Famous Sea Fights, from Salamis to Tsu-Shima

by A. Hilliard Atteridge

CHAPTER VIII

THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS' PASSAGE
1782

In the days when fleets in action relied upon the oar, all fighting was at close quarters, and, as we have seen in our study of typical battles of this period, naval engagements fought out at close quarters gave very definite results, the fleet that was defeated being practically destroyed.

When battles began to be fought under sail, with the gun as the chief weapon, a new method had to be evolved. The more the fire of broadside batteries was relied upon, the greater was the tendency to fight at short artillery range, without closing to hand-to-hand distance, and when the sailors and sea-fighters of the seventeenth century adopted line ahead as the normal formation for making the most of broadside fire, battles had a marked tendency to degenerate into inconclusive artillery duels.

In both the English and the French navies—the two powers that after the naval decline of Spain and Holland disputed the command of the sea—the tactics of the battle in line ahead soon crystallized into a pedantic system. For a hundred years the methods of English admirals were kept in rigid uniformity by a code of "Fighting Instructions for the Navy," drawn up under the direction of the Duke of York (afterwards James II), when he was still Lord High Admiral of England in his brother's reign. These instructions were a well-meant attempt to provide a "sealed pattern" for naval engagements. They contemplated set, formal battles with both fleets in line ahead, sailing on parallel courses, or passing and repassing each other on opposite tacks, exchanging broadsides as the guns bore. The French adopted similar methods. If the English had any advantage in their tactics, it was in their ideas of gunnery. The French aimed at masts and rigging, in the hope of crippling an adversary in her sail power and forcing her to fall out of the moving line. The English believed in making the hull their target, aiming "between wind and water" to start dangerous leaks, or sending their shot into the crowded gun-decks to put the enemy's batteries out of action.

guns and carronades in use in the british navy in the latter part of the 18th century

Under such methods battles became formal duels, in which, as often as not, there was no great result, and both sides claimed the victory. The story of many of the naval campaigns of the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century is weary reading. It was in the last quarter of the century that English admirals learned to fight again at close quarters, and to strike crushing blows at an enemy. The new period of energetic, decisive fighting began with a famous battle in West Indian waters in 1782, and culminated in the world-renowned victories of Nelson, who was a young captain on the North American station "when Rodney beat the Comte de Grasse" in the battle of the Saints' Passage.

Born when George I was King, Rodney was a veteran of many wars when he won his West Indian triumph. He had fought the French under Hawke, and was with Boscawen at the taking of Louisburg. In 1759 he bombarded Havre, and burned the transport flotilla collected at the mouth of the Seine for a raid on England. Three years later, as commander-in-chief on the Leeward Islands station, he captured Martinique, St. Lucia, and Grenada, and learned the ways of the West Indian seas. Then came years of political disfavour, half-pay and financial embarrassment, until in an hour of darkness for England, with the American colonies in successful revolt and Frenchman and Spaniard besieging Gibraltar by land and sea, the veteran admiral was recalled to active service, and found and seized the great opportunities of his life. Sailing south with a relieving fleet, he fell in with and captured a Spanish convoy off Finisterre, and then surprised and destroyed Lungara's Spanish squadron, taking seven ships out of eleven, and chasing the rest into Cadiz. The appearance of his fleet before Gibraltar saved the fortress, and then in February, 1780, he sailed across the Atlantic to try conclusions with De Guichen, whose powerful fleet based on Martinique was threatening all the English possessions in the West Indies. So far numbers and opportunity had been on his side. He had now to depend more on skill than fortune, and meet a more equal opponent.