Part 7

After calling in his chasers Rodney closed his fleet to one cable interval all along the line. His van ships continued meanwhile to lead obliquely across the course that the French were steering, making towards the spot where, as both sides could see, the two lines were bound to intersect. The headmost ships of the French fleet passed over the spot first; just, it so happened, as the leading ships of the British fleet came within range. For that the French had been watching. As soon as they saw that their shots could reach the enemy they opened fire.

De Grasse did not intend, if he could help it, to fight a pitched battle. It was not his policy to fight the battle out. Since he must fight he would confine the day's proceedings to a mere passing cannonade, after which he would work to windward and slip away. He knew he had the heels of Rodney; the events of the past two days had shown that. Thus at the last moment De Grasse thought he might snatch a strategical advantage in the great game. His gunners, however, did not shoot straight enough. They failed to do the execution among Rodney's masts and spars that their admiral hoped for. The British fleet came steadily on with little to show by way of damage except a few rope-ends dangling loose and some shot-holes through the sails.

The _Marlborough_, a powerful 74, one of the finest men-of-war that Deptford dockyard ever sent to sea, led the line. She kept her helm steady and held her way forward without checking for an instant, unswerving, regardless of the storm of shot that hurtled overhead or splashed in the sea alongside. Taylor Penny, the _Marlborough's_ captain, a gallant son of Dorset and a veteran now serving in his third war, was not the man to mind a cannonade. The _Marlborough_ stood on silently until she had come within 150 yards of the French line. Then, when nearly opposite the fifth ship from the enemy's van, her helm went swiftly up and the ship's huge bulk swung round to port. The next minute she began to range along the enemy broadside on, in the opposite direction to that the French were taking. Not a shot had come from the _Marlborough's_ ports all this time. Four French ships in turn passed her and fired at her, but Captain Penny took no notice. The flagship had made no sign. No order to 'commence action' had been given. Every telescope on board was kept fixed on the _Formidable_, while below the captains of the guns fidgeted impatiently with the firing lanyards. They had to practise patience. Eight bells clanged out on board the silent _Marlborough_, and still they waited. Then, instantaneously the signal was made. The _Formidable's_ signal halyards were seen to twitch, and a little ball of bunting slid swiftly aloft to the mast-head. There was a jerk, and the next instant the red flag for battle--the 'bloody flag,' as the navy called it--was 'abroad,' flying out upon the breeze. It went up just as the _Marlborough_ came abreast of the French _Dauphin Royal_, the ninth ship in De Grasse's line, and as the flag 'broke' the _Marlborough's_ opening broadside flashed off with a thundering crash, guns, carronades, and musketry all together.

The British ships nearest astern of the _Marlborough_ opened fire at the same moment. Each in her station, a cable's length apart, they had been following close in the _Marlborough's_ wake, equally ready and eager to begin.

There were sixteen ships in the line between the _Marlborough_ and the _Formidable_, each 200 yards apart (the length of a cable), and the men of Rodney's flagship had to wait some little time yet for their turn. Their eyes, though, had something to look at, for most of the ships ahead of them were full in their view meanwhile. What they saw was worth seeing.

The _Arrogant_, a veteran 74 of the Seven Years' War time, backed 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 _Prothee_, 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 anaesthetics 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.

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.

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 _Eveille_, 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.