Part 8

As the _Sceptre_ went astern, Rodney, with Blane at his elbow, walked out from the quarter-deck on to the starboard gangway at the side of the ship to get a better view. As he got there he saw another French ship nearing them. It was the _Glorieux_, reeling under the terrific punishment she had just undergone from the _Duke's_ guns. Her captain, D'Escars, had been struck down, and the ship wrecked from end to end; left lying a log on the water, 'shorn,' in Blane's words, 'of all her masts, bowsprit, and ensign staff, but with the white flag nailed to the stump of one of the masts, breathing defiance as it were in her last moments.' According to the French accounts they nailed their colours to the mast as the _Glorieux_ was approaching the _Formidable_, the operation affording opportunity for a fine little bit of heroic by-play. While they were nailing up the flag a sergeant of the Auxerrois regiment (a company of which was on board), Choissat by name, fastened a white cloth to his halberd and sprang on the bulwark rail and held it up, waving it defiantly. A bullet from either the _Formidable_ or the _Duke_ broke Choissat's right arm, whereupon the brave fellow caught the halberd with his left hand and held it up until the ship's flag had been secured. He lived through the fight and was given a commission for his heroism.

Rodney marked the oncoming of the _Glorieux_ as the stricken vessel dropped slowly down on them. Then, a second later, seeing that the French seventy-four was drifting in such a way that she would brush close past them and almost collide, he turned abruptly to Dr. Blane. Both the Admiral's aides-de-camp were out of the way. 'Run down,' he told the doctor, 'and tell them to elevate their metal.' Blane went. He guessed the Admiral's meaning, thanks to _Hudibras_, a couplet from which came opportunely into his mind.

Thus cannon shoot the higher pitches, The lower you let down their breeches.

'If this holds true,' says Dr. Blane, telling the story for himself, 'so must the converse of it, that is the muzzles must be lower by the elevation of the breeches. The Admiral's meaning could be no other than that of taking the enemy between wind and water.'[37] Blane hurried down and gave the order. In the interests of historic truth, in view of what immediately followed, it would have been well if he had not left the deck.

At the very moment that Rodney was sending Blane below, the wind suddenly shifted. It veered to the southward and headed the French fleet off, taking them all aback and throwing them out of order all along their line. It checked their way, and cast every ship round with her head to starboard, half-right as it were, setting the whole line _en echelon_. For the British, on the other hand, the shift of wind made things more favourable than before. It sent Rodney's ships briskly forward. Its effect was instantly apparent in the immediate neighbourhood of the _Formidable_. The mastless hull of the _Glorieux_ drove down steadily on the _Formidable_. The ship next astern of her in the French line, the _Diademe_, a seventy-four, hung back and then swung round sharply at right angles, paying off on the wrong tack. A wide gap was made at once in the enemy's line, and just opposite the _Formidable_. What was to be done?

Ink enough to float the _Formidable_ herself has been spilled over the incidents of the next three minutes on board the British flagship, and we cannot even now say that we know the true story. According to one officer, who, as a quarter-deck midshipman, was an eye-witness of what took place, but did not put pen to paper about it until half a century after the event, a highly dramatic--and in the interests of discipline not very edifying--scene followed, between Rodney personally and Sir Charles Douglas his flag-captain.

Here is Midshipman Dashwood's narrative as he wrote it down from memory some forty years or so after both Rodney and Sir Charles Douglas had been laid in the grave. Dashwood was then an admiral, Sir Charles Dashwood, K.C.B. The account was written for Sir Howard Douglas, son of Rodney's flag-captain.[38]

I shall simply relate facts, to which I was an eye-witness, and 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 _Diademe_. 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 _Diademe_ 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 _Diademe_ 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]

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 _Diademe_. Thrown aback by the shift of wind, and further disordered by the sudden turning round of the _Diademe_ 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 _Cesar_, 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 _Cesar_ 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 _Cesar_ 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. Littre explains why:--'a cause,' he says, 'qu'il n'y a plus a 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 _Cesar_ 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.