed, and the rival fleets, so lately enemies, met, both on their way home, in Table Bay. They had fought five fierce battles within sixteen months--each one a drawn action, with honours divided. On finding the Bailli de Suffren and his fleet in Table Bay when they arrived, the British captains, brave old Commodore King, the senior officer, at their head, proceeded in a body to call on the gallant leader of their quondam foes, and pay the homage of brave men to the brilliant tactician they had more than once been hard put to it to keep at bay. Their generous tribute delighted the warm-hearted Provencal immensely, as he described, by the spontaneity and peculiar graciousness of the act. The intercourse between Rodney and De Grasse was in essentials of the same kind: the outcome of two warriors' sense of _noblesse oblige_ the one to the other; the obligation, as a point of honour, on both sides--

To set the cause above renown, To love the game beyond the prize, To honour while you strike him down The foe that comes with fearless eyes.

To count the life of battle good, And dear the land that gave you birth, And dearer yet the brotherhood That binds the brave of all the earth.[16]

It was, as it were, the swordsmen's obligatory recognition of each other in 'the Salute' when they first come face to face, ere the sword-blades cross and clash in fight; one of the courtesies of war between destined opponents, wishing one another well until the striking of the appointed hour--

Health and high fortune till we meet, And then--what pleases Heaven!

'Always be polite,' said Bismarck once to Moritz Busch; 'be polite to the foot of the scaffold, but hang your man nevertheless!' Nothing could be nicer than Rodney's attentions, but he was in deadly earnest all the same--he meant, at the proper time, 'to hang his man nevertheless!'

Another incidental detail. It was while Rodney's fleet off Gros Islet Bay was getting ready for sea that, according to local tradition, the grim little real-life tragedy of the Pitons took place. The Pitons or 'Sugar Loaves,' as, from their general shape, they are to this day commonly called by seafaring men, are two gigantic cones of rock, of volcanic origin, that thrust themselves up out of the sea off the south-westernmost end of St. Lucia, rising abruptly, almost sheer from the water's edge. The larger of the two, the Grand Piton, towers up to a height of some 2720 feet, or nearly seven times the height of St. Paul's Cathedral; the smaller has an elevation some 300 feet less. A number of sailors, the story goes, either stragglers from a watering-party or, possibly, men from the _Russell_, a seventy-four, then undergoing repairs in the _carenage_, managed to get on to the Grand Piton, clambering up on to its lower slopes 'by means of lianes and scrub.' Their intention was to try and scale the huge mass and plant a Jack flag they had brought with them on the boulders at the summit. The Grand Piton is covered almost to the top with dense bush, but there are bare patches and open areas of rock surface and ledges here and there. How many landed or started to climb is not stated, but, according to the story told at St. Lucia to this day, lookers-on with telescopes made out four men, including one man with the flag, more than half-way up. Immediately afterwards one of the party was seen to stagger and fall, and then roll down a little way and disappear. The others went on until some two or three hundred feet higher up, when a second man dropped. The two survivors went on steadily higher still, and then suddenly one of the two was seen to go down. His companion apparently took no notice. He pressed on with his flag, intent only on getting to the top. He nearly succeeded. The last man seemed to have almost reached the summit when he, like his messmates, was seen to stop, stagger, throw up his arms, and drop. So the local people tell visitors to St. Lucia to this day. What was it? What made the men fall dead so suddenly? How they met their death no man ever knew. Few human feet besides theirs, if indeed any, have ever tried to scale the Pitons, and the bones of Rodney's sailors lie up there on the windy height as they fell--what the weather and a hundred and twenty years' exposure in the open has left of them. Was it sunstroke? Local opinion attributes their fate to another cause. The Pitons, like the whole island of St. Lucia itself, are known to swarm with venomous serpents, the deadly _fer de lance_--'perhaps the deadliest snake in the world' it has been called--an ugly monster, in average length from 3 to 5 feet, as thick as a boy's wrist, of a dull red or reddish-yellow colour, fiercely aggressive in its ways, ever ready to strike at sight, and its bite practically instant death. _Craspedocephalus_--the name in itself is almost enough to kill--would account for everything. Whatever the cause really was, at any rate the Grand Piton has ever since kept its secret to itself.

At Fort Royal, meanwhile, everybody, from the great French Admiral De Grasse himself down to the smallest _mousse_, was in the highest spirits and assured of victory. To one and all the hour was at hand for the development of the grand scheme that was to lay all the West Indies at the feet of France. Hardly a finer fleet, perhaps, had ever assembled under a French admiral than that lying there at that moment in attendance on the orders of De Grasse. There were thirty-four ships of the line, the finest men-of-war in the French navy among them, and their captains were some of the smartest and most dashing and most highly trained officers that ever trod a French quarter-deck. A specially interesting set they were, as it happened, in many ways.

De Grasse himself was a man of reputation, a talented and highly trained officer, able to map out the strategy of a campaign in advance with any man of his time, as his admirably planned and executed Chesapeake campaign had just proved to all the world. He was just fifty-nine--five years younger than Rodney. Both men had followed the sea for half-a-century, the young De Grasse taking service under the Order of Malta, in which seven-and-twenty of his ancestors had been enrolled before him, just about the time that the schoolboy Rodney was leaving Harrow to enter the Royal Navy as the last of the 'King's Letter Boys.' Since then De Grasse, as an officer of the French navy in the regular line, had served all over the world, and done well for his country and himself. He had fought against England in three wars and been taken prisoner once. In the present war, indeed, he had already taken part in six fleet actions, and in three of them as _chef d'escadre_ and third in command had had opportunity of learning something of Rodney's methods on the day of battle. Such was Joseph Paul de Grasse-Briancon, Knight of Malta, Grand Cross of the Order of St. Louis, Chevalier of the Order of Cincinnatus, Count de Grasse and Marquis de Grasse-Tilly, thirty-fifth of his line, of the _noblesse_ of Provence, overlord of forty fiefs, the man in whose hands rested the fate of the campaign now about to open. 'Fresh from the victorious thunder of the American cannon' as he was, not a man under his orders doubted his ability to achieve success in the grand project that had been committed to his hands.